escription does
not make his idol's defeat more creditable to the vanquished. As for the
character of Gifford, and the earlier "Letter to Gifford," I should have
to print them entire to show the state of Hazlitt's mind in regard to
this notorious, and certainly not very amiable person. His own words,
"the dotage of age and the fury of a woman," form the best short
description of both. He screams, he foams at the mouth, he gnashes and
tears and kicks, rather than fights. Nor is it only on living authors
and living persons (as some of his unfavourable critics have said) that
he exercises his spleen. His remarks on Burke (_Round Table_, p. 150)
suggest temporary insanity. Sir Philip Sidney (as Lamb, a perfectly
impartial person who had no politics at all, pointed out) was a kind of
representative of the courtly monarchist school in literature. So down
must Sir Philip go; and not only the _Arcadia_, that "vain and
amatorious poem" which Milton condemned, but the sonnets which one would
have thought such a lover of poetry as Hazlitt must have spared, go down
also before his remorseless bludgeon.

But there is no need to say any more of these faults of his, and there
is no need to say much of another and more purely literary fault with
which he has been charged--the fault of excessive quotation. In him the
error lies rather in the constant repetition of the same, than in a too
great multitude of different borrowings. Almost priding himself on
limited study, and (as he tells us) very rarely reading his own work
after it was printed, he has certainly abused his right of press most
damnably in some cases. "Dry as a remainder biscuit," and "of no mark or
likelihood," occur to me as the most constantly recurrent tags; but
there are many others.

These various drawbacks, however, only set off the merits which almost
every lover of literature must perceive in him. In most writers, in all
save the very greatest, we look for one or two, or for a few special
faculties and capacities, and we know perfectly well that other
(generally many other) capacities and faculties will not be found in
them at all. We do not dream of finding rollicking mirth in Milton, or
gorgeous embroidery of style in Swift, or unadorned simplicity in
Browne. But in Hazlitt you may find something of almost everything,
except the finer kinds of wit and humour; to which last, however, he
makes a certain side-approach by dint of his appreciation of the irony
of Nat