The present selection of Hazlitt's critical essays has been planned to serve two important purposes. In the first place it provides the materials for an estimate of the character and scope of Hazlitt's contributions to criticism and so acquaints students with one of the greatest of English critics. And in the second place, what is perhaps more important, such a selection, embodying a series of appreciations of the great English writers, should prove helpful in the college teaching of literature. There is no great critic who by his readableness and comprehensiveness is as well qualified as Hazlitt to aid in bringing home to students the power and the beauty of the essential things in literature. There is, in him a splendid stimulating energy which has not yet been sufficiently utilized.
The contents have been selected and arranged to present a chronological and almost continuous account of English literature from its beginning in the age of Elizabeth down to Hazlitt's own day, the period of the romantic revival. To the more strictly critical essays there have been added a few which reveal Hazlitt's intimate intercourse with books and also with their writers, whether he knew them in the flesh or only through the printed page. Such vivid revelations of personal contact contribute much to further the chief aim of this volume, which is to introduce the reader to a direct and spontaneous view of literature...: Chronology of Hazlitt's Life and Writings
Introduction
The Age of Elizabeth
Spenser
Shakspeare
The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays
Cymbeline
Macbeth
Iago
Hamlet
Romeo and Juliet
Midsummernight's Dream
Falstaff
Twelfth Night
Milton
Pope
On the Periodical Essayists
The English Novelists
Character of Mr. Burke
Mr. Wordsworth
Mr. Coleridge
Mr. Southey
Elia
Sir Walter Scott
Lord Byron
On Poetry in General
My First Acquaintance With Poets
On the Conversation of Authors
Of Persons One Would Wish To Have Seen
On Reading Old Books