To this solitary outpost of civilisation came William Hazlitt, critic and essayist, during several years, for quietude. For four years, from 1808 to 1812, he and his wife lived in a cottage at West Winterslow, on the small income derived from her other cottage property there, supplemented by the sums the wayward Hazlitt earned fitfully by the practice of literature. Then they removed to London, where they disagreed, Hazlitt retiring to the ‘Hut’ in 1819, and leaving his wife in town. Nervous and irritable, he wanted quiet, nor can it be doubted that in this spot he found what he sought. He was cursed, according to the widely different beliefs of his friends, with ‘an ingrained selfishness,’ or ‘a morbid self-consciousness,’ and oil the downs he would walk, for the pleasure of having the neighbourhood all to himself, from forty to fifty miles a day. He wrote his _Winterslow_ essays here, and his _Napoleon_, for whom he had an almost insane reverence. The ‘diabolical scowl’ of Hazlitt when Napoleon or any other of his pet susceptibilities were abused must have been worth seeing. ‘Now,’ says a literary hero-hunter, who has visited ‘Winterslow Hut,’ as a place of pilgrimage,--‘now it is a desolate place, fallen into decay, and tenanted by a labouring man and his family, cultivating a small farm of some thirty acres, and barely able to make a living out of it. In winter two or three weeks will sometimes elapse without even a beggar or tramp or cart passing the door. On the ground floor, looking out upon a horse-pond, flanked by two old lime-trees, is a little parlour, which was the one probably used by Hazlitt as his sitting-room. At the other end of the house is a large empty room, formerly devoted to cock-fighting matches and singlestick combats. It was with a strange and eerie feeling that I contemplated this little parlour, and pictured to myself the many solitary evenings during which Hazlitt sat in it enjoying copious libations of his favourite tea (for during the last fifteen years of his life he never tasted alcoholic drinks of any kind) perhaps reading _Tom Jones_ for the tenth time, or enjoying [Sidenote: _A LITERARY RECLUSE_] [Illustration: ‘WINTERSLOW HUT.’] one of Congreve’s comedies, or Rousseau’s _Confessions_, or writing, in his large flowing hand, a dozen pages of the essay on _Persons one would Wish to have Seen_, or _On Living to One’s Self_. One cannot imagine any retreat more consonant with the feelings of this lonely thinker, during one of his periods of seclusion, than the out-of-the-world place in which I stood. In winter time it must have been desolate beyond description--on wild nights especially--“heaven’s chancel-vault” blind with sleet--the fierce wind sweeping down from the bare wolds around, and beating furiously against the doors and windows of the unsheltered hostelry.’