Characters of Shakespeare.
The Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays is perhaps not as good as any of these three courses of Lectures; but it should be remembered that it came earlier in time, and that the critic had not “got his hand in.” The notes are as a rule nearly as desultory as Coleridge’s, with less suggestiveness; there is at least one outburst, in the case of Henry V., of the usual disturbing influence; there is very much more quotation than there need be from Schlegel; and there are other signs of the novitiate. Yet the book contains admirable things, as in the early comparison of Chaucer and Shakespeare, where, though Hazlitt’s defective knowledge of Chaucer again appears, there is much else good. Among the apices of Shakespearian criticism is the statement that the poet “has no prejudice for or against his characters,”[[493]] that he makes “no attempt to force an interest: everything is left for time and circumstance to unfold.”[[494]] There is perhaps something inconsistent with this as well as with truth in the observation on Lear,[[495]] that “He is here fairly caught in the web of his own imagination”; but, like most of the greater critics, Hazlitt cares very little for superficial consistency. The characters of Falstaff and Shylock are masterpieces in his bravura style, and one need perhaps nowhere seriously quarrel with any critical statement of his except the astonishing one, that All’s Well that Ends Well is “one of the most pleasing” of the plays.
In the remaining volumes the literary articles or passages are only occasional, and are often considerably adulterated with non-literary matter. In The Plain Speaker, for instance, the opening paper on “The Prose Style of Poets” holds out almost the highest promise, and gives almost the lowest performance. Hazlitt, as is not so very uncommon with him, seems to have deliberately set himself to take the other side from Coleridge’s. That it happens also to be the wrong side matters very little. But even his attack on Coleridge’s own prose style (open enough to objection) has nothing very happy in it except the comparison, “To read one of his disquisitions is like hearing the variations to a piece of music without the score.” So, too, “On the Conversation of Authors,” though intensely interesting, has no critical interest or very little—the chief exception being the passage on Burke’s style. Far more important is the glance at the theory of the single word in “On Application to Study,”[[496]] and in that in “On Envy”[[497]] on the taste of the Lake School.
The Plain Speaker.
Much of The Plain Speaker is injured as a treasury of criticism, though improved as a provision of amusement, by Hazlitt’s personal revelations, complaints, agonies; but the critical ethos of the man was so irrepressible that it will not be refused. There is a curious little piece[[498]] of critical blasphemy, or at least “dis-gusto” (the word is wanted and is fairly choice Italian), in “On the Pleasure of Hating,” and, almost throughout the series, the sharp flux and reflux of literary admiration and political rage in respect of Scott is most noteworthy. “On the Qualifications necessary to Success in Life” contains yet another[[499]] of those passages on Coleridge which are like nothing so much as the half-fond, half-furious, retrospects of a discarded lover on his mistress—which are certainly like nothing else in literature. But “On Reading Old Books” does not belie the promise of its title, and is a complete and satisfactory palinode to the fit of critical headache noted just now. One must not venture to cite from it; it is to be read and re-read, and hardly any single piece, except the immortal “Farewell to Essay-Writing,” gives us so much insight into Hazlitt’s critical temperament as this. “On People of Sense” contains many critical glances, and, unfortunately, one[[500]] of those on Shelley which show Hazlitt at his worst. One might think that he who found others so “far above singing” could not miss the similar altitude of the author of Prometheus Unbound. But Shelley was a contemporary, something of an acquaintance, a man of some means, a gentleman—so Hazlitt must snarl[[501]] at him. Let us sigh and pass.
“Antiquity,” though on one side only, is almost throughout ours, and therefore not ours: and there is not a little for us in “On Novelty and Familiarity,” while “Old English Writers and Speakers” speaks for itself, and is specially interesting for its glances on matters French and its characteristically Hazlittian fling—one I confess with which I have for once no quarrel—that “’Tis pity She’s a Whore will no more act than Lord Byron and Goethe together could have written it.”[[502]] It puts one in charity for the absurd description,[[503]] contradicted by
his own remarks, of Redgauntlets “the last and almost worst” of Scott’s novels, and the prediction (alas! to be falsified) that “Old Sir Walter will last long enough”—in the flesh, not in fame.[[504]] “Scott, Racine, and Shakespeare” is not unworthy of its title, though it is really on the first and last only. Racine is brought in perfunctorily, and justice is done to him in neither sense.
Table-Talk, one of the greenest pastures of the Hazlittian champaign generally, is among the least literary of the books, and yet so literary enough. “On Genius and Common Sense” contributes its Character of Wordsworth,[[505]] on whom Hazlitt is always interesting, because of the extraordinary opposition between the men’s temperaments. The companion on Shelley,[[506]] which is supplied by “On Paradox and Commonplace,” is hardly less interesting, though, for the reasons above indicated, much less valuable. “On Milton’s Sonnets,” however, is, as it ought to be, a pure study and an admirable one.[[507]] “The Aristocracy of Letters” carries its hay high on the horn, yet it is not negligible: and “On Criticism,” which follows, really deserves the title, despite its frequent and inevitable flings and runnings-amuck. The good-humoured, though rather “home” description of “the Occult School”[[508]] (v. supra on Lamb) is perfectly just. “On Familiar” Style is also no false promiser, and yet another passage on Coleridge meets us in the paper “On Effeminacy of Character.”