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       WINTERSLOW

  ESSAYS AND CHARACTERS
      WRITTEN THERE

           BY

     WILLIAM HAZLITT


      [Decoration]


         LONDON
     GRANT RICHARDS
   48 LEICESTER SQUARE
          1902




  The World's Classics

           XXV

      THE WORKS OF
  WILLIAM HAZLITT--III

       WINTERSLOW

  ESSAYS AND CHARACTERS
      WRITTEN THERE


_These Essays were first published collectively in the year
1839. In 'The World's Classics' they were first published in
1902._

Edinburgh: Printed by T. and A. Constable




The World's Classics


  I.
  JANE EYRE. By Charlotte Bronte. [_Second Impression._

  II.
  THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. By Charles Lamb. [_Second Impression._

  III.
  THE POEMS OF ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, 1830-1858. [_Second
    Impression._

  IV.
  THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. By Oliver Goldsmith.

  V.
  TABLE-TALK: Essays on Men and Manners. By William Hazlitt.
    [_Second Impression._

  VI.
  ESSAYS. By Ralph Waldo Emerson. [_Second Impression._

  VII.
  THE POETICAL WORKS OF JOHN KEATS. [_Second Impression._

  VIII.
  OLIVER TWIST. By Charles Dickens.

  IX.
  THE INGOLDSBY LEGENDS. By Thomas Ingoldsby. [_Second
    Impression._

  X.
  WUTHERING HEIGHTS. By Emily Bronte.

  XI.
  ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. By Charles Darwin. [_Second
    Impression._

  XII.
  THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. By John Bunyan.

  XIII.
  ENGLISH SONGS AND BALLADS. Selected by T. W. H. Crosland.

  XIV.
  SHIRLEY. By Charlotte Bronte.

  XV.
  SKETCHES AND ESSAYS. By William Hazlitt.

  XVI.
  THE POEMS OF ROBERT HERRICK.

  XVII.
  ROBINSON CRUSOE. By Daniel Defoe.

  XVIII.
  HOMER'S ILIAD. Translated by Alexander Pope.

  XIX.
  SARTOR RESARTUS. By Thomas Carlyle.

  XX.
  GULLIVER'S TRAVELS. By Jonathan Swift.

  XXI.
  TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION. By Edgar Allan Poe.

  XXII.
  NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. By Gilbert White.

  XXIII.
  CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM EATER. By T. De Quincey.

  XXIV.
  BACON'S ESSAYS.

  XXV.
  WINTERSLOW. By William Hazlitt.

  XXVI.
  THE SCARLET LETTER. By Nathaniel Hawthorne.

  XXVII.
  LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. By Lord Macaulay.

  XXVIII.
  HENRY ESMOND. By W. M. Thackeray.

  XXIX.
  IVANHOE. By Sir Walter Scott.

  _Other volumes in preparation._

  Pott 8vo. Cloth, 1s. net. Leather, 2s. net.




PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1850


Winterslow is a village of Wiltshire, between Salisbury and Andover,
where my father, during a considerable portion of his life, spent
several months of each year, latterly, at an ancient inn on the Great
Western Road, called Winterslow Hut. One of his chief attractions
hither were the noble woods of Tytherleigh or Tudorleigh, round Norman
Court, the seat of Mr. Baring Wall, M.P., whose proffered kindness to
my father, on a critical occasion, was thoroughly appreciated by the
very sensitiveness which declined its acceptance, and will always be
gratefully remembered by myself. Another feature was Clarendon
Wood--whence the noble family of Clarendon derived their title--famous
besides for the Constitutions signed in the palace which once rose
proudly amongst its stately trees, but of which scarce a vestige
remains. In another direction, within easy distance, gloams
Stonehenge, visited by my father, less perhaps for its historical
associations than for its appeal to the imagination, the upright
stones seeming in the dim twilight, or in the drizzling mist, almost
continuous in the locality, so many spectre-Druids, moaning over the
past, and over their brethren prostrate about them. At no great
distance, in another direction, are the fine pictures of Lord Radnor,
and somewhat further, those of Wilton House. But the chief happiness
was the thorough quiet of the place, the sole interruption of which
was the passage, to and fro, of the London mails. The Hut stands in a
valley, equidistant about a mile from two tolerably high hills, at the
summit of which, on their approach either way, the guards used to blow
forth their admonition to the hostler. The sound, coming through the
clear, pure air, was another agreeable feature in the day,
reminiscentiary of the great city that my father so loved and so
loathed. In olden times, when we lived in the village itself--a mile
up the hill opposite--behind the Hut, Salisbury Plain stretches away
mile after mile of open space--the reminiscence of the metropolis
would be, from time to time, furnished in the pleasantest of ways by
the presence of some London friends; among these, dearly loved and
honoured there, as everywhere else, Charles and Mary Lamb paid us
frequent visits, rambling about all the time, thorough Londoners in a
thoroughly country place, delighted and wondering and wondered at. For
such reasons, and for the other reason, which I mention incidentally,
that Winterslow is my own native place, I have given its name to this
collection of 'Essays and Characters written there'; as, indeed,
practically were very many of his works, for it was there that most of
his thinking was done.

                                            William Hazlitt.

    Chelsea, _Jan. 1850_.




CONTENTS


                                                        PAGE
       I. MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS                 1

      II. OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN          24

     III. ON PARTY SPIRIT                                 40

      IV. ON THE FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH          45

       V. ON PUBLIC OPINION                               53

      VI. ON PERSONAL IDENTITY                            67

     VII. MIND AND MOTIVE                                 82

    VIII. ON MEANS AND ENDS                               97

      IX. MATTER AND MANNER                              108

       X. ON CONSISTENCY OF OPINION                      115

      XI. PROJECT FOR A NEW THEORY OF CIVIL AND
            CRIMINAL LEGISLATION                         130

     XII. ON THE CHARACTER OF BURKE                      155

    XIII. ON THE CHARACTER OF FOX                        173

     XIV. ON THE CHARACTER OF MR. PITT                   185

      XV. ON THE CHARACTER OF LORD CHATHAM               191

     XVI. BELIEF, WHETHER VOLUNTARY?                     196

    XVII. A FAREWELL TO ESSAY-WRITING                    205




HAZLITT'S ESSAYS




ESSAY I

MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS


My father was a Dissenting Minister, at Wem, in Shropshire; and in the
year 1798 (the figures that compose the date are to me like the
'dreaded name of Demogorgon') Mr. Coleridge came to Shrewsbury, to
succeed Mr. Rowe in the spiritual charge of a Unitarian Congregation
there. He did not come till late on the Saturday afternoon before he
was to preach; and Mr. Rowe, who himself went down to the coach, in a
state of anxiety and expectation, to look for the arrival of his
successor, could find no one at all answering the description but a
round-faced man, in a short black coat (like a shooting-jacket) which
hardly seemed to have been made for him, but who seemed to be talking
at a great rate to his fellow passengers. Mr. Rowe had scarce returned
to give an account of his disappointment when the round-faced man in
black entered, and dissipated all doubts on the subject by beginning
to talk. He did not cease while he stayed; nor has he since, that I
know of. He held the good town of Shrewsbury in delightful suspense
for three weeks that he remained there, 'fluttering the _proud
Salopians_, like an eagle in a dove-cote'; and the Welch mountains
that skirt the horizon with their tempestuous confusion, agree to have
heard no such mystic sounds since the days of

    'High-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lay.'

As we passed along between Wem and Shrewsbury, and I eyed their blue
tops seen through the wintry branches, or the red rustling leaves of
the sturdy oak-trees by the road-side, a sound was in my ears as of a
Syren's song; I was stunned, startled with it, as from deep sleep; but
I had no notion then that I should ever be able to express my
admiration to others in motley imagery or quaint allusion, till the
light of his genius shone into my soul, like the sun's rays glittering
in the puddles of the road. I was at that time dumb, inarticulate,
helpless, like a worm by the way-side, crushed, bleeding, lifeless;
but now, bursting the deadly bands that bound them,

    'With Styx nine times round them,'

my ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their plumes, catch
the golden light of other years. My soul has indeed remained in its
original bondage, dark, obscure, with longings infinite and
unsatisfied; my heart, shut up in the prison-house of this rude clay,
has never found, nor will it ever find, a heart to speak to; but that
my understanding also did not remain dumb and brutish, or at length
found a language to express itself, I owe to Coleridge. But this is
not to my purpose.

My father lived ten miles from Shrewsbury, and was in the habit of
exchanging visits with Mr. Rowe, and with Mr. Jenkins of Whitchurch
(nine miles farther on), according to the custom of Dissenting
Ministers in each other's neighbourhood. A line of communication is
thus established, by which the flame of civil and religious liberty is
kept alive, and nourishes its smouldering fire unquenchable, like the
fires in the _Agamemnon_ of AEschylus, placed at different stations,
that waited for ten long years to announce with their blazing pyramids
the destruction of Troy. Coleridge had agreed to come over and see my
father, according to the courtesy of the country, as Mr. Rowe's
probable successor; but in the meantime, I had gone to hear him preach
the Sunday after his arrival. A poet and a philosopher getting up
into a Unitarian pulpit to preach the gospel, was a romance in these
degenerate days, a sort of revival of the primitive spirit of
Christianity, which was not to be resisted.

It was in January of 1798, that I rose one morning before daylight, to
walk ten miles in the mud, to hear this celebrated person preach.
Never, the longest day I have to live, shall I have such another walk
as this cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798.
_Il y a des impressions que ni le tems ni les circonstances peuvent
effacer. Dusse-je vivre des siecles entiers, le doux tems de ma
jeunesse ne peut renaitre pour moi, ni s'effacer jamais dans ma
memoire._ When I got there, the organ was playing the 100th Psalm, and
when it was done, Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text, 'And he
went up into the mountain to pray, HIMSELF, ALONE.' As he gave out
this text, his voice 'rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes,'
and when he came to the two last words, which he pronounced loud,
deep, and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young, as if the
sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if that
prayer might have floated in solemn silence through the universe. The
idea of St. John came into my mind, 'of one crying in the wilderness,
who had his loins girt about, and whose food was locusts and wild
honey.' The preacher then launched into his subject, like an eagle
dallying with the wind. The sermon was upon peace and war; upon church
and state--not their alliance but their separation--on the spirit of
the world and the spirit of Christianity, not as the same, but as
opposed to one another. He talked of those who had 'inscribed the
cross of Christ on banners dripping with human gore.' He made a
poetical and pastoral excursion--and to show the fatal effects of war,
drew a striking contrast between the simple shepherd-boy, driving his
team afield, or sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, 'as
though he should never be old.' and the same poor country lad,
crimped, kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse,
turned into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with
powder and pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the
loathsome finery of the profession of blood:

    'Such were the notes our once-loved poet sung.'

And for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had heard
the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met together.
Truth and Genius had embraced, under the eye and with the sanction of
Religion. This was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well
satisfied. The sun that was still labouring pale and wan through the
sky, obscured by thick mists, seemed an emblem of the _good cause_;
and the cold dank drops of dew, that hung half melted on the beard of
the thistle, had something genial and refreshing in them; for there
was a spirit of hope and youth in all nature, that turned everything
into good. The face of nature had not then the brand of JUS DIVINUM on
it:

    'Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe.'

On the Tuesday following, the half-inspired speaker came. I was called
down into the room where he was, and went half-hoping, half-afraid. He
received me very graciously, and I listened for a long time without
uttering a word. I did not suffer in his opinion by my silence. 'For
those two hours,' he afterwards was pleased to say, 'he was conversing
with William Hazlitt's forehead!' His appearance was different from
what I had anticipated from seeing him before. At a distance, and in
the dim light of the chapel, there was to me a strange wildness in his
aspect, a dusky obscurity, and I thought him pitted with the
small-pox. His complexion was at that time clear, and even bright--

    'As are the children of yon azure sheen.'

His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, with
large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them, like a
sea with darkened lustre. 'A certain tender bloom his face
o'erspread,' a purple tinge as we see it in the pale thoughtful
complexions of the Spanish portrait-painters, Murillo and Valasquez.
His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent; his chin
good-humoured and round; but his nose, the rudder of the face, the
index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing--like what he has done.
It might seem that the genius of his face as from a height surveyed
and projected him (with sufficient capacity and huge aspiration) into
the world unknown of thought and imagination, with nothing to support
or guide his veering purpose, as if Columbus had launched his
adventurous course for the New World in a scallop, without oars or
compass. So, at least, I comment on it after the event. Coleridge, in
his person, was rather above the common size, inclining to the
corpulent, or like Lord Hamlet,'somewhat fat and pursy.' His hair
(now, alas! grey) was then black and glossy as the raven's, and fell
in smooth masses over his forehead. This long pendulous hair is
peculiar to enthusiasts, to those whose minds tend heavenward; and is
traditionally inseparable (though of a different colour) from the
pictures of Christ. It ought to belong, as a character, to all who
preach _Christ crucified_, and Coleridge was at that time one of
those!

It was curious to observe the contrast between him and my father, who
was a veteran in the cause, and then declining into the vale of years.
He had been a poor Irish lad, carefully brought up by his parents, and
sent to the University of Glasgow (where he studied under Adam Smith)
to prepare him for his future destination. It was his mother's
proudest wish to see her son a Dissenting Minister. So, if we look
back to past generations (as far as eye can reach), we see the same
hopes, fears, wishes, followed by the same disappointments, throbbing
in the human heart; and so we may see them (if we look forward) rising
up for ever, and disappearing, like vapourish bubbles, in the human
breast! After being tossed about from congregation to congregation in
the heats of the Unitarian controversy, and squabbles about the
American war, he had been relegated to an obscure village, where he
was to spend the last thirty years of his life, far from the only
converse that he loved, the talk about disputed texts of Scripture,
and the cause of civil and religious liberty. Here he passed his days,
repining, but resigned, in the study of the Bible, and the perusal of
the Commentators--huge folios, not easily got through, one of which
would outlast a winter! Why did he pore on these from morn to night
(with the exception of a walk in the fields or a turn in the garden to
gather broccoli-plants or kidney beans of his own rearing, with no
small degree of pride and pleasure)? Here were 'no figures nor no
fantasies'--neither poetry nor philosophy--nothing to dazzle, nothing
to excite modern curiosity; but to his lack-lustre eyes there appeared
within the pages of the ponderous, unwieldy, neglected tomes, the
sacred name of JEHOVAH in Hebrew capitals: pressed down by the weight
of the style, worn to the last fading thinness of the understanding,
there were glimpses, glimmering notions of the patriarchal wanderings,
with palm-trees hovering in the horizon, and processions of camels at
the distance of three thousand years; there was Moses with the Burning
Bush, the number of the Twelve Tribes, types, shadows, glosses on the
law and the prophets; there were discussions (dull enough) on the age
of Methuselah, a mighty speculation! there were outlines, rude guesses
at the shape of Noah's Ark and of the riches of Solomon's Temple;
questions as to the date of the creation, predictions of the end of
all things; the great lapses of time, the strange mutations of the
globe were unfolded with the voluminous leaf, as it turned over; and
though the soul might slumber with an hieroglyphic veil of inscrutable
mysteries drawn over it, yet it was in a slumber ill-exchanged for all
the sharpened realities of sense, wit, fancy, or reason. My father's
life was comparatively a dream; but it was a dream of infinity and
eternity, of death, the resurrection, and a judgment to come!

No two individuals were ever more unlike than were the host and his
guest. A poet was to my father a sort of nondescript; yet whatever
added grace to the Unitarian cause was to him welcome. He could hardly
have been more surprised or pleased, if our visitor had worn wings.
Indeed, his thoughts had wings: and as the silken sounds rustled round
our little wainscoted parlour, my father threw back his spectacles
over his forehead, his white hairs mixing with its sanguine hue; and a
smile of delight beamed across his rugged, cordial face, to think that
Truth had found a new ally in Fancy![1] Besides, Coleridge seemed to
take considerable notice of me, and that of itself was enough. He
talked very familiarly, but agreeably, and glanced over a variety of
subjects. At dinner-time he grew more animated, and dilated in a very
edifying manner on Mary Wolstonecraft and Mackintosh. The last, he
said, he considered (on my father's speaking of his _Vindiciae Gallicae_
as a capital performance) as a clever, scholastic man--a master of the
topics--or, as the ready warehouseman of letters, who knew exactly
where to lay his hand on what he wanted, though the goods were not his
own. He thought him no match for Burke, either in style or matter.
Burke was a metaphysician, Mackintosh a mere logician. Burke was an
orator (almost a poet) who reasoned in figures, because he had an eye
for nature: Mackintosh, on the other hand, was a rhetorician, who had
only an eye to commonplaces. On this I ventured to say that I had
always entertained a great opinion of Burke, and that (as far as I
could find) the speaking of him with contempt might be made the test
of a vulgar, democratical mind. This was the first observation I ever
made to Coleridge, and he said it was a very just and striking one. I
remember the leg of Welsh mutton and the turnips on the table that day
had the finest flavour imaginable. Coleridge added that Mackintosh and
Tom Wedgwood (of whom, however, he spoke highly) had expressed a very
indifferent opinion of his friend Mr. Wordsworth, on which he remarked
to them--'He strides on so far before you, that he dwindles in the
distance!' Godwin had once boasted to him of having carried on an
argument with Mackintosh for three hours with dubious success;
Coleridge told him--'If there had been a man of genius in the room he
would have settled the question in five minutes.' He asked me if I had
ever seen Mary Wolstonecraft, and I said, I had once for a few
moments, and that she seemed to me to turn off Godwin's objections to
something she advanced with quite a playful, easy air. He replied,
that 'this was only one instance of the ascendency which people of
imagination exercised over those of mere intellect.' He did not rate
Godwin very high[2] (this was caprice or prejudice, real or affected),
but he had a great idea of Mrs. Wolstonecraft's powers of
conversation; none at all of her talent for bookmaking. We talked a
little about Holcroft. He had been asked if he was not much struck
_with_ him, and he said, he thought himself in more danger of being
struck _by_ him. I complained that he would not let me get on at all,
for he required a definition of every the commonest word, exclaiming,
'What do you mean by a _sensation_, Sir? What do you mean by an
_idea_?' This, Coleridge said, was barricadoing the road to truth; it
was setting up a turnpike-gate at every step we took. I forget a great
number of things, many more than I remember; but the day passed off
pleasantly, and the next morning Mr. Coleridge was to return to
Shrewsbury. When I came down to breakfast, I found that he had just
received a letter from his friend, T. Wedgwood, making him an offer of
150_l._ a year if he chose to waive his present pursuit, and devote
himself entirely to the study of poetry and philosophy. Coleridge
seemed to make up his mind to close with this proposal in the act of
tying on one of his shoes. It threw an additional damp on his
departure. It took the wayward enthusiast quite from us to cast him
into Deva's winding vales, or by the shores of old romance. Instead of
living at ten miles' distance, of being the pastor of a Dissenting
congregation at Shrewsbury, he was henceforth to inhabit the Hill of
Parnassus, to be a Shepherd on the Delectable Mountains. Alas! I knew
not the way thither, and felt very little gratitude for Mr. Wedgwood's
bounty. I was presently relieved from this dilemma; for Mr. Coleridge,
asking for a pen and ink, and going to a table to write something on a
bit of card, advanced towards me with undulating step, and giving me
the precious document, said that that was his address, _Mr. Coleridge,
Nether-Stowey, Somersetshire_; and that he should be glad to see me
there in a few weeks' time, and, if I chose, would come half-way to
meet me. I was not less surprised than the shepherd-boy (this simile
is to be found in _Cassandra_), when he sees a thunderbolt fall close
at his feet. I stammered out my acknowledgments and acceptance of this
offer (I thought Mr. Wedgwood's annuity a trifle to it) as well as I
could; and this mighty business being settled, the poet preacher took
leave, and I accompanied him six miles on the road. It was a fine
morning in the middle of winter, and he talked the whole way. The
scholar in Chaucer is described as going

    ----'Sounding on his way.'

So Coleridge went on his. In digressing, in dilating, in passing from
subject to subject, he appeared to me to float in air, to slide on
ice. He told me in confidence (going along) that he should have
preached two sermons before he accepted the situation at Shrewsbury,
one on Infant Baptism, the other on the Lord's Supper, showing that he
could not administer either, which would have effectually disqualified
him for the object in view. I observed that he continually crossed me
on the way by shifting from one side of the footpath to the other.
This struck me as an odd movement; but I did not at that time connect
it with any instability of purpose or involuntary change of principle,
as I have done since. He seemed unable to keep on in a straight line.
He spoke slightingly of Hume (whose _Essay on Miracles_ he said was
stolen from an objection started in one of South's sermons--_Credat
Judaeus Appella!_) I was not very much pleased at this account of Hume,
for I had just been reading, with infinite relish, that completest of
all metaphysical _chokepears_, his _Treatise on Human Nature_, to
which the _Essays_ in point of scholastic subtility and close
reasoning, are mere elegant trifling, light summer reading. Coleridge
even denied the excellence of Hume's general style, which I think
betray