Hazlitt on English Literature: An Introduction to the Appreciation of LiteratureHazlitt, William
History
Hazlitt on English Literature: An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature
Hazlitt, William
English literature -- History and criticism
found the way into his heart: no sound that does not awaken the memory of
other years--
"To him the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
The daisy looks up to him with sparkling eye as an old acquaintance: the
cuckoo haunts him with sounds of early youth not to be expressed: a
linnet's nest startles him with boyish delight: an old withered thorn is
weighed down with a heap of recollections: a grey cloak, seen on some wild
moor, torn by the wind, or drenched in the rain, afterwards becomes an
object of imagination to him: even the lichens on the rock have a life and
being in his thoughts. He has described all these objects in a way and
with an intensity of feeling that no one else had done before him, and has
given a new view or aspect of nature. He is in this sense the most
original poet now living, and the one whose writings could the least be
spared: for they have no substitute elsewhere. The vulgar do not read
them, the learned, who see all things through books, do not understand
them, the great despise, the fashionable may ridicule them: but the author
has created himself an interest in the heart of the retired and lonely
student of nature, which can never die. Persons of this class will still
continue to feel what he has felt: he has expressed what they might in
vain wish to express, except with glistening eye and faultering tongue!
There is a lofty philosophic tone, a thoughtful humanity, infused into his
pastoral vein. Remote from the passions and events of the great world, he
has communicated interest and dignity to the primal movements of the heart
of man, and ingrafted his own conscious reflections on the casual thoughts
of hinds and shepherds. Nursed amidst the grandeur of mountain scenery, he
has stooped to have a nearer view of the daisy under his feet, or plucked
a branch of white-thorn from the spray: but in describing it, his mind
seems imbued with the majesty and solemnity of the objects around him--the
tall rock lifts its head in the erectness of his spirit; the cataract
roars in the sound of his verse; and in its dim and mysterious meaning,
the mists seem to gather in the hollows of Helvellyn, and the forked
Skiddaw hovers in the distance. There is little mention of mountainous
scenery in Mr. Wordsworth's poetry; but by internal evidence one might be
almost sure that it is written in a mountainous country, from its
bareness, its simplicity, its loftiness, and its depth!
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