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William Hazlitt was an English essayist, drama and literary critic, painter, social commentator, and philosopher. He is now considered one of the greatest critics and essayists in the history of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. He is also acknowledged as the finest art critic of his age. Despite his high standing among historians of literature and ar…
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culture · 19th-century English essayist and critic (1778-1830) · literary historian · philosopher · writer · literary critic · journalist · painter · translator · essayist · critic · also William Hazlitt, Wm. Haslett, William Carew Hazlitt, Hazlitt
Born 10 April 1778 · Died 18 September 1830 · Q126596
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“s defeat at Waterloo. Here, as so often, Hazlitt is trying to point radicals away from the stagnant, costive prose of Bentham and the philosophical radicals who followed him. Bentham he profiles in The Spirit of the Age , remarking”
“Whether Genius is Conscious of its Powers?”
“On the Difference Between Writing and Speaking”
“On the Qualifications Necessary for Success”
“no one had ever attempted a comprehensive study of all of Shakespeare, play by play, that readers could read and reread with pleasure as a guide to their understanding and appreciation”
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Following a lengthy appeal initiated by Ian Mayes together with A
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And Quarrel of the Age: The Life and Times of William Hazlitt by A
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Died 1830-09-18.
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“Well, I've had a happy life.”
“When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.”
“No really great man ever thought himself so.”
“Prejudice is the child of ignorance…”
“Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.”
“The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness, than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings.”
“The art of pleasing consists in being pleased.”
Sharing lodgings with his son, Hazlitt moved into a small apartment at 6 Frith Street, Soho
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Only to have its publisher fail soon thereafter
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Hazlitt found work reviewing for the theatre again (for The Examiner)
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May have been written during a second tour to Italy with his wife and son
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As Notes of a Journey through France and Italy (despite the title, there is also much about the other countries he visited, particularly Switzerland)
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As The Spirit of the Age: Or, Contemporary Portraits
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“On Old English Writers and Speakers”
“On the Spirit of Obligations”
Began a European tour lasting over a year
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Hazlitt also published anonymously Characteristics: In the Manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims, a collection of aphorisms modelled explicitly, as Hazlitt noted in his preface, on the Maximes (1665–1693) of the Duc de La Roc
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Hazlitt had met Isabella Bridgwater (née Shaw), who married him in March or April 1824, of necessity in Scotland, as Hazlitt's divorce was not recognised in England
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Was unable to pay the rent on their rooms at 19 York Street and his family were evicted
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Forty of Hazlitt's essays that had appeared in The Examiner in a regular column called "The Round Table", along with a dozen pieces by Leigh Hunt in the same series, was collected in book form
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The Champion was added to the list of periodicals that accepted Hazlitt's by-now profuse output of literary and political criticism
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And the scope of his work for the Chronicle was expanded to include drama criticism, literary criticism, and political essays
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This work did not see the light of day until 1816, and so provided no financial gain to satisfy the needs of a young husband and father
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Hazlitt undertook a compilation of parliamentary speeches, published that year as The Eloquence of the British Senate
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And may have had some influence on his own later thinking
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Hazlitt liked it well enough to have already had it printed twice before (and it would appear again in a collection of political essays in 1819)
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Hazlitt was commissioned to travel to Paris and copy several works of the Old Masters hanging in The Louvre
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Born 1778-04-10.
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