Hazlitt "Why Distant Objects Please"

[Everyman]

I am extremely fond of the 18th and 19th century essayists (rough dates -- I include part of the late 17th Century, particularly with Lamb). It's a form which, I think, came to its height in those centuries. Not to diminish the work of Montaigne, Addison, Steele, and Johnson in earlier centuries, but for me, such essayists as Lamb, Stevenson, Leigh Hunt, Dickens, Matthew Arnold, Macaulay, Hazlitt, E.V. Lucas, and Ruskin in England and Thoreau and Emerson in the States, to mention just a few, perfected the art of the personal essay (on which later authors such as Chesterton, Fadiman, Woolf, and perhaps greatest of all, Orwell and E.B. White, built).

These essays can't, generally, be considered classic literature, but I certainly think they deserve to be read and better known than they are.

Here's a typical example from Hazlitt for, I hope, your enjoyment.

http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Ess...

BTW, this Interim Read will, officially, last only one week instead of the usual two, so dig in and enjoy.

[Everyman]

Patrice wrote: "Some of this article touches on Hazlitt's essay, I think. There's a lot to his essay. I've always loved the painting by Freidrich and I think it fits the essay.

On a superficial level, the other..."

Nice link.

As part of my eye rehabilitation, I've been advised to spend at least fifteen minutes of each hour focusing on distant sights and at most 45 minutes (less if possible) on near vision like the computer and reading. Which made this essay particularly relevant to me. Fortunately, I have some wonderful distant objects to view from my library window, including yesterday afternoon the Orca whales going up the Strait.

[Everyman]

Yes, it is hard to figure out what he's saying. That almost looks like the sun god in the center of the painting.

[[deleted user]]

Does Hazlitt precede Wordsworth?

I was struck by these lines in the Hazlitt:

When I was quite a boy my father used to take me to the Montpelier Tea-Gardens at Walworth. Do I go there now? No; the place is deserted, and its borders and its beds o'erturned. Is there, then, nothing that can

"Bring back the hour
Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flower?"

It led me to the wonderful poem by Wordsworth:

Splendour in the Grass

What though the radiance
which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass,
of glory in the flower,
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
-- William Wordsworth

I am not sure who sparked who, but the poem seems to be nice complement to the essay.