Previous Exhibitions - Hazlitt: Spirit of the Age

Hazlitt: Spirit of the Age

27 March - June 2004

A major new edition of William Hazlitt's 1824 work "The Spirit of the Age" is being published by The Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere to coincide with a new exhibition which will run until June.

The exhibition, at The Wordsworth Museum alongside Dove Cottage, illustrates the figures who were given prose portraits by William Hazlitt in his 1824 work "Spirit of the Age" in which he comments on the leading figures of the time - at the height of the Romantic period.

It has been dedicated to veteran Labour politician and Hazlitt expert Michael Foot as a 90th birthday present for his devotion to and advocacy of Hazlitt. The new edition of Hazlitt's "Spirit of the Age" carries a preface by Michael Foot, new reader friendly notes and portraits from the exhibition of the 25 figures who feature in the work.

Hazlitt was born in 1778 and became the leading journalist, essayist and critic of the early nineteenth century. He spoke out against tyrannical conservative politics at a time when England, aware of the French Revolution, was fearful of a mob uprising.

In "Spirit of the Age" Hazlitt included all the people who had an influence, but far from celebrating the achievements of his famous contemporaries, Hazlitt unleashed a savage attack on the vanity and hypocrisy of his times.

He praised Wordsworth as the "most original poet now living" but criticised Lord Byron's pride and ego as well as his "fantastic opinions".

Dr Robert Woof, director of the Trust said: "This has been one of the most challenging exhibitions - at the same time, one of the most rewarding. It is fascinating to see the figures of the Romantic period brought to life both in the great portraits and in Hazlitt's great prose."

The exhibition at The Wordsworth Museum begins with Hazlitt's perspective on Wordsworth and Coleridge, "My first acquaintance with poets", in which he describes the poets as young men. A portrait by Robert Hancock shows Coleridge as young man in 1796 when Hazlitt records the poets as full of promise. The portrait can be compared with later images of Coleridge by James Northcote in 1802 and Thomas Phillips in 1818.

By the time he writes "Spirit of the Age", Hazlitt is judging them on whether or not they have lived up to that early promise. He had been heavily critical of Wordsworth earlier but praised him in "Spirit of the Age".

Many others were found wanting in "Spirit of the Age", a work which expresses Hazlitt's disappointment at an age which, he felt, might have been great but had failed to fulfil its potential.

Other figures featured in portraits and their work in the exhibition includes Thomas Malthus, whose radical views that poor relief should be abolished, was regarded with particular disgust by Hazlitt; politician Jeremy Bentham; James Henry Leigh Hunt, journalist and founder of the liberal radical weekly paper, The Examiner and William Wilberforce, the Tory anti slavery campaigner.