hates 'both mobs,' or, in other words, the great mass of the human race. He would sympathise with Coriolanus more easily than with the Tribunes. He laughs at the perfectibility of the species, and holds that 'all things move, not in progress but in a ceaseless round.' The glorious dream is fled: The radiance which was once so bright Is now for ever taken from our sight; and his only consolation is to live over in memory the sanguine times of his youth, before Napoleon had fallen and the Holy Alliance restored the divine right of kings; to cherish eternal regret for the hopes that have departed, and hatred and scorn equally enduring for those who blasted them. 'Give me back,' he exclaims, 'one single evening at Boxhill, after a stroll in the deep empurpled woods, before Bonaparte was yet beaten, with "wine of Attic taste," when wit, beauty, friendship presided at the board.' The personal blends with the political regret. Hazlitt, the politician, was soured. He fed his morbid egotism by indignantly chewing the cud of disappointment, and scornfully rejecting comfort. He quarrelled with his wife and with most of his friends, even with the gentle Lamb, till Lamb regained his affections by the brief quarrel with Southey. Certainly, he might call himself, with some plausibility, 'the king of good haters.' But, after all, Hazlitt's cynicism is the souring of a generous nature; and when we turn from the politician to the critic and the essayist, our admiration for his powers is less frequently jarred by annoyance at their wayward misuse. His egotism--for he is still an egotist--here takes a different shape. His criticism is not of the kind which is now most popular. He lived before the days of philosophers who talk about the organism and its environment, and of the connoisseurs who boast of an eclectic taste for all the delicate essences of art. He never thought of showing that a great writer was only the product of his time, race, and climate; and he had not learnt to use such terms of art as 'supreme,' 'gracious,' 'tender,' 'bitter,' and 'subtle,' in which a good deal of criticism now consists. Lamb, says Hazlitt, tried old authors 'on his palate as epicures taste olives;' and the delicacy of discrimination which makes the process enjoyable is perhaps the highest qualification of a good critic. Hazlitt's point of view was rather different, nor can we ascribe to him without qualification that exquisite appreciation of purely literary charm which is so rare and so often affected. Nobody, indeed, loved some authors more heartily or understood them better; his love is so hearty that he cannot preserve the true critical attitude. Instead of trying them on his palate, he swallows them greedily. His judgment of an author seems to depend upon two circumstances. He is determined in great measure by his private associations, and in part by his sympathy for the character of the writer. His interest in this last sense is, one