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.^[1] It is frequently judged to be his masterpiece,^[2] even "the crowning ornament of Hazlitt's career, and ... one of the lasting glories of nineteenth-century criticism."^[3] 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 well^[4]—enabling his appreciation of portrait painting to help him bring his subjects to life.^[5] 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.^[6]
The Spirit of the Age, despite its essays' uneven quality, has been generally agreed to provide "a vivid panorama of the age".^[7] 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.^[8] 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.^[9]

Background[edit]

Preparation[edit]

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,^[10] immersing him in the spirit of the previous age, and a generation later helping him understand changes he had observed in British society.^[11] He was befriended in his early years by the poets Wordsworth and Coleridge,^[12] who at that time shared his radical thinking, and soon he entered the circle of reformist philosopher William Godwin.^[13] His brother John was also responsible for helping him connect with other like-minded souls,^[14] leading him to the center 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 Lamb^[15] and, some time afterward, Leigh Hunt.^[16]

Although Hazlitt had aimed at a career in philosophy, he was unable to make a living by it.^[14] 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.)^[17] After having practised for a while as an artist^[18] (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),^[5] he found work as a political reporter, which exposed him to the major politicians and issues of the day.^[19]

Hazlitt followed this by many years as a literary, art, and theatre critic, at which he enjoyed some success.^[20] He was subsequently beset by numerous personal problems, including a failed marriage, illness,^[21] insolvency,^[22] a disastrous love entanglement that led to a mental breakdown,^[23] and scurrilous attacks by political conservatives, many of them fueled by his indiscreet publication of Liber Amoris, a thinly disguised autobiographical account of his love affair.^[24] English society was becoming increasingly prudish,^[25] the ensuing scandal effectively destroyed his reputation, and he found it harder than ever to earn a living.^[26] He married a second time. Consequently, more than ever in need of money,^[27] he was forced to churn out article after article for the periodical press.

"The Spirits of the Age"[edit]

Hazlitt had always been adept at writing character sketches.^[28] His first was incorporated into Free Thoughts on Public Affairs, written in 1806, when he was scarcely 28 years old.^[29] 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).^[30]

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".^[28] 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".^[28]

Publication[edit]

William Hazlitt in 1825 (engraving derived from a chalk sketch by William Bewick).

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,^[31] 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 and revised but otherwise similar to the first edition. No further editions would appear in Hazlitt's lifetime.^[32]

Editions[edit]

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.^[33]

In the book first published in January of the following year, 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.^[32] 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.^[34]

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),^[34] "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),^[35] "Mr. Cobbett" (which had first appeared in Hazlitt's book Table-Talk in 1821),^[32] 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".^[36]

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 completed the book.^[32]

Essays[edit]

The order of the following accounts of the essays in the book follows that of the second English edition.

Jeremy Bentham[edit]

See also: Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) was an English philosopher, jurist, and social and legislative reformer. He was a major proponent of Utilitarianism, based on the idea of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number", which he was the first to systematise, introducing it as the "principle of utility".^[37] Hazlitt's link with Bentham was unusual, as Bentham was his landlord and lived close by.^[38] Bentham would sometimes take his exercise in his garden, which was visible from Hazlitt's window; yet the two were not personally acquainted.^[39] Still, what Hazlitt observed enabled him to interweave personal observations into his account of the older man.^[40]

Jeremy Bentham by Henry William Pickersgill, detail

"His works have been translated into French.
They ought to be translated into English."

—William Hazlitt, "Jeremy Bentham", The Spirit of the Age

Bentham was a representative of the reformist element of the time. Yet, also symptomatic of "the spirit of the age"—and the note Hazlitt strikes on the opening of his sketch—was the fact that Bentham had only a small following in England, yet enjoyed respectful celebrity in nations half a world away. "The people of Westminster, where he lives, hardly dream of such a person ...."^[41] "His name is little known in England, better in Europe, best of all in the plains of Chili and the mines of Mexico."^[41]

Hazlitt notes Bentham's persistent unity of purpose, "intent only on his grand scheme of Utility .... [r]egarding the people about him no more than the flies of a summer. He meditates the coming age .... he is a beneficent spirit, prying into the universe ...."^[42]

But Hazlitt soon qualifies his admiring tone. First, he cautions against mistaking Bentham for the originator of the theory of utility; rather, "his merit is, that he has brought all the objections and arguments, more distinctly labelled and ticketed, under this one head, and made a more constant and explicit reference to it at every step of his progress, than any other writer."^[43]

As Bentham's thinking gained complexity, his style, unfortunately, deteriorated. "It is a barbarous philosophical jargon" even though it "has a great deal of acuteness and meaning in it, which you would be glad to pick out if you could. ... His works have been translated into French", quips Hazlitt. "They ought to be translated into English."^[44]

Bentham's refined and elaborated logic fails, in Hazlitt's assessment, to take into account the complexities of human nature.^[45] In his attempt to reform mankind by reasoning, "he has not allowed for the wind ". Man is far from entirely "a logical animal", Hazlitt argues.^[43] Bentham bases his efforts to reform criminals on the fact that "'all men act from calculation'". Yet, Hazlitt observes, "it is of the very essence of crime to disregard consequences both to ourselves and others."^[46]

Hazlitt proceeds to contrast in greater detail the realities of human nature with Bentham's benevolent attempts to manipulate it. Bentham would observe and attempt to alter the behavior of a criminal by placing him in a "Panopticon, that is, a sort of circular prison, with open cells, like a glass bee-hive."^[47] When the offender is freed from its restraints, however, Hazlitt questions whether it is at all likely he will maintain the altered behavior that had seemed so amenable to change. "Will the convert to the great principle of Utility work when he was from under Mr. Bentham's eye, because he was forced to work when under it? ... Will he not steal, now that his hands are untied? ... The charm of criminal life ... consists in liberty, in hardship, in danger, and in the contempt of death, in one word, in extraordinary excitement".^[47]

Panopticon

Further, there is a flaw in Bentham's endlessly elaborating on his single idea of utility. His "method of reasoning" is "comprehensive ..." but it "includes every thing alike. It is rather like an inventory, than a valuation of different arguments."^[48] Effective argument needs more coloring. "By aiming at too much ... it loses its elasticity and vigour".^[49] Hazlitt also objects to Bentham's considering "every pleasure" as "equally a good".^[43] This is not so, "for all pleasure does not equally bear reflecting on." Even if we take Bentham's reasoning as presenting "the whole truth", human nature is incapable of acting solely upon such grounds, "needing helps and stages in its progress" to "bring it into a tolerable harmony with the universe."^[49]

In the manner of later journalists^[50] Hazlitt weaves into his criticism of the philosopher's ideas an account of Bentham the man. True to his principles, "Mr. Bentham, in private life, is an amiable and exemplary character", of regular habits, and with childlike characteristics, despite his advanced age. In appearance, he is like a cross between Charles Fox and Benjamin Franklin,^[40] "a singular mixture of boyish simplicity and the venerableness of age."^[51] He has no taste for poetry, but relaxes by playing the organ. "He turns wooden utensils in a lathe for exercise, and fancies he can turn men in the same manner."^[52]

A century and a half later, critic Roy Park acclaimed "Hazlitt's criticism of Bentham and Utilitarianism" here and in other essays as constituting "the first sustained critique of dogmatic Utilitarianism."^[53]