The Spirit of the Age (full title The Spirit of the Age: Or, Contemporary Portraits) is a collection of character sketches by the early 19th century English essayist, literary critic, and social commentator William Hazlitt, portraying 25 men, mostly British, whom he believed to represent significant trends in the thought, literature, and politics of his time. The subjects include thinkers, social reformers, politicians, poets, essayists, and novelists, many of whom Hazlitt was personally acquainted with or had encountered. Originally appearing in English periodicals, mostly The New Monthly Magazine in 1824, the essays were collected with several others written for the purpose and published in book form in 1825.
The Spirit of the Age was one of Hazlitt's most successful books.Wardle 1971, pp. 406–7. It is frequently judged to be his masterpiece,Park 1971, p. 204; Wu 2008, pp. 344, 360. even "the crowning ornament of Hazlitt's career, and ... one of the lasting glories of nineteenth-century criticism."Kinnaird 1978, p. 301. Hazlitt was also a painter and an art critic, yet no artists number among the subjects of these essays. His artistic and critical sensibility, however, infused his prose style—Hazlitt was later judged to be one of the greatest of English prose stylists as wellGrayling 2000, p. 349.—enabling his appreciation of portrait painting to help him bring his subjects to life.Paulin 1998, pp. 234–35; p. 266: "Hazlitt's vast knowledge of the visual arts helps to structure the individual portraits in The Spirit of the Age." His experience as a literary, political, and social critic contributed to Hazlitt's solid understanding of his subjects' achievements, and his judgements of his contemporaries were later often deemed to have held good after nearly two centuries.Wardle 1971, p. 503.
The Spirit of the Age, despite its essays' uneven quality, has been generally agreed to provide "a vivid panorama of the age".Wardle 1971, p. 406; Kinnaird 1978, pp. 301–2. Yet, missing an introductory or concluding chapter, and with few explicit references to any themes, it was for long also judged as lacking in coherence and hastily thrown together.Kinnaird 1978, pp. 301–2. More recently, critics have found in it a unity of design, with the themes emerging gradually, by implication, in the course of the essays and even supported by their grouping and presentation.Park 1971, pp. 213–15: "The Spirit of the Age can no longer be regarded as it often has been in the past ... as a series of perceptive but disparate and impressionistic sketches .... His conception ... emerges powerfully but indirectly through the massing of particulars .... What appears to be a collection of detached portraits is converted into an historical painting of an age"; Kinnaird 1978, pp. 301–7; Paulin 1998, p. 237: "What he is aiming for is an expressive flow ... which carries the reader along .... The momentum of his prose aims at a totally unified composition ..." Hazlitt also incorporated into the essays a vivid, detailed and personal, "in the moment" kind of portraiture that amounted to a new literary form and significantly anticipated modern journalism.Kinnaird 1978, pp. 302, 411; Paulin 1998, p. 323; Grayling 2000, p. 315.
Background
Preparation
Hazlitt was well prepared to write The Spirit of the Age. Hackney College, where he studied for two years, was known for fostering radical ideas,Paulin 1998, pp. 10–12. immersing him in the spirit of the previous age, and a generation later helping him understand changes he had observed in British society. He was befriended in his early years by the poets Wordsworth and Coleridge,Wu 2008, pp. 1–19. who at that time shared his radical thinking, and soon he entered the circle of reformist philosopher William Godwin.There had, however, been a previous family connection with Godwin. Grayling 2000, pp. 34–35. His brother John was also responsible for helping him connect with other like-minded souls,Wu 2008, p. 104. leading him to the centre of London intellectual culture, where he met others who, years later, along with Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Godwin, would be brought to life in this book, particularly Charles LambWu 2008, pp. 86–87. and, some time afterward, Leigh Hunt.Wu 2008, p. 151.
Although Hazlitt had aimed at a career in philosophy, he was unable to make a living by it. His studies and extensive thinking about the problems of the day, however, provided a basis for judging contemporary thinkers. (He had already begun, before he was thirty, with an extensive critique of Malthus's theory of population.)Grayling 2000, pp. 109–16. After having practised for a while as an artistWu 2008, p. 72. (a major part of his background that entered into the making of this book not in the selection of its content but as it helped inform his critical sensibility and his writing style),Roy Park, in the chapter "The Painter as Critic", and elsewhere, explores this idea at length. See Park 1971, pp. 138–58, 161; also Paulin 1998, pp. 234–35. he found work as a political reporter, which exposed him to the major politicians and issues of the day.Wu 2008, p.144.
Hazlitt followed this by many years as a literary, art, and theatre critic, at which he enjoyed some success.Jones 1989, pp. 132–60, 165, 279. He was subsequently beset by numerous personal problems, including a failed marriage, illness,Wardle 1971, pp. 209, 224, 226, 295, 312. insolvency,Wu 2008, pp. 332–33. a disastrous love entanglement that led to a mental breakdown,Cook 2007. and scurrilous attacks by political conservatives, many of them fuelled by his indiscreet publication of Liber Amoris, a thinly disguised autobiographical account of his love affair.Cook 2007, p. 206. English society was becoming increasingly prudish,Wilson 2007, pp. ix–x, 386, 388. the ensuing scandal effectively destroyed his reputation, and he found it harder than ever to earn a living.Wu 2008, p. 341. He married a second time. Consequently, more than ever in need of money,Wu 2008, p. 350. he was forced to churn out article after article for the periodical press.
"The Spirits of the Age"
Hazlitt had always been adept at writing character sketches.Jones 1989, p. 349. His first was incorporated into Free Thoughts on Public Affairs, written in 1806, when he was scarcely 28 years old.Wu 2008, p. 106. Pleased with this effort, he reprinted it three times as "Character of the Late Mr. Pitt", in The Eloquence of the British Senate (1807), in The Round Table (1817), and finally in Political Essays (1819).Noted by biographer and scholar P. P. Howe in Hazlitt 1930, vol. 11, p. 383.
Another favourite of his own was "Character of Mr. Cobbett", which first appeared in Table-Talk in 1821 and was later incorporated into The Spirit of the Age. Following this proclivity, toward the end of 1823 Hazlitt developed the idea of writing "a series of 'characters' of men who were typical of the age". The first of these articles appeared in the January 1824 issue of The New Monthly Magazine, under the series title "The Spirits of the Age".
Publication
Four more articles appeared in the series, and then Hazlitt prepared numerous others with the goal of collecting them into a book. After he had left England for a tour of the continent with his wife, that book, bearing the title The Spirit of the Age: Or Contemporary Portraits, was published in London on 11 January 1825,Some advance copies may have been issued in late 1824. Kinnaird 1978, p. 303. by Henry Colburn, and printed by S. and R. Bentley. In Paris, Hazlitt arranged to have an edition, with a somewhat different selection and ordering of articles, published there by A. & W. Galignani. Unlike either English edition, this one bore his name on the title page. Finally, later in the same year, Colburn brought out the second English edition, with contents slightly augmented, revised, and rearranged but in many respects similar to the first edition. No further editions would appear in Hazlitt's lifetime.P. P. Howe, in Hazlitt 1930, vol. 11, p. 2.
Editions
Four of the essays that made it into the first edition of The Spirit of the Age, plus part of another, had appeared, without authorial attribution, in the series "The Spirits of the Age", in the following order: "Jeremy Bentham", "Rev. Mr. Irving", "The Late Mr. Horne Tooke", "Sir Walter Scott", and "Lord Eldon", in The New Monthly Magazine for 1824 in the January, February, March, April, and July issues, respectively.P. P. Howe, in Hazlitt 1930, vol. 11, pp. 323, 332, 333, 344.
In the book first published in January 1825, these essays, with much additional material, appeared as follows: "Jeremy Bentham", "William Godwin", "Mr. Coleridge", "Rev. Mr. Irving", "The Late Mr. Horne Tooke", "Sir Walter Scott", "Lord Byron", "Mr. Campbell—Mr. Crabbe", "Sir James Mackintosh", "Mr. Wordsworth", "Mr. Malthus", "Mr. Gifford", "Mr. Jeffrey", "Mr. Brougham—Sir F. Burdett", "Lord Eldon—Mr. Wilberforce", "Mr. Southey", "Mr. T. Moore—Mr. Leigh Hunt", and "Elia—Geoffrey Crayon". An untitled section characterising James Sheridan Knowles concludes the book. A portion of "Mr. Campbell—Mr. Crabbe" was adapted from an essay Hazlitt contributed (on Crabbe alone) to the series "Living Authors" in The London Magazine, "No. V" in the May 1821 issue.P. P. Howe, in Hazlitt 1930, vol. 11, p. 346.
Despite the closeness in the ordering of the contents of the first and second English editions, there are numerous differences between them, and even more between them and the Paris edition that appeared in between. The Paris edition, the only one to credit Hazlitt as the author, omitted some material and added some. The essays (in order) were as follows: "Lord Byron", "Sir Walter Scott", "Mr. Coleridge", "Mr. Southey", "Mr. Wordsworth", "Mr. Campbell and Mr. Crabbe" (the portion on Campbell was here claimed by Hazlitt to be "by a friend", though he wrote it himself), "Jeremy Bentham", "William Godwin", "Rev. Mr. Irving", "The Late Mr. Horne Tooke", "Sir James Mackintosh", "Mr. Malthus", "Mr. Gifford", "Mr. Jeffrey", "Mr. Brougham—Sir F. Burdett", "Lord Eldon and Mr. Wilberforce", "Mr. Canning" (brought in from the 11 July 1824 issue of The Examiner, where it bore the title "Character of Mr. Canning", this essay appeared only in the Paris edition),P. P. Howe, in Hazlitt 1930, vol. 11, pp. 2, 345. "Mr. Cobbett" (which had first appeared in Hazlitt's book Table-Talk in 1821), and "Elia". This time the book concludes with two untitled sections, the first on "Mr. Leigh Hunt" (as shown in the page header), the second again on Knowles, with the page header reading "Mr. Knowles".Hazlitt 1825.
Finally, later in 1825, the second English edition was brought out (again, anonymously). There, the essays were "Jeremy Bentham", "William Godwin", "Mr. Coleridge", "Rev. Mr. Irving", "The Late Mr. Horne Tooke", "Sir Walter Scott", "Lord Byron", "Mr. Southey", "Mr. Wordsworth", "Sir James Mackintosh", "Mr. Malthus", "Mr. Gifford", "Mr. Jeffrey", "Mr. Brougham—Sir F. Burdett", "Lord Eldon—Mr. Wilberforce", "Mr. Cobbett", "Mr. Campbell and Mr. Crabbe", "Mr. T. Moore—Mr. Leigh Hunt", and "Elia, and Geoffrey Crayon". Again, an account of Knowles completes the book.
Essays
The order of the following accounts of the essays in the book follows that of the second English edition. (The essay on George Canning, however, appeared only in the Paris edition.)
Jeremy Bentham