a number of subjects—painting, poetry, prose, plays, politics, parliamentary speakers, metaphysical lore, books, men, and things.”[83]
The importance of Hazlitt’s Shakespearian criticism is no longer open to question. Though Coleridge alluded to them slightingly as out-and-out imitations of Lamb,[84] Hazlitt’s dicta on the greatest English genius are equal in depth to Lamb’s and far more numerous; and while in profoundness and subtlety they fall short of the remarks of Coleridge himself, they surpass them in intensity and carrying power. To both of these men Hazlitt owed a great deal in his appreciation of Shakespeare, and perhaps even more to August Wilhelm Schlegel, whose Lectures on Dramatic Literature he reviewed in 1815.[85] His allusions to Schlegel border on enthusiasm and he makes it a proud claim that he has done “more than any one except Schlegel to vindicate the Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays from the stigma of French criticism.”[86] But however great his obligation, there was some point in the compliment of the German critic when he declared that Hazlitt had gone beyond him (l’avoit dépassé) in his Shakespearian opinions.[87] A few years later Heine maintained that the only significant commentator of Shakespeare produced by England was William Hazlitt.[88] Coleridge’s notes, it is to be remembered, were not at that time generally accessible.
Hazlitt’s attitude toward Shakespeare was wholesomely on this side of idolatry. He did not make it an article of faith to admire everything that Shakespeare had written, and refused his praise to the poems and most of the sonnets. Even Schlegel and Coleridge could not persuade him to see beauties in what appeared to be blemishes, but in a general estimate of Shakespeare’s all-embracing genius he conceived his faults to be “of just as much consequence as his bad spelling.”[89] He saw in him a genius who comprehended all humanity, who represented it poetically in all its shades and varieties. He examined all the fine distinctions of character, he studied Shakespeare’s manner of combining and contrasting them so as to produce a unity of tone above even the art of the classic unities. From the irresponsible comedy of Falstaff to the deepest tragic notes of Lear, the whole gamut of human emotions encounters responsive chords in the critic’s mind—the young love of Romeo and Juliet or the voluptuous abandonment of Antony and Cleopatra, the intellect of Iago irresistibly impelled to malignant activity or Hamlet entangled in the coils of a fatal introspection. To the sheer poetry of Shakespeare he is also acutely sensitive, to the soft moonlit atmosphere of the “Midsummernight’s Dream,” to the tender gloom of “Cymbeline,” to the “philosophic poetry” of “As You Like It.” Some of his interpretations of isolated passages are hardly to be surpassed. He comments minutely and exquisitely on what he considers to be a touchstone of poetic feeling,
“Daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty.”[90]
And with what complete insight he translates a speech of Antony’s:
“This precarious state and the approaching dissolution of his greatness are strikingly displayed in the dialogue of Antony with Eros:
‘Antony. Eros, thou yet behold’st me? Eros. Ay, noble lord. Antony. Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish; A vapour sometime, like a bear or lion, A towered citadel, a pendant rock, A forked mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon’t, that nod unto the world And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs, They are black vesper’s pageants. Eros. Ay, my lord. Antony. That which is now a horse, even with a thought The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct As water is in water. Eros. It does, my lord. Antony. My good knave, Eros, now thy captain is Even such a body,’ etc.
“This is, without doubt, one of the finest pieces of poetry in Shakspeare. The splendour of the imagery, the semblance of reality, the lofty range of picturesque objects hanging over the world, their evanescent nature, the total uncertainty of what is left behind, are just like the mouldering schemes of human greatness. It is finer than Cleopatra’s passionate lamentation over his fallen grandeur, because it is more dim, unstable, unsubstantial.”[91]
If an understanding of Shakespeare in Hazlitt’s day may be taken as a measure of a critic’s depth of insight, his attitude toward Shakespeare’s fellow-dramatists will just as surely reveal his powers of discrimination. Lamb was often carried away by a pioneer’s fervor and misled persons like Lowell, who, returning to Ford late in life, found “that the greater part of what [he] once took on trust as precious was really paste and pinchbeck,” and that as far as the celebrated closing scene in “The Broken Heart” was concerned, Charles Lamb’s comment on it was “worth more than all Ford ever wrote.”[92] Hazlitt’s dispassionate sanity in this instance forms an instructive contrast: “Except the last scene of the Broken Heart (which I think extravagant—others may think it sublime, and be right) they [Ford’s plays] are merely exercises of style and effusion of wire-drawn sentiment.”[93] The same strength of judgment rendered Hazlitt proof against the excessive sentimentality in Beaumont and Fletcher and gave a distinct value to his opinions even when they seemed to be wrong, which was not often. But in writing of Marlowe, of Dekker and of Webster, he spreads out all his sail to make a joyous run among the beauties in his course.
And it is so with the rest of his criticism—throughout the same susceptibility to all that is true, or lofty, or refined, vigilantly controlled by a firm common sense, the same stamp of originality unmistakably impressed on all. “I like old opinions with new reasons,” he once said to Northcote, “not new opinions without any.”[94] But he did not hesitate to express a new opinion where the old one appeared to be unjust. His heretical preference of Steele over Addison has found more than one convert in later days. On Spenser or Pope, on Fielding or Richardson, he is equally happy and unimprovable. In the opinion of Mr. Saintsbury, Hazlitt’s general lecture on Elizabethan literature, his treatment of the dramatists of the Restoration, of Pope, of the English Novelists, and of Cobbett have never been excelled; and who is better qualified than Mr. Saintsbury by width of reading to express such an opinion?[95]
Of Hazlitt’s treatment of his own contemporaries an additional word needs to be said. No charge has been repeated more often than that of the inconsistency, perversity, and utter unreliableness of his judgments on the writers of his day. To distinguish between the claims of living poets, particularly in an age of new ideas and changing forms, is a task which might test the powers of the most discerning critics, and in which perfection is hardly to be attained. Yet one may ask whether in the entire extent of Hazlitt’s writing a great living genius has been turned into a mockery or a figurehead been set up for the admiration of posterity. Of his personal and political antipathies enough has been said, but against literary orthodoxy his only great sin is a harsh review of “Christabel.”[96] If in general we look at the age through Hazlitt’s eyes, we shall see its literature dominated by the figures of Wordsworth and Scott, the one regarded as the restorer of life to poetry, the other as the creator or transcriber of a whole world of romance and humanity. Coleridge stands out prominently as the widest intellect of his age. Byron’s poetry bulks very large, though it is not estimated as superlatively as in the criticism of our own day. It is a pity that Hazlitt never wrote formally of Keats, for his casual allusions indicate a deep enjoyment of the “rich beauties and the dim obscurities” of the “Eve of St. Agnes”[97] and an appreciation of the perfection of the great odes.[98] If he failed to give Shelley his full dues, he did not overlook his exquisite lyrical inspiration. He spoke of Shelley as a man of genius, but “ ‘all air,’ disdaining the bars and ties of mortal mould;” he praised him for “single thoughts of great depth and force, single images of rare beauty, detached passages of extreme tenderness,” and he rose to enthusiasm in commending his translations, especially the scenes from Faust.[99] He has been accused of writing a Spirit of the Age which omitted to give an account of Shelley and Keats, but in the title of the book consists his excuse. As it was not his idea to anticipate the decision of posterity but only to sketch the personalities who were in control of the public attention, he passed over the finer poets who were still neglected, and wrote instead about Campbell
