pensions and civil appointments; Southey had come to his laureateship, and his additional pension; we found the venerable Wordsworth making a London pilgrimage for a "kissing of hands," and the honor of a royal stipend; Walter Scott had received his baronetcy at the hands of George IV., and that dilettante sovereign would have taken Byron (whom we shall presently encounter) patronizingly by the hand, except the fiery poet — scenting slights everywhere—had flamed up in that spirit of proud defiance, which afterward declared itself with a fury of denunciation in the Irish Avatar (1821).

Hazlitt and Hallam.

Another noticeable author of this period, whose cynicism kept him very much by himself, was William Hazlitt; he was the son of a clergyman

* William Hazlitt, b. 1778; d. 1830. Characters of Shakespeare, 1817; Table Talk, 1821; Liber Amoris, 1823; Life of Napoleon, 1828; Life (by Grandson), 1867; a later book of memoirs, Four Generations of a Literary Family, appeared 1897. (It gave nothing essentially new, and was quickly withdrawn from sale.)

WILLIAM HAZLITT.

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and very precocious - hearing Coleridge preach in his father's pulpit at Wem in Shropshire, and feeling his ambition stirred by the notice of that poet, who was attracted by the shrewd speech and great forehead of the boy. Young Hazlitt drifts away from such early influences to Paris and to painting-he thinking to master that art. But in this he does nothing satisfying; he next appears in London, to carve a way to fame with his pen. He is an acute observer; he is proud; he is awkward; he is shy. Charles Lamb and sister greatly befriend him and take to him; and he, with his hate of conventionalisms, loves those Lamb chambers and the whist parties, where he can go, in whatever slouch costume he may choose; poor Mary Lamb, too, perceiving that he has a husband-ish hankering after a certain female friend of hers-blows hot and cold upon it, in her quaint little notelets, with a delighted and an undisguised sense of being a party to their little game. It ended in a marriage at last; not without its domestic infelicities; but these would be too long, and too dreary for the telling. Mr. Hazlitt wrote upon a vast variety of topics-upon

art, and the drama, upon economic questions, upon politics—as wide in his range as Leigh Hunt; and though he was far more trenchant, more shrewd, more disputatious, more thoughtful, he did lack Hunt's easy pliancy and grace of touch. Though a wide reader and acute observer, Hazlitt does not contend or criticise by conventional rules; his law of measurement is not by old syntactic, grammatic, or dialectic practices; there's no imposing display of critical implements (by which some operators dazzle us), but he cuts quick and sharp-to the point at issue. We never forget his strenuous, high-colored personality, and the seething of his prejudices — whether his talk is of Napoleon (in which he is not reverent of average British opinion), or of Sir Joshua Reynolds, or of Burke's brilliant oratorical apostrophes. But with fullest recognition of his acuteness, and independence, there remains a disposition (bred by his obstinacies and shortcomings) to take his conclusions cum grano salis. He never quite disabuses our mind of the belief that he is a paid advocate; he never conquers by calm; and, upon the whole, impresses one as a man who

found little worth the living for in this world, and counted upon very little in any other.

*

The historian, Henry Hallam, on the other hand, who was another notable literary character of this epoch, was full of all serenities of charactereven under the weight of such private griefs as were appalling. He was studious, honest, staid - with a great respect for decorum; he would have gravitated socially-as he did - rather to Holland House than to the chambers where Lamb presided over the punch-bowl. In describing the man one describes his histories; slow, calm, steady even to prosiness, yet full; not entertaining in a gossipy sense; not brilliant; scarce ever eloquent. If he is in doubt upon a point he tells you so; if there has been limitation to his research, there is no concealment of it; I think, upon the whole, the honestest of all English historians. In his search for truth, neither party, nor tradition, nor religious scruples make him waver. None can make their historic journey through the Middle Ages

Henry Hallam, b. 1777; d. 1859. Middle Ages, 1818. Literature of Europe, 1837-39. Sketch of Life, by Dean Milman in Transactions of Royal Society, vol. x.

without taking into account the authorities he has brought to notice, and the path that he has scored.

And yet there is no atmosphere along that path as he traces it. People and towns and towers and monarchs pile along it, clearly defined, but in dead shapes. He had not the art—perhaps he would have disdained the art- to touch all these with

picturesque color, and to make that page of the world's history glow and palpitate with life.

Among those great griefs which weighed upon the historian, and to which allusion has been made, I name that one only with which you are perhaps familiar-I mean the sudden death of his son Arthur, a youth of rare accomplishmentscounted by many of more brilliant promise than any young Englishman of his time- yet snatched from life, upon a day of summer's travel, as by a thunderbolt. He lies buried in Clevedon Church, which overhangs the waters of Bristol Channel; and his monument is Tennyson's wonderful memorial poem.

I will not quote from it; but cite only the lines "out of which" (says Dr. John Brown), "as out of