two may not seem very
succulent. But within moderate space there is really no other means of
indicating the author's extraordinary range of subject, and at the same
time the pervading excellence of his treatment. To exemplify a
difference which has sometimes been thought to require explanation, his
work as regards system, connection with anything else, immediate
occasion (which with him was generally what his friend, Mr. Skimpole,
would have called "pounds") is always Journalism: in result, it is
almost always Literature. Its staple subjects, as far as there can be
said to be any staple where the thread is so various, are very much
those which the average newspaper-writer since his time has had to deal
with--politics, book-reviewing, criticism on plays and pictures, social
etceteras, the minor morals, the miscellaneous incidents of daily life.
It is true that Hazlitt was only for a short time in the straitest
shafts, the most galling traces, of periodical hack-work. His practice
was rather that of George Warrington, who worked till he had filled his
purse, and then lay idle till he had emptied it. He used (an indulgence
agreeable in the mouth, but bitter in the belly) very frequently to
receive money beforehand for work which was not yet done. Although
anything but careful, he was never an extravagant man, his tastes being
for the most part simple; and he never, even during his first married
life, seems to have been burdened by an expensive household. Moreover,
he got rid of Mrs. Hazlitt on very easy terms. Still he must constantly
have had on him the sensation that he lived by his work, and by that
only. It seems to be (as far as one can make it out) this sensation
which more than anything else jades and tires what some very
metaphorical men of letters are pleased to call their Pegasus. But
Hazlitt, though he served in the shafts, shows little trace of the
harness. He has frequent small carelessnesses of style, but he would
probably have had as many or more if he had been the easiest and
gentlest of easy-writing gentlemen. He never seems to have allowed
himself to be cramped in his choice of his subjects, and wrote for the
editors, of whom he speaks so amusingly, with almost as much freedom of
speech as if he had had a private press of his own, and had issued
dainty little tractates on Dutch paper to be fought for by bibliophiles.
His prejudices, his desultoriness, his occasional lack of correctness of
fact (he speaks o