Hazlitt; selected essays

Preface

IN preparing this selection from Hazlitt's many essays I have had in view the possible needs of students in Training Colleges, candidates for the Board of Education's Certificate examination, pupils in the highest forms of schools, and even those general readers who may care to have certain fine prose pieces "extra-illustrated," as it were, by appropriate annotation. My actual teaching experience with the second of these groups has shown me that one can take nothing for granted in the students' general knowledge. I have found that even the simplest allusions need elucidation and the simplest foreign phrases translation. If therefore some of the notes seem unnecessary, readers should remember that what is unnecessary to them may be useful to others.

The choice of essays will be found to embody a departure from the usual procedure in the case of Hazlitt, who is generally represented in students' editions by Characters of Shakespear's Plays. The present selection ranges through the whole of Hazlitt's essays from The Round Table to the posthumous pieces. The first four essays show him as the Boswell of Lamb and the candid friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge. The next three are an extension of this group, forming a pleasant parallel to Lamb's Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading and his delightful essays on the old actors. The next three show a very attractive and original Hazlitt — Hazlitt the enthusiastic critic or "gustator" of fine pictures. The last three show us Hazlitt savouring things of the world, rejoicing in the multitude of sporting crowds and in the solitude of lonely wanderings. If it be urged that political essays have been excluded, the answer must be that there is no essay of Hazlitt that is not political. Whether his subject be Poussin or pugilism, it is odd if he cannot get in a few thrusts at apostate poets and government tools.

vi Preface

The notes, I fear, will lie open to the charge of being, like Falstaff's waist, " out of all reasonable compass." But then Hazlitt is the most allusive of essayists, and to extend his snatches of quotation and expand his tantalising allusions is a pleasure as well as a duty. If the notes, beyond their immediate utility, tempt certain adventurers along some hinted paths of future reading, they will have accomplished the editor's chief intention. Says old Fuller in the preface to his History of the Worthies of England :

I confess the subject is but dull in itself, to tell the time and place of men's births, and deaths, their names, with the names and number of their books, and therefore this bare sceleton of Time, Place, and Person, must be fleshed with some pleasant passages. To this intent I have purposely interlaced (not as meat, but as condiment) many delightful stories, that so the Reader if he do not arise (which I hope and desire) Religiosor or Doctior, with more Piety or Learning, at least he may depart yucundior with more pleasure and lawful delight.

It is the first and best defence of the garrulous commentator — or at least of one such commentator's intention.

The introduction is necessarily more than a recital of personal facts, for Hazlitt was the child of his time. One can read Lamb without caring what century he was born in ; but one will enjoy Hazlitt the more for knowing why his vigorous utterance is so often a challenge or a condemnation.

Some of Hazlitt's books have been constantly reprinted since the first issue; but much of his work was overlooked and almost unknown until the appearance of the Collected Works (i2 vols., 1902-1904, Index vol. 1906), edited by A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover. To the notes of these editors I am indebted for the identification of many quotations.

GEORGE SAMPSON

Barnes

October, 1916

CONTENTS Text

My First Acquaintance with Poets .

On the Conversation of Authors. I

Of Persons One would Wish to have Seen On Reading Old Books .

On Actors and Acting. I

On a Landscape of Nicholas Poussin On the Pleasure of Painting. I

n

The Fight ....

The Indian Jugglers On Going a Journey

PACE

1-150

99 109 126

[51-251