Volume 56, Number 11 · July 2, 2009
Jazzing Up Hazlitt
By James Fenton
William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man
by Duncan Wu
Oxford University Press, 557 pp., $45.00
New Writings of William Hazlitt
edited by Duncan Wu
Oxford University Press, two volumes, 1,060 pp., $275.00
Hazlitt in Love: A Fatal Attachment
by Jon Cook
London: Short Books, 214 pp., $19.95
There is something secretly repellent in the prospect of an author recommended for his prose style (and nothing else). We hate the thought of an empty performance. Great prose attracts us by expressing great truths, not by the purity of its diction or the beauty and variety of its cadences. And so that place on the library shelf, or in the bookshop, that used to be reserved for the masterpieces of English prose or 'belles lettres' ('literary works valued for their aesthetic qualities rather than for any informative or educational content'[1]) became dusty and unvisited long ago. Joseph Addison, whose essays were once the fire- side reading of cottagers throughout Britain, is obliterated. Samuel Johnson's 'Rambler' essays are reserved for the specialists. And it has been said recently that William Haz- litt too has, as it were, fallen off the shelf.
Review, 4311 words
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