Characters of Shakespeares Plays | Page 3

one long beau jour to him'. His allusions to it are
constant. He returned to England in 1803, with formed tastes and
predilections, very few of which he afterwards modified, much less
forsook.
We next find him making a tour as a portrait-painter through the north
of England, where (as was to be expected) he attempted a portrait of

Wordsworth, among others. 'At his desire', says Wordsworth, 'I sat to
him, but as he did not satisfy himself or my friends, the unfinished
work was destroyed.' He was more successful with Charles Lamb,
whom he painted (for a whim) in the dress of a Venetian Senator. As a
friend of Coleridge and Wordsworth he had inevitably made
acquaintance with the Lambs. He first met Lamb at one of the
Godwins' strange evening parties and the two became intimate friends
and fellow theatre-goers.
Hazlitt's touchy and difficult temper suspended this inintimacy in later
years, though to the last Lamb regarded him as 'one of the finest and
wisest spirits breathing'; but for a while it was unclouded. At the
Lambs', moreover, Hazlitt made acquaintance with a Dr. Stoddart,
owner of some property at Winterslow near Salisbury, and his sister
Sarah, a lady wearing past her first youth but yet addicted to keeping a
number of beaux to her string. Hazlitt, attracted to her from the
first,--he made a gloomy lover and his subsequent performances in that
part were unedifying--for some years played walking gentleman behind
the leading suitors with whom Miss Stoddart from time to time
diversified her comedy. But Mary Lamb was on his side; the rivals on
one excuse or another went their ways or were dismissed; and on May
1, 1808, the marriage took place at St. Andrew's Church, Holborn.
Lamb attended, foreboding little happiness to the couple from his
knowledge of their temperaments. Seven years after (August 9, 1815),
he wrote to Southey. 'I was at Hazlitt's marriage, and had like to have
been turned out several times during the ceremony. Anything awful
makes me laugh.' The marriage was not a happy one.
Portrait-painting had been abandoned long before this. The Essay on
the Principles of Human Action (1805) had fallen, as the saying is,
stillborn from the press: Free Thoughts on Public Affairs (1806) had
earned for the author many enemies but few readers: and a treatise
attacking Malthus's theory of population (1807) had allured the public
as little. A piece of hack-work, The Eloquence of the British Senate,
also belongs to 1807: A New and Improved Grammar of the English
Tongue for the use of Schools to 1810. The nutriment to be derived
from these works, again, was not of the sort that replenishes the family
table, and in 1812 Hazlitt left Winterslow (where he had been
quarrelling with his brother-in-law), settled in London in 19 York

Street, Westminster--once the home of John Milton- -and applied
himself strenuously to lecturing and journalism. His lectures, on the
English Philosophers, were delivered at the Russell Institution: his most
notable journalistic work, on politics and the drama, was done for The
Morning Chronicle, then edited by Mr. Perry. From an obituary notice
of Hazlitt contributed many years later (October 1830) to an old
magazine I cull the following:
He obtained an introduction, about 1809 or 1810, to the late Mr. Perry,
of The Morning Chronicle, by whom he was engaged to report
Parliamentary debates, write original articles, etc. He also furnished a
number of theatrical articles on the acting of Kean. As a political writer
he was apt to be too violent; though in general he was not a man of
violent temper. He was also apt to conceive strong and rooted
prejudices against individuals on very slight grounds. But he was a
good-hearted man ... Private circumstances, it is said, contributed to
sour his temper and to produce a peculiar excitement which too
frequently held its sway over him. Mr. Hazlitt and Mr. Perry did not
agree. Upon one occasion, to the great annoyance of some of his
colleagues, he preferred his wine with a few friends to taking his share
in reporting an important discussion in the House of Commons. Added
to this, he either did not understand the art of reporting, or would not
take the trouble to master it.... His original articles required to be
carefully looked after, to weed them of strong expressions.
Hazlitt's reputation grew, notwithstanding. In 1814 Jeffrey enlisted him
to write for The Edinburgh Review, and in 1815 he began to contribute
to Leigh Hunt's paper The Examiner. In February 1816 he reviewed
Schlegel's 'Lectures on Dramatic Literature' for the Edinburgh, and this
would seem to have started him on his Characters of Shakespeare's
Plays. Throughout 1816 he wrote at it sedulously.
The MS., when completed, was accepted by Mr. C. H.