by its subject, a trifle; yet Hazlitt could hardly have had a motive for such an effort but in some philosophic perception of the ignorance betrayed by many gram. mars of our language, and sometimes by that of Lindley Murray; which Lindley, by the way, though resident in England, was an American. There is great room for a useful display of philosophic subtlety in an English grammar, even though meant for schools. Hazlitt could not but have furnished something of value towards such a display. And if (as I was once told) his book was suppressed, I imagine that this suppression must have been purchased by some powerful publisher interested in keeping up the current reputa tion of Murray. "Strange stories," says Mr. Gilfillan, "are told about his [Hazlitt's] latter days, and his death-bed." I know not whether I properly understand Mr. Gilfillan. The stories which I myself have happened to hear, were not so much "strange," since they arose, naturally enough, out of pecuniary embarrassments, as they were afflicting in the turn they took. Dramatically viewed, if a man were speaking of things so far removed from our own times and interests as to excuse that sort of language, the circumstances of Hazlitt's last hours might rivet the gaze of a critic as fitted, harmoniously, with almost scenic art, to the whole tenor of his life; fitted equally to rouse his wrath, to deepen his dejection, and in the hour of death to justify his misanthropy. But I have no wish to utter a word on things which I know only at second-hand, and cannot speak upon without risk of misstating facts or doing injustice to persons. I prefer closing this section. with the words of Mr. Gilfillan : "Well says Bulwer, that of all the mental wrecks which have occurred in our era, this was the most melancholy. Others may have been as unhappy in their domestic circumstances, and gone down steeper places of dissipation than he; but they had meanwhile the breath of popularity, if not of wealth and station, to give them a certain solace." What had Hazlitt of this nature? Mr. Gilfillan answers, "Absolutely nothing to support and cheer him. With no hope, no fortune, no status in society; no certain popularity as a writer, no domestic peace, little sympathy from kindred spirits, little support from his political party, no moral management, no definite belief; with great powers, and great passions within, and with a host of powerful enemies without, it was his to enact one of the saddest tragedies on which the sun ever shone. Such is a faithful portraiture of an extraordinary man, whose restless intellect and stormy passions have now, for fifteen years, found that repose in the grave which was denied them above it." Mr. Gilfillan concludes with expressing his conviction, in which I desire to concur, that both enemies and friends will now join in admiration for the man; "both will readily concede now, that a subtle thinker, an eloquent writer, a lover of beauty and poetry, and man and truth, one of the best of crities, and not the worst of men, expired in William Hazlitt." Requiescat in pace. NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.* NOBODY In this generation reads The Spectator. There are, however, several people still surviving who have read No. 1; in which No. 1 a strange mistake is made. It is there asserted, as a general affection of human nature, that it is impossible to read a book with satisfaction until one has ascertained whether the author of it be tall or short, corpulent or thin, and, as to complexion, whether he be a "black" man (which, in the Spectator's time, was the absurd expression for a swarthy man), or a fair man, or a sallow man, or perhaps a green man, which Southey affirmed to be the proper description of many stout artificers in Birmingham, too much given to work in metallic fumes; on which account the name of Southey is an abomination to this day in certain furnaces" of Warwickshire. But can anything be more untrue than this Spectatorial doctrine? Did ever the youngest of female novel readers, on a sultry day, decline to eat a bunch of grapes until she knew whether the fruiterer were a good-looking man? Which of us ever heard a stranger inquiring for a "Guide to the Trosachs," The Works of Walter Savage Landor. 2 vols. but saying, "I scruple, however, to pay for this book, until I know whether the author is heather-legged." On this principle, if any such principle prevailed, we authors should be liable to as strict a revision of our physics before having any right to be read, as we all are before having our lives insured from the medical advisers of insurance offices; fellows that examine one with stethescopes; that pinch one, that actually punch one in the ribs, until a man becomes savage, and — in case the insurance should miss fire in consequence of the medical report-speculates on the propriety of prosecuting the medical ruffian for an assault, for a most unprovoked assault and battery, and, if possible, including in the indictment the now odious insurance office as an accomplice before the fact. Meantime the odd thing is, not that Addison should have made a mistake, but that he and his readers should, in this mistake, have recognized a hidden truth, the sudden illumination of a propensity latent in all people, but now first exposed; for it happens that there really is a propensity in all of us, very like what Addison describes very different, and yet, after one correction the very same. No reader cares about an author's person. before reading his book; it is after reading it, and supposing the book to reveal something of the writer's moral nature, as modifying his intellect; it is for his fun, his fancy, his sadness, possibly his craziness, that any reader cares about seeing the author in person. Afflicted with the very satyriasis of curiosity no man ever wished to see the author of a Ready Reckoner, or of a treatise on the Agistment Tithe 01 on the P: 'sent deplorable Dry-rot in Potatoes. |