Dear Unknown Friends:

We begin here to serialize a lecture that is magnificent. It’s magnificent about its subject—literary criticism, art criticism—and magnificent about life. Eli Siegel gave this talk, Hazlitt Tells of Criticism, in 1970.

You’ll see early in the lecture a description of what a true critic is. But I’ll quote it now, for its clarity—and also for its charm and its complete lack of pretentiousness. Mr. Siegel said:

There have been some persons who have had the great responsibility, which they’ve also enjoyed, of wanting to see what was beautiful or good in this world and wanting to know why it was beautiful or good.

Central to Aesthetic Realism

Criticism is central to Aesthetic Realism. One can say that this philosophy arose from Eli Siegel’s respect and love for what authentic criticism is. His essay “The Scientific Criticism” was published in the Modern Quarterly in March 1923, when he was twenty. It begins with his giving this definition: “Criticism is that action of mind whose aim is to get the value of anything; and by value I mean size of power; and this power may be good or bad.”

Later, in Aesthetic Realism, Mr. Siegel did two tremendous things that no critic before him had done. 1) He showed definitively what it is that makes something beautiful or not beautiful. 2) He showed the inseparable relation between art and the life of every human being. Both achievements are present in outline in this principle: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”

For example, a good song, in no matter what style, is a oneness of thrust and nuance. We as people can feel that these opposites fight in us: we can feel that when we’re assertive, intense, we’re not thoughtful; and that when we’re gentle we’re not strong. The song is beautiful too because it’s continuous even as it changes. We can feel that the way we change from one state of mind to another does not have continuity with it; so we’re agitated and ashamed. We want to be like a good song.

Mr. Siegel also showed what it is that interferes with the desire to be a good critic—of art, people, happenings, oneself. Of course, not knowing enough is an interference with critical judgment. But the fundamental interference—and the most hurtful thing in everyone—is contempt. Contempt is the seeing of things and people in terms of whether they make us feel comfortable, important, superior. Contempt is utterly against the desire to know, to see truly what’s not oneself.

Why It Matters

Why does it matter for a person to go after being a good critic? Because that is really the very purpose of life itself! Our deepest desire, Aesthetic Realism shows, is “to like the world through knowing it.” We were born to value rightly. And as Mr. Siegel speaks here about William Hazlitt (1778-1830), we see that to be a good critic is a oneness of, yes, exactitude, carefulness—and also thrill, pleasure, delight. To value rightly is to like, really like, what is beautiful, have big feeling about it.

I have said elsewhere that I consider Eli Siegel the greatest of all critics. And I’ve given reasons why, as I’m sure I shall again. For now I’ll mention simply this: He had, always, the desire and ability to see justly, and enormous happiness in that seeing. He had a oneness of unsurpassed intellect and great feeling. Inseparable from these were his complete sincerity; his ease at one with passion; his ability to relate, gracefully, spontaneously, one writer or artist’s work to that of others; his humor, sometimes wild, that was part of a mighty seriousness; his utter good will.

I wish with all my heart that Hazlitt could have known and learned from him. I’m thankful with all my heart that I have.

—Ellen Reiss, Aesthetic Realism
Chair of Education

Hazlitt Tells of Criticism

By Eli Siegel

The subject of this talk is Hazlitt Tells of Criticism. By that, I don’t mean Hazlitt is writing about what criticism is, but rather that his life and all his writings taken together show what criticism is. He does show that somewhat in his writing, but I’d say his life and his activity in general do it even more notably.

There have been some persons who have had the great responsibility, which they’ve also enjoyed, of wanting to see what was beautiful or good in this world and wanting to know why it was beautiful or good. Most people have felt if they see enough that’s beautiful or pleasing, well, that’s sufficient. The desire to see why has not been as strong. There are two things one has to have in being a critic. One is to be just to something, which means that appreciation and accuracy are one thing. But the other is to be troubled in a most beautiful way about why something is good. That is one of the reasons good critics are fewer than good poets.

As I said, Hazlitt’s whole life is a telling of what criticism is. There are other people who can be seen that way, but I cannot think of a person who can serve better, through his or her life and also writing, the idea of criticism.

History Is There

Criticism has a history, and it (criticism) has been seen differently every ten years: there’s a different feeling about it. I’ll mention that the early neglect of Hazlitt has changed now into an intermittent sniping attack in about half the colleges of America. There’s something about Hazlitt that has annoyed the English faculty mind. Persons can conceal it, but the annoyance is there; and Hazlitt can annoy minds in general.*

Whether Hazlitt represented criticism in a true way is a subject of debate. However, I’m going to deal with the matter historically somewhat.

In September 1830 Hazlitt died, and the feeling that was present in England about him was partially a feeling of disagreeableness and a desire to put what he meant aside. He was looked upon as having manners that were not the best. It’s hard to explain this. You have to get into the feeling of the years from 1800 to 1830. I think Hazlitt was made to suffer because he was true to the idea of criticism. Then, the years from 1830 to 1860 were not exactly thriving as to a just seeing of him, and the years after weren’t thriving either.

One of the present-day attackers of Hazlitt, George Watson, in his book on English critics, quotes with relish an earlier disparagement of Hazlitt—by Leslie Stephen. The Stephen piece appeared in the 1870s in the Cornhill Magazine. It really was an attack though it seemed to be sober. At that time the value of Hazlitt was peering out, and Stephen was pretty effective in saying there wasn’t so much to Hazlitt that one should know. Meanwhile, Stephen was wrong—he didn’t know enough, didn’t feel enough, just plainly wasn’t good enough.

Then in 1887 George Saintsbury wrote an essay on Hazlitt for Macmillan’s Magazine. One can say that the place of Hazlitt, in the Romantic time and as a writer, can be seen as beginning with this essay. I have said that the critic who, on the whole, is the greatest in the world is George Saintsbury. But this essay of Saintsbury in itself is a wonderful study in the finding of something not so good and the finding of something good. That is, in it there’s the ability of a critic to be like an April or late March day—to see the cold and the warmth, the light and the dark, to present simultaneously the lights and shadows, lesses and mores, failures and successes, absences and presences, with a certain accurate love.

And there’s color in the criticism itself, a sense of hue and tint and nuance that is criticism—because, while criticism goes for showing good and bad, good and bad are most variegated fabrics. Criticism shows the subtlety of good and bad, the way they can meet, the way, for example, there can be a slight rent on a wonderful silk dress, and a cotton dress not so good has no defect. There are all kinds of defects and goodnesses, many more than people have surmised.

This essay about Hazlitt is one of the best works of Saintsbury, and it has a brilliant inconclusiveness about it while something is said that is conclusive. That is, Saintsbury does say definitely that, as far as he can see, Hazlitt is the greatest of all English critics. That was astounding for 1887. It’s still astounding.

I’m going to deal with this essay because of what it says about Hazlitt and also because it shows the quality of Saintsbury. It gives evidence for what I’ve said: that he is one of the great writers of the world and the greatest critic, all in all. He is greater than Hazlitt, but I don’t think Saintsbury would have been without Hazlitt. I’m reading from the essay as it appeared in book form, in Saintsbury’s Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 (London, 1890).

Hazlitt Had This

A thing we see about Hazlitt is that double intensity. When you go after beauty sincerely, a world that is good, you have to be hit hard by the things that are other than beautiful, and Hazlitt is one of the angry and peevish people of the world. But his peevishness and anger are valuable. Even the persons who write against him say that his bad temper didn’t come from something small. We have to distinguish between anger that comes from a disappointing universe and anger that comes from a discontented ego. The two can be mixed up.

There’s a sentence of Saintsbury that has a lot in it. In fact, it’s like some of Hazlitt’s: it jumps around in a valuable and accurate way, with rhythm. He says of Hazlitt:

He was himself the son of a Unitarian minister, was born at Maidstone in 1778, accompanied his parents as a very little boy to America, but passed the greater part of his youth at Wem in Shropshire, where the interview with Coleridge, which decided his fate, took place.

If you look at that sentence you’ll find a lot there: it’s like having five important houses on a little street.

Hazlitt suffered a great deal. There’s no doubt of it. Other people have suffered, but the cause of Hazlitt’s suffering was rather good. His confusion was high class. Saintsbury says:

He was one of those men, such as an extreme devotion to literature now and then breeds, who, by the intensity of their enjoyment of quite commonplace delights—a face passed in the street, a sunset, a quiet hour of reflection, even a well-cooked meal—make up for the suffering of not wholly commonplace woes.

It happens that Hazlitt, along with writing of literature, also wrote about food, about tennis, about acting, painting, the dance (somewhat). The one art he didn’t write much about was music. But mainly, if it interested humanity it interested him. It interested him in such a way that you could see it did something to him. There were tingle and bounce and permanence and depth. A sentence of Hazlitt that, apparently, he did use when he was dying is notable: “Well, I’ve had a happy life.”

Saintsbury is somewhat like Hazlitt in his enjoyment. For instance, Saintsbury wrote a book on wines, Notes on a Cellar Book. There is in Saintsbury the saying that a pleasure seen as of the world is related to every other pleasure and is divine. —He says of Hazlitt:

I do not know whether even the joy of literary battle did not overweigh the pain of the dishonest wounds which he received from illiberal adversaries. I think that he had a happy life, and I am glad that he had.

I like Saintsbury for saying that.

Then, there is Saintsbury at his noblest:

For he was in literature a great man. I am myself disposed to hold that, for all his accesses of hopelessly uncritical prejudice, he was the greatest critic that England has yet produced; and there are some who hold (though I do not agree with them) that he was even greater as a miscellaneous essayist than as a critic.

The thing to notice in Hazlitt’s style is the attempt to make the mental something that thumps, that’s physical, that has the energy of a child running around the room. You can see that very often in Hazlitt; sometimes not—Hazlitt can lag too.

Saintsbury is very annoyed with some of Hazlitt’s statements. Saintsbury imagined that he himself was nothing but a Tory. Well, he’s right in so many things that I grant George Saintsbury the right to be wrong in various conspicuous and misleading fashions. He says of Hazlitt (and the “idol” is Napoleon):

The Duke of Wellington he always speaks of as a brainless noodle, forgetting apparently that the description does not make his idol’s defeat more creditable to the vanquished.

Saintsbury’s right. If the Duke of Wellington is a brainless noodle, what can be surmised about Napoleon?

And we have this:

But in Hazlitt you may find something of almost everything, except the finer kinds of wit and humour.

That is quite true. There’s a certain kind of wit and humor in Hazlitt, and wit and humor, like criticism, are of ever so many kinds. Saintsbury continues:

Almost every other grace of matter and form that can be found in prose may be found at times in his. He is generally thought of as, and for the most part is, a rather plain and straightforward writer….Yet most of the fine writing of these latter days is but as crumpled tarlatan [a kind of stiff muslin] to brocaded satin beside the passage on Coleridge in the English Poets, or the description of Winterslow and its neighborhood in the “Farewell to Essay-writing,” or “On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin” in the Table-Talk.

There are sentences of Hazlitt that seem to be circling delicately around sunsets and also forests.

To See What Is Good

Saintsbury writes about the desire in Hazlitt to see what is good, which is such a lovely thing. One way of criticizing oneself is how much is one interested in seeing what is good or beautiful in relation to what seems to be commodious or comfortable for oneself. He says:

There are always present Hazlitt’s enthusiastic appreciation of what is good in letters, his combination of gusto with sound theory as to what is excellent in prose and verse, his felicitous method of expression, and the acuteness that kept him from that excessive and paradoxical admiration which both Lamb and Coleridge affected.

So Hazlitt is more enthusiastic than even Lamb and Coleridge, and at the same time he is more careful. In Hazlitt there is this gusto, this largeness of feeling—speed, energy, intensity of feeling. Such a thing can be seen, of course, in the history of feeling. I think of the 18th-century man of France who is very much like Hazlitt: Denis Diderot, in his writings about art and literature. Diderot seemed to be saying, This universe must be able to surprise me even more than it already has—there are so many things in it!

The Novel Was Thought of Too

There’s the way Hazlitt saw the novel—which was different from how his contemporaries saw. Coleridge, for instance, has statements about novelists in his Table Talk, and he seems even to have read Marryat. He read Scott, Cervantes, Defoe. Yet he wasn’t too interested in the novel. Hazlitt, in his Lectures on the English Comic Writers, does write about novelists, and says things of liveliness and importance about them. That is, he writes about Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and Richardson, the 18th-century immortal quartet. Saintsbury says:

His chapter on the English novelists (that is to say, those of the last century) is perhaps the best thing ever written on the subject; and is particularly valuable nowadays when there is a certain tendency to undervalue Smollett in order to exalt Fielding, who certainly needs no such illegitimate and uncritical leverage.

We have the picture of Saintsbury in 1887 looking to see what undervaluing is going on.

Then there’s his statement about a quality present in a real critic. It had been said of Burke that even when he was wrong he was more valuable than when other people were right. And this is said of Hazlitt by Saintsbury:

His very aberrations are often more instructive than other men’s right-goings; and if he sometimes fails to detect or acknowledge a beauty, he never praises a defect.

Saintsbury comments too on Hazlitt’s essays. (There is, for instance, “On a Sun-Dial,” and we have that angry person so meditative in it.) Then Saintsbury says:

The fact is that he was a born man of letters, and that he could not help turning whatsoever he touched into literature, whether it was criticism on books or on pictures, a fight or a supper, a game at marbles, a political diatribe, or the report of a literary conversation.

Hazlitt represents the vicissitudes of the human mind, and the variety of his response to things is amazing.