WILLIAM HAZLITT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20740, 6 December 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

WILLIAM HAZLITT.

.THE WRITER.

BY KOTARE.

The dust of tho conflicts induced by Hazlitt's uncompromising personality took long to settle. His contemporaries, irritated by his frank combativeness and rendered doubly hostile by his political opinions and his methods o£ expressing them, saw him and his work through thick clouds of prejudice, and very few of them suspected the genuine greatness of the man. The Victorian period either neglected him or took him at his enemies' valuation. But ho holds his place unchallenged in English letters to-day. And there are little men who treated him with abuse and contempt a hundred years ago who will be carried to immortality on liis despised shoulders, remembered only because of the stupid venom with which they assailed ono of the great figures of their age. Even in his years of greatest eclipse there were always some that did not bow tho knee to Baal. Bagehot, no mean critic, stoutly maintained that he was a greater essayist than Charles Lamb. Later Stevenson frankly Look him as his model, and his charming essays owe more to Hazlitt than has been usually recognised. "Wo are mighty fine fellows," said Robert Louis, " but wo cannot write like William Hazlitt." And Henley made tho characteristic addendum—" Whether or not we are mighty fine fellows is a great Perhaps, but that nono of us, from Stovcnson down, can as writers come near to Hazlitt—this to me is merely indubitable." His Style. Hazlitt's style, at once eloquent and restrained, the superb expression of a perfectly trained athletic mind, virile, thrusting, moving to its goal with magnificent concentration of purpose, severely disciplined, but never dry, and always on fire, is one of tho " richest possessions of tho English mind." There is nothing billowy or pillowy about his swift, unerring movement. There is rhythm and grace in abundance, though theso are 'never sought for themselves. As ho haled the social system that gave all tho honours to the tenth transmitter of a foolish face, so every instinct in him loathed the writer who " seized on tho most gorgeous, tarnished, threadbare, patchwork set of phrases, the left-off finory of poetic, extravagance transmitted down through successive generations of barren pretenders." He deliberately aimed at the familiar style. " Many people," he affirms, " mistake a familiar for a vulgar style, and suppose that to write without affectation is to write at random. On the contrary, there is nothing that requires more precision, and, if I may say so, purity of expression, than the style I am speaking of. It utterly rejects not only all unmeaning pomp, but all low cant phrases and all loose, unconnected, slipshod allusions. It is not to take the first word that offers, but the best word in common use; it is not to throw words together in any combinations we please, but to follow and avail ourselves of tho true idiom of the language." Matter and Torm. In a shrewd estimate of Dr. Johnson, ho argues that it is possible for a man to impair the clarity and precision of his thought by the adoption of too mannered a style. Johnson, he thinks, had to impose on his thought a parallelism that was not always natural to its logical development, to adapt it to the exigencies of his carefully balanced style. The thought movement was dictated by tho form of expression, not the expression by the thought movement.

You will seek in vain in Hazlitt for the genial rotundities of the Elian style. His mind did not work that way. Hazlitt lays aside every weight; he strips for the fray. There is eloquence, but of the purely Hazlitt typo. Eloquence may cither flow or glow or in some rare cases achieve both. ]?urkc has both flow and glow; Johnson has flow. But Hazlitt is our chief exponent of the eloquence of glow. Both Henley and Professor Saintsbury give him pre-eminence among English writers, for " gusto." " Gusto," says Henley, "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 relish." And Saintsbury defines the word as he applies it to Hazlitt: "Gusto," he says, " is taste intensified and rapturous." The Critic. It was this attribute of his mind and method that made him the founder of a new school of English criticism, and placed him unassailably at the head of it. Before his time a work was judged chiefly by its conformity to accepted standards. The critic had his foot-rule and easily measured up anything that came his way. Hazlitt read a book and noted his own personal reactions. He had a rnind richly, stored with the literary treasures of the ages, and he noted the impact of the work on that mind; but he- gave judgment with his whole personality. If the book stirred him, moved him. there was something in it of true literary quality. He set down his impressions hot and vivid as they surged in his heart, and then used his powers of analysis to explain the impression the book had made on him. It was individual criticism, the basis of it always personal appreciation. In him the Romantic movement found its canons of criticism, and all valuable criticism since his day has followed the path he so valiantly blazed a hundred years ago. "To Hazlitt a poem, a play, a novel, is what are to others agreeable food, delicious wine, a lovely face, a grand or charming prospect, an exquisite perfume, a soothing or stirring piece of music." The same qualities of divination and analysis appear in his greatest work, his essays. In fullest measure he shows the magic power over words that he ascribes to Shakespeare—" Words come winged at his bidding, and seem to know their places." An essay must be above all personal. ' The author must be in every line—not merely his thoughts, but the man himself. Hazlitt has in full measure the gift of scli-communication. Ho is always the chief subject of his essays; everything is brought into relation with himself. Then an essay must be discursive; it should run on from topic to topic as the interest of the moment dictates; Hazlitt has the power of relevant digression; he walks delightfully all round his subject, always tremendously interested himself and alwayi commanding interest. They seemed to him poor stuff, these essays of his. " What abortions are these essays. What errors, what ill-pieced transitions, what crooked reasons, what lame conclusions! How little is made out and that little how ill. Yet they are the best that I can do."

- Honley may the last word. "At his highest moments Hazliit is hard to beat, and lias not these many years been beaten."-