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Selected Writings
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) developed a variety of identities as a writer: essayist, philosopher, critic of literature, drama and art, biographer, political commentator, and polemicist. Praised for his eloquence, he was also reviled by conservatives for his radical politics. This edition, thematically organized for ease of access, contains some of his best-known essays, such as The Indian Jugglers and The Fight, as well as more obscure pieces on politics, philosophy, and culture.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
480 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1825
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About the author
William Hazlitt
1,125 books179 followersWilliam Hazlitt (1778-1830) was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell, but his work is currently little-read and mostly out of print. During his lifetime, he befriended many people who are now part of the 19th-century literary canon, including Charles and Mary Lamb, Stendhal, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.
Hazlitt was the son of the Unitarian minister and writer, William Hazlitt, who greatly influenced his work. Hazlitt's son, also called William Hazlitt, and grandson, William Carew Hazlitt, were also writers.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name on Goodreads.
Hazlitt was the son of the Unitarian minister and writer, William Hazlitt, who greatly influenced his work. Hazlitt's son, also called William Hazlitt, and grandson, William Carew Hazlitt, were also writers.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name on Goodreads.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
March 22, 2018
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 I can do. I ever to recollect all I have ever observed or thought upon a subject, and to express it as nearly as I can. Instead of writing on four subjects at a time, it is as much as I can manage to keep the thread of one discourse clear and unentangled. —The Indian Jugglers
So I have loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. —My First Acquaintance with Poets
__________
Hazliitt's Complete Works run to 21 volumes, so a selection like this would be a good place to start for anyone wishing to get a flavour of his style.
Hazlitt wrote on a extraordinarily wide range of topics with a very unique, and idiosyncratic style. My personal favourites were his Essays on culture and art, and I would highly recommend (and prioritise) any Essays on these topics; Hazlitt was highly regarded as an Art Critic, and I personally think his critical Essays contain some of his best writing.
The public taste is, therefore, necessarily vitiated, in proportion as it is public; it is lowered with every infusion it receives of common opinion. The greater the number of judges, the less capable must they be of judging, for the addition to the number of good ones will always be small, while the multitude of bad ones is endless, and thus the decay of art may be said to be the necessary consequence of its progress.
. . . The highest efforts of genius, in every walk of art, can never be properly understood by mankind in general: there are numberless beauties and truths which lie far beyond their comprehension. It is only as refinement or sublimity are blended with other qualities of a more obvious and common nature, that they pass current with the world.
. . . To suppose that it can really appreciate the excellence of works of high art, is as absurd as to suppose that it could produce them.
. . . It may be objected, that the public taste is capable of gradual improvement, because, in the end, the public do justice to works of the greatest merit. This is a mistake. The reputation ultimately, and often slowly affixed to works of genius is stamped upon them by authority, not by popular consent or the common sense of the world. We imagine that the admiration of the works of celebrated men has become common, because the admiration of their names has become so. —On Whether the Fine Arts are Promoted by Academies
Hazlitt was friends with fellow essayist Charles Lamb, as well as the poets Keats, Coleridge, and Wordsworth; his Essay, My First Acquaintance with Poets , describes his impressions upon meeting the latter two.
__________
From Mind and Motive:
An account of this matter, with which we were amused ourselves, we met with some time ago in a metaphysical allegory, which begins in this manner:
'In the depth of a forest, in the kingdom of Indostan, lived a monkey, who, before his last step of transmigration, had occupied a human tenement. He had been a Brahmin, skilful in theology, and in all abstruse learning. He was wont to hold in admiration the ways of Nature, and delighted to penetrate the mysteries in which she was enrobed; but in pursuing the footsteps of philosophy, he wandered too far from the abode of the social Virtues. In order to pursue his studies, he has retired to a cave on the banks of the Jumna. There he forgot society, and neglected ablution; and therefore his soul was degraded to a condition below humanity. So inveterate were the habits which he had contracted in his human state, that his spirit was still influenced by his passion for abstruse study. He sojourned in this wood from youth to age, regardless of everything, save cocoa-nuts and metaphysics.'
For our own part, we should be content to pass our time much in the same way as this learned savage, if we could only find a substitute for his cocoa-nuts! We do not, however, wish to recommend the same pursuit to others, nor to dissuade then from it. It has its pleasures and its pains—its successes and its disappointments. It is neither quite so sublime nor quite so uninteresting as it is sometimes represented. The worst is, that much thought on difficult subjects tends, after a certain time, to destroy the natural gaiety and dancing of the spirits; it deadens the elastic force of the mind, weighs upon the heart, and makes us insensible to the common enjoyments and pursuits of life.
. . . The world has no hold on them. They are in it; not of it; and a dream and a glory is ever around them!
______
Like Johnson, Hazlitt highly praises Milton, and quotes him very frequently:
The four greatest names in English poetry, are almost the four first we come to—Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. There are no others that can really be put in competition with these. —Shakespeare
Milton took only a few simple principles of character, and raised them to the utmost conceivable grandeur, and refined them from every base alloy. —Shakespeare
It has been ingeniously urged, as an objection to having been Milton, that 'then we should not have had the pleasure of reading Paradise Lost.' —On Personal Identity
August 31, 2017
Hazlitt writes about culture, politics, art, poetry, history, himself, and innumerable other things. His prose is breathlessly energetic and almost completely without structure. He rarely concludes; he simply follows his wandering mind and metaphors as far as they will lead him. He combines an unrelenting radicalism with a strikingly unprejudiced and thoughtful appraisal of even his worst enemies' ideas.
His running theme in writing about people, politics, and art, is a pretty pessimistic one: that man worships power whether he has it or not, and that 'the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave' ('Coriolanus'). He writes about the tendency of dogmatic thinking to make one more, not less likely to abandon one's principles in the long run ('On Consistency of Opinion'); about the arbitrariness of the mob ('On Public Opinion'); about Shakespeare's being 'fonder of puns than became so great a man' ('Shakespeare'); about the frightening power of violence done in the name of principle ('The French Revolution'); about the littleness of the English mind, which seeks 'to derive a stupid or sullen satisfaction from the privations and disappointments of others' ('Our National Theatres'). Despite this misanthropic tendency, he never wavers in his commitment--controversial in its time--to democratic ideals: an admirable paradox.
His running theme in writing about people, politics, and art, is a pretty pessimistic one: that man worships power whether he has it or not, and that 'the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave' ('Coriolanus'). He writes about the tendency of dogmatic thinking to make one more, not less likely to abandon one's principles in the long run ('On Consistency of Opinion'); about the arbitrariness of the mob ('On Public Opinion'); about Shakespeare's being 'fonder of puns than became so great a man' ('Shakespeare'); about the frightening power of violence done in the name of principle ('The French Revolution'); about the littleness of the English mind, which seeks 'to derive a stupid or sullen satisfaction from the privations and disappointments of others' ('Our National Theatres'). Despite this misanthropic tendency, he never wavers in his commitment--controversial in its time--to democratic ideals: an admirable paradox.
August 23, 2018
“On Gusto” (1816)
“William Shakespeare” (1818)
“Mr. Wordsworth” (1818)
“Montaigne” (1819)
“On the Pleasure of Hating” (1821)
“My First Acquaintance with Poets” (1823)
“The Indian Jugglers” (1828)
“William Shakespeare” (1818)
“Mr. Wordsworth” (1818)
“Montaigne” (1819)
“On the Pleasure of Hating” (1821)
“My First Acquaintance with Poets” (1823)
“The Indian Jugglers” (1828)
September 3, 2024
William Halzitt - snakes for bricks.
Rarely have I been more frustrated by a writer or experienced such a crazed swing in my opinion of them depending on _what they are writing about_.
A brilliant, weak man, Halzitts prose flows like water. when he reports first hand on real events, talks of specifics in art, fiction or persons, this clear, liquid, almost lucent eye, discovers and transmits living detail with rare beauty. When I read about Halzitt attending a prize fight in the country, or Halzitt spending a weekend with Coleridge, or even just Halzitt walking across rural England for a few days, I am always compelled, he brings the scene to life and places me in it.
When he discusses Shakespeare’s characters, or discusses poets and artists in general, I am always, if not convinced, then impressed.
When he trips into philosophy and doctrine, working out his principals and ideas, I am tired, bored and irritated. He builds castles with his serpentine prose, but in discovering thought, rather than looking at nature, simple writing works, because it is harder to built castles of cards.
When he describes or justifies his politics I retch. The man was a weak fey whore of tyranny whose high principals boiled down to one thing; the ends justify the means and all that is bad is good if done it in a right cause. After all his prancing about, the core of his character comes down to a naked adoration of power and will, so long as it pleases his prejudices.
ON HIS SERPENTINE TONGUE
Halzitt writes too long. His paragraphs are big and they don't contain his thoughts. His ideas and justifications are such a rapid and changeable stream, he may as well not use paragraphs at all, or even sentences, but have everything in one long snake of words. We hear about things as they occur to him and purely as the words which give their nature please his vanity. Halzitt says many beautiful things, but he says _a lot of things_, at once.
let us deal with ONE Halzattian paragraph. from 'On Fashion;
"What shews the worthlessness of mere fashion is, to see how easily this vain and boasted distinction is assumed, when the restraints of decency or circumstances are once removed, by the most uninformed and commonest of the people. I know an undertaker that i the greatest prig in the streets of London, and an Aldermanbury haberdasher, that has the most military strut of any lounger in Bond-street or St James's. We may, at any time, raise a regiment of fobs from the same number of fools who have vanity enough to be intoxicated with the smartness of their appearance, and not sense enough to be ashamed of themselves. Every one remembers the story in _Peregrine Pickle__ of the strolling gipsy that he picked up in spite, had well scoured, and introduced her into genteel company, where she met with great applause, till she got into a passion by seeing a fine lady cheat at cards, rapped out a volley of oaths, and let nature get the better of art. Dress is the great secret of address. Clothes and confidence will set anybody up in the trade of modish accomplishment. Look at the two classes of well-dressed females whom we see at the play-house, in the boxes. Both are equally dressed in the height of the fashion, both are _rouged_, and wear their neck and arms bare,- both have the same conscious, haughty, theatrical air;- the same toss of the head, the same stoop of the shoulder, with all the grace that arises from a perfect freedom from embarrassment, and all the fascination that arises from a systematic distain of formal prudery;- the same pretence and jargon of fashionable conversation,- the same mimicry of tones and phrases,- the same 'lisping, and ambling, and painting and nicknaming of Heaven's creatures'; the same every thing but real propriety of behaviour, and real refinement of sentiment. In all the externals, they are as like as the reflection in the looking-glass. The only difference between the woman of fashion and the woman of pleasure is, that the one _is_ what the other only _seems to be_; and yet, the victims of dissipation who thus rival and almost outshine women of the first quality in all the blaze and pride, and glitter of shew and fashion, are, in general, not better than a set of raw uneducated, inexperienced country girls or awkward, coarse-fisted servant maids, who require no other apprenticeship or qualification to be on a level with persons of the highest distinction in society, in all the brilliancy and elegance of outward appearance, than that they have forfeited its commons privileges, and every titles in respect to its reality. The truth is, that real virtue, beauty, or understanding, are the same whether 'in a high or low degree'; and the airs and graces of pretended superiority over these which the highest classes give themselves, from mere frivolous and external accomplishments, are easily imitated, with provoking success, by the lowest, whenever they _dare_".
Now, that is some very nice writing, but that is about all it is.
Firstly - are you not, quite _tired_ after reading all that?
Part 1. We start with 'low' people easily imitating the surface appearance of fashion.
Part 2. The prig undertaken and strutting haberdasher.
Part 3. The story of the secret Gypsy woman dressed up.
Part 4. "Dress is the great secret of address." a very beautiful and telling Halzitt line, and if it were not buried under the ruined city o his prose it would be easier to appreciate.
Part 5. A long discursion on how the theatre the whores look just like the fancy ladies.
Part 6. With fashion, the low can easily look like the high.
Halzitt talks in detail about the fake-Lady Gypsy, and the theatre prostitutes, and *real* Ladies, who are also inferred bad because their 'Fashion' does not guarantee "real virtue, beauty, or understanding". He examines this thought long enough to conclude that it makes 'Fashion' bad, but he goes no deeper into this difference between Ladies. What does it mean to be a "woman of pleasure" or an "awkward, coarse-fisted servant maid" dressed up as a Lady in the theatre. Where does virtue actually lie there and what would it look like if he could see it? Well, he is not interested.
All this grand show of thoughts and words streaming along, highlighting so many things, but for all its theatre, contributing only one thing to his central argument. This is a long way to go to make a single point. It is a paragraph long enough that I needed to write a _guide to it_. But this is a pleasure-paragraph, a pleasing point of cultural commentary where the reader is enjoying walking along with Halzitt and even paying for the pleasure, so perhaps it is not bad that it is long, and is even good, you are certainly getting your moneys worth.
But Halzitt is like this *with everything he does*. It fails apocalyptically when dealing with philosophy and any kind of moral judgement for he is able to hide from himself in the thickets of his own prose, and almost to pretend he does not think what he actually thinks.
His view on Robespierre, much more lengthily given, was that he was a bigot, monster, murderer, but that everything he did was justified because it was for the revolution
His view on Burke was that he is underestimated, sensitive, deep, perceptive, with a strong moral sense, and that all this was completely worthless as he wrote against the revolution
On Napoleon - well it is the same thing; he is bad, complex, many terrible deeds, deep analysis, but everything he did was good because it was for the revolution
Halzitt has a deep perception but a shallow mind. He is intelligent and complex enough to see, discover and describe the deep moral complexities behind his views, but he rarely masters that complexity and incorporates it into a morally and historically complex world-view, especially when its about the French Revolution, which he is all-for, regardless.
Rarely have I been more frustrated by a writer or experienced such a crazed swing in my opinion of them depending on _what they are writing about_.
A brilliant, weak man, Halzitts prose flows like water. when he reports first hand on real events, talks of specifics in art, fiction or persons, this clear, liquid, almost lucent eye, discovers and transmits living detail with rare beauty. When I read about Halzitt attending a prize fight in the country, or Halzitt spending a weekend with Coleridge, or even just Halzitt walking across rural England for a few days, I am always compelled, he brings the scene to life and places me in it.
When he discusses Shakespeare’s characters, or discusses poets and artists in general, I am always, if not convinced, then impressed.
When he trips into philosophy and doctrine, working out his principals and ideas, I am tired, bored and irritated. He builds castles with his serpentine prose, but in discovering thought, rather than looking at nature, simple writing works, because it is harder to built castles of cards.
When he describes or justifies his politics I retch. The man was a weak fey whore of tyranny whose high principals boiled down to one thing; the ends justify the means and all that is bad is good if done it in a right cause. After all his prancing about, the core of his character comes down to a naked adoration of power and will, so long as it pleases his prejudices.
ON HIS SERPENTINE TONGUE
Halzitt writes too long. His paragraphs are big and they don't contain his thoughts. His ideas and justifications are such a rapid and changeable stream, he may as well not use paragraphs at all, or even sentences, but have everything in one long snake of words. We hear about things as they occur to him and purely as the words which give their nature please his vanity. Halzitt says many beautiful things, but he says _a lot of things_, at once.
let us deal with ONE Halzattian paragraph. from 'On Fashion;
"What shews the worthlessness of mere fashion is, to see how easily this vain and boasted distinction is assumed, when the restraints of decency or circumstances are once removed, by the most uninformed and commonest of the people. I know an undertaker that i the greatest prig in the streets of London, and an Aldermanbury haberdasher, that has the most military strut of any lounger in Bond-street or St James's. We may, at any time, raise a regiment of fobs from the same number of fools who have vanity enough to be intoxicated with the smartness of their appearance, and not sense enough to be ashamed of themselves. Every one remembers the story in _Peregrine Pickle__ of the strolling gipsy that he picked up in spite, had well scoured, and introduced her into genteel company, where she met with great applause, till she got into a passion by seeing a fine lady cheat at cards, rapped out a volley of oaths, and let nature get the better of art. Dress is the great secret of address. Clothes and confidence will set anybody up in the trade of modish accomplishment. Look at the two classes of well-dressed females whom we see at the play-house, in the boxes. Both are equally dressed in the height of the fashion, both are _rouged_, and wear their neck and arms bare,- both have the same conscious, haughty, theatrical air;- the same toss of the head, the same stoop of the shoulder, with all the grace that arises from a perfect freedom from embarrassment, and all the fascination that arises from a systematic distain of formal prudery;- the same pretence and jargon of fashionable conversation,- the same mimicry of tones and phrases,- the same 'lisping, and ambling, and painting and nicknaming of Heaven's creatures'; the same every thing but real propriety of behaviour, and real refinement of sentiment. In all the externals, they are as like as the reflection in the looking-glass. The only difference between the woman of fashion and the woman of pleasure is, that the one _is_ what the other only _seems to be_; and yet, the victims of dissipation who thus rival and almost outshine women of the first quality in all the blaze and pride, and glitter of shew and fashion, are, in general, not better than a set of raw uneducated, inexperienced country girls or awkward, coarse-fisted servant maids, who require no other apprenticeship or qualification to be on a level with persons of the highest distinction in society, in all the brilliancy and elegance of outward appearance, than that they have forfeited its commons privileges, and every titles in respect to its reality. The truth is, that real virtue, beauty, or understanding, are the same whether 'in a high or low degree'; and the airs and graces of pretended superiority over these which the highest classes give themselves, from mere frivolous and external accomplishments, are easily imitated, with provoking success, by the lowest, whenever they _dare_".
Now, that is some very nice writing, but that is about all it is.
Firstly - are you not, quite _tired_ after reading all that?
Part 1. We start with 'low' people easily imitating the surface appearance of fashion.
Part 2. The prig undertaken and strutting haberdasher.
Part 3. The story of the secret Gypsy woman dressed up.
Part 4. "Dress is the great secret of address." a very beautiful and telling Halzitt line, and if it were not buried under the ruined city o his prose it would be easier to appreciate.
Part 5. A long discursion on how the theatre the whores look just like the fancy ladies.
Part 6. With fashion, the low can easily look like the high.
Halzitt talks in detail about the fake-Lady Gypsy, and the theatre prostitutes, and *real* Ladies, who are also inferred bad because their 'Fashion' does not guarantee "real virtue, beauty, or understanding". He examines this thought long enough to conclude that it makes 'Fashion' bad, but he goes no deeper into this difference between Ladies. What does it mean to be a "woman of pleasure" or an "awkward, coarse-fisted servant maid" dressed up as a Lady in the theatre. Where does virtue actually lie there and what would it look like if he could see it? Well, he is not interested.
All this grand show of thoughts and words streaming along, highlighting so many things, but for all its theatre, contributing only one thing to his central argument. This is a long way to go to make a single point. It is a paragraph long enough that I needed to write a _guide to it_. But this is a pleasure-paragraph, a pleasing point of cultural commentary where the reader is enjoying walking along with Halzitt and even paying for the pleasure, so perhaps it is not bad that it is long, and is even good, you are certainly getting your moneys worth.
But Halzitt is like this *with everything he does*. It fails apocalyptically when dealing with philosophy and any kind of moral judgement for he is able to hide from himself in the thickets of his own prose, and almost to pretend he does not think what he actually thinks.
His view on Robespierre, much more lengthily given, was that he was a bigot, monster, murderer, but that everything he did was justified because it was for the revolution
His view on Burke was that he is underestimated, sensitive, deep, perceptive, with a strong moral sense, and that all this was completely worthless as he wrote against the revolution
On Napoleon - well it is the same thing; he is bad, complex, many terrible deeds, deep analysis, but everything he did was good because it was for the revolution
Halzitt has a deep perception but a shallow mind. He is intelligent and complex enough to see, discover and describe the deep moral complexities behind his views, but he rarely masters that complexity and incorporates it into a morally and historically complex world-view, especially when its about the French Revolution, which he is all-for, regardless.
May 9, 2024
Morning reading 9/05
On the pleasure of hating (naturally)
On Envy
On Application to Study
Whether Genius is conscious of its powers
On Dreams
On the pleasure of hating (naturally)
On Envy
On Application to Study
Whether Genius is conscious of its powers
On Dreams
June 5, 2021
I despise the style of his political writings. Puffed up, aiming to dazzle rather than illuminate. The cheap rhetoric of the ochlagogue. Actively offensive. The non-political writings are much better: they are merely unreadable and sophomoric.
November 5, 2018
this was fine. i am sick of reading dusty old white authors tho ill tell you that
May 16, 2021
Hazlitt was one of the most important essayists of his time. It just took until our time to realize it. His best portions here all the essays on art and literature, as well as his sympathetic and insightful selection on Napoleon. He defined the Romantic era - perhaps only second to Wordsworth's essay prefacing the second edition of Lyrical Ballads - and was the arbiter of taste when Romanticism perhaps went too far, became too self involved, or was hypocritical. An important addition to your collection of important essays of literary and historical eras.
November 22, 2019
An exceptional essay writer who inspires me with how he connects complex themes in such a casual way.
April 19, 2024
Hazlitt is most definitely one of the most skilled essayists I've read but personally, I found the only truly captivating essay to be 'On the Fear of Death'.
September 13, 2023
Read for my university course. Interesting, but less I found it to be considerably more dense and difficult to understand than other texts of its kind, perhaps owing to Hazlitt’s writing style. This is, of course, a matter of personal taste. (‘On Gusto’, and ‘ On the Elgin Marbles’). I found his essay on the French Revolution, however, to be wonderfully clear, direct, and persuasive. A jewel in the crown of Hazlitt’s work, he writes convincingly, frequently utilising rhetorical questions and analogy to execute his exposition.
February 13, 2013
Hazlitt is a witty fellow with a wide range of sometimes arcane interests, a (left-wing) political radical (yeah!) and I will be eternally grateful to BBC Radio 4 for bringing him to my attention.
(Unfortunately I can't say anything about the quality of this edition, since that's just not my field of expertise.)
(Unfortunately I can't say anything about the quality of this edition, since that's just not my field of expertise.)
July 19, 2018
This is a demanding and valuable read. Here is a brilliant man focused on truth in politics, culture and the Fine Arts. An artist himself, he became a formidable essayist and critic. His astute observations are poignant and just as applicable today as they were during the early Romantic Age in England.
July 12, 2019
Masterful essays on every subject imaginable.
September 24, 2014
Came for a look at the un-Burkean alternative, stayed for the penetrating prose.
October 5, 2020
En rigtig god kilde ifb. med et semesterfag på engelskstudiet.
- Brugt på universitetet (engelsk)
- Brugt på universitetet (engelsk)
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews