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poet rising up from the ranks by a few strides, grasping eminence by the very mane, and vaulting into a seat so commanding with such ease and perfect mastery. He has much yet, however, to do-to learn-and, it may be, to endure. It is yet all morning with him. Life's enchanted cup is sparkling at the brim. From early sufferings he has passed into comfort, domestic happiness, and general fame. Many veils are yet to drop from his eyes. He has yet to learn the worthlessness of human nature as a whole, the impotence of human effort, the littleness of human life, and the delusive nature of all joy which is not connected with our duty to God and man. His present sanguine hopes and notions of humanity will wither, just as the green earth and blue skies will by and by appear altogether insufficient to fill and satisfy his soul. This process we regard inevitable to all genuine thinkers and lofty poets; but the great question is, Does it result in souring or in strengthening the man? Carlyle and Foster both passed through this disenchanting process; but how different the results! The one has become savage in his despair as a flayed wild beast. The other became milder and calmer in proportion to the depth of his melancholy. And the reason of this difference is very simple. Carlyle believes in nothing but the universe. Foster believed in a Father, a Savior, and a future world. If Mr. Massey comes (as we trust he shall) to a true belief, it will corroborate him for every trial and every sad internal or external experience, and he will stand like an Atlas above the ruins of a world, calm, firm, pensive, but pressing forwards, and looking on high.*

*Since this paper was written, we have read some specimens of Massey's prose, in his preface to his third edition, and in his review of "Balder" in the "Eclectic." It is most excellent, clear, massive, masterly English, very refreshing in this age of mystical fudge.

Modern Critics.

NO. I.-HAZLITT AND HALLAM.

We have chosen the above two names as representing two opposite styles of criticism-the impulsive and the mechanical —or, otherwise, the genial and the learned. In speaking of Hazlitt, we have nothing to do with him as a man, a politician, or a historian, but simply as a critic; and, in speaking of Hallam, we have nothing to do with him as a historian, but solely as the writer of those literary criticisms which have recently been collected into a separate publication.

William Hazlitt was brutally abused while alive, and has been but partially appreciated since his death. Indeed, in many quarters he seems entirely forgotten. Sacrificing, as he did, popular applause in search of posthumous fame, he seems to have lost both-like the dog in the fable, shadow and substance seem alike to have given him the slip. Our proud and prosy Quarterlies, while showering praise on the misty nothings which often now abuse the name of scientific or philosophic criticism-those compounds of natural and acquired dulness which disguise themselves under German terminology, and are deemed profound-seldom name, or coldly underrate, the glowingly acute, gorgeously clear, and dazzlingly deep criticisms of poor Hazlitt.

Harry Cockburn thinks him ineffably inferior to Lord Jeffrey. Macaulay first steals from Hazlitt, and then puffs Hallam. Bulwer and Talfourd have done him justice, but rather in a patronising way. Horne did his best to imitate him, and paid back the pilferings in praise. But De Quincey and one

or two more seem alone aware of the fact that no thinker of such rich seminal mind-of such genuine originality, insight, and enthusiasm, has been ever so neglected or outraged as the author of "The Spirit of the Age.'

17

Hazlitt was, in many respects, the most natural of critics. He was born to criticise, not in a small and captious way, but as a just, generous, although stern and rigorous judge. Nature had denied him great constructive, or dramatic, or synthetic power-the power of the highest kind of poet or philosopher. But he possessed that mixture in proper proportions of the acute and the imaginative, the profound and the brilliant, the cool and the enthusiastic, which goes to constitute the true critic. Hence his criticism is a fine compound -pleasing, on the one hand, the lover of analysis, who feels that its power can go no farther; and, on the other, the young and ardent votary of literature, who feels that Hazlitt has expressed in language what he only could "with the faltering tongue and the glistening eye." When he has a favorite, and especially an old favorite author to discuss, it becomes as great a luxury to witness as to feel his rapture. Even elderly enthusiasts, whose ardor is somewhat passèe, might contemplate him with emotions such as Scott has so exquisitely described in Louis XI, when looking at the hungry Quentin Durward devouring his late and well-won breakfast. Youth -hot, eager, joyous youth-sparkles in Hazlitt's best criticisms even to the last. And yet, beside all his bursts and bravuras, there is always looking on the stern, clear, piercing eye of Old Analysis. Why is it that Hazlitt, thus eminently fitted to attract all classes, has failed to be generally popular? Many answers might be given to this question. There was first the special victimisation he underwent during his lifetime from the reviews and magazines. Old Gifford was his bitterest, although by no means his ablest opponent. The power wielded thirty years ago by that little arid mass of commonplace and dried venom is, to us, absolutely marvellous. The manner in which he exercised the critical profession showed, indeed, that he was perfectly skilled in his former one, espe cially in the adroit use of the awl. He was admirable at boring small holes; but beyond this he was nothing. If Shakspeare's works had appeared in his time, he would have treated

them precisely as he treated Shelley's and Keats', unless, indeed, they had been submitted to his revision before, or dedicated to him at publication. Otherwise, how he would have ostracised "Othello;" mauled "Macbeth;" torn up "The Tempest;" mouthed, like a dog at the moon, against the "Midsummer Night's Dream;" laughed at "Lear;" raved at "Romeo and Juliet ;" and admitted merit only in "Timon," because it suited his morbid temper, and in the "Comedy of Errors," because it melted down his evil humors into grim laughter. It is lamentable to think of such a man being respected by Byron, and feared by Hunt and Lamb. It is more lamentable still, to remember that he and his coadjutors were able to half-madden Shelley, to kill Keats, and to add gall and wormwood to the native bitterness of Hazlitt's spirit.

But he had other opponents, who, if not animated by all Gifford's spirit, had ten times the talent. Wilson and Lockhart bent all their young power against a writer whom both in their hearts admired, and from whom both had learned much. The first twenty-five volumes of "Blackwood's Magazine" are disgraced by incessant, furious, and scurrilous attacks upon the person, private character, motives, talents, and moral and religious principles of Hazlitt, which future ages shall regard with wonder, indignation, and disgust. 66 Ass," "blockhead," "fool," "idiot," "quack," "villian," "infidel,” &c., are a specimen of the epithets applied to this masterspirit. "Old Maga" has greatly improved in this respect since; but there is at least one of its present contributors who would perpetrate, if he durst, similar enormities of injustice, and whose maximum of will to injure and abuse all minds superior to his own, is only restrained by his minimum of power. Need we name the laureate of Clavers, and the libeller of the noble children of the Scottish Covenant? We see nothing wrong in genius now and then turning round to rend and trample on its pertinacious foes. But Hazlitt was far too thin-skinned. He felt his wounds too keenly, he acknowledged them too openly, and gave thus a

* He has since dared! none but an ape of the first "Firmilian."

*

Vide that tissue of filthy nonsense, which magnitude could have vomited, yclept

great advantage to his opponents. This was partly accounted for from his nervous temperament, and partly from his precarious circumstances. It was very easy for Lord Jeffrey, sitting in state in his palace in Moray Place, to curl his lip in cool contempt, or even to burst out into laughter, over attacks on himself in "Ebony;" or for Wordsworth, in his drawing-room on Rydal Mount, to grumble over the "Edinburgh," ere dashing it to the other side of the room; it is very easy still, for those of us who are not dependent for subsistence on our writings, to treat insolent injustice with pity or scorn; but the tendency of such attacks upon Hazlitt was to snatch the bread from his mouth, to lower the opinion of his capacity with the booksellers, whose serf he was, and to drive him to mean subterfuges, which his soul abhorred, to prevent him literally from starving. He is said, a little before his death, to have met Horne, and said to him, "I have carried a volcano in my breast for the last three hours up and down Pall Mall; I have striven mortally to quench, to quell it, but it will not. Can you lend me a shilling? I have not tasted food for two days."

Want of thorough early training, an unsettled and wandering life, want of time for systematic study, and want of selfcontrol and of domestic happiness, combined to lessen the artistic merit, and have limited to some extent the permanent power, of Hazlitt's writings. Hence they are full of faults -the faults never, however, of weakness, but of haste, carelessness and caprice. They swarm with gossiping anecdote, with flashy clap-trap, with egotism, with jets of bitterest venom, and with sounding paradoxes. They are cast chiefly, too, in the form of slipshod essays; nor has he ever completed any great, solid, separate work, for his "Life of Napoleon" is not worthy of his powers. His superficial readers-especially if their minds have been previously poisoned by reading the "Quarterly" and "Blackwood"-fasten on these faults, and never get farther. "An amusing, flimsy writer" is the highest compliment they find in their hearts to bestow on one of the finest and deepest thinkers of the day. Our misty Germanisers, again, find him too clear, too brilliant, not sufficiently conversant with Kant, Fichte, Schiller, and Goethe, and vote him obsolete. Carlyle classes him with Dermody in one pa

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