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

Hazlitt was ambivalent about Rome, the farthest point of his journey. His first impression was one Notes
of disappointment. He had expected primarily the monuments of antiquity. But, he asked, “what
has a green-grocer’s stall, a stupid English china warehouse, a putrid trattoria, a barber’s sign, an
old clothes or old picture shop or a Gothic palace ... to do with ancient Rome?” Further, “the
picture galleries at Rome disappointed me quite”.Eventually he found plenty to admire, but the
accumulation of monuments of art in one place was almost too much for him, and there were also
too many distractions. There were the “pride, pomp, and pageantry” of the Catholic religion, as
well as having to cope with the “inconvenience of a stranger’s residence at Rome....You want some
shelter from the insolence and indifference of the inhabitants....You have to squabble with every
one about you to prevent being cheated, to drive a hard bargain in order to live, to keep your
hands and your tongue within strict bounds, for fear of being stilettoed, or thrown into the Tower
of St. Angelo, or remanded home. You have much to do to avoid the contempt of the
inhabitants....You must run the gauntlet of sarcastic words or looks for a whole street, of laughter
or want of comprehension in reply to all the questions you ask....
Venice presented fewer difficulties, and was a scene of special fascination for him: “You see
Venice rising from the sea”, he wrote, “its long line of spires, towers, churches, wharfs ... stretched
along the water’s edge, and you view it with a mixture of awe and incredulity”.The palaces were
incomparable: “I never saw palaces anywhere but at Venice”.Of equal or even greater importance
to him were the paintings. Here there were numerous masterpieces by his favourite painter Titian,
whose studio he visited, as well as others by Veronese, Giorgione, Tintoretto, and more.
On the way home, crossing the Swiss Alps, Hazlitt particularly desired to see the town of Vevey,
the scene of Rousseau’s 1761 novel La Nouvelle Héloïse, a love story that he associated with his
disappointed love for Sarah Walker. He was so enchanted with the region even apart from its
personal and literary associations that he remained there with his wife for three months, renting
a floor of a farmhouse named “Gelamont” outside of town, where “every thing was perfectly
clean and commodious”. The place was for the most part an oasis of tranquility for Hazlitt. As he

reported:
Days, weeks, months, and even years might have passed on much in the same manner.... We
breakfasted at the same hour, and the tea-kettle was always boiling...; a lounge in the orchard for
an hour or two, and twice a week we could see the steam-boat creeping like a spider over the
surface of the lake; a volume of the Scotch novels..., or M. Galignani’s Paris and London Observer,
amused us till dinner time; then tea and a walk till the moon unveiled itself, “apparent queen of
the night,” or the brook, swoln with a transient shower, was heard more distinctly in the darkness,
mingling with the soft, rustling breeze; and the next morning the song of peasants broke upon
refreshing sleep, as the sun glanced among the clustering vine-leaves, or the shadowy hills, as the
mists retired from their summits, looked in at our windows.
Hazlitt’s time at Vevey was not passed entirely in a waking dream. As at Paris, and sometimes
other stopping points such as Florence, he continued to write, producing one or two essays later
included in The Plain Speaker, as well as some miscellaneous pieces. A side trip to Geneva during
this period led him to a review of his Spirit of the Age, by Francis Jeffrey, in which the latter takes
him to task for striving too hard after originality. As much as Hazlitt respected Jeffrey, this hurt
(perhaps the more because of his respect), and Hazlitt, to work off his angry feelings, dashed off
the only verse from his pen that has ever come to light, “The Damned Author’s Address to His
Reviewers”, published anonymously on 18 September 1825, in the London and Paris Observer, and
ending with the bitterly sardonic lines, “And last, to make my measure full,/Teach me, great
J[effre]y, to be dull!”
Much of his time, however, was spent in a mellow mood. At this time he wrote “Merry England”
(which appeared in the December 1825 New Monthly Magazine). “As I write this”, he wrote, “I am
sitting in the open air in a beautiful valley.... Intent upon the scene and upon the thoughts that stir

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