d that he took a deep interest in his own concerns. He was, one
would say, decidedly unselfish, if by selfishness is meant a disposition
to feather one's own nest without regard for other people's wants. Still
less was he selfish in the sense of preferring solid bread and butter to
the higher needs of mind and spirit. His sentiments are always generous,
and if scorn is too familiar a mood, it is scorn of the base and
servile. But his peculiarity is that these generous feelings are always
associated with some special case. He sees every abstract principle by
the concrete instance. He hates insolence in the abstract, but his
hatred flames into passion when it is insolence to Hazlitt. He resembles
that good old lady who wrote on the margin of her 'Complete Duty of Man'
the name of that neighbour who most conspicuously sinned against the
precept in the opposite text. Tyranny with Hazlitt is named Pitt, party
spite is Gifford, apostasy is Southey, and fidelity may be called
Cobbett or Godwin; though he finds names for the vices much more easily
than for the virtues. And thus, if he cannot be condemned for
selfishness, one must be charitable not to put down a good many of his
offences to its sister jealousy. The personal and the public sentiments
are so invariably blended in his mind that neither he nor anybody else
could have analysed their composition. He was apt to be the more moody
and irritable because his resentments clothed themselves spontaneously
in the language of some nobler emotion. If his friends are cold, he
bewails the fickleness of humanity; if they are successful, it is not
envy that prompts his irritation, but the rarity of the correspondence
between merit and reward. Such a man is more faithful to his dead than
to his living friends. The dead cannot change; they always come back to
his memory in their old colours; their names recall the old tender
emotion placed above all change and chance. But who can tell that our
dearest living friend may not come into awkward collision with us before
he has left the room? It is as well to be on our guard! It is curious
how the two feelings alternate in Hazlitt's mind in regard to the
friends who are at once dead and living; how fondly he dwells upon the
Coleridge of Wem and Nether Stowey where he first listened to the
enchanter's voice, and with what bitterness, which is yet but soured
affection, he turns upon the Coleridge who defended war-taxes in the
'Friend.' He hacks