The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString The Spirit of the Age: Or, Contemporary Portraits

rdf:langString The Spirit of the Age: Or, Contemporary Portraits

rdf:langString The Spirit of the Age; Or, Contemporary Portraits

rdf:langString left

rdf:langString right

rdf:langString William Hazlitt

rdf:langString #B6D7FE

rdf:langString Title page of The Spirit of the Age 2nd London edition

rdf:langString England

rdf:langString William

rdf:langString The Plain Speaker: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things

rdf:langString biography

rdf:langString Hazlitt

rdf:langString Print

rdf:langString Liber Amoris: Or, The New Pygmalion

rdf:langString "The talent with which the [political opinions and critical decisions of the Edinburgh Review] are supported, and ... the tone of manly explicitness in which they are delivered ... are eminently characteristic of the Spirit of the Age".

rdf:langString "The Spirit of the Age was never more fully shown than in its treatment of this writer—its love of paradox and change, its dastard submission to prejudice and to the fashion of the day."

rdf:langString "Few circumstances show the prevailing and preposterous rage for novelty in a more striking point of view, than the success of Mr. Irving's oratory."

rdf:langString "... a reminder of where the modern age began."

rdf:langString "His works have been translated into French.

rdf:langString Mr. Knowles is "the first tragic writer of the age" who pours into his plays "impulses of [his] natural feeling, and produces a perfect work of art."

rdf:langString "Mr. Irvine's [sic] language is with great taste and felicity modeled on that of Addison, Goldsmith, Sterne, or Mackenzie .... Instead of looking round to see what we are, he sets to work to describe us as we were—at second hand. He has Parson Adams, or Sir Roger de Coverley in his mind's eye; and he makes a village curate or a country 'squire sit to these admired models for their portraits in the beginning of the nineteenth century."

rdf:langString "It was his delight to make mischief and spoil sport. He would rather be against himself than for any body else."

rdf:langString Hazlitt was unique in his day, a "representative observer" whose observations on what lay "directly before him" were so objective as to have the effect of "prophecy".

rdf:langString Sir James "strikes after the iron is cold."

rdf:langString They ought to be translated into English."

rdf:langString "Mr. Wordsworth's genius is a pure emanation of the Spirit of the Age."

rdf:langString Lord Eldon is "a thorough-bred Tory ... an out-and-outer ... There has been ... no existing abuse, so odious or so absurd, that he has not sanctioned ... ."

rdf:langString Mr. Wilberforce "preaches vital Christianity to untutored savages; and tolerates its worst abuses in civilized states."

rdf:langString Here is "another volume from the reckless, extravagant, and hasty, but acute, brilliant, spirit-stirring, and always entertaining pen of the author of 'Table-Talk'; for his it must be—or the devil's."

rdf:langString Mr. Campbell is "a high finisher in poetry ... who labours to lend every grace of execution to his subject, while he borrows his ardour and inspiration from it."

rdf:langString Mr. Gifford "is admirably qualified for th[e] situation [of editor of the Quarterly Review], which he has held for some years, by a happy combination of defects, natural and acquired ... ."

rdf:langString "Mr. Crabbe gives us one part of nature, the mean, the little, the disgusting, the distressing; ... he does this thoroughly and like a master, and we forgive all the rest!"

rdf:langString The Malthusian theory "we conceive to be the boldest paralogism that was ever offered to the world, or palmed upon willing credulity."

rdf:langString "The Spirit of the Age is one of those rare works of criticism which really do approach to the character of a work of art".

rdf:langString "We have said that Lord Byron is a sublime coxcomb: why should we not say that Mr. Hunt is a delightful one? [His] natural gaiety and spriteliness of manner, his high animal spirits, and the vinous quality of his mind, produce an immediate fascination and intoxication in those who come in contact with him ... ."

rdf:langString Scott's "works are almost like a new edition of human nature. This is indeed to be an author!"

rdf:langString "A bias to abstraction is evidently ... the reigning spirit of the age ...".

rdf:langString Mr. Southey is "ever in extremes, and ever in the wrong!"

rdf:langString "The spirit of the age" is "the progress of intellectual refinement, warring with our natural infirmities".

rdf:langString "Mr. Lamb succeeds not by conforming to the Spirit of the Age, but in opposition to it. He does not march boldly along with the crowd, but steals off the pavement to pick his way in the contrary direction."

rdf:langString "It has been too much [Mr. Moore's] object to pander to the artificial taste of the age. ... Now all must be raised to the same tantalising and preposterous level. ... The craving of the public mind after novelty and effect ... must be pampered with fine words at every step—we must be tickled with sound, startled with show, and relieved by the importunate, uninterrupted display of fancy and verbal tinsel as much as possible from the fatigue of thought or shock of feeling."

rdf:langString Sir Francis is "one of the few remaining examples of the old English understanding and old English character."

rdf:langString "Absorbed in the pursuit of truth as an abstract inquiry, [Mr. Brougham] is led away by the headstrong and overmastering activity of his own mind."

rdf:langString Hazlitt's prose is "dense" with thought, "extraordinarily varied", alternating plain, reasoned explanations, with attempts at "effects of oratorical grandeur". He "can be grave and clever, irritable and above dispute in the quick succession of his moods as his sentences move straight to the mark. The pace and consistency, the head-on stubbornness and willing imperfection of a man talking to you about what concerns him most" are traits that, taken together, form prose like that of no other writer in English.

rdf:langString "Mr. Canning's success as an orator, and the space he occupies in the public mind, are strong indications of the Genius of the Age, in which words have obtained a mastery over things 'and to call evil good and good evil,' is thought the mark of a superior and happy spirit."

rdf:langString "What is become of all this mighty heap of hope, of thought, of learning, and humanity? It has ended in swallowing doses of oblivion and in writing paragraphs in the Courier.—Such, and so little is the mind of man!"

rdf:langString Lord Byron "is not contented to delight, unless he can shock the public. He would force them to admire in spite of decency and common sense. ... His Lordship is hard to please: he is equally averse to notice or neglect, enraged at censure and scorning praise."

rdf:langString Mr. Cobbett "is like a young and lusty bridegroom that divorces a favourite speculation every morning, and marries a new one every night. He is not wedded to his notions, not he. He has not one Mrs. Cobbett among his opinions."

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rdf:langString —William Hazlitt, "The Late Mr. Horne Tooke", The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString —William Hazlitt, "Mr. Wordsworth", The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString —William Hazlitt, "Mr. Brougham—Sir F. Burdett", The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString —William Hazlitt, "Mr. Gifford", The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString —William Hazlitt, "Lord Eldon—Mr. Wilberforce", The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString —William Hazlitt, "Sir Walter Scott", The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString —William Hazlitt, "Mr. Jeffrey", The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString —William Hazlitt, "Mr. Coleridge", The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString —William Hazlitt, "Mr. Southey", The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString —William Hazlitt, "Mr. Canning", The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString —William Hazlitt, "On the Pleasure of Hating", The Plain Speaker

rdf:langString —William Hazlitt, "Rev. Mr. Irving", The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString —William Hazlitt, "Elia, and Geoffrey Crayon", The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString —William Hazlitt, "Jeremy Bentham", The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString —William Hazlitt, "The Drama, No. IV", The London Magazine, April 1820

rdf:langString —William Hazlitt, "Mr. Cobbett", The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString —William Hazlitt, "Mr. Malthus", The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString —William Hazlitt, "Mr. Campbell—Mr. Crabbe", The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString —William Hazlitt, "Lord Byron", The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString —William Hazlitt, "William Godwin", The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString —William Hazlitt, "Sir James Mackintosh", The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString —David Bromwich on Hazlitt's style, in Hazlitt: The Mind of a Critic

rdf:langString —Duncan Wu, William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man

rdf:langString —David Bromwich, Hazlitt: The Mind of a Critic

rdf:langString —John Kinnaird, William Hazlitt: Critic of Power

rdf:langString —The New Monthly Magazine, March 1825

rdf:langString —William Hazlitt, "Mr. T. Moore—Mr. Leigh Hunt", The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString The Spirit of the Age

rdf:langString first edition

rdf:langString The Spirit of the Age (full title The Spirit of the Age: Or, Contemporary Portraits) is a collection of character sketches by the early 19th century English essayist, literary critic, and social commentator William Hazlitt, portraying 25 men, mostly British, whom he believed to represent significant trends in the thought, literature, and politics of his time. The subjects include thinkers, social reformers, politicians, poets, essayists, and novelists, many of whom Hazlitt was personally acquainted with or had encountered. Originally appearing in English periodicals, mostly The New Monthly Magazine in 1824, the essays were collected with several others written for the purpose and published in book form in 1825. The Spirit of the Age was one of Hazlitt's most successful books. It is frequently judged to be his masterpiece, even "the crowning ornament of Hazlitt's career, and ... one of the lasting glories of nineteenth-century criticism." Hazlitt was also a painter and an art critic, yet no artists number among the subjects of these essays. His artistic and critical sensibility, however, infused his prose style—Hazlitt was later judged to be one of the greatest of English prose stylists as well—enabling his appreciation of portrait painting to help him bring his subjects to life. His experience as a literary, political, and social critic contributed to Hazlitt's solid understanding of his subjects' achievements, and his judgements of his contemporaries were later often deemed to have held good after nearly two centuries. The Spirit of the Age, despite its essays' uneven quality, has been generally agreed to provide "a vivid panorama of the age". Yet, missing an introductory or concluding chapter, and with few explicit references to any themes, it was for long also judged as lacking in coherence and hastily thrown together. More recently, critics have found in it a unity of design, with the themes emerging gradually, by implication, in the course of the essays and even supported by their grouping and presentation. Hazlitt also incorporated into the essays a vivid, detailed and personal, "in the moment" kind of portraiture that amounted to a new literary form and significantly anticipated modern journalism.