than acting, of very
ephemeral interest; and Hazlitt's education in art and knowledge of it
were not quite extensive enough, nor the examples which in the first
quarter of this century he had before him in England important enough,
to make his work of this kind of the first importance. The best of it is
the _Conversations with Northcote_, a painter of no very great merit,
but a survivor of the Reynolds studio; and these conversations very
frequently and very widely diverge from painting into literary and
miscellaneous matters. The second class contains the miscellaneous
essays proper, and these have by some been put at the head of Hazlitt's
work. But although some of them, indeed, nearly all, display a spirit, a
command of the subject, and a faculty of literary treatment which had
never been given to the same subjects in the same way before, although
such things as the famous "Going to a Fight," "Going a Journey," "The
Indian Jugglers," "Merry England," "Sundials," "On Taste," and not a few
more would, put together and freed from good but less good companions,
make a most memorable collection, still his real strength is not here.

Great as Hazlitt was as a miscellaneous and Montaignesque essayist, he
was greater as a literary critic. Literature was, though he coquetted
with art, his first and most constant love; it was the subject on which,
as far as English literature is concerned (and he knew little and is
still less worth consulting about any other), he had acquired the
largest and soundest knowledge; and it is that for which he had the most
original and essential genius. His intense prejudices and his occasional
inadequacy make themselves felt here as they do everywhere, and even
here it is necessary to give the caution that Hazlitt is never to be
trusted when he shows the least evidence of dislike for which he gives
no reason. But to any one who has made a little progress in criticism
himself, to any one who has either read for himself or is capable of
reading for himself, of being guided by what is helpful and of
neglecting what is not, there is no greater critic than Hazlitt in any
language. He will sometimes miss--he is never perhaps so certain as his
friends Lamb and Hunt were to find--exquisite individual points.
Prejudice, accidental ignorance, or other causes may sometimes
invalidate his account of authors or of subjects in general. But still
the four great collections of his criticism, _The Characters of
Sh