William Hazlitt (1778-1830) was a prominent essayist who critiqued various aspects of English literature, painting, and politics, ultimately publishing 'The Spirit of the Age' in 1825, which critiques major literary and political figures of his time. His work reflects a tension between reason and imagination, positing that an individual's imaginative capacity is shaped by the prevailing cultural climate, while he also examines differing types of genius represented by figures like Wordsworth and Coleridge. Hazlitt's approach unearths a masculine perspective that has faced scrutiny, and he notably emphasizes the significance of imagination against the backdrop of strict rationalism represented by figures such as Bentham and Malthus.

1. William Hazlitt:
The Spirit of the Age
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2. William Hazlitt 1778-1830
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3. Romantic Conflicts
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) at first planned to follow his
father into the Unitarian ministry, became instead a painter of portraits, then
turned to writing on philosophy, economics, and politics. In his mid thirties,
he established himself as a public lecturer and prolific contributor to
periodicals.
 (sometime) friends with Charles and Mary Lamb, Wordsworth, Coleridge,
and Stendhal; also acquainted with the world of Parisian art
 Frequented prostitutes –felt uncomfortable around women of his own class.

4. Hazlitt the essayist
 criticism of English dramatists, poets, and novelists,
 commentaries on painting in the England of his day,
 analyses of the English theatre and its actors,
 comments on the contemporary political scene
 more than a hundred informal essays.
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5. Meeting Coleridge
“I was at that time… dumb, inarticulate,
helpless.” But because of Coleridge’s
eloquence, “my understanding did not remain
dumb and brutish,” but “at last found a
language to express itself.”
a three weeks’ visit to his home at Nether
Stowey in the Lake Country in 1798
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6. The Spirit of the Age
 The Spirit of the Age, published in 1825, began as a journalistic series for the
New Monthly Magazine. Entitled ‘Spirits of the Age’, the string of essays was
launched with ‘Jeremy Bentham’ in January 1824, ‘Rev. Mr. Irving’ in February,
The Late Mr. Home Tooke’ in March, ‘Sir Walter Scott’ in April, and ‘Lord
Eldon’ in July.
 Hazlitt added 18 sketches to this group for the first edition of the book,
including essays on Wordsworth, Byron, Coleridge, Southey, Godwin, Malthus
and Lamb. ‘Contemporary Portraits’, as the subtitle explains, of major literary
and political figures.
 Why important? As a culmination of over a decade of critical endeavour,
Hazlitt's assessments of the representative figures and their impact on the age
have been very influential in shaping subsequent characterizations of
Romanticism.
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7. Wordsworth:
the Spirit of the Age?
 Critics disagree over whether Hazlitt's book is united under a single
unifying trope or person — some believe that Hazlitt meant Wordsworth
to be the figure most representative of the spirit of the age — or whether
a spirit of contradiction and resistance to simplification governs the book.
 Another point of view says that The Spirit of the Age is Hazlitt's elegy for
the failure of Romantic poetry and the imaginative spirit.
 Hazlitt distrusted any tendency toward abstraction, any kind of
speculative theory — philosophical, historical, scientific, religious,
economic or aesthetic — at the expense of the imaginative, the
spiritual and the poetic.
 He believed that at least to some extent the age and its tendencies shape
the imaginative capacity of its people.Romantic Conflicts

8. Men Only?
 Hazlitt’s was a masculine vision of Romanticism - now much questioned
and criticised for what it downgrades in importance or leaves out.
 Hazlitt himself knew he would attract criticism for his firm views: in an
1826 essay ‘On Knowledge of the World’ he complains about the
neglect of The Spirit of the Age:
 ‘If you do not attach yourself to some one set of people and
principles, and stick to them through thick and thin, instead of
giving your opinion fairly and fully all round, you must expect to
have all the world against you, for no other reason than because
you express yourself sincerely.’
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9. Hazlitt's method is different for each
individual portrait; an intuitive style, even
haphazard? ‘descriptions of physical
appearance, dress, and personal habits
jostle with philosophical analysis, critical
commentary, and anecdotal reportage’.
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10. The character and quality
of genius
 In his essay from Table-Talk, ‘On Genius and Common Sense’, Hazlitt defines genius or
originality as ‘some strong quality in the mind, answering to and bringing out some new and
striking quality in nature’ (Howe, VIII, 42)
 In The Spirit of the Age Scott's prose novels and romances come closest to embodying this
kind of genius. Scott has achieved the ability to ‘borrow of others’ and in so doing has
‘enriched his own genius with everlasting variety, truth, and freedom’ and has enriched
his audience with ‘a new edition of human nature’ (Howe, XI, 61, 64). Hence, Scott, like
Shakespeare, has the potential to lose his authorial-self in his subject.
 On the other hand, there is what Hazlitt identifies as ‘genius in ordinary’, a genius which is
exclusive, self-willed, egotistical, and reflects the author more than the object he looks upon
(‘On Genius’, Howe, VIII, 42). This kind of genius Hazlitt finds typical of Wordsworth, who
‘stamps [his] character, that deep individual interest, on whatever he meets’, which in Lyrical
Ballads includes ingrafting ‘his own conscious reflections on the casual thought of hinds and
shepherds’ (Howe, XI, 89).
 Between these two definitive poles, however, Hazlitt comprehends many varieties of genius.
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11. Coleridge’s ‘unfocused
genius’
Hazlitt dwells on the foibles of unfocused
genius as he sees them manifested in
Coleridge's aborted career.
In an age when the ‘accumulation of
knowledge’ has surpassed all that has gone
before and ‘distracts and dazzles the
looker-on’ (29), Hazlitt reasons that it is
understandable that Coleridge, with his
‘tangential mind’ and an understanding
‘fertile, subtle, expansive … beyond all
living precedent’, touches on all subjects,
but rests on none (Howe, XI, 29).
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12. Conservatives and Reformers
 Another central theme in The Spirit of the Age is
the opposition between anti-Jacobin
politicians and writers and their reformist
counterparts. Two representatives of the anti-
Jacobin camp are George Canning (1770–1827)
and William Gifford (1756–1826).
 Both were writers for the newspaper the Anti-
Jacobin; or, Weekly Examiner (1797–8), and both
were associated in later years with the conservative
Quarterly Review.Romantic Conflicts

13. Reason vs. the Imagination
 Another theme which is central to Hazlitt's spirit of the age is reason vs. the
imagination.
 For Hazlitt any creed, dogma, theory or system, when it restricted feeling and
man's imaginative spirit, was a threat to the individual's awareness of his
relation to the rest of humanity.
 His portraits of Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) and Thomas Malthus (1766–
1834) represent the danger of theories that are taken to extremes.
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14. Bentham, Malthus
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15.  The development of man's imaginative spirit was, Hazlitt believed, one
way to offset the bias of the age toward reason in all its forms as it denied
man's affective nature.
 In ‘On Genius and Common Sense’ Hazlitt defines the imagination as ‘the
power of carrying on a given feeling into other situations, which must be done
best according to the hold which the feeling itself has taken of the mind’
(Howe, VIII, 42).
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16. Literary Magazines
 After the Regency’s highly politicized culture, the journals of the 1820s aimed
at ordinariness. The greatest of their innovations was a sense of place.
 In the 1810s satires appeared, by Byron, Hunt, Moore, Horace Smith, and
Peacock: these made no attempt to portray “literary London” as realizable
people moving about real streets.
 The New Monthly, Blackwood’s and the London Magazine were already in the early
1820s shaping post-Romantic culture - became the main initiators of a culture
which we might now call “Romantic,”
 Colburn’s New Monthly Magazine featured occasional pieces from some of the
best journalists of the day, including Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and Lamb.
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17.  The London picked up from the New Monthly an eye for the star journalist as literary
celebrity. It poached Hazlitt, featuring in its first number a series of his highly
personal essays, “Table Talk,” in imitation of the same writer’s “Round Table” a
few years before in the New Monthly.
 In the next few years it ran the “Essays of Elia,” by Lamb, and De Quincey’s
Confessions of an English Opium Eater.
 The London testifed to a new belief in being literary for its own sake. (It did not
cover, onlylisted, books on antiquities, science, law, political economy, and
theology).
 Before 1820 - no writing like Hazlitt’s opening to his essay “The Fight” (New
Monthly, February 1821), where he describes his walk down Chancery Lane one
damp evening, looking for someone sharing his passion for “the Fancy” to tell him
the time and place of the fight.Romantic Conflicts