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Prose

Notes within me, I conjure up the cheerful passages of my life, and a crowd of happy images appear
before me”.
The return to London in October was a letdown. The grey skies and bad food compared unfavorably
with his recent retreat, and he was suffering from digestive problems (these recurred throughout
much of his later life), though it was also good to be home. But he already had plans to return to
Paris.

“The old age of artists”
As comfortable as Hazlitt was on settling in again to his home on Down Street in London in late
1825 (where he remained until about mid-1827), the reality of earning a living again stared him in
the face. He continued to provide a stream of contributions to various periodicals, primarily The
New Monthly Magazine. The topics continued to be his favourites, including critiques of the “new
school of reformers”, drama criticism, and reflections on manners and the tendencies of the human
mind. He gathered previously published essays for the collection The Plain Speaker, writing a few
new ones in the process. He also oversaw the publication in book form of his account of his recent
Continental tour.
But what he most wanted was to write a biography of Napoleon. Now Sir Walter Scott was
writing his own life of Napoleon, from a strictly conservative point of view, and Hazlitt wanted to
produce one from a countervailing, liberal perspective. Really, his stance on Napoleon was his
own, as he had idolised Napoleon for decades, and he prepared to return to Paris to undertake the
research. First, however, he brought to fruition another favourite idea.
Always fascinated by artists in their old age (see “On the Old Age of Artists”),Hazlitt was especially

interested in the painter James Northcote, student and later biographer of Sir Joshua Reynolds,
and a Royal Academician. Hazlitt would frequently visit him—by then about 80 years old—and
they conversed endlessly on men and manners, the illustrious figures of Northcote’s younger
days, particularly Reynolds, and the arts, particularly painting.
Northcote was at this time a crochety, slovenly old man who lived in wretched surroundings and
was known for his misanthropic personality. Hazlitt was oblivious to the surroundings and tolerated
the crotchetiness. Finding congeniality in Northcote’s company, and feeling many of their views
to be in alignment, he transcribed their conversations from memory and published them in a
series of articles entitled “Boswell Redivivus” in The New Monthly Magazine. (They were later
collected under the title Conversations of James Northcote, Esq., R.A.) But there was little in common
between these articles and Boswell’s life of Johnson. Hazlitt felt such a closeness to the old artist
that in his conversations, Northcote was transformed into a kind of alter ego. Hazlitt made no
secret of the fact that the words he ascribed to Northcote were not all Northcote’s own but sometimes
expressed the views of Hazlitt as much as Hazlitt’s own words.
Some of the conversations were little more than gossip, and they spoke of their contemporaries
without restraint. When the conversations were published, some of those contemporaries were
outraged. Northcote denied the words were his; and Hazlitt was shielded from the consequences
to a degree by his residing in Paris, where he was at work on what he thought would be his
masterpiece.
The last conversation (originally published in The Atlas on 15 November 1829, when Hazlitt had
less than a year to live) is especially telling. Whether it really occurred more or less as given, or
was a construct of Hazlitt’s own imagination, it provides perspective on Hazlitt’s own position in
life at that time.
In words attributed to Northcote: “You have two faults: one is a feud or quarrel with the world,
which makes you despair, and prevents you taking all the pains you might; the other is a
carelessness and mismanagement, which makes you throw away the little you actually do, and
brings you into difficulties that way.”

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