The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1900-12-04

Prose StyIe-Nature and Value of Hi
Literary Criticism -DeIightfuI Paper
ofPersonaI Remintscence and Rehec
tion.
In the course of Yale public lectures
IN College street hall Professor Win
chester of Wesleyan university lecturec
last evening on the English critic anc
essayist, William Hazlitt.
The period in which Hazlitt lived
from 177S to 1880, was influenced strong
ly with the thoughts and ideas arising
out of the French Revolution, and Haz'
lit was one of the many who espoused
the cause of liberty, equality and fra
ternity. Professor Winchester sketched
this early liberalism of Hazlitt and the
union of his aristocratic feelings with
democratic theories With the battle
Of Waterloo his early political hopes
were blasted, and this during the later
years of his literary success emblttered
his temper He was of shy, morbidly
sensitive nature, and was a brilliant
and entertaining comparison only IN
the small circle of literary friends who
most understood him. Physically rath-
err insignificant, he had the misfortune
to marry a strong minded, 'emancipat-
ed woman, and domestic infelicities
resulted.
Hazlitt was a master of prose style.
He was keenly perceptive, epigram-
matte, gifted in paradox and fertile In
allusion and quotation. His literary
criticism was of such nature and value
that it established permanently what
was at that time a new thing in litera-
ture-the extended critical essay. or
his papers of personal "Reminiscences and
reflection, the most delightful of his
work, Professor winchester said: "Haz-
lit is never quite SO happy as in his
miscellaneous papers--the Table Talk,
the Winterslow Essays and the Plain
Speaker. 1t is not easy to describe
these essays, but they all have this in
common-they are the personal talk OF
William Hazlitt, and they all have
backward look. They are his autobiog-
raphy. Sometimes they are made up
entirely of "reminiscences, like the one
from which I read at the beginning of
the hour, My First Acquaintance With
Poets or that even more familiar story
of the evening in Lambs chamber, or
Persons One Would Wish to Have
Seem But more frequently Hazlitt
takes a topic that starts some train of
reflection or gratifies some fit animos-
ity and talks a half hour on Reading
Old Books ON Dlsagreeable People,
'On Antiquity and what not. The
mhims and perversities that doubtless
made him difficult as friend here
make him delightful as writer. He
hot n al hilton In ha
called a good-natured man, and agrees
with Vaudeville that were it not for
envy, malice and all uncharitableness
mankind might die ennui But you see
that he is only half in earnest; that at
heart he loves all true and beautiful
things, and reserves his real hatred for
that which is really hateful. I don't
understand those persons who say Haz-
lit had no humor. To be sure, it is
sardonic; it was not, like Lambs,
good humor to live with, but it is good
to read. He likes to break UP our self
satisfied commonplaces, to explode
paradox under some SNUG propriety.
He has an exhaustless store of illustra-
tions, and constantly enlivens an alb
stract discussion with some shrewd bit
of observation or bright CLEAN Of fancy
His essays are full of that keen analy-
sis of ordinary motives, that half cyni-
cal but good natured philosophy of
every day life of which no other essay |
list is so great master
"But whatever his theme, you shall
never read far without coming upon
passages of genuine poetic vision and |
poetic feeling glimpses of that kind of |
retreat he liked best, not rugged or re-
mote, but rather, as at W1ntersoW, on |
some softer solitude, humanized by old |
associations and in sound of village |
bells; memories of scenes he knew, or |
friends he loved, or books he read. He |
hears again the sound Of the curfew he
heard when boy swinging slow with
sullen roar and the generations that |
are gone, the tangled forest glades and
hamlets of his native country, the
woodman's art, the warrior armed for
battle, the conqueror's iron rule and the
peasants lamp extinguished-all start
into memory at that clamorous peal. He
recalls the time when, in the inn at
he sat up the livelong
night to read Paul and Virginia. the
place where he read Mr.. Inchbold,'
while an old crazy hand organ outside
was pay ilS IhcJiil <ANe'iit etiA' a. sum | 4
mer shower dropped mamma on my
head or that hour when first the great
Mrs Sddons passed before his sight,
and shook his soul to tears. His IA
vorite phrase is I remember, and he
might have said with Wordsworth, THE
thought of our past years in me doth
breed perpetual benediction' But with
a difference. For out of all his memo
res Hazltt, like Jacques in AS You
Like It,--of whom, in fact, I have often
thought him reincarnation-can suck
as weasel sucks eggs. 1t
IS melancholy of his own, compounded .
If many simples. He himself undoubt-
edly takes great joy of it; and it softens q
al his angry and guerulous complaints
with the twilight hues Of recollection" I
Summing up, Professor Winchester
said: eff I have estimated Hazlitt i
lightly, as a master of prose style, as t
| literary critic, he had no equal in his =
,wn time, and has had few since. The
collected body of his writings, though z
t does not quite entitle him to a place
n the first rank of English authors, ex- t
libits vividly unique and most inter .
sting personality. He may have been
Ill to live with, but few men have II
-nown how to write such delightful L