64 learning he seems to have left nothing for his followers but to fill in his outline. The same keenness of discernment ✓ he applied casually in dissecting the genius of his own time. He associated the absence of drama with the French Revolution, its tendency to deal in abstractions and to regard everything in relation to man and not men—a tendency irreconcilable with dramatic literature, which is essentially individual and concrete. To be sure the eighteenth century before the Revolution was as void of drama as Hazlitt's generation, but what is true of the period which produced Political Justice and the Edinburgh Review would hold equally of the time which produced the "Essay on Man" and the deistic controversy. He sometimes harshly exposes the weaker side of contemporary lyricism as a mere effusion of natural sensibility," and he regrets the absence of "imaginary splendor and human passion 66 as of a glory departed.65 But with all this he had the true historical sense. It breaks out most unmistakably when he says, "If literature in our day has taken this decided turn into a critical channel, is it not a presumptive proof that it ought to do so?"66 Of the actual application of historical principles, which were just beginning to be realized in the study of literature, we find only a few faint traces in Hazlitt. Some remarks on the influence of climate and of religious and political institutions occur in his contributions to the Edinburgh, but occasionally their perfunctory manner suggests the editorial pen of Jeffrey. Doubtless Hazlitt's discriminating judgment would have enabled him to excel in this field, had he been equipped with the necessary learning. It may also be a serious limitation of Hazlitt's that he 64 Dramatic Essays, VIII, 415. "On Shakespeare. and Milton," p. 44. neglects questions of structure and design. Doubtless he was reacting against the jargon of the older criticism with its lifeless and monotonous repetitions about invention and fable and unity, giving nothing but the "superficial plan and elevation, as if a poem were a piece of formal architecture." *t_In avoiding the study of the design of “ Paradise Lost" or of the "Faerie Queene" he may have brought his criticism nearer to the popular taste; but he deliberately shut himself off from a vision of some of the higher reaches of poetic art, perhaps betraying thereby that > lack of imagination" with which he has sometimes been charged. His interpretation of an author is therefore occasionally in danger of becoming an appreciation of isolated characters, or scenes, or passages, as if he were actually reading him over with his audience. But this is a limitation which Hazlitt shares with all the finer critics of his day. After all these shortcomings have been acknowledged, the permanence of Hazlitt's achievement appears only the more remarkable. It is clear that the gods made him critical. The two essential qualities of judgment and taste he seems to have possessed from the very beginning. It is v impossible to trace in him any development of taste; his growth is but the succession of his literary experiences. One looks in vain for any of those errors of youth such as are met even in a Coleridge enamored of Bowles. What extravagance of tone Hazlitt displayed in his early criticism he carried with him to his last day. If any change is to be noted, it is in the growing keenness of his appreciation. The early maturity of his judicial powers is attested by the political and metaphysical tendency of his youthful *“On Criticism,” in Table Talk. ** Cf. “On Reading Old Books." pp. 338-9, where this charge is curiously echoed by Hazlitt himself. studies. His birth as a full-fledged critic awaited only the stirring of the springs of his eloquence, as is evident from the excellence of what is practically his first literary essay, the "Character of Burke." 99 69 No critic has approached books with so intense a passion as Hazlitt. That sentimental fondness for the volumes themselves, especially when enriched by the fragrance of antiquity, which gives so delicious a savor to the bookishness of Lamb, was in him conspicuously absent. For him books were only a more vivid aspect of life itself. “Tom Jones," he tells us, was the novel that first broke the spell of his daily tasks and made of the world "a dance through life, a perpetual gala-day." Keats could not have romped through the "Faerie Queene" with more spirit than did Hazlitt through the length and breadth of eighteenth century romance, and the young poet's awe before the majesty of Homer was hardly greater than that of the future critic. when a Milton or a Wordsworth swam into his ken. This hot and eager interest, deprived of its outlet in the form of direct emulation, sought a vent in communicating itself to others and in making converts to its faith. So intimately ✓did Hazlitt feel the spell of a work of genius, that its life-blood was transfused into his own almost against his will. "I wish," he exclaims, "I had never read the Emilius I had better have formed myself on the model of Sir Fopling Flutter." 70 He entered into the poet's creation with a sympathy amounting almost to poetic vision, and the ever-present sense of the reality of the artist's world. led him to interpret literature primarily in relation to life. The poetry of character and passion is what he regards of most essential interest." This point of view unintentionally converts his familiar essays on life into a literary disIbid., p. 340. 69 Ibid., p. 337. 70 71"On Shakespeare and Milton," p. 109. course, and gives to his formal criticism the tone of a study of life at its sources, raising it at once to the same level with creative literature. Though he nowhere employs the now familiar formula of "literature and life," the lecture On Poetry in General" is largely an exposition of this outlook. 72 Life in its entire compass is regarded as the rough material of literature, but it does not become literature until the artist's imagination, as with a divine ray, has penetrated the mass and inspired it with an ideal existence. Among the numerous attempts of his contemporaries to define the creative faculty of the poet, this comparatively simple one of Hazlitt's is worth noting. "This intuitive perception of the hidden analogies of things, or, as it may be called, this instinct of imagination, is perhaps what stamps the character of genius on the productions of art more than any other circumstance: for it works unconsciously, like nature, and receives its impressions from a kind of inspiration." It is this power that he has in mind when he says “Poetry is infusing the same spirit in a number of things, or bathing them all as it were, in the same overflowing sense of delight." It shows Hazlitt to have fully apprehended the guiding principle of the new ideal of criticism which, looking upon the work of art as an act of original creation and not of mechanical composition, based its judgment on a direct sympathy with the artist's mind instead of resorting to a general rule. In the light of this principle he is enabled to avoid the pitfalls of a moralistic interpretation of literature and to decide the question as to the relative importance of substance and treatment with a certainty which seems to preclude the possibility of any other answer. "The English Novelists," VIII, 109. as It is not the dignity of the theme which constitutes the great work of art, for in that case a prose summary of the "Divine Comedy" would be as exalted as the original, and it would be necessary merely to know the subject of a poem in order to pass judgment upon it. A low or a trivial subject may be raised by the imagination of the artist who recognizes in it the elements of beauty or power. No definition of poetry can be worth anything which would exclude "The Rape of the Lock"; and Murillo's painting of "The Two Beggar Boys" is as much worth having almost any picture in the world." 74 'Yet it is not true that execution is everything, and the class or subject nothing. The highest subjects, equally well-executed (which, however, rarely happens), are the best." Though each is perfect in its kind, there can be no difficulty in deciding the question of greatness between "King Lear" and "The Comedy of Errors.” "The greatest strength of genius is shewn in describing the strongest passions: for the power of imagination, in works of invention, must be in proportion to the force of the natural impressions, which are the subject of them." 76 One also finds a test of relative values in the measure of fulness with which the work of art reflects the complex elements of life. If we estimate a tragedy of Shakespeare above one of Lillo or Moore, it is because "impassioned poetry is an emanation of the moral and intellectual part of our nature, as well as of the sensitive-of the desire to know, the will to act, and the power to feel; and ought to appeal to these different parts of the constitution, in order to be perfect." "7 In treating of the specific distinction of poetry Hazlitt 74" On Criticism," in Table Talk. 75 Ibid. 7 Characters of Shakespeare, “Lear." |