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Hazlitt on the Poetry of Wit

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

W. P. Albrecht
W. P. Albrecht*
Affiliation:
University of Kansas, Lawrence
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Extract

The greatest poetry, according to Hazlitt, is the “truest” poetry and therefore the most passionate; for, to communicate the essential truths of nature, a poet must feel intensely. Lesser poetry falls short by offering a limited or “abstracted” view of nature. This abstraction may be due to imitating other poets, as in the “poetry of common places”; to the poet's preoccupation with his own experience, as in the “poetry of paradox”; or to the use of “articial” materials, as in the “poetry of wit.” Each kind lacks the truth of great poetry, for each kind, in one way or another, limits the range or depth of feeling. But whereas the “poetry of common places” and the “poetry of paradox” simply have the qualities of great poetry to a lesser degree, the “poetry of wit” has a “kind and degree of excellence” of its own.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 75 , Issue 3 , June 1960 , pp. 245 - 249
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1960

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References

1 “On Dryden and Pope,” Lectures on the English Poets, in The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, ed. P. P. Howe (London, 1930–34), v, 68, 82–83.

2 See Rene Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism: 1750–1950, Part ii, The Romantic Age (New Haven, 1955), pp. 200–205.

3 “On Dryden and Pope,” pp. 69–70. See also “On Gusto,” The Round Table, in Works, iv, 77; “On Poetry in General,” Lectures on the English Poets, p. 1.

4 “On Poetry in General,” pp. 3–6; “On Shakspeare and Milton,” Lectures on the English Poets, pp. 53–54, 58–59; “On Reason and Imagination,” The Plain Speaker, in Works, xii, 51; “On Genius and Common Sense,” Table-Talk, in Works, viii, 35, 40–41. For more detailed treatment see J. M. Bullitt, “Hazlitt and the Romantic Conception of the Imagination,” PQ, xxiv (1945), 343–361; W. J. Bate, Criticism: The Major Texts (New York, 1952), pp. 281–292; and my article “Haz-litt's Preference for Tragedy,” PMLA, LXXI (1956), 1042–51.

5 “Character of Mr. Wordsworth's New Poem, The Excur sion,” Works, xix, 18–19; “On Shakspeare and Milton,” p. 53

6 “On Gusto,” p. 77.

7 “On the Pleasure of Painting” and “On Certain Incon sistencies in Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses,” Table-Talk, pp. 9–10, 122–145; “Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses” and “On the Elgin Marbles,” Works, xviii, 62–84, esp. 158; “Character of… The Excursion,” p. 10; Bullitt, pp. 345–348; Bate, pp. 287–291.

8 “On Thomson and Cowper,” Lectures on the English Poets, p. 96.

9 “On the Living Poets,” Lectures on the English Poets, pp, 161–163; “Character of… The Excursion,” pp. 9–12, 18.

10 “On Thomson and Cowper,” p. 101; “Pope, Lord Byron and Mr. Bowles,” Works, xix, 78–79.

11 “On Shakspeare and Ben Jonson,” Lectures on the Eng lish Comic Writers, in Works, VI, 31–32, 35, 37; “On the Comic Writers of the Last Century,” Lectures on the Englisl Comic Writers, pp. 154–155, n.; “Hazlitt's Preference foi Tragedy,” esp. pp. 1045–48.

12 ii, ii, 31–32; “On Wit and Humour,” pp. 15–17, 23.

13 Essay on Criticism, 11. 9–10; “On Wit and Humour,' p. 24.

14 “On Dryden and Pope,” pp. 68–72. Cf. Wellek, p. 204.

15 “On Wit and Humour,” pp. IS, 19, 23–24.

16 C. Brooks and R. P. Warren, Understanding Poetry, rev. ed. (New York, 1950),p. 175.

17 “Character of… The Excursion,” pp. 9–12; “On the Living Poets,” p. 154.

18 “Critical List of Authors,” Works, ix, 243–244; “Mr. Coleridge,” “Mr. Southey,” and “Mr. Gifford,” The Spirit of the Age, in Works, xi, 29,80,118–123; “On the Living Poets,” pp. 153, 156; “Shelley's Posthumous Poems,” Works, xvi, 267, 269, et passim; “On Living to One's-Self,” “On Paradox and Common-Place,” and “On Effeminacy of Character,” Table-Talk, pp. 99, 149, 254–255; “Landor's Imaginary Con versations,” Works, xvi, 240–241; “The Periodical Press,” Works, xvi, 237. As W.J. Bate has noticed (p. 286), Hazlitt's criticism of Wordsworth seems to anticipate T. S. Eliot's remarks on “dissociation of sensibility” (“The Metaphysical Poets,” Selected Essays, New York, 1950, pp. 247–248). But Hazlitt differs from Eliot in his estimate of the metaphysical poets, which closely follows Johnson's (“Life of Cowley,” Lives of the English Poets, London, 1781, i, 27–33).

19 “On the Beggar's Opera,” The Round Table, p. 65.

20 “Character of… The Excursion,” p. 20.

21 “On the Beggar's Opera,” p. 65.

22 “Character of… The Excursion,” p. 11.

23 “On the Beggar's Opera,” pp. 65–66. Hazlitt's italics.

24 “On Cowley, Butler, Suckling, Etberege, etc.,” Lectures on the English Comic Writers, pp. 49–51. Thus, as Rene Wel-lek has pointed out, Hazlitt objects to Donne, Cowley, Crashaw, etc. by “expound[ing] the standard neoclassical theory of metaphor,” but it is this theory used to express his own preference for intense feeling. With “the logic of the schools, or an oblique and forced construction of dry, literal matter-of-fact,” these poets obscure “the face of nature” and “the secrets of the heart.” (Wellek, p. 204; “On Cowley…,”p. 50.)

25 “On Cowley…, ” p. 58.

26 “On Wit and Humour,” pp. 23–24.

27 In “On Shakspeare and Milton” (p. 54) Hazlitt quotes, among other examples of imagination, from Troilus and Cressida (iii. iii. 222–225):

Rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold, And like a dew-drop from the lion's mane Be shook to air.

“Dew-drop” is a “natural” image variously appropriate to “weak wanton Cupid,” but, if one persists, incongruities and “selfish” interests may be found in the same comparison. A folded dew-drop, amorous or not, is hardly less ridiculous than dawn served up like a lobster. “Doubtless,” I. A. Richards has written, “the ideal case of Imagination is rare; if enough of the possibilities of the part-meanings come in we overlook any that must stay out. With Fancy, we either ‘overlook’ them in quite another sense, we voluntarily and expressly ignore them; or we let an awareness of their irrelevance in to gain a mixed effect, of burlesque for instance…” (Coleridge on Imagination, New York, 1950, p. 92).

28 “On Shakspeare and Milton,” p. 54. Here Hazlitt comes close to a distinction made by Coleridge: “It is not always easy to distinguish between wit and fancy. When the whole pleasure received is derived from surprise at an unexpected turn of expression, then I call it wit; but when the pleasure is produced not only by surprise, but also by an image which remains with us and gratifies for its own sake, then I call it fancy” (“Lectures of 1811–12,” Coleridge's Shakespearean Criticism, ed. T. M. Raysor, Cambridge, Mass., 1930, p. 124). Hazlitt, however, is illustrating the effects of Shakespeare's imagination and is not using the word fancy to suggest a dif ferent or inferior faculty. Poetry, he says in his Lectures on thi English Poets, declined “from the poetry of imagination, in the time of Elizabeth, to the poetry of fancy… in the time of Charles I.; and again from the poetry of fancy to that oi wit, as in the reign of Charles II. and Queen Anne” (“Or Dryden and Pope,” p. 82); but fancy, in Hazlitt's writings may designate not only a kind of middle ground distinct fron both imagination and wit but, perhaps more often, the crea tive or combining faculty that includes imagination and does not always exclude wit. Its effects may be serious or comic tender or caustic, true or false. (“On Miscellaneous Poems' and ”On the Spirit of Ancient and Modern Literature,' Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, ir Works, vi, 322–323, 350, et passim; “A Critical List o: Authors,” pp. 326–345.)

29 “Life of Cowley,” p. 29.

30 “On Shakespeare and Milton,” p. 54. The comparison! quoted by Hazlitt are from Troilus and Cressida, i. iii. 227–230; iii. iii. 115–123, 222–225.

31 “On Wit and Humour,” p. 24.

32 “Lear,” Characters of Shakespear's Plays, in Works, iv, 260.

33 “On Poetry in General,” pp. 6–8; “Lear,” pp. 271–272. See my reply to S. Barnet, “More on Hazlitt's Preference for Tragedy,” PMLA, Lxxiii (1958), 444–445.