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William Hazlitt as a Critic of Prose Fiction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 March 2021
Extract
From his youth William Hazlitt was fond of prow fiction and liked to discuss it with other readers. When he turned from painting to literary criticism as a career, he therefore paid considerable attention to novels and romances. Since his criticism appeared chiefly between 1815 and 1830, it largely parallels the appearance of Sir Walter Scott's novels from 1814 to 1832—an important period in the development of the novel and its reading public. This was a time when most first-ranking critics refused to take novels seriously, had not made up their minds about them, or ignored them altogether. Hazlitt contended that this “department of criticism” deserved more attention for “settling the standard of excellence, both as to degree and kind” (vi, 108). He repeatedly asserted the worth and dignity of the genre, approved its effects upon readers, and judged novels by his fundamental aesthetic principles. Although his “Lecture on the English Novelists” is well known, the full extent of his criticism of prose fiction is not generally realized. For example, he wrote four essays on Sir Walter Scott. In addition to articles on various novelists, including minor figures, there are passages on prose fiction throughout the twenty volumes of Hazlitt's writings. From this mass of criticism it is easy to reconstruct his conception of what a novel should be—the first clear and well-defined conception of fiction from a great English critic
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1953
References
page 1001 note 1 Complete Works of William Haslitt, ed. P. P. Howe (London, 1930–34), iii, 171 n. (henceforth cited by volume number).
page 1001 note 2 Hazlitt did not differentiate sharply between the two terms.
page 1001 note 3 VI, 106–107; xv, 233. Cf. William Godwin's pref. to his novel Cloudesley (1830).
page 1001 note 4 The low condition of the theatre and his preference for reading plays may help to account for this attitude. He considered the temper of his age not conducive to the creation of dramatic poetry (xviii, 305).
page 1002 note 5 xvii, 326–328. Haslitt here enunciates ideas which Arnold stressed about 50 years latere: the need for increased sympathy, disinterestedness, and harmonious development of all man's greater capacities—all to be fostered through literature. However, although Arnold defined literature broadly enough to include nearly everything printed, his tremendous emphasis on the classics resulted in something skin to depreciation of modern literature. He said very little about the novel I spite of his better point of vantage in the century than Hazlitt's. Yet Hazlitt said much in favor of classical literatures and in some respects said it better than did Arnold (“On Classical Education,” iv, 4 ff.).
page 1002 note 6 vi, 130–132; xvi, 402–404—“Some leading truth, some master-passion, is the secret of his daring and his success... All is the effect... of one sole purpose ...In both [Political Justice and Caleb Williams] there is the same pertinacity and unity of design, the same agglomeration of objects round a center.” Cf. xi, 25.
page 1003 note 7 XII, 251. Cf. his further denunciation of Godwin's perfectibilitarianism: “It were better that a man were an angel or a god than what he is; but he can neither be one nor the other ... to require him to attain the highest point of perfection is to fling him back to grovel in the mire of sensuality and selfishness. He must get on by the use and management of the favulties which God has given him ... Mr. Godwin takes on element of the human mind, the understanding, and makes it the whole; and hence falls into solecisms and extravaganes” (xvi, 405–406).
page 1003 note 8 XII, 302–302. Cf. “Knowledge is pleasure as well as power” (IV, 75). Cf. Elissbeth Schneider, Aesthetics of William Hazliti (Philadelphia, 1933), pp. 176, 152.
page 1004 note 9 XX, 232; IV, 130. Cf. VI, 107—“A certain set of them [novels] rank by the side of reality and are appealed to as evidene on all questions concerning human nature.” Here he names Cervantes, Le Sage, Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, Sterne, and Defoe. The novel by definition centers on actual life and Hazlitt consciously applied the theory of imitation as a suitable criterion of judgment.
page 1004 note 10 Hazlitt discusses the theory of imitation in various essays: “On Imitation,” IV, 72–77; “On Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses,” VIII, 122-144; “On the Imitation of Nature,” XVIII, 70–77. He stressed that mimesis in Shakespeare is different from that in Greek drama (VI, 350.)
page 1005 note 11 VIII, 82; cf. XVII, 57–66. Hazlitt has support from Elijah Jordan: “Feeling, then, is the ontological stuff of the world... It seems necessary to accept feeling-clearness ... as the basis of all clear images of imagination and even of thought, and this means that cognition itself can only be understood to approach the real when conceived as operating within the sustaining medium of feeling” (The Aesthetic Object, Bloomington, 1937, pp. 67–72).
page 1005 note 12 XII, 340. Cf. “Milton has borrowed more than almost any other writer, but he has uniformly stamped a character of his own upon it” (xx, 310). Milton's imagination “melts down and renders malleable the most contradictory materials” (v, 58–59). The poet Thomson, Hazlitt thought, described the vivid impression a landscape made on his own imagination, and thereby transferred the impression unbroken to his readers (v. 87).
page 1006 note 13 VIII, 141. Hezlitt wrote three brief essays o the ideal (xviii, 77 ff.; viii, 317 ff.; xx, 302 ff.) and discussed it frequently elsewhere.
page 1006 note 14 IV, 75; VIII, 43 170; XII, 46; XVIII, 134. Cf. VIII, 144.
page 1007 note 15 XVI, 388-389. This appeared in a review of Walter Wilson's Memoirs of the Life and Times of Daniel Defoe (1830), to which Lamb contributed a critical essay and a letter.
page 1008 note 16 Hook rapidly produced fiction built on stereotyped plots and executed with little craftsmanship (Sayings and Doings, Series 1–3, 1824, 1825, 1828). Hazlitt thrice states that in 1829 Hook was more widely read than Scott (XI, 272; xviii, 375; xx, 281). Hazlitt seems not to lave mentioned Egan's Life in London directly (bat see xx, 248) nor Jane Austen at all.
page 1010 note 17 XII, 338; XVI, 322; XVIII, 311; XIX, 94; XI, 57. For this reason, I think it erroneous to attribute Hazlitt's reservation to his detestation of Scott's toryism.
page 1010 note 18 Because Hazlitt disliked satire, he did not fully appreciate Fielding's satiric overtone and consequently seemed obtuse at times in discussing Fielding.
page 1012 note 19 xx, 9. Cf. his remark about Hamlet: “Attention is excited without effort, incidents succeed each other as matters of course, characters think and speak just as they might do if left entirely to themselves” (IV, 233). Cf. XVIII, 305: “Dramatic poetry ... is essentially individual and concrete.” Cf. v, 367: “An appeal to the imagination is superfluous where the senscs are assailed on all sides.” Obviously the novel in many respects can achieve what Hazlitt wanted better than the stage play can—an appeal primarily to the imagination rather than to the senses. Coleridge made the same demand.
page 1013 note 20 Hazlitt believed that Rousseau had changed the world more than any other writer by the depth and force of his own feelings alone (i, 26; iv, 91–92; xii, 224, 304), but that he lacked the vividness and distinctness of Sterne. Hazlitt stated that Rousseau had “some ability, yet not sufficient ... to know right from wrong” (xi, 279).
page 1014 note 21 vi, 108. Cf. “He has in ... his hero really represented the maxims of benevolence and genernaity inculcated by the Christian religion ... and by his fine conception of the subject, he has miraculously succeeded” (xi, 254).
page 1015 note 22 E. A. Baker, History of the English Novel (London, 1935), vi, 15.
page 1016 note 23 From Classic to Romantic (Cambridge, 1946), p. 181.
page 1016 note 24 This research has been supported by the Grant-in-Aid Program of the Alabama Polytechnic Institute. I gratefully acknowledge that Professor Royal A. Gettmann of the University of Illinois suggested this study and inspired my pursuit of it.