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Unit 15: Hazlitt—On Genius and Common Sense...

can give the best advice to others, though they do not follow it in their own lives. They see Notes
and approve the better course, and follow the worse. Their judgements are clear and just,
though their habits and affections follow the wrong way. They escape from reason and
common sense.
• This is a remarkable essay. By common sense Hazlitt only means natural good sense of a
practical kind in every day affairs. It is tact or social good sense. It involves sincerity and it
is based on a valid insight into human affairs.

15.3 Key-Words

1. Rare : not common
2. Its price : Originally this was said of wisdom. See Job, 28.18.‘the price of
wisdom is above rubies’ and Proverbs, 8.11. ‘wisdom is better than
rubies’
3. Pedant : one who prides in his scholarship.
4. Fairly worth the seven : from Pope’s Moral Essays, Epistle 4.43. The medieval schools had
seven sciences. These are grammar. rhetoric, logic, arithmetic,
geometry, music and astronomy.
5. Does not consist with : is not compatible with
6. Warn and trammel : give a bias to, hamper.
7. Common sense : natural good sense of a practical kind in every day affairs. It is
social good sense, tact.
8. ‘Comes home to ... men’ : from the Dedication of Bacon’s Essays.
9. Of the later ... instance : one and the same person having both kinds of wisdom, namely,
practical and theoretical kinds.
10. Dupes : victims.

15.4 Review Questions
1. Briefly discuss Hazlitt’s eassy On Genius and Common Sense.
2. What does Hazlitt want to indicate by Common Sense? Explain

Answers: Self-Assessment
1. (i)(a) (ii)(b) (iii)(c) (iv)(d)
15.5 Further Readings

1. P.S. Sastri, Hazlitt selected essays, Doaba House, Delhi.
2. Geoffrey Keynes, selected essays of William Hazlitt 1778 to 1830.
3. Peter Quennell, A History of English Literature (London: Ferndale Editions, 1981),
p. 380.
4. Rene Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism: 1750-1950, 4 vols. (New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1955-65), vol. 3: The Age of Transition, p. 125.
5. Stephen F. Fogle, “Leigh Hunt and the End of Romantic Criticism,” in Some British
Romantics, ed. James V. Logan, John E. Jordan, and Northrop Frye (Columbus:
Ohio StateUniversity Press, 1966), p. 128.

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