William Hazlitt (1778-1830)

• Essayist, journalist and critic

• Born in Maidstone, Kent, England in 1778
• Mother: Grace Loftus
• Father: Reverent William Hazlitt (Irish Unitarian minister)
• His family was forced to leave Kent and live in Ireland b’coz of their support for the
‘American Revolution’
• 1787: returned to England & settle at Wem in Shropshire.
• Educated at the Unitarian New College at Hackney, but left 2 years later because
he did not want to become a Unitarian minister
• 1802: traveled to Paris to become a painter & to work in the Louvre, though war
between England and France compelled his return the following year.
• Through his father became friends with Coleridge and Wordsworth, under their
influence that he developed as a writer.
• In London his friend Charles Lamb introduced him to Godwin and other literary
figures and he began a long career as a prolific critic, journalist, essayist and
lecturer
• 1805: wrote his first book A Study of the Principles of Human Action
• Strongly supported the French Revolution
• Admired Napoleon indiscriminately
• 1806: wrote a political pamphlet, Free Thoughts on Public Affairs
• 1808: married Sara Stoddart, a friend of Mary Lamb & John Stoddart’s sister and
settled in London
• He then left philosophy for literature and journalism
• 1812: Became a theatre critic for The Morning Chronicle
• 1820: living apart from his wife, became passionately involved with his landlord’s
daughter. This attachment brought him close to insanity
• After divorcing his wife in Scotland, he returned to London to discover that the
young lady had transferred her affection to another man
• wrote Characteristics: In the Manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims (1823)
- imitation of La Rochefoucauld
Works
1. The Round Table (1817)
• Full Title: The Round Table: A Collection of Essays on Literature, Men, and
Manners
• Series of essays wrote jointly with William Hazlitt
• Published in 2 volumes in The Examiner
• 51 essays = 40 by Hazlitt (art, literature & theatre) + 12 by Hunt (on ordinary
subject)
2. Characters of Shakespeare’s Play (1817)
• Book of criticism of Shakespeare’s play
• Established him as a Shakespearean critic second only to Coleridge
• Dedicated to: Lamb
• Admired by Keats
• A Preface establishes his main theme of the uniqueness of Shakespeare's
characters and looks back at earlier Shakespearean criticism
• Two concluding chapters on "Doubtful Plays of Shakespear" and the "Poems
and Sonnets" round out the book.
• His main focus is on the characters that appear in the plays, but he also
comments on the plays' dramatic structure and poetry
• Preface > Cymbeline > Coriolanus > Falstaff > Hamlet > King Lear > Macbeth
> The Merchant of Venice > Othello > The Tempest >Twelfth Night; Or, What
You Will > As You Like It > Measure for Measure > Tragedies > Histories >
Comedies
3. Lectures on the English Poets (1818)
4. Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819)
5. Table Talk (181-22)
• A collection of essays originally published in two volumes
• Deals with the topic of art, literature & philosophy
• Made a spiteful attack on Shelley
• On the Pleasure of Painting
- 1st essay
- Intended to be a reflection on the life of Hazzlitt’s father, who died in 1820
 - It grew into an account of Hazlitt view on the nature of art and the mental
satisfaction to be derived satisfaction to be derived from painting
• The Indian Jugglers
- “No man is truly great, who is great only in his lifetime. The test of
greatness is the page of history. Nothing can be said to be great that has a
distinct limit, or that borders on something evidently greater than itself.
Besides, what is short-lived and pampered into mere notoriety, is of a
gross and vulgar quality in itself.”
6. On Milton’s Sonnets (1822)
7. Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion (1823)
• Published anonymously
• transparent description of his affair with landlord’s daughter (fell in love with
the daughter of his London landlord, but the affair ended disastrously)
8. My First Acquaintance with Poets (1823)
• Talked about his meeting with Coleridge and Wordsworth
• Coleridge is the only person I have ever knew, who answer to the idea of man
of genius
• “Wordsworth has eyes to see nature”
- Describe him as Don-Quixote like
• After reading Lyrical ballad
- “the sense of new style and new spirit in poetry came to me.”
9. The Plain Speaker (1826)
10. Sketches of the Principal Picture Galleries in England (1824)
11. The Spirit of the Age (1825)
• Essays on the work and personalities of Hazlitt’s contemporaries
• Included sketches of 25 men presented as seen in daily life
• Contains his mature and balanced criticism of Godwin, Coleridge, Wordsworth,
Byron, Lamb, Bentham and Scott
• Also included Malthus
- who wrote the controversial “Essay on the Principle of Population”,
which argued that population will outrun food supply
• “The present is an age of talkers, and not of doers; and the reason is that the
world is growing old”