ily legitimate enough, but somewhat
embarrassing when it is a question of definition. "That which lifts the
spirit above the earth, which draws the soul out of itself with
indescribable longings, is," he says, "poetry in kind, and generally fit
to become so in name, by 'being married to immortal verse.'"[80] If it is
true that Pilgrim's Progress and Robinson Crusoe possess the "essence and
the power of poetry" and require only the addition of verse to become
absolutely so,[81] then the musical expression is only a factitious
ornament, to be added or removed at the caprice of the writer. But Hazlitt
is careful to declare that verse does not make the whole difference
between poetry and prose, leaving the whole question as vaguely suspended
as ever.[82]

Bare theorizing, according to his own confession, was no favorite pursuit
with Hazlitt. He enjoyed himself much more in the analysis of an
individual author or his work. His aversion to literary cant, his love of
"saying things that are his own in a way of his own," were here most in
evidence. What he says of Milton might appropriately be applied to
himself, that he formed the most intense conception of things and then
embodied them by a single stroke of his pen. In a phrase or in a sentence
he stamped the character of an author indelibly, and, enemy to commonplace
though he was, became a cause of commonplace in others. No matter how much
might already have been written on a subject (and Hazlitt did not make a
practice of celebrating neglected obscurity) his own view stood out fresh
and clear, and yet his judgments were never eccentric. He wrestled with a
writer's thoughts, absorbed his most passionate feelings, and mirrored
back his most exquisite perceptions with "all the color, the light and the
shade." His fertility is more amazing than his intensity, for no critic of
nearly equal rank has enriched English literature with so many valuable
and enduring judgments on so great a variety of subjects. Dr. Johnson is
by common consent the spokesman of the eighteenth century, or of its
dominant class; Coleridge and Lamb are entitled to the glory of revealing
the literature between Spenser and Milton to English readers, and the
former rendered the additional service of acting as the interpreter of
Wordsworth. But to give an idea of Hazlitt's scope would require a summary
of opinions embracing poetry from Chaucer and Spenser to Wordsworth and
Byron, prose sacred and profane from