THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17749, 28 April 1923, Page 11

THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

HALF-HOURS IN A LIBRARY. (specially wbittek fob "the passs.") By A. H. Grinling. VI.—ON WILLIAM HAZLITT. It was Mr Augustine Birrell who, in his "Res Judicata," published in iv-t-, first directed my attention to William Hazlitt. "He is always interesting," wrote Mr Birrell, "and always writes about interesting things," adding, "as a companion at the Feast of "Wits commend me to Hazlitt, and as a companion for a fortnight's holiday commend me to the admirable selection recently made from his works, which are numerous—some twenty volumes —by Mr ireland." That volume of selections never came my way, but in WOl Mr Grant Richards launched a wonderful series of cheap reprints, "The Worlu's Classics," which at the popular price of one shilling per volume placed the cream of literature within the reach of the man of moderate means; besides, tilt books were the right si/.e to sup in the pocket and hold easily in the hand. Included in the earner issues of the series were four volumes of Hazlitt's works —"lable Talk, "Sketches and Essays," "Winterslow," and "The Spirit of the Age"—and these little books evoked in my mind a love ior and admiration of Hazlitt, which the passage of time has deepened rather man effaced. In Mi Augustine Birrell added his monograph on Jciaziitt to the jMigiish Men or Letters series; and in tlie same year -were published tne first volumes of "The Collected Works of William Hazlitt," euited by A. 11. Waller and Aruoui uiover, wmen, with au mtxouuction oy vv. Hi. rjLciuey, remains as tue'autnontiiwve euiuuii ior aniline-, lne twelve or x+dzmi a worlis in Una eu-uuu occupy a prominent piace on uiv sneives and proviue eutertamment and inspiration wmen are wen nign m--i.iiaustible.

My attention has been anew directed to Huzutt by the of a new •'Lite" of tlie essay.st iroin tne pen of Mr P. P. Howe, whose biographical studies of J. M. Syiige, the insh playwright, and Mr Ueorge Bernard fehaw, attest him a critic 01 no mean caiiore. it is scarcely correct to dub the a "new"' life; as a matter of fact it is the only life" of Hazlitt ever published. Twenty-one vears ago —in 1902, 72 years after Hazlitt's death, and 124 years aiter his birth—Henley wrote: "i'or his life, despite his many bursts of confidence, the admissions of his grandson, and the disclosures of such friends as Patmore, the half of it, I think, has to be told to us. This was not his fault, for he was in no sense secretive." Twenty years later, Mr Howe is compelled to say, "A life of iiazlitt is Btill, after a hundred years, in the nature of a pioneer work," and he proceeds to present "in clear outline, and with reasonable attention to detail, a narrative of what has been termed the 'rather imperfectly known life' of a great English man of letters." Mr Howe adds: "Since a good deal of what has hitherto been believed of Hazlittt has proved itself to be not altogether worthy of credence, and since a good deal more is told in these pages for the first time, I have thought it better not to recast the narrative in my own words, but to present.it as far as possible in those of the various witnesses."

Some forty years ago R. L. Stevenson contemplated a life of, Hazlitt; he had just completed "Treasure Island," and he wrote.to his father: "I am. in treaty with Bcntley for a Hazlittl Is not that splendid! There will be .piles of labour but the book should be good. This will please you, will it not? Biography, anyway a verv interesting and sad one." R. L. S. had a great admiration for Hazlitt, and ho confesses that in his struggle alter style _ he "played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt" among other writers. He declares that Hazlitt's essay "On the Spirit of Ooligations"—from "The Plain Speaker" — marked a turning point in his life. He quotes freely from Hazlitt, notably in his essay on "Walking Tours," where he exclaims, following an extract from "On Going a Journey," "I should wish to quote more, for though we are mighty fine fellows nowadays, we cannot write like Hazlitt. And talking of that, a volume of Hazlitt's essays would be a capital pocket book on such a journey." It is said that Stevenson originally applied for a commission to write a life of Hazlitt in a biographical series then in course of publication, but his request was refused on the ground that neither he nor his subject were of sufficient importance to warrant their inclusion. It was Sydney Colvin who intervened with _ Bentley on Stevenson's behalf, securing; him the commission, and R. L. S. "started eagerly" on the "Life" of Hazlitt, a. book, "he had long been wanting to write." A wider study of Hazlftt's writings, however, "produced a cooler feeling," the "Liber Amoris" in particular creating in Stevenson's mind "a final distaste, which rendered any continued investigation or sympathetic treatment impossible."

"Liber Amoris; or the New Pygmalion," the rock on which Stevenson split with Hazlitt, and winch was the reason for much of the ostracism to which the essayist's waitings so long were treated, made its appearance just a hundred years ago, in the first week of May, 1823, Hazlitt receiving £11)0. for the copyrignt. On June 23rd, Crabb Hooinson wrote in his diary: "Finished early Hazlitt's disgusting New Pygmalion. One can tolerate the passion of a St. Preux or a Werter as it is set on bv the eloquence of Rousseau or Goethe, but such a story as this is nauseous and revolting. It ought to exclude the author from all decent society. tie has been exposed in John Bull, and 1 should think will feel the effects of his exposure of himself in being slighted by many who tolerated him before." bnfortunately for Hazlitt's memory, the actual correspondence on which the "Liber Amoris" was founded had been preserved, and in 1894, these letters, with an introduction by Richard le Gallienne, were issued in a privately printed edition. In his essay on Hazlitt, Mr Paul Elmer More, most conservative of American critics, sums up the matter fairly enough:— Certainly the episode, which was the occasion of the divorce, and which he gave to the world in his "Liber Amoris"—whatever else may be said about it—is one of the few stories of strong unrestrained passion in the range of English letters. We might like, for decorum's sake, to expunge that relation from his life and from his works: "there is," as he himself confessed, "something in it discordant to honest ears." The tale is simply the vulgar adventure of a man who dandles the daughter of his lodginghouse keeper on his knees, becomes infatuated with her, pours out the agony his dejection in letters to his f riends, and then prints letters and all, 'imewhat expurgated, to be sure, in a N ook. That is bad enough in all con"Mence; but the matter has been made vorse by the recent publication of the ictual correspondence. As Mr Austin

Dobson says: "The whole sentimental structure of the 'Liber Anions' now sinks below the stage and joins the realm of things unspeakable —'vile kitchen stuff'; lit omy ior the midden." And yet, there is a reservation to be made withal to this criticism. The book is something more than merely sentimental: it is in part one of the very few expressions of genuine passion in the English language.

No man knew William Haziitt better or was more closely associated witu him than was Charges Lamb; indeed, it is impossible to study Lamb's life as set down in Mr E. V. "Lucas's illuminating pages without being brought into the closest contact with Haziitt. Lamb's open letter to Southey — written, be it remembered, in the year 1823, when the denunciations of the '•Liber Amoris" were everywhere resounding, contains an oft-quoted reference to Haziitt. "Protesting against much that he has written and some things that he chooses to do; judging iiim by his conversation, which I enjoyed" so long:, and relished so deeply; or by his books, in those places where no " clouding passion intervened—i should belie my own conscience if I said less than that I think W. H. to be, in. his natural and healthy state, one of the wisest, finest spirits breathing. So far from being ashamed of that intimacy which was betwixt us, it was my boast that I was able for so many years to have preserved it entire; and l think 1 shall go to my grave without finding or expecting to find another such companion." Here Saint Charles hits the nail right on the head, Haziitt, "in his natural and healthy state," was all that could be desired as intimate friend and man of letters, but Haziitt, irritated by matrimonial infelicity and infuriated beyond measure by the gross personalities of the critics of Blackwood, was scarcely in his sane senses, especially when, as a consequence, he exchanged his customary beverage of many cups of strong/ tea for an equal number of glasses of strong ale.

"The persistent attacks made upon Hazlitt in Blackwood's Magazine," says Mr Le Gallienne, ''low and personal to a degree hardly realisable in our day, when we have seldom the excitement of a really spirited set-to among men oi letters, and 'knuckle-dusters' are forbidden, doubtless aggravated his irritable self-consciousness. He could never forget that he was 'pimpled' "Hazlitt, and the epithet made him stalk through the streets like a criminal and made him especially sensitive in. the presence of women, who, he felt sure, were always saying it over to themselves." In 1819, when Gifford, in the Quarterly had stigmatised Hazlitt's delightful contributions to the Hound Table as "loathsome trash," "vulgar descriptions," "silly paradoxes," "flat truism," "misty sophistry," and ''broken English," following all this up by damning Hazlitt's "Lectures on the English Poets" as "predatory incursions on truth and common sense," Hazlitt was in fine fighting trim. He retorted with "A Letter to William Gifford, Esq., from William Hazlitt, Esq., a trenchant philippic compelling the delight of the poet Keats, always an admirer of Hazlitt. "The force and innate power with which it yeasts and works itself up," wrote Keats, "the feeling for the costume of society, is a type of genius. He hath a demon, as he himself says of Lord Byron."

"Gifford was content on the appearance of Table Talk—l am quoting from Mr Birrell—"to add to the title of 'Wanderer of the Human Race' that of 'Siang 'Whanger,' meaning thereby, he was good enough to explain, a 'gabbler who employs slung to amuse the rabble.' But any deficiency of abuse noticeable in the style of the Quarterly was amply atoned for by Professor Wilson's merry men in Blackwood, who declared that the Table-talker was not a man but an ulcer; that his two volumes were one gaping sore of Wounded feeling and vanity; nor were they content with a single reference to Hazlitt. who henceiorth became one of the favourite marks of their goat-footed merriment. Hazlitt, if Mr Patmore is to be believed, was driven almost mad by these yahoos, and it may be'that the irregularities and coarse excesses of this period of his life may be in part attributed to an unhinging of the mind occasioned by repeated personal abuse."

If Hazlitt had written nothing else but "The Fight," which appeared in the New Monthly Magazine of February, 1822, he would be entitled to rank among the immortals. "Reader, have you ever seen a fight?" he exclaims with great gusto. "If not, you have a pleasure to come, at least if it ia a fight like that between the Gas-man and Bill Neate." I have never seen a fight—l dodged an opportunity to be present at the meeting of Carpentier and Gunboat Smith in London, in July, 1914—but how many times I have read Hazlitt's account in which "Hogarth, Shakespeare and Nature" combine *nd co-mingle, I scarcely dare to tell. it is the gusto of the thing that carries one along. For tho word "gusto" in this connexion I am indebted to Henley. Paul Elmer More remarks: "The word, now unfortunately falling into desuetude, connotes the power of intense enjoyment oased on understanding and is so common in his essays that Henley took it as the keynote of all his work." Henley's comment so accurately expresses my own feeling in the matter that I make bold to reproduce it almost as it stands:—

His summary of the fight between Hickman and Bill Neate is alone in literature, as also in the annals of the Ring. . . . Hazlitt looked on at the proceedings of Neate and the Gaslight Man exactly as he had looked on at divers creations of Edmund Kean. He saw the' essentials in both expressions of human activity, and his treatment of both is fundamentally the same. In both he ignores the trivial: here the acting (in its lowest sense;, there the' hits that did not count. And thus, as lie gives you only the vital touches, you know how and why Neate beat Hickman, and can tell the exact moment at which Hickman began w», lip a beaten man. It is the same wj».. his panegyric on Cavanagh, the fives piayer. For a blend of gusto with understanding I know but one thing to equal with this. ~ . . Gusto, though, is Hazlitt's special attribute: he glories in what he likes, what he reads, what he,feels, what he writes. . . . He relished things and expressed them with a relish. That is nig note.

For any and every unfortunate who has lost a relish for readinz and a relish for life I prescribe a course of Hazlitt as an unfailing remedy. The gusto of "The Fight," the brief biography ol John Cnvanagh—it is contained in the essay on "The Indian Jugglers" in Table Talk—will prepare the palate for the infinite relish of almost all Hazlitt's essays. Why, the very titles make the mouth water: "On the Pleasures ol Paintine," "On Living to One's Self," -On Goine a Journey," "On the Fear of Dentil," "On Readin" New Books," "On Reading Old Books," "On Disagreeable People," "On Nicknames, "On Footmen," etc. and above all "A Chanter on Editors." Hazlitt suffered much at the hands of editors, and he writes feelingly of the editorial interposition: — , . Some editors have a wav of altering the first paragraph; they have tuen exercised their privilege and let you alone for the next chapter. . . . Others add a pointless conclusion ot their own: it is like signing their name? to the article. Some, have a passion for sticking in the word "however" at

(Continued at foot of next Column.)

every opportunity in order to impede HI Lro_ of the style j and other, are contented and uuw great pains to altei -if it is" into "if it be." An JUuior abhors- an ellipsis, li you hmg your thoughts into continued passages, tney set to work to cut tnem up into short paragxupns: if you mate frequent brea-s they turn tne tables on you that way and throw the whole composition into masses. Anything to preserve the lorm and appearance of power. . . • if there is any po.nt they do not •understand, they are sure to meddle with it and mar the sense. . . . 'ihen they substitute (at a venture and merely for the sake of altering) one epithet for another, when, perhaps, the same word has recurred just before and produces a cruel tautology, never considering the trouble you have been to to compare the context and vary .the phraseology.

This in no way Applies to the editors of the present day wiio, speaking generally, are the most complacent ot men, and this largely because the gusto haa gone out of journalism. The days m which Hazlitt lived were fully as stormy as the present, the days ot the French Revolution, the days ot tne American War when the Tories and the Liberals were at daggers drawn and politics operated in all relations of lite. Hazlitt championed Napoleon and stood up for America and braved the inevitable odium, and he did it all with gusto. Hazlitt, like Oscar Wilde, talked better than he wrote; he often repeated himself, as is usually the case with great talkers, and he made a huge use of quotations which he was never at a trouble to verify, often altering them, indeed, to suit the needs of the moment. I know no writer who, within the space of a page, will give the reader so much to think of as will Hazlitt; and after the lapse of a hundred years his criticisms have lost neither flavour nor freshness. And at nis best his style is superb. Elmer More says —and with this I conclude:— There is something in the keen sinewy language of Hazlitt that suggests the tiger's spring. His sentences succeed one another Jjke the rapid bounds of such an animal, and at the last comes one unerring leap and the prey is fixed, bleeding you mipht almost sny, in his grasp. There is nothjug just like it among English authors. Genuine passion, indeed, if one considers it, is a rare, almost the rarest trait in literature. Certainlv in English it would not be easy to find another nuthor whose work is so dominated by this quality as Hazlitt's.'