es, or
cold, uncomfortable acquaintance'--it is, of course, their fault. A
thoroughgoing egotist must think himself the centre of gravity of the
world, and all change of relations must mean that others have moved away
from him. Politically, too, all who have given up his opinions are
deserters, and generally from the worst of motives. He accuses Burke of
turning against the Revolution from--of all motives in the
world!--jealousy of Rousseau; a theory still more impossible than Mr.
Buckle's hypothesis of madness. Court favour supplies in most cases a
simpler explanation of the general demoralisation. Hazlitt could not
give credit to men like Southey and Coleridge for sincere alarm at the
French Revolution. Such a sentiment would be too unreasonable, for he
had not been alarmed himself. His constancy, indeed, would be admirable
if it did not suggest doubts of his wisdom. A man whose opinions at
fifty are his opinions at fourteen has opinions of very little value. If
his intellect has developed properly, or if he has profited by
experience, he will modify, though he need not retract, his early views.
To claim to have learnt nothing from 1792 to 1830 is almost to write
yourself down as hopelessly impenetrable. The explanation is, that what
Hazlitt called his opinions were really his feelings. He could argue
very ingeniously, as appears from his remarks on Coleridge and Malthus,
but his logic was the slave, not the ruler, of his emotions. His
politics were simply the expression, in a generalised form, of his
intense feeling of personality. They are a projection upon the modern
political world of that heroic spirit of individual self-respect which
animated his Puritan forefathers. One question, and only one question,
he frequently tells us, is of real importance. All the rest is mere
verbiage. The single dogma worth attacking or defending is the divine
right of kings. Are men, in the old phrase, born saddled and bridled,
and other men ready booted and spurred, or are they not? That is the
single shibboleth which distinguishes true men from false. Others, he
says, bowed their heads to the image of the beast. 'I spit upon it, and
buffeted it, and pointed at it, and drew aside the veil that then half
concealed it.' This passionate denial of the absolute right of men over
their fellows is but vicarious pride, if you please to call it so, or a
generous recognition of the dignity of human nature translated into
political terms. Hazl