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Unit 14: Hazlitt-On Genius And Common Sense-Introduction

hard about what he had seen, and this provided substance for a considerable body of art criticism Notes
some years afterward. He also had an opportunity to see Napoleon (at a distance), whom he
idolised as the rescuer of the common man from the oppression of royal “Legitimacy”. Eighteen
years later, Hazlitt reviewed nostalgically the “pleasure in painting, which none but painters
know”, and all the delight he found in this art, in his essay “On the Pleasure of Painting”.
Back in England, Hazlitt again travelled up into the country, having obtained more work painting
portraits. One commission again proved fortunate, as it brought him back in touch with Coleridge
and Wordsworth. He painted portraits of both, as well as of Coleridge’s son Hartley. Always
endeavouring to paint the best pictures he could, even if they failed to flatter their subjects, he
produced results not found satisfactory by either poet. (And yet Wordsworth and their friend
Robert Southey thought his portrait of Coleridge a better likeness than one by the celebrated James
Northcote.)
In this period also a mishap occurred that shadowed his life for many years. The young Hazlitt
rarely felt comfortable in the society of women, especially those of the upper and middle classes.
Tormented by sexual desires, he sought the company of prostitutes and “loose women” of lower
social and economic strata. During his last stay in the Lake District with Coleridge, his actions led
to a near disastrous blunder, as a misunderstanding of the intentions of one local woman led to an
altercation, followed by Hazlitt’s precipitous retreat from the town under cover of darkness. This
strained his relationship with Coleridge and Wordsworth, which was already coming apart at the
seams for other reasons.
Marriage, family, and friends
In 1803, Hazlitt met Charles Lamb and his sister Mary. There was an immediate sympathy between
William and Charles, and they became fast friends. The friendship, though sometimes strained by
Hazlitt’s difficult ways, lasted until the end of Hazlitt’s life.He was fond of Mary as well, and—
ironically in view of her intermittent fits of insanity—he considered her the most reasonable
woman he had ever met. (Coming from one whose view of women at times took a misogynistic
turn, this was high praise indeed.)
Portrait of Charles Lamb by William Hazlitt, 1804
Hazlitt frequented the society of the Lambs for the next several years. He was not getting much
work as a painter, but now he finally found the opportunity to complete his philosophical treatise,
which was published in 1805 as An Essay on the Principles of Human Action: Being an Argument in
favour of the Natural Disinterestedness of the Human Mind. This gained him little notice as an original
thinker, and no money. Hazlitt’s outrage at events then taking place in English politics in reaction
to Napoleon’s wars led to his writing and publishing, at his own expense (though he had almost
no money), a political pamphlet, Free Thoughts on Public Affairs (1806). Finally, he began to find
enough work to support himself, if just barely. Although the treatise he valued above anything
else he wrote was never, at least in his own lifetime, recognised for what he believed was its true
worth, it brought him attention as one who had a grasp of contemporary philosophy. He therefore
was commissioned to abridge and write a preface to a now obscure work of mental philosophy,
The Light of Nature Pursued by Abraham Tucker (originally published in seven volumes from 1765
to 1777), which appeared in 1807 and may have had some influence on his own later thinking.
Hazlitt also contributed three letters to William Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register at this time, all
scathing critiques of Thomas Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population (1798 and later editions).
Another project that came his way was a compilation of parliamentary speeches, released in 1807
as The Eloquence of the British Senate. In the prefaces to the speeches, he began to show a skill he
would later develop to perfection, the art of the pithy character sketch. He was able to get more
work as a portrait painter as well.

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