f contradiction to some people!--and
perhaps heaps indiscriminating praise on an old friend, a term nearly
synonymous with an old enemy. Then the dagger suddenly flashes out, and
Hazlitt strikes two or three rapid blows, aimed with unerring accuracy
at the weak points of the armour which he knows so well. And then, as he
strikes, a relenting comes over him; he remembers old days with a
sudden gush of fondness, and puts in a touch of scorn for his allies or
himself. Coleridge may deserve a blow, but the applause of Coleridge's
enemies awakes his self-reproach. His invective turns into panegyric,
and he warms for a time into hearty admiration, which proves that his
irritation arises from an excess, not from a defect, of sensibility; but
finding that he has gone a little too far, he lets his praise slide into
equivocal description, and, with some parting epigram, he relapses into
silence. The portraits thus drawn are never wanting in piquancy nor in
fidelity. Brooding over his injuries and his desertions, Hazlitt has
pondered almost with the eagerness of a lover upon the qualities of his
intimates. Suspicion, unjust it may be, has given keenness to his
investigation. He has interpreted in his own fashion every mood and
gesture. He has watched his friends as a courtier watches a royal
favourite. He has stored in his memory, as we fancy, the good retorts
which his shyness or unreadiness smothered at the propitious moment, and
brings them out in the shape of a personal description. When such a man
sits at our tables, silent and apparently self-absorbed, and yet shrewd
and sensitive, we may well be afraid of the dagger, though it may not be
drawn till after our death, and may write memoirs instead of piercing
flesh. And yet Hazlitt is no mean assassin of reputations; nor is his
enmity as a rule more than the seamy side of friendship. Gifford,
indeed, and Croker, 'the talking potato,' are treated as outside the
pale of human rights.

Excellent as Hazlitt can be as a dispenser of praise and blame, he seems
to me to be at his best in a different capacity. The first of his
performances which attracted much attention was the Round Table,
designed by Leigh Hunt (who contributed a few papers), on the old
'Spectator' model. In the essays afterwards collected in the volumes
called 'Table Talk' and the 'Plain Speaker,' he is still better, because
more certain of his position. It would, indeed, be difficult to name any
writer, from the d