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Unit 17: Hazlitt - On The Ignorance of The Learned

to say in the least possible space. There is always in the style of Hazlitt a certain amount of Notes
refine taste which becomes his most marked characteristic. In whatever that Hazlitt did he
had an enthusiasm and a courageous spirit. It was this that enabled him to say things with
a conviction and spirited. He was keen to keep in his memory certain experiences that he had
come across-books that he had read’, plays which he had seen; pictures that he had admired,
actually, the fact was that he liked to say something’s he liked and to say them in his own
way critically. In his present essay while defining artistic sensibility in the piece of art, he is
fearlessly expressing an honest and individual opinion. He has his own enjoyment and his
own gift for evoking unnoticed beauties. Here his judgments’ are based on his emotional
relations rather than an objectively applied principle.
• In style Hazlitt in fact strongly contrasts with the elaborate or chest ration of the complex
sentence and the magic of the delicate word tracery which we have seen in de quinsy. His
brief, abrupt sentences have the vigor and directness which his views demand. His lectures
are mainly of simplicity and something of the looseness of organization which is typical of
good conversation. For example ,“learning is in too many cases, but a foil to common sense;
a substitute for true knowledge”.
• “The faculties of mind, when not exerted, or when not exerted, or when cramped by custom
and authority, becomes listless, torpid, and unfit for the purposes of thought or action”.
• On the Ignorance of the Learned. “There is gusto in the coloring of Titian. Not only do his
heads seem to think – his bodies seem to feel”.
• “The infinite quantity of dramatic invention in Shakespeare takes from his gusto. The power
he delights to show is not intense, but discursive”.
• People, who have been nourished on the Victorian model and have grown priggish, murmur
at the lack of amoral purpose in Hazlitt. It is no doubt a fact that in Hazlitt one does not
discover any of such moral purpose; a theory or a principle as one finds in Ruskin, Carlyle
and Arnold, neither is there the shallowness and railing of a pessimist. He has an abiding
faith in human nature, a devotion to beauty and a belief and honesty –all these things being
clearly exhibited in a clear and courageous style that he possessed.
• The somewhat discursive manner of his writings is a strong point with him as well as a
weakness. His style is forcible and spontaneous; it progresses by means of successive traits
which issue from one and the same central act of perception; subjected to the continuous
light of consciousness and examined in turn under all its aspects. Such a device ensures
movements, sincerity and a telling force of style. But this discontinuity in an order which is
wholly organic is not entirely happy. It gives no safety against repetition and prolixity at
times it wearies that mind that cannot readily perceive the logical sequence of thought, the
point of departure or the goal. At bottom, extremely English and national, Hazlitt’s critical
method finds, in the sufficiency of composition, the defect of its quality. Our present essay
On Gusto is no exception in this manner.
17.4 Key-Words

1. Discursive manner : In a rambling manner
2. Prolixity : Long-windedness, an excess of words

17.5 Review Questions

1. Explain Hazlitt as an essayist.
2. What Hazlitt try to provide to the readers by On the Ignorance of the Learned?
3. Write a short note On the Ignorance of the Learned.

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