HAZL1TT HEAD. 



657 



Mr Hazlitt's first acknowledged literary production 

 was " An Essay on the Principles of Human Action," 

 in which much metaphysical acuteness seems to have 

 been displayed. In 1808, he published, in two 

 volumes octavo, " The Eloquence of the British Sen- 

 ate ; being a Selection of the best Speeches of the 

 most distinguished Parliamentary Speakers, from the 

 beginning of the Reign of Charles I., to the present 

 Time ; with Notes, biographical, critical, and ex- 

 planatory." In 1810, " A new and improved Eng- 

 lish Grammar, for the use of Schools ; in which the 

 Discoveries of Mr Home Tooke, and other modern 

 Writers on the Formation of Language, are for the 

 first time incorporated.'' To which was added, " A 

 New Guide to the English Tongue, by Edward Bald- 

 wyn," printed together in 12mo. Mr Baldwyn pub- 

 lished a smaller abridgement of Mr Hazlitt's book, 

 in 1812, 18mo. In conjunction with Mr Leigh Hunt, 

 he next wrote a series of Weekly Essays in the Ex- 

 aminer, afterwards published in 1817, under the title 

 of " The Round Table ; a Collection of Essays on 

 Literature, Men, and Manners,'' two vols. 8vo. In 

 the same year he published an octavo volume, 

 "Characters of Shakspeare's Plays ;" and, in 1818, 

 " A View of the English Stage ; containing a Series 

 of Dramatic Criticism." In 1818, Mr Hazlitt was 

 engaged to deliver some Lectures on English Poetry, 

 at the Surrey Institution ; they were published in an 

 octavo volume. 



Among the most popular of his writings are several 

 volumes collected from periodical works, under the 

 ti ties of " Table Talk, " "The Spirit of the A ge, "and 

 " The Plain Speaker." His largest and most ela- 

 borate performance is " The Life of Napoleon," which 

 is in four volumes. In this, though tinged with party 

 feeling, the writer displays much deep philosophical 

 remark. Mr Hazlitt was one of the writers in the 

 Supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica ; he has 

 also published " Political Essays and Sketches of 

 Public Characters/' an account of " British Galleries 

 of Art," "A Letter to William Gifford, Esq.," "The 

 Literature of the Elizabethan Age," and " The Mo- 

 dern Pygmalion." 



In 1828, he published a volume of " Notes on a 

 Journey through France and Italy." At the very 

 moment, as it were, of his death, his last labour 

 issued from the press in an exceedingly pleasant and 

 amusing volume, entitled, " Conversations of James 

 Northcote, Esq. R. A., by William Hazlitt." Many, 

 if not all, of these " Conversations," had previously 

 appeared as detached papers in the New Monthly 

 Magazine. 



Mr Hazlitt's death, which occurred in Frith Street, 

 Soho, London, on the 18th of September, 1830, was 

 occasioned by an organic disease of the stomach of 

 many years' standing. He retained the entire pos- 

 session of his faculties to the last ; and, almost free 

 from bodily pain, he died with perfect calmness of 

 mind. His funeral, at St Ann's, Soho, on the 25th of 

 September, was strictly private. He was twice mar- 

 ried, and left an only son. 



Soon after his death, a character of him appeared in 

 the Atlas ; from which the following are extracts: 



" It is said that accident made Hazlitt a writer. 

 He was originally a painter, or pursued his earliest 

 studies with that end in view. But his taste was not 

 satisfied with his labours : he never could imbody his 

 own conceptions, or transfer to the canvass his own 

 principles complete. Instead of practising the art, he 

 expounded it. Connected with the philosophical 

 examination of painting and sculpture, the drama 

 and the theatre came naturally within his inquiries. 

 Into these subjects he poured the tide of his luminous 

 mind, and soon acquired the reputation of being one of 

 the highest critical authorities on the drama and the 



fine arts. He penetrated boldly, and wrote graphi- 

 cally ; and whether his opinions were always pro- 

 found or just, you felt that they were dexterously 

 said, and hardly cared to question farther. 



" Much has been said of the caustic bitterness of 

 his style when occasion demanded it, and the pub- 

 lic have not hesitated to ascribe it to his natural 

 disposition. The inference was hasty and erroneous. 

 Hazlitt was mild, even to a child's temper ; he was 

 self-willed, but who needed to have drawn out the 

 venom ? Had he been suffered to pursue his career 

 at his ease, he would not have afforded grounds for 

 charging malignity upon him. The malignity grew 

 up elsewhere, and extracted from him all the gall 

 that was in his heart. For some unaccountable 

 reason, which Hazlitt could never fathom, Black- 

 wood's Magazine took an extraordinary pleasure in 

 ridiculing him. They went beyond ridicule, they 

 made him appear all that was base in public and 

 private, until at last his fame became a sort of dan- 

 gerous notoriety. His political and religious opinions 

 were represented in such odious colours, that even 

 the booksellers, our trading ones, shrunk from 

 the publication of his writings, as if they contained 

 nothing but treason and blasphemy. That impression 

 went abroad, and nearly ruined him. He attributed 

 it solely to the writers in Blackwood, who painted 

 him as a cockney of the worst description, mixing up 

 wickedness with namby-pamby. It was not surpris- 

 ing that a man of Hazlitt's solitary habits should feel 

 and resent this in his brooding moods. He did 

 resent it, and fearfully, and the passion of revenge 

 was instilled into his being, subdued only by the 

 imperious presence of philosophy. He had strong 

 passions and affections ; and they swelled the torrent. 

 Those who charge him with evil should pause over 

 the story of his agitated life. 



" When you were first introduced to Hazlitt, with 

 this previous impression of his bold character on your 

 mind, you were disappointed or astonished to meet an 

 individual, nervous, low-spoken, and feeble, who 

 lived on tea as a regimen. There was not a particle 

 of energy about him ordinarily. His face when at 

 repose, had none of the marks of extraordinary intel- 

 lect, or even of animation. The common expression 

 was that of pain, or rather the traces left by pain ; it 

 was languor and inertion. But when he kindled, a 

 flush mantled over his sunken cheeks, his eyes lighted 

 up wildly, his chest expanded, he looked like one 

 inspired, his motions were eloquent, and his whole 

 form partook of the enthusiasm. His conversation, 

 generally, was ragged in expression, exceedingly 

 careless as to phraseolgy, and not always clear in 

 purport. He used the most familiar words, and, for 

 ease-sake, fell into conventional turns of language, 

 to save himself the trouble of explanation. This was 

 not so, however, when he grew warmed. Then he 

 sometimes mounted into sublime flights. But his 

 conversational powers were, at the best, below his 

 literary capacity." 



HEAD ; the part of the animal body which contains 

 the brain and the higher organs of sense. In many 

 animals, it is connected with the trunk, by the neck, 

 and is more or less movable ; in some animals, how- 

 ever, it is immovable, and is merely a prolongation 

 of the trunk. The head in animals is more distinct 

 in proportion as the brain is more fully developed 

 as the centre of the nervous system. It is entirely 

 wanting in the lowest classes of animals, which there- 

 fore, from the intestinal worms downward, form a 

 third class, in the system of Latreille, under the 

 name of ucephala (headless animals), while those 

 provided with heads are divided into two classes, the 

 vertebral animals, having distinct and proper heads, 

 and the cephalidia, having small and less distinctly 



