William Hazlitt, the Word Juggler

The more a man writes, the more he can write.
(Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, 1820)

The only impeccable writers are those that never wrote.
("On the Aristocracy of Letters," Table Talk, Essays on Men and Manners, 1821)

Unfortunately, William Hazlitt's essays are unlikely to appear on anybody's list of Hot Summer Reads this year. Granted, the fellow can be grumpy at times and a mite too sure of himself. On top of that, he hasn't published anything new since 1830.

But in our age of hype, hooey, and balderdash, Hazlitt's plain speaker still provides some of the best table talk in town--caustic, impassioned, genuinely interesting. And in that questionable corner where journalism bumps up against literature, Hazlitt's style is one of the finest and fiercest in the language.

Ronald Blythe has characterized Hazlitt as "the word-juggler who never misses: his almost casual use of ornament, epigram, and fancy is hypnotic." Another notable English essayist, Virginia Woolf, judged that Hazlitt's "essays are emphatically himself," and even the titles of some of those essays betray his distinctive character: "On the Connection between Toad-Eaters and Tyrants," "On Cant and Hypocrisy," "On Disagreeable People," and "On the Pleasure of Hating."

Hazlitt is a writer worth listening to. If you have a moment, read aloud this opening paragraph from his essay "Why Distant Objects Please":

Distant objects please, because, in the first place, they imply an idea of space and magnitude, and because not being obtruded too close upon the eye, we clothe them with the indistinct and airy colours of fancy. In looking at the misty mountain-tops that bound the horizon, the mind is as it were conscious of all the conceivable objects and interests that lie between; we imagine all sort of adventures in the interim; strain our hopes and wishes to reach the air-drawn circle, or to "descry new lands, rivers, and mountains," stretching far beyond it: our feelings, carried out of themselves, lose their grossness and their husk, are rarefied, expanded, melt into softness and brighten into beauty, turning to ethereal mould, sky-tinctured. We drink the air before us, and borrow a more refined existence from objects that hover on the brink of nothing. Where the landscape fades from the dull sight, we fill the thin, viewless space with shapes of unknown good, and tinge the hazy prospect with hopes and wishes and more charming fears.

But you needn't stop there. You'll find the rest of the essay in Table-Talk: Essays On Men And Manners (1822), which appears complete at Peter Landry's wonderful website, Bluepete.

Also worth reading (and listening to) are Hazlitt's observations on the nature of writing. In the essay "On the Difference Between Writing and Speaking," he argues that "few persons can be found who speak and write equally well." An expert speaker is more immediately impressive--and invariably shallow; the writer, by contrast, is "thrown back . . . on the severer researches of thought and study":

The writer must be original, or he is nothing. He is not to take up with ready-made goods; for he has time allowed him to create his own materials, to make novel combinations of thought and fancy, to contend with unforeseen difficulties of style and execution, while we look on, and admire the growing work in secret and at leisure. There is a degree of finishing as well as of solid strength in writing which is not to be got at every day, and we can wait for perfection.

Finally, let me recommend a piece that all writers should slip into their rucksacks (or download into their PDAs) as they head off to the beach this summer: "On Familiar Style," in which Hazlitt makes clear, through his own example, what it means to "write naturally."

Writers on Writing

• "On Familiar Style," by William Hazlitt
• Kurt Vonnegut on Writing with Style
• Writers on Writing

Image: William Hazlitt (1778-1830), Selected Writings (Oxford University Press, 1999)