A Life in Dissent

William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man, Duncan Wu (Oxford University Press, 2008). Hardback: £25.00 / $45.00. ISBN 9780199549580

The dictionary definition of biography is given simply as ‘a written account of a person’s life, usually by another’ (Concise Oxford English Dictionary). William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man by Duncan Wu is not entirely this. Wu’s new biography grew from a previous project, a two volume New Writings of William Hazlitt (OUP, 2007). This included 205 newly discovered writings by Hazlitt. Amongst these additions to Hazlitt’s oeuvre were major essays on the poetry of Coleridge and Wordsworth as well as a series of reminiscences and memoirs from his latter days. Naturally, these writings lend themselves well to a new biography independently of the New Writings, because they add so much nuance and colour to Hazlitt’s unique lifestyle and work methods.

Considering The First Modern Man as an extension of the previous scholarly work, which Wu began researching as far back as 1996, one can admire the depth of knowledge which Wu brings to bear on his subject. Good biography research delves deeply into the life, mind and times of the subject to such a degree that the subject almost breathes once more. However, there are occasions when it can feel as though Wu almost courts our dis-empathy in his empathising with Hazlitt in circumstances that would try the patience of most individuals. This may come from the feeling that a high-minded writer such as Hazlitt should have been above the flaws for which he has been berated: this is indeed to regard Hazlitt as some sort of superman, which he was not.

Trying people’s patience, indeed, seemed to be Hazlitt’s personal motto: from early on he pushed against his parents, rejecting (regretfully, for his part) his father’s world of preaching and ministry in the church. Later in life he estranged many of his friends in the writing and publishing world, through reviews and articles that slated rather than celebrated, sometimes from the wilful standpoint of perceived slights. And there is, of course, Hazlitt’s notorious affair with Sarah Walker. Despite his demeanour, Hazlitt was a man determined to be singular in his principles, unwavering even when these opinions ran counter to popular culture (and paying editors) of the time.

Wu begins The First Modern Man with a prologue that sets a younger Coleridge, Wordsworth and Hazlitt on a collision course from which Wu can trace the elements of discord that rankled with the older Hazlitt throughout his life. The nineteen year old Hazlitt travels by foot to hear Coleridge preach, at a stage in Coleridge’s life long before laudanum has claimed its testy grip. Coleridge has just recently composed ‘Kubla Khan’ and ‘The Ancient Mariner’. Coleridge introduces Hazlitt to Wordsworth’s work, shortly to be published with Coleridge’s as The Lyrical Ballads, and then to the man himself.

However, during the stay Hazlitt’s hubristic youth causes him to try to best Wordsworth in a philosophical discussion of Hazlitt’s own ‘theory of disinterestedness,’ with its emphasis on the freedom of the individual will. This is dismissed as ‘what every shoemaker must have thought of,’ by Wordsworth. Wu begins like this in order to foreground the great ‘falling-out’ that has crystallized by the time Coleridge’s ‘Christobel’ appears in print for the first time in 1816 (and is severely criticised by Hazlitt in the Examiner and the Edinburgh Review).

From this youthful vantage point, the book pivots back, outlining Hazlitt’s early life with his family when they relocate to Ireland, and thence to America and back to Britain. By showing the family background — in particular Hazlitt’s father as a dissenter who refuses to compromise his ruling principles — Wu gives another foretaste of the sort of man that Hazlitt junior will become.

Wu offers an insight into Hazlitt’s attitudes towards Sarah Walker, the girl with whom he became obsessed just as he was attaining a strong reputation as a reviewer, character sketcher and political observer. He presents Hazlitt’s thoughts, as set down in his journals, as though to show him as he was without further comment. However, Wu cannot resist defending him, almost as though these thoughts need mediation for our modern mindset: that was how it was in the early 19th century; this is how men thought of women of a certain class.

This almost seems to undo the ambit of the book: there is nothing modern or advanced about a man complaining about the coquettishness of a woman’s response to his advances. Given that Hazlitt was prone to venting his spleen about people who slighted him, such as his turning on Coleridge or Wordsworth, it is no surprise that his feelings for Sarah turn to plans to ‘ascertain […] by any means or through any person who might try her as a lodger,’ as he wrote to Patmore, whether she is ‘a regular lodging house decoy, who leads a sporting life with every one who comes in succession & goes different lengths according as she is urged or inclined.’

All this is to assume from Hazlitt’s writings that he was a robust individual. Wu builds from contemporary accounts a shy, bashful Hazlitt, one who has social difficulties, as well as a splenetic Hazlitt. Hazlitt saves his sharp wit for his newspaper articles or those that he knows well and is comfortable with in intimate conversation. John Keats’s friend John Hamilton Reynolds describes Hazlitt thus: ‘[he] remained with us till 3 o’clock in the morning! Full of eloquence — warm, lofty and communicative on everything imaginative and intelligent; breathing out with us the peculiar and favourite beauties of our best bards.’ Compare this to a ‘grand dinner party,’ in the wake of his success at his second series of lectures on poetry. Here, Hazlitt is remembered by Mary Russell Mitford as someone who the host is trying to ‘shew off as the lion of the day. The lion came — smiled & bowed — handed Miss Bently to the dining room […] said once Yes & twice No — & never uttered another word the whole evening.’

In examining Hazlitt so closely, Wu presents him undoubtedly as a complex man, riven with flaws as the next; there is sometimes the feeling that Wu is trying to absolve his subject of his worst excesses. Reconciling such flaws and strengths is something that people have had to do with many figures in writing: the debate about Ezra Pound still resonates today. Quirks and excesses aside, Hazlitt is still a writer whom many still respect, almost two hundred years on.

In reconstructing a life from Hazlitt’s published and unpublished writings, as well as other scholarly sources and biographies, Wu strives to present us with a fair and thorough account. William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man is an account that is well-paced and belies its dry scholarly origins and it does reveal that most fascinating of eras, the Romantic period. Hazlitt’s wide-angled lens (and indeed Wu’s behind that) allows modern readers to revisit early 19th century Britain’s theatre; fine art; sports reports; political satire as well as book reviews and character sketches.

At the book’s close, Wu invokes Virginia Woolf, who strikes closest to the mark when she describes her impression of Hazlitt through his work: ‘He had the most intense consciousness of his own existence, since never a day passed without inflicting on him some pang of jealousy, some thrill of anger or pleasure.’ Hazlitt was indeed a man of all the contradictions Woolf describes: ‘ill-conditioned yet high-minded; mean yet noble; intensely egotistical yet inspired by the most genuine passion for the rights and liberties of mankind.’ To feel everything as strongly as Hazlitt did — in his own word to feel ‘gusto’ — is what writers strive to do in their most vivid writing; for Duncan Wu to convey as much of the man’s drive to do so is no little achievement.