On the Hazards of Ignoring Hazlitt

     This Guardian article is better than 16 years-old. It concerns William Hazlitt, the English-Irish polemicist who, like Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt and Charles Hamilton Reynolds, decades ago provided merely a marginal presence in my youthful studies in the 70's & 80's in the life & work of John Keats that accounted for the bulk of my English literature scholarship in my late teens-early 20's. Reading this old article from 16+ years ago was, in a way, almost like a homecoming for me. Like a tragically huge number of us, I'd neglected Hazlitt whose star has faded in proximity to the brilliance of Keats' own.
     In other words, Hazlitt had been relegated by me and many others as a mere supporting player loitering in the peripheries of the continually tragic parlor play of Keats' own short life. But back in his day, Hazlitt was certainly a major mover and shaker in political polemics and was, for just reasons, simultaneously attacked and feared by the far right wing extremists of his own day (Think of Michael Moore being pilloried by Breitbart and you'll get the picture). While his famous friend Keats was not overly concerned with politics, the two men and those in their social circle certainly shared the same political sensibilities and instincts.
      This article reacquainted me with Hazlitt's work and what he'd stood for his entire life. Along with Shelley, he was one of the arch liberals of his day, an unapologetic and often savage critic of the powerful and pompous, the Hunter S. Thompson of his day and age. Hazlitt, it's very safe to say (He famously thought British social reformer and fellow Unitarian Jeremy Bentham, on hearing he'd been translated into French, should've also been translated into English), would've had a field day with Trump.

      Exactly 200 years ago in 1819, the same year as his friend Keats' annus mirabilis, Hazlitt published the simply-titled Political Essays (available on Amazon for a mere .99¢- I have a copy on my Kindle device) and in it (at 39% in) is a rare, neglected gem that has recently and thankfully been resurrected, “The Times: On the Connexion between Toad-Eaters and Tyrants.”
     Speaking of the great essayist Edmund Burke, who'd inveighed against the French Revolution that Hazlitt and his Romantic circle adored as much they had the Renaissance, this is what Hazlitt wrote that is eerily reminiscent of what we're seeing today (edits and emphasis mine):

(H)e succeeded, because there were others like himself, ready to sacrifice every manly and generous principle to the morbid, sickly, effeminate, little, selfish, irritable, dirty spirit of authorship. Not only did such persons, according to Mr. Coleridge’s valuable and competent testimony... make the distinction between Atheism and Religion a mere stalking-horse for the indulgence of their idle vanity, but they made the other questions of Liberty and Slavery, of the Rights of Man, or the Divine Right of Kings to rule millions of men as their Slaves for ever, they made these vital and paramount questions (which whoever wilfully and knowingly compromises, is a traitor to himself and his species), subordinate to the low, whiffling, contemptible gratification of their literary jealousy. We shall not go over the painful list of instances; neither can we forget them. But they all or almost all contrived to sneak over one by one to the side on which “empty praise or solid pudding” was to be got; they could not live without the smiles of the great (not they), nor provide for an increasing establishment without a loss of character... (T)hey chose rather to prostitute their pens to the mock-heroic defence of the most bare-faced of all mummeries, the pretended alliance of kings and people! We told them how it would be, if they succeeded; it has turned out just as we said; and a pretty figure do these companions of Ulysses... these gaping converts to despotism, these well-fed victims of the charms of the Bourbons, now make, nestling under their laurels in the stye of Corruption, and sunk in torpid repose... in lazy sinecures and good warm births! Such is the history and mystery of literary patriotism and prostitution for the last twenty years.—Power is subject to none of these disadvantages. It is one and indivisible; it is self-centered, self-willed, incorrigible, inaccessible to temptation or entreaty; interest is on its side, passion is on its side, prejudice is on its side, the name of religion is on its side...

     The Times, it ought to be noted for those of you who aren't English literary scholars, was the biggest right wing organ of its time, the early 19th century's version of Fox "News" that never saw a Tory politician or policy it didn't grovel to extol. Hazlitt himself was a favorite target of the Times. And Hazlitt was the kind of guy who led with his chin and welcomed a fight and the chance to defend his principles.
     One does not have to squint very hard to see parallels to what passes for the political literary set these days, especially on the seedy side of the tracks and toad-eaters in Trump's own rapidly shriveling inner circle, the hood ornament issues of religion and atheism by the politically opportunistic. And indeed, we've seen countless instances of hacks in the fields of jurisprudence, economics, journalism, etc. being given sinecures that used to be important positions, hacks who are legendarily, vastly and ludicrously unsuited to these positions that now serve but one single, painfully simple purpose- Protecting the despot now squatting in the Oval Office and enacting his corporate-friendly agenda.
     Hazlitt's essay not only brilliantly deconstructs the authoritarian mindset that worships early 19th century power regardless of how corrupt it is, it stands up very well to the pitiless test of time in explaining Trump's inexplicably (to those of us in the sanity-based community) enduring popularity even as he nudges America closer to full-throated fascism, a socio-political concept the English essayist and political polemicist would've at once recognized and loathed as well as found mystifying. Hazlitt is indeed an indispensable requisite in the study of the English Romantic movement of the early 19th century. And we continue to ignore him at our peril.