orld led him to interpret literature primarily in relation to life. The
poetry of character and passion is what he regards of most essential
interest.[71] This point of view unintentionally converts his familiar
essays on life into a literary discourse, and gives to his formal
criticism the tone of a study of life at its sources, raising it at once
to the same level with creative literature. Though he nowhere employs the
now familiar formula of "literature and life," the lecture "On Poetry in
General" is largely an exposition of this outlook.

Life in its entire compass is regarded as the rough material of
literature, but it does not become literature until the artist's
imagination, as with a divine ray, has penetrated the mass and inspired it
with an ideal existence. Among the numerous attempts of his contemporaries
to define the creative faculty of the poet, this comparatively simple one
of Hazlitt's is worth noting. "This intuitive perception of the hidden
analogies of things, or, as it may be called, this _instinct of
imagination_, is perhaps what stamps the character of genius on the
productions of art more than any other circumstance: for it works
unconsciously, like nature, and receives its impressions from a kind of
inspiration."[72] It is this power that he has in mind when he says
"Poetry is infusing the same spirit in a number of things, or bathing them
all as it were, in the same overflowing sense of delight."[73] It shows
Hazlitt to have fully apprehended the guiding principle of the new ideal
of criticism which, looking upon the work of art as an act of original
creation and not of mechanical composition, based its judgment on a direct
sympathy with the artist's mind instead of resorting to a general rule. In
the light of this principle he is enabled to avoid the pitfalls of a
moralistic interpretation of literature and to decide the question as to
the relative importance of substance and treatment with a certainty which
seems to preclude the possibility of any other answer.

It is not the dignity of the theme which constitutes the great work of
art, for in that case a prose summary of the "Divine Comedy" would be as
exalted as the original, and it would be necessary merely to know the
subject of a poem in order to pass judgment upon it. A low or a trivial
subject may be raised by the imagination of the artist who recognizes in
it the elements of beauty or power. No definition of poetry can be worth
anythi