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HAZLITT'S LAUGH.

dining;' saw Wilkie under a different aspect, and under different influences, from his countryman, Mr. Allan Cunningham, though it is more likely Sir David (then Mr. Wilkie) asked the question with a view to avoid my Lord's dinner-hour, rather than that he was guilty of such an impropriety, so unlike his modesty and his independent spirit, as to desire to intrude into a family circle without invitation.

Having arranged to sit to Haydon for his picture the next day, I went to him accordingly, and after that rather tedious business was over he asked me to accompany him to Mr. Hazlitt's, to give him a description of the extraordinary exhibition we had witnessed the night before between Foscolo and Wordsworth. Mr. Haydon told exactly what had occurred, and how timid and alarmed the ladies appeared at the gesticulations and violent manner of Foscolo. Hazlitt laughed his curious laugh, a sort of hysteric shout-a quick 'Ah! ah!' stopping suddenly. He was much amused, and laughed at Wordsworth's sang-froid, saying, 'He was right to hold to the last, when he was in the right.' I asked if he did not suppose that

Hobbes or Helvetius was present at Mr. Haydon's? He replied, 'Well, either of those gentlemen would probably have taken the same side of the question; but I hope that for the sake of good manners, to say nothing of philosophy, they would have listened with more fairness and reasonable calmness to what such a person as my friend Wordsworth would have to say upon any subject that he thought it worth while to trouble himself to speak about.'

CHAPTER VI.

BEWICK'S LITERARY STYLE-REFLECTIONS SUGGESTED BY THE MEMORY OF HAZLITT INTELLECTUAL AND SOCIAL CHARACTER OF THE ESSAYIST VEHEMENCE OF HIS PASSION POLITICAL TENDENCIES-HAZLITT'S HOUSE-BENTHAM— MILTON HAZLITT AS A CONVERSATIONALIST-RAPHAELMICHAEL ANGELO, dante, MILTON, AND HOMER―TITIANABSENCE OF MIND.

Ir is by no means improbable that his familiarity with Hazlitt's characteristic sketches of poets, essayists, and painters, may have had considerable influence in suggesting to Bewick the idea of these literary portraits of his contemporaries, the presentment of which is in all respects so vivid. If so, the following chapter on Hazlitt himself, whom he knew not only by his writings, but by intimate personal intercourse, must be regarded as so much the more interesting. Perhaps in some respects the ambition to imitate the great English essayist, or some similar type of literary excellence, has tended to

WILLIAM HAZLITT.

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lead him away from that simplicity and directness of style which would have rendered his portraits so much the more truthful, and from which it is probable he would not have departed if he had trusted to his own instead of to foreign inspiration. The influence of Hazlitt is nowhere more apparent than in Bewick's sketch of that eloquent writer.

WILLIAM HAZLITT.

Man is said to be

'The paragon of animals,'

because of his intelligence, but if in 'action' he may be compared to a Deity, his frailties and unaccountable inequalities reduce him to the level of imperfect beings. Well has it been said, 'What a want of harmony there is between man and the other works of God; how imperfect and unfinished, as it were, is man; how the mind longs, struggles to penetrate the mysteries of its being; how imperfect and without aim does life sometimes seem! Everything besides man seems to reach its utmost perfection. Man alone appears a thing incomplete and faulty.

Other things and beings are finished and complete-man alone is left, as it were, half made up. A tree grows and bears fruit, and the end of its creation is answered. A complete circle It is the same with the animals.

is run. No one expects more from a lion or a horse than is found in both. But with man it is not so. In no period of history, and among no people, has it been satisfactorily determined what man is, or what are the limits of his capacity and being. He is full of contradictions, and incomprehensible in his organisation. For while every other affection finds rest in its appropriate object, which fully satisfies and fills it, the desire of unlimited improvement and of long life -the strongest of all the desires-alone is answered by no corresponding object. And man would seem a monster in creation compared with other things an abortion-and in himself, and compared with himself, an enigma, a riddle which no human wit has ever solved, or can ever hope to solve. And when we think

of the great and good of

other times, and of

what the mind of man has in them accomplished, we feel that he has been made not altogether