William Hazlitt

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) was an English essayist, literary and art critic, painter by training, and social commentator. He is regarded as the greatest English literary critic since Samuel Johnson, and his writing on Shakespeare has rarely been matched for depth and originality. His outlook belongs to the radical tradition that followed the French Revolution, but today he is remembered above all for his essays and criticism.

He was born in Maidstone to a family of Irish Protestant origin. His father was a Unitarian minister, and William's childhood was spent on the move, first in Ireland, then in America and later in Shropshire. He trained at the Unitarian seminary at Hackney, where he absorbed a belief in liberty and the rights of man, but he lost his faith and gave up the idea of becoming a minister. Around 1795 he returned home and turned to philosophy, having met William Godwin in 1794. His treatise on the natural disinterestedness of the human mind, published in 1805, aimed to disprove the idea that people are naturally selfish.

Painting gradually gave way to writing. In 1798 he met Coleridge, an encounter he later regarded as decisive, and he befriended Charles and Mary Lamb. He married Sarah Stoddart in 1808 and separated from her three years later. He then made his living from journalism, writing for the Morning Chronicle, the Edinburgh Review and The Times. His major works include Characters of Shakespear's Plays (1817), his lectures on the English poets and The Spirit of the Age (1825), a gallery of portraits of his contemporaries.

His political convictions stayed close to those of his youth. He was angered that Burke, whom he admired as a writer, and the poets Coleridge and Wordsworth had moved towards conservatism, and he criticised them harshly, seeing it as a personal betrayal. He defended Napoleon with enthusiasm and wrote a four-volume biography of him. His private life became scandalous after his affair with Sarah Walker, a maid in the house where he was staying; her letters were published in Liber Amoris (1823), and the conservative press used the scandal to damage his career. He died poor in London in 1830.

His influence has lasted. He is placed alongside Johnson and Orwell among the great essayists in the English language, and he is considered the finest art critic of his age, although for a long time he was little read.