A LITERAR Y RE CL USE 1 6 1 



one of Coiigreve's comedies, or Rousseau's Confessions, 

 or writing, in liis large flowing hand, a dozen pages 

 of tlie essay on Persons one would Wish to have Seen, 

 or On Living to Ones Self. One cannot imagine 

 any retreat more consonant with the feelings of this 

 lonely thinker, during one of his periods of seclusion, 

 than the out-of-the-world place in which I stood. In 

 Avinter time it must have been desolate beyond 

 description — on wild nights especially — " heaven's 

 chancel- vault " blind with sleet — the fierce wdnd 

 sweeping down from the bare wolds around, and 

 beating furiously against the doors and windows of 

 the unsheltered hostelry.' 



It is not to be supjDosed that Hazlitt was insensible 

 to the dreariness of the spot. ' Here, even here,' he 

 says, as though the dolour of the place had come 

 home to him, ' with a few old authors I can manage 

 to o-et throuo-h the summer or winter months without 

 ever knowing what it is to feel ennui. They sit 

 with me at breakfast ; they walk out with me before 

 dinner. After a long walk through unfrequented 

 tracts, after starting the hare from the fern, or 

 hearing the wing of the raven rustling above my 

 head, or being greeted by the woodman's " stern 

 good-night," as he strikes into his narrow homeward 

 path, I can " take mine ease at mine inn," beside the 

 blazing hearth, and shake hands with Signor Orlando 

 Friscobaldo, as the oldest acc[uaintance I have.' 



His Farewell to Essay Writing was written here 

 20th February 1828. He had long given up the 

 intemperance of former years, and cultivated litera- 

 ture on copious tea - drinking. ' As I quaff" my 



M 



