performed according to a system of
mechanical routine. Hazlitt impressed something of his personality on
whatever he touched. His violent attack on the inhuman tendencies of
Malthus's doctrines is pervaded by a glow of humanitarian indignation. For
the Eloquence of the British Senate he wrote a sketch of Burke, which for
fervor of appreciation and judicious analysis ranks with his best things
of this class. Even the Grammar bears evidence of his enthusiasm for an
idea. Whenever he has occasion to express his feelings on a subject of
popular interest, his manner begins to grow animated and his language to
gain in force and suppleness.

But Hazlitt continued firmly in the faith that it was his destiny to be a
metaphysician. In 1812 he undertook to deliver a course of lectures on
philosophy at the Russell Institution with the ambitious purpose of
founding a system of philosophy "more conformable to reason and
experience" than that of the modern material school which resolved "all
thought into sensation, all morality into the love of pleasure, and all
action into mechanical impulse."[8] Though he did not succeed in founding
a system, he probably interested his audience by a stimulating review of
the main tendencies of English thought from Bacon and Hobbes to Priestley
and Godwin.

At the conclusion of his last lecture, Hazlitt told the story of a Brahmin
who, on being transformed into a monkey, "had no other delight than that
of eating cocoanuts and studying metaphysics." "I too," he added, "should
be very well contented to pass my life like this monkey, did I but know
how to provide myself with a substitute for cocoanuts." But it must have
become apparent to Hazlitt and his friends that he possessed a talent more
profitable than that of abstract speculation. The vigor and vitality of
the prose in these lectures, compared with the heavy, inert style of his
first metaphysical writing, the freedom of illustration and poetic
allusion, suggested the possibility of success in more popular forms of
literature. He tried to work for the newspapers as theatrical and
parliamentary reporter, but his temper and his habits were not adaptable
to the requirements of daily journalism, and editors did not long remain
complacent toward him. He did however, in the course of a few years,
succeed in gaining admission to the pages of the Edinburgh Review and in
establishing an enviable reputation as a writer, of critical and
miscellaneous essa