And certainly if you want to read about Kean, Hazlitt is your man. It has been said, over and over again, that it was good luck for both actor and critic that Hazlitt had just begun his theatrical work on the _Morning Chronicle_ when Kean made his first appearance as Shylock at Drury Lane. Hazlitt helped to make Kean’s reputation and Kean’s acting was an invaluable stimulant to Hazlitt’s critical faculties. It is said, by the way, that Kean was originally recommended to Hazlitt’s notice by his editor, Perry. Things of this sort may have happened in that weird time of a century ago, but the age of miracles is passed. Editors of daily newspapers in our time are not on the look-out for unrevealed histrionic genius. They have other fish to fry. But Perry seems to have been a most interfering editor. He plagued his critic with his own critical opinions. Hazlitt’s first “notice” in the _Chronicle_ was about Miss Stephens as Polly in _The Beggar’s Opera_. “When I got back, after the play” (note that he had meditated in advance his “next day’s criticism, trying to do all the justice I could to so interesting a subject. I was not a little proud of it by anticipation”—happy Hazlitt!) “Perry called out, with his cordial, grating voice, ‘Well, how did she do?’ and on my speaking in high terms, answered that ‘he had been to dine with his friend the Duke, that some conversation had passed on the subject, he was afraid it was not the thing, it was not the true _sostenuto_ style; but as I had written the article’ (holding my peroration on _The Beggar’s Opera_ carelessly in his hand), ‘it might pass.’... I had the satisfaction the next day to meet Miss Stephens coming out of the Editor’s room, who had been to thank him for his very flattering account of her.” That “carelessly” is a delicious touch, which will come home to every scribbler. But Perry and his friend the Duke and that glimpse of a petticoat whisking out of the editor’s room! What a queer, delightful, vanished newspaper-world! There were, however, even in those days, editors who did not interfere. Hazlitt was, for a brief period, dramatic critic of _The Times_ (his most notable contribution was his notice of Kemble’s retirement in _Coriolanus_, June 25th, 1817), and was evidently well treated, for in his preface to the “View” (1818) he advises “any one who has an ambition to write, and to write _his best_ in the periodical Press, to get, if he can, a position in _The Times_ newspaper, the editor of which is a man of business and not a man of letters. He may write there as long and as good articles as he can, without being turned out for it.” One can only account for Hazlitt’s singular ideal of an editor as Johnson accounted for an obscure passage in Pope, “Depend upon it, Sir, he wished to vex somebody.” Hazlitt only wanted to be disagreeable to Perry.