e than that of a statesman. And
perhaps the same sentiment, mingled with sheer artistic love of the
physically beautiful, prompts his eloquence upon the game of fives--in
which he praises the great player Cavanagh as warmly, and describes his
last moments as pathetically, as if he were talking of Rousseau--and
still more his immortal essay on the fight between the Gasman and Bill
Neate. Prize-fighting is fortunately fallen into hopeless decay, and we
are pretty well ashamed of the last flicker of enthusiasm created by
Sayers and Heenan. We may therefore enjoy without remorse the prose-poem
in which Hazlitt kindles with genuine enthusiasm to describe the fearful
glories of the great battle. Even to one who hates the most brutalising
of amusements, the spirit of the writer is impressibly contagious. We
condemn, but we applaud; we are half disposed for the moment to talk the
old twaddle about British pluck; and when Hazlitt's companion on his way
home pulls out of his pocket a volume of the 'Nouvelle Heloise,' admit
for a moment that 'Love of the Fancy is,' as the historian assures us,
'compatible with a cultivation of sentiment.' If Hazlitt had thrown as
much into his description of the Battle of Waterloo, and had taken the
English side, he would have been a popular writer. But even Hazlitt
cannot quite embalm the memories of Cribb, Belcher, and Gully.

It is time, however, to stop. More might be said by a qualified writer
of Hazlitt's merits as a judge of pictures or of the stage. The same
literary qualities mark all his writings. De Quincey, of course,
condemns Hazlitt, as he does Lamb, for a want of 'continuity.' 'No man
can be eloquent,' he says, 'whose thoughts are abrupt, insulated,
capricious, and nonsequacious.' But then De Quincey will hardly allow
that any man is eloquent except Jeremy Taylor, Sir Thomas Browne, and
Thomas De Quincey. Hazlitt certainly does not belong to their school;
nor, on the other hand, has he the plain homespun force of Swift and
Cobbett. And yet readers who do not insist upon measuring all prose by
the same standard, will probably agree that if Hazlitt is not a great
rhetorician, if he aims at no gorgeous effects of complex harmony, he
has yet an eloquence of his own. It is indeed an eloquence which does
not imply quick sympathy with many moods of feeling, or an intellectual
vision at once penetrating and comprehensive. It is the eloquence
characteristic of a proud and sensitive nature, wh