Jul 03, · Essays of William Hazlitt by Hazlitt, William, ; Carr, Frank, Publication date [] Publisher London: The Walter Scott publishing co. Collection cdl; americana Digitizing sponsor MSN Contributor University of California Libraries Language English. Addeddate Bookplateleaf 4 As one of England's most distinguished wits of the early 19th century, William Hazlitt was an accomplished author, painter and critic whose barbed prose was notorious in literary circles at the time. Hazlitt wrote the titular essay of this collection in , when his personal circumstances were strained; we thus find his tone both markedly resentful and embittered William Hazlitt's Essay, "On the Love of Life." "On the Love of Life" 1. It is our intention, in the course of these papers, occasionally to expose certain vulgar errors, which have crept into our reasonings on men and manners. Perhaps one of the most interesting of these, is that which relates to the source of our general attachment to life. We are not going to enter into the question, whether life is, on the whole, to
William Hazlitt: Selected Essays Background | GradeSaver
William Hazlitt 10 April — 18 September was an English essayist, drama and literary criticpainter, social commentator, and philosopher. He is now considered one of the greatest critics and essayists in the history of the English language, william hazlitt essays, [1] [2] placed william hazlitt essays the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell.
During his lifetime he befriended many people who are now part of the 19th-century literary canonwilliam hazlitt essays, including Charles and Mary LambStendhalSamuel Taylor ColeridgeWilliam Wordsworthand John Keats.
The family of Hazlitt's father were Irish Protestants who moved from the county of Antrim to Tipperary in the early 18th century. Also named William Hazlitt, Hazlitt's father attended the University of Glasgow where he was taught by Adam Smith[9] receiving a master's degree in Not entirely satisfied with his Presbyterian faith, he became a Unitarian minister in England.
In he became pastor at Wisbech in Cambridgeshire, where in he married Grace Loftus, daughter of a recently deceased ironmonger. Of their many children, william hazlitt essays three survived infancy. The first of these, John later known as a portrait painterwilliam hazlitt essays, was born in at Marshfield in Gloucestershire, where the Reverend William Hazlitt had accepted a new pastorate after his marriage.
Inthe elder Hazlitt accepted yet another position and moved with his family to MaidstoneKent, william hazlitt essays, where his first and only surviving daughter, Margaret usually known as "Peggy"was born that same year. William, the youngest of the surviving Hazlitt children, was born in Mitre Lane, Maidstone, in Inwhen he was two, his family began a nomadic lifestyle that was to last several years, william hazlitt essays.
From Maidstone his father took them to Bandon, County CorkIreland; and from Bandon in to the United Stateswhere the elder Hazlitt preached, lectured, and sought a ministerial call to a liberal congregation.
His efforts to obtain a post did not meet with success, although he did exert a certain influence on the founding of the first Unitarian church in Boston. Hazlitt would remember little of his years in America, save the taste of barberries. Hazlitt was educated at home and at a local school. At age 13 he had the satisfaction of seeing his writing appear in print for the first time, when the Shrewsbury Chronicle published his letter July condemning the riots in Birmingham over Joseph Priestley 's support for the French Revolution.
The curriculum at Hackney was very broad, including a grounding in the Greek and Latin classicsmathematicshistory, government, science, and, of course, religion.
Priestley, whom Hazlitt had read and who william hazlitt essays also one of his teachers, was an impassioned commentator on political issues of the day. This, along with the turmoil in the wake of the French Revolution, sparked in Hazlitt and his classmates lively debates on these issues, william hazlitt essays, as they saw their william hazlitt essays being transformed around them.
Changes were taking place within the young Hazlitt as well. While, out of respect for his father, Hazlitt never openly broke with his religion, he suffered a loss of faith, and left Hackney before completing his preparation for the ministry.
Although Hazlitt rejected the Unitarian theology[20] his time at Hackney left him with much more than religious scepticism. He had read widely and formed habits of independent thought and respect for the truth that would remain with him for life.
The school had impressed upon him the importance of the individual's ability, william hazlitt essays, working both alone and within a mutually supportive community, to effect beneficial change by adhering to strongly held principles. The belief of many Unitarian thinkers in the natural disinterestedness of the human mind had also laid a foundation for the young Hazlitt's own philosophical explorations along those lines. And, though harsh experience and disillusionment later compelled him to qualify some of his early ideas about human naturehe was left with a hatred of tyranny and persecution that he retained to his dying days, [22] as expressed a quarter-century afterward in the retrospective summing up of his political stance in his collection of Political Essays : "I have a hatred of tyranny, william hazlitt essays, and a contempt for its tools I cannot sit quietly down under the claims of barefaced power, and I have tried to expose the little arts of sophistry by which they are defended.
Returning home, aroundhis thoughts were directed into more secular channels, encompassing not only politics william hazlitt essays, increasingly, modern philosophy, which he had begun to read with fascination at Hackney, william hazlitt essays. In Septemberhe had met William Godwinwilliam hazlitt essays, [24] the reformist thinker whose recently published Political Justice had taken English intellectual circles by storm.
Hazlitt was never to feel entirely in sympathy william hazlitt essays Godwin's philosophy, but it gave him much food for thought.
His intense studies focused on william hazlitt essays as a social and political animal, and, in particular, on the philosophy of mind, a discipline that would later be called psychology, william hazlitt essays. It was in this period also that he came across Jean-Jacques Rousseauwho became one of the most important influences on the budding philosopher's thinking.
He also familiarized himself with the works of Edmund Burkewhose writing style impressed him enormously. In the meantime the scope of his reading had broadened and new circumstances had altered the course of his career.
Yet, to the end of his life, he would consider himself a philosopher. AroundHazlitt found new inspiration and william hazlitt essays from Joseph Fawcett william hazlitt essays, a retired clergyman and prominent reformer, whose enormous breadth of taste left the young thinker awestruck.
From Fawcett, in the words of biographer Ralph Wardle, he imbibed a love for "good fiction and impassioned writing", Fawcett being "a man of keen intelligence who did not scorn the products of the imagination william hazlitt essays apologize for his tastes".
With him, Hazlitt not only discussed the radical thinkers of their day, but ranged comprehensively over all kinds of literature, from John Milton 's Paradise Lost to Laurence Sterne 's Tristram Shandy. This background is important for understanding the breadth and depth of Hazlitt's own taste in his later critical writings. Aside from residing with his father as he strove to find his own voice and work out his philosophical ideas, Hazlitt also stayed over with his older brother John, who had studied under Joshua Reynolds and was following a career as a portrait painter.
He also spent evenings with delight in London's theatrical world[32] an aesthetic experience that would prove, somewhat later, of seminal importance to his mature critical work. In large part, however, william hazlitt essays, Hazlitt was then living a decidedly contemplative existence, one somewhat frustrated by his failure to express on paper the thoughts and feelings that were churning within him.
This encounter, a life-changing event, was subsequently to exercise a profound influence on his writing career that, in retrospect, william hazlitt essays, Hazlitt regarded as greater than any other.
On 14 JanuaryHazlitt, william hazlitt essays, in what was to prove a turning point in his life, encountered Coleridge as the latter preached at the Unitarian chapel in Shrewsbury. A minister at the time, Coleridge had as yet none of the william hazlitt essays that would later accrue to him as a poet, critic, and philosopher. Hazlitt, william hazlitt essays, like Thomas de Quincey and many others afterwards, william hazlitt essays swept off his feet by Coleridge's dazzlingly erudite eloquence.
Truth and Genius had embraced, under the eye and with the sanction of Religion. In April, Hazlitt jumped at Coleridge's invitation to visit him at his residence in Nether Stoweyand that same day was taken to call in on William Wordsworth at his house in Alfoxton.
While he was not immediately struck by Wordsworth's appearance, in observing the cast of Wordsworth's eyes as they contemplated a sunset, he reflected, "With what eyes these poets see nature! All three were fired by the ideals of liberty and william hazlitt essays rights of man. Rambling across the countryside, they talked of poetry, philosophy, and the political movements that were shaking up the old order. This unity of spirit was not to last: Hazlitt himself would recall disagreeing with Wordsworth on the philosophical underpinnings of his projected poem The Recluse[40] just as he had earlier been amazed that Coleridge could dismiss David Humeregarded as one of the greatest philosophers of that century, william hazlitt essays, as a charlatan.
Meanwhile, william hazlitt essays, the fact remained that Hazlitt had chosen not to follow a pastoral vocation. Although he never abandoned his goal of writing a philosophical treatise on the disinterestedness of the human mind, william hazlitt essays, it had to be put aside indefinitely. Still dependent on his father, he was now obliged to earn his own living.
Artistic talent seemed to run in the family on his mother's side and, starting inhe became increasingly fascinated by painting. His brother, John, had by now become a successful painter of miniature portraits. So it occurred to William that he might earn a living similarly, and he began to take lessons from John. Hazlitt also visited various picture galleries, and he began to get work doing portraits, painting somewhat in the style of Rembrandt.
Byhis work was considered good enough that a portrait he had recently painted of william hazlitt essays father was accepted for exhibition by the Royal Academy. Later inHazlitt was commissioned to travel to Paris and copy several works of the Old Masters hanging in the Louvre.
This was one of the great opportunities of his life. Over a william hazlitt essays of three months, he spent long hours rapturously studying the gallery's collections, [47] and hard thinking and close analysis would later inform a considerable body of his art criticism. He also happened to catch sight of Napoleona man he idolised as the rescuer of the common man from the oppression of royal " Legitimacy ".
Back in England, Hazlitt again travelled up into the country, having obtained several commissions to paint portraits. One commission again proved fortunate, as it brought him back in touch with Coleridge and Wordsworth, william hazlitt essays, both of whose portraits he painted, as well as one of Coleridge's son Hartley. Hazlitt aimed to create the best pictures he could, whether they flattered their subjects or not, and neither poet was satisfied with his result, though Wordsworth and their mutual friend Robert Southey considered his portrait of Coleridge a better likeness than one by the celebrated James Northcote.
Recourse to prostitutes was unexceptional among literary—and other—men of that period, william hazlitt essays, [50] and if Hazlitt was to differ from his contemporaries, the difference lay in his unabashed candour about such arrangements. He had however grossly misread her intentions and an altercation william hazlitt essays out which led to his precipitous retreat from the town under cover of darkness.
This public blunder placed a further strain on his relations with both Coleridge and Wordsworth, which were already fraying for other reasons. On 22 Marchat a London dinner party held by William Godwin, Hazlitt met Charles Lamb and his sister Mary. Their friendship, though sometimes strained by Hazlitt's difficult ways, lasted until the end of Hazlitt's life. With william hazlitt essays commissions for painting, Hazlitt seized the opportunity to ready for publication his philosophical treatise, william hazlitt essays, which, according to his son, william hazlitt essays, he had completed by Godwin intervened to help him find a publisher, and the work, An William hazlitt essays on the Principles of Human Action: Being an Argument in favour of the Natural Disinterestedness of the Human Mindwas printed in a limited william hazlitt essays of copies by Joseph Johnson on 19 July Although the treatise he valued above anything else he wrote was never, at least in his own lifetime, recognised for what he believed was its true worth, [60] it brought him attention as one who had a grasp of contemporary philosophy.
He therefore was commissioned to abridge and write a preface to a now obscure work of mental philosophy, The Light of Nature Pursued by Abraham Tucker originally published in seven volumes from towhich appeared in [61] and may have had some influence on his own later thinking.
Slowly Hazlitt began to find enough work to eke out a bare living. His outrage at events then taking place in English politics in reaction to Napoleon's wars led to his writing and publishing, at his own expense though he had almost no moneywilliam hazlitt essays political pamphlet, Free Thoughts on Public Affairs[63] an attempt to mediate between private economic interests and a national application of the thesis of his Essay that human motivation is not, inherently, entirely selfish.
Hazlitt also contributed three letters to William Cobbett 's Weekly Political Register at this time, all scathing critiques of Thomas Malthus 's William hazlitt essays on the Principle of Population and later editions. Here he replaced the dense, abstruse manner of his philosophical work with the trenchant prose style that was to be the hallmark of his later essays, william hazlitt essays.
Hazlitt's philippicdismissing Malthus's argument on population limits as sycophantic rhetoric to flatter the rich, since large swathes of uncultivated land lay all round England, has been hailed as "the most substantial, comprehensive, and brilliant of the Romantic ripostes to Malthus". In the prefaces to the speeches, he began to show a skill he would later develop to perfection, william hazlitt essays, the art of the pithy character sketch, william hazlitt essays.
He was able to find more work as a portrait painter as well. In MayHazlitt married Sarah Stoddart, [67] a friend of Mary Lamb and william hazlitt essays of John Stoddarta journalist who became editor of The Times newspaper in Shortly before the wedding, John Stoddart established a trust into which he began paying £ per year, for the benefit of Hazlitt and his wife—this was a very generous gesture, but Hazlitt detested being supported by his brother-in-law, whose political beliefs he despised.
Miss Stoddart, an unconventional woman, accepted Hazlitt and tolerated his eccentricities just as he, with his own somewhat offbeat individualism, william hazlitt essays, accepted her. Together they made an agreeable social foursome with the Lambs, who visited them when william hazlitt essays set up a household in Winterslowa village a few miles from SalisburyWiltshire, in southern England. He in turn fathered William Carew Hazlitt.
As the head of a family, Hazlitt was now more than ever in need of money. William hazlitt essays William Godwin, with whom he was frequently in touch, william hazlitt essays, he obtained a commission to write an English grammarpublished on 11 November as A New and Improved Grammar of the English Tongue. Though completed inthis work did not see the light of day untiland so provided no financial gain to satisfy the needs of a young husband and father.
Hazlitt in the meantime had not forsaken his painterly ambitions. His environs at Winterslow afforded him opportunities for landscape painting, and he spent considerable time in London procuring commissions for portraits.
In January Hazlitt embarked on a sometime career as a lecturer, in this first instance by delivering a series of talks on the British philosophers at the Russell Institution in London.
A central thesis of the talks was that Thomas Hobbesrather than John Locke, had laid the foundations of modern philosophy. After a shaky beginning, Hazlitt attracted some attention—and some much-needed money—by these lectures, and they provided him with an opportunity to expound some of his own ideas. The year seems to have been the last in which Hazlitt persisted seriously in his ambition to make a career as a painter.
Although he had demonstrated some talent, the results of his most impassioned efforts always fell far short of the very standards he had set by comparing his own work with the productions of such masters as Rembrandt, Titianand Raphael.
William Hazlitt - Romantic Essayist
, time: 50:18from “On Poetry in General” by William Hazlitt | Poetry Foundation
In his essay, “On the Want of Money”, he conveys the extent to which it is horrible to be in want of money. To live in this world, one needs money to survive. Hazlitt stresses this point by using suggestive syntax, harsh diction and figurative language. He writes in Jul 03, · Essays of William Hazlitt by Hazlitt, William, ; Carr, Frank, Publication date [] Publisher London: The Walter Scott publishing co. Collection cdl; americana Digitizing sponsor MSN Contributor University of California Libraries Language English. Addeddate Bookplateleaf 4 William Hazlitt's Essay, "On the Love of Life." "On the Love of Life" 1. It is our intention, in the course of these papers, occasionally to expose certain vulgar errors, which have crept into our reasonings on men and manners. Perhaps one of the most interesting of these, is that which relates to the source of our general attachment to life. We are not going to enter into the question, whether life is, on the whole, to
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