Hazlitt on English Literature

Book excerpt: The present selection of Hazlitt's critical essays has been planned to serve two important purposes. In the first place it provides the materials for an estimate of the character and scope of Hazlitt's contributions to criticism and so acquaints students with one of the greatest of English critics. And in the second place, what is perhaps more important, such a selection, embodying a series of appreciations of the great English writers, should prove helpful in the college teaching of literature. There is no great critic who by his readableness and comprehensiveness is as well qualified as Hazlitt to aid in bringing home to students the power and the beauty of the essential things in literature. There is, in him a splendid stimulating energy which has not yet been sufficiently utilized. The contents have been selected and arranged to present a chronological and almost continuous account of English literature from its beginning in the age of Elizabeth down to Hazlitt's own day, the period of the romantic revival. To the more strictly critical essays there have been added a few which reveal Hazlitt's intimate intercourse with books and also with their writers, whether he knew them in the flesh or only through the printed page. Such vivid revelations of personal contact contribute much to further the chief aim of this volume, which is to introduce the reader to a direct and spontaneous view of literature...: Chronology of Hazlitt's Life and Writings Introduction The Age of Elizabeth Spenser Shakspeare The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays Cymbeline Macbeth Iago Hamlet Romeo and Juliet Midsummernight's Dream Falstaff Twelfth Night Milton Pope On the Periodical Essayists The English Novelists Character of Mr. Burke Mr. Wordsworth Mr. Coleridge Mr. Southey Elia Sir Walter Scott Lord Byron On Poetry in General My First Acquaintance With Poets On the Conversation of Authors Of Persons One Would Wish To Have Seen On Reading Old Books