[In the following review, Garnett finds Paulin's analysis of William Hazlitt in The Day-Star of Liberty: William Hazlitt's Radical Style to be overly occupied with hidden meanings and lacking in political understanding.]

Hazlitt is a major figure in the English radical tradition. He bestrides both literature and politics as has only Orwell in our times. It needed courage for Tom Paulin to take up this project [The Day-Star of Liberty: William Hazlitt's Radical Style]. Any well-known author who writes about Hazlitt runs the risk of inviting comparisons; when, as in this case, readers know that the study has evolved over several years, judgements on the respective styles of author and subject are unavoidable. To his credit, Paulin has not been distracted from his task; he aimed to praise Hazlitt, not to compete with him, and his familiar, quirky voice is consistent throughout. The effect is something like an extended lecture which brings a kind of coherence to Hazlitt's diffuse writings.

Unfortunately Paulin sets off from a false premise. He states that Hazlitt is ‘almost never read or cited or studied’. But Hazlitt's work is probably read, enjoyed and remembered today much more than that of his contemporaries, Carlyle, Lamb and De Quincey. In recent years several academic studies have been published, together with a major new biography and numerous learned articles. Judging from the bibliography, Paulin has spent at least part of the last five years reading these contributions for himself.

What Paulin probably means when he refers to Hazlitt as a forgotten author is that he is not taught in universities; specifically, that he is not taught in departments of English Literature. His book might rectify this fault—if it is a fault. Paulin makes great claims on Hazlitt's behalf: that later critics like Eliot borrowed freely from him (whether they read him or not), and that his clear grasp of ‘modernity’ allowed him to anticipate the invention of photography and television. All of this is presented in the approved style of such productions, where the guesswork of one paragraph becomes proven fact in the next. Thus, because Dickens went on a pilgrimage to the Wiltshire village where Hazlitt lived he must have been thinking about him when he wrote Bleak House, David Copperfield and Our Mutual Friend. Hazlitt's writing is vivid, therefore he must have envisaged the television age.

This game of ‘hunt the influence’ clearly gave Paulin a lot of fun during his five years of research; it holds the attention, even when he is obviously beating around in the wrong bushes. Certainly he read a great deal of obscure material, and some of the sources he has unearthed add a little to existing knowledge of Hazlitt's background. There are some new insights; previous students have paid insufficient attention to Hazlitt's Irish connections, and Paulin is right to lay emphasis on the numerous physical allusions in Hazlitt's prose. But most of his ground has been covered before, equally well. The main difference between Paulin and his predecessors is that this book leaves the impression that while writing his essay Hazlitt was mainly concerned to leave juicy hints and double meanings to be teased out by the literary critics of the future. But this disease has only taken hold in the twentieth century, when too many published authors are former students of English Literature; in Hazlitt's day it was unknown—except, perhaps, to William Wordsworth. Hazlitt wanted to be appreciated in the way that he felt about his own favourite writers; his dusty volumes should be taken down with a feeling of pleasure, not in anticipation of hours of wrangling with obscure passages. If his meaning was unclear he felt that he had failed.

In short, Paulin has not written a book to match his eye-catching title. The Day-Star of Liberty might acquaint new readers with the name of Hazlitt, but the style of presentation here threatens to fill undergraduates with the mixture of fear and repulsion currently reserved for the established literary canon. Most likely, ‘Hazlitt’ will just become a more fashionable name to drop; he has been neglected in universities not because there is some irrational prejudice against him, but because his criticism is too scattered (and sometimes contradictory). After all, it took Paulin five years to boil him down into this book, with the usual effect on his flavour.

The mystery is that Paulin is a good political writer, and Hazlitt was nothing if not political—even when discussing Titian or anticipating photography. Paulin provides some interesting material on Hazlitt's roots in dissent and republicanism, but the politics in his book get little further than a series of nudges and winks. People whom Hazlitt disliked are stigmatised as ‘reactionaries’ (a meaningless word); his favourites are applauded, even when (as in the case of Napoleon) these feelings are crying out for exploration. This thin and predictable treatment leaves the rest of Paulin's ingenious thoughts on style and influence floating in mid-air.

Perhaps, after all, the political Hazlitt was too awkward a customer for Paulin to handle in a book which presses his claims on today's intelligent readers. Understanding his passionate beliefs leads to a serious problem of context. Hazlitt had very tangible reasons for the radical anger which informs his best writing—the gibbet, the slave trade, and the undeserved power of kings and their sycophants. Today we can get worked up over interest-rate policy, or underfunding of the health service; but criticism seems softened by the fact that our governors are elected, not chosen by an accident of birth. We lack what Paul Johnson (in a previous incarnation) called ‘a sense of outrage’.

This was a problem which Hazlitt really did anticipate, in a remarkable phrase which Paulin overlooks: ‘It is necessary to the triumph of reform that it should never succeed.’ The satisfaction of political grievances leaves polemical authors without nourishment, and complacent writing encourages a ‘culture of contentment’ from which new abuses can creep out. In our information-rich age some space needs to be found for the spirit of vigilance which gives Hazlitt's prose its imperishable value. A book-length study gave Paulin an opportunity to advance this argument, and perhaps suggest some solutions; the most interesting reflection provoked by The Day-Star of Liberty is why he, of all people, chose not to take it.