III
But the power of co-ordination was not always exerted; perhaps not always possible. Had it been so, then Hazlitt would not take his place in this little band of literary Vagabonds.
There are times when the Puritan element disappears; and it is Hazlitt the eager, curious taster of life that is presented to us. For there was the restless inquisitiveness of the Vagabond about him. This gives such delightful piquancy to many of his utterances. He ranges far and wide, and is willing to go anywhere for a fresh sensation that may add to the interest of his intellectual life. He has no patience with readers who will not quit their own small back gardens. He is for ranging “over the hills and far away.”
No sympathy he with the readers who take timid constitutionals in literature, choosing only the well-worn paths. He is a true son of the road; the world is before him, and high roads and byways, rough paths and smooth paths, are equally acceptable, provided they add to his zest and enjoyment.
Not that he cares for the new merely because it is new. The essay on “Reading Old Books” is proof enough of that. A literary ramble must not merely be novel, it must have some element of beauty about it, or he will revisit the old haunts of whose beauty he has full cognizance.
The passion for the Earth which was noted as one of the Vagabond’s characteristics is not so pronounced in Hazlitt and De Quincey as with the later Vagabonds. But it is unmistakable all the same. There are, he says, “only three pleasures in life pure and lasting, and all derived from inanimate things—books, pictures, and the face of Nature.” The somewhat curious use of the word “inanimate” here as applied to the “face of Nature” scarcely does justice to his intense, vivid appreciation of the life of the open air; but at any rate it differentiates his attitude towards Nature from that of Wordsworth and his school. It is a feeling more direct, more concrete, more personal.
He has no special liking for country people. On the contrary, he thinks them a dull, heavy class of people.
“All country people hate one another,” he says. “They have so little comfort that they envy their neighbours the smallest pleasure and advantage, and nearly grudge themselves the necessaries of life. From not being accustomed to enjoyment, they become hardened and averse to it—stupid, for want of thought, selfish, for want of society.”
No; it is the sheer joy of being in the open, and learning what Whitman called the “profound lesson of
reception,” that attracted Hazlitt. “What I like best,” he declares, “is to lie whole mornings on a sunny bank on Salisbury Plain, without any object before me, neither knowing nor caring how time passes, and thus, ‘with light-winged toys and feathered idleness, to melt down hours to moments.’” A genuine Vagabond mood this.
Hazlitt, like De Quincey, had felt the glamour of the city as well as the glamour of the country; not with the irresistibility of Lamb, but for all that potently. But an instinct for the open, the craving for pleasant spaces, and the longing of the hard-driven journalist for the gracious leisure of the country, these things were paramount with both Hazlitt and De Quincey.
In Hazlitt’s case there is a touch of wildness, a more primal delight in the roughness and solitude of country places than we find in De Quincey.
“One of the pleasantest things,” says Hazlitt, in true Vagabond spirit, “is going on a journey; but I like to go by myself.”
The last touch is not only characteristic of Hazlitt, it touches that note of reserve verging on anti-social sentiment that was mentioned as characteristic of the Vagabond.
He justifies his feeling thus with an engaging frankness: “The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel. Do just as one pleases. We go a journey chiefly to be free of all impediments and of all inconveniences; to leave ourselves behind; much more to get rid of others. . . . It is hard if I cannot start some game on these lone heaths. I laugh, I run, I leap, I
sing for joy. From the point of yonder rolling cloud I plunge into my past being, and revel there, as the sunburnt Indian plunges headlong into the wave that wafts him to his native shore. Then long-forgotten things, like ‘sunken wrack and sunless treasures,’ burst upon my eager sight, and I begin to feel, think, and be myself again.”