Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub
[graphic][subsumed]
[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]
[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

EDITOR'S NOTE

WILLIAM HAZLITT was born at Maidstone, 10th April 1778, his father being a Unitarian minister of Irish birth and parentage; his mother, Grace Loftus, the daughter of a farmer of Wisbech. In 1783 the family went to America, and remained till 1787, when they returned and settled at Wem in Shropshire.

William received his early education at home here, and at the age of fifteen was sent to the Unitarian College at Hackney to study for the ministry. He had already written in 1792, "A Project for a New Theory of Criminal and Civil Legislation." After about four years at Hackney he had given up all ideas of the pulpit. His father was still living at Wem, and there it was that in 1798 Hazlitt first saw Coleridge, and heard his last sermon in the Unitarian chapel of which his father had the charge. Coleridge took a kindly interest in him, and encouraged his application to metaphysics, and, moreover, in the spring of the same year invited him to Nether Stowey, where he spent three weeks, and on an excursion to Lynton with Coleridge met Wordsworth.

It was from this visit that Hazlitt dated his regard for literature; he was never a reader of many books, but what he read he studied thoroughly.

In 1802-3, after learning the elements of painting, probably from his elder brother John, who had been a pupil of Reynolds, he spent some four months in Paris copying pictures. Art, however, was not his metier, though after his return from France he painted some portraits, one of which -the last he did-is at least familiar, that of Lamb as a Venetian Senator, now in the National Portrait Gallery. he did not shine as an artist in execution, he had a true love for art as for literature. To quote from what is perhaps

vii

If

the justest estimate of him as a man and as a writer, the introduction by the late W. E. Henley to the recently issued complete edition of his works :

"He was interested only in the highest achievement; and to be the highest even that must lie behind him. Thus, Fielding was good, and Rubens; Sir Joshua was good, and so were Richardson and Smollett; so, likewise, Shakespeare was good, and Raphael and Titian were good-these with Milton and Rembrandt, and Burke and Rousseau and Boccaccio; and it was well. Well with them, and wellespecially well!—with him: they had achieved, and here was he, the perfect lover, to whom their achievement was as an enchanted garden, a Prospero's Island abounding in romantic and inspiring chances, unending marvels, miracles of vision and solace and pure, perennial delight."

It was probably as a result of Coleridge's encouragement of his study of metaphysics that he published in 1805 his "Principles of Human Action," to be used later on as the basis of his course of ten lectures at the Russell Institute on "The Rise and Progress of Modern Philosophy."

In 1808 he married Sarah Stoddart, and settled at Winterslow, near Salisbury, where in January 1809 his first son was born, who died in infancy, and a second in 1811, who survived him. Here they remained until 1812, when they removed to 19 York Street, Westminster, a house belonging to Jeremy Bentham, in which at one time Milton had lived. About 1819 he parted company with his wife, who later divorced him. In 1824 he was married a second time to a Mrs. Bridgewater, the widow of a colonel. They, together with his son by his former wife, toured for awhile in France and Italy, but Hazlitt and his son returned to London, leaving Mrs. Hazlitt in Paris. On his writing to ask his wife when she purposed to come home, he received the reply that she did not intend to come to him at all.

A further quotation from W. E. Henley well sums up Hazlitt's literary record.

"In the beginning he worked in the Reporters' Gallery,

« FöregåendeFortsätt »