what we didn't know... ...we learn today
William Hazlitt (10 April 1778 – 18 September 1830)
William, the youngest of the surviving Hazlitt children, was born in Mitre
Lane, Maidstone. He was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic
essays and literary criticism, as the greatest art critic of his age, and as
a drama critic, social commentator, and philosopher. He was also a painter.
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.
Yet his work is currently little read and mostly out of print.
When Hazlitt was two his family moved to Ireland and then the United
States, where his father preached as a Unitarian Minister. They returned
to England in 1786 to live at Wem, in Shropshire.
In 1793 Hazlitt was sent by his father to the Unitarian New College at
Hackney. He was tutored by eminent Dissenting thinkers such as Joseph Priestly. During his time there Hazlitt formed habits of independent thought and a belief in Liberty and the rights of man. These ideas would remain with him all his life.
Hazlitt had chosen not to follow his father in a pastoral career, and began to study as a painter under the tutelage of his brother, John, who was a successful portrait painter. He began to make something of a living, and a portrait he painted of his father was considered worthy of exhibition in the Royal Academy. Later in 1802, Hazlitt was commissioned to travel to Paris to copy several works of the old masters hanging in the Louvre. This was one of the great opportunities of his life. Over a period of three months, he spent long hours in rapture studying the paintings. He later thought long and hard of what he had seen and this provided substance for considerable body of art criticism some years afterward. He also had an opportunity to see Napoleon (at a distance), whom he idolised as the rescuer of the common man from the oppression of royal “Legitimacy”.
In 1798, Hazlitt encountered Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He would speak of Coleridge as “the only person I ever knew who answered to the idea of a man of genius”. Coleridge introduced Hazlitt to William Wordsworth, and the three became friends, sharing ideas of liberty and the right of man. Unfortunately this would later end, as their friendship would not last political change.
In 1803, Hazlitt met Charles Lamb and his sister Mary. They became fast friends, which would last until the end of Hazlitt’s life. Hazlitt frequented the society of the Lambs for the next several years. In 1805 he turned to metaphysics and the study of philosophy that had attracted him earlier, publishing his first book, On the Principles of Human Action. He was not getting much work as a painter, and his outrage at events then taking place in English politics in reaction to Napoleon’s wars led to his writing and publishing, at his own expense (though he had almost no money), a political pamphlet, Free Thoughts on Public Affairs (1806). Finally he began to find enough work to support himself, if just barely.
In 1808, Hazlitt married Sarah Stoddart, a friend of Mary Lamb. The couple had three sons, but only one survived infancy – William, who Hazlitt adored, was born in 1811.
By January 1812 Hazlitt was penniless, he embarked on a sometime career as a lecturer, and gained some attention (as well as much-needed money) and they gave him an opportunity to expand some of his own ideas. He made new friends and admirers, including Mary Shelly and John Keats.
Hazlitt no longer entertained serious ambition as a painter. Although he had demonstrated some talent, the results fell far short of the standards he had set for himself. Later that year he met John
and Leigh Hunt, publisher and editor of The Examiner, who found work for him as a journalist. Hazlitt would contribute drama criticism, literary criticism, art criticism, and political essays. He would come to enjoy critical and popular acclaim.