[19]. His grandson describes him as ‘physically incapable’ of any but a transient fidelity to anybody.
[20]. He confessed that one day he told it half a dozen times or so to persons he had never seen before: once, twice over to the same listener.
[21]. It cost Hazlitt a crown, perhaps less; and he arranged—apparently with Mrs. Hazlitt—to be taken in the act! After this the knowledge that Mr. and Mrs. Hazlitt took tea together, pendente lite, and that then and after his second espousals Hazlitt supplied this very reasonable woman with money, astonishes no more, but comes as a kind of anticlimax.
[22]. That damsel presently married in her station. She seems to have been a decent woman according to her lights, and to have lived up honestly to her ideals, such as they were.
[23].
There was a laughing devil in his sneer
That raised emotions both of rage and fear;
And where his frown of hatred darkly fell,
Hope, withering, fled—and Mercy sighed farewell.
[24]. These details are Patmore’s, and, even if they be true, are not the whole truth. Hazlitt loved solitude and the country, had to write for a living, wrote with difficulty, and left no inconsiderable body of work.