Page:Imperialdictiona02eadi Brandeis.pdf/894

HAZ At that establishment he neglected many of the routine duties, and spent his time chiefly in those pursuits for which in later life he was so distinguished, the prosecution of philosophical inquiry, and the search after abstract truth. At a very early period Hazlitt manifested an extreme distaste for the profession for which he was destined, and leaving college, returned home in 1795. He determined upon devoting himself to the study of painting as a profession. In the intervals of his work he prosecuted his study of the great metaphysical writers; and it was at the age of eighteen that he began the first rough sketch of his "Principles of Human Action." In 1802 Hazlitt took advantage of the peace of Amiens to visit Paris, where he painted copies (some upon commission) of the masterpieces at the Louvre. He remained abroad till the following spring. On his return he made the circuit of the Midland counties, and was highly successful in obtaining sitters. But unhappily he failed to satisfy his own fastidious taste, or to overcome a diffidence of his own powers; and it was not long before he determined to relinquish his new vocation, and by substituting the pen for the pencil to throw himself upon literature as a livelihood. In the same autumn he consequently came to London, and in 1805 he published anonymously an "Essay on the Principles of Human Action," of which he had sketched the first outline so far back as 1796. From that time till 1830 Hazlitt continued to be a large and conspicuous contributor to the leading serials and newspapers. His writings consisted of essays on miscellaneous subjects, but principally on art, poetry, and the drama; and they gained their author a wide and merited celebrity. The predominance of the personal over the abstract in Hazlitt's mind, had the effect of lessening the influence of his writings on his contemporaries; and this fact is exemplified in a striking manner by his attack on Southey and his "Letter to Gifford." "The faults of Hazlitt," says Bulwer, "have been harshly judged, because they have not been fairly analyzed; they arose mostly from an arrogant and lordly sense of superiority. It is into this that I resolve his frequent paradoxes, his bold assertions, his desire to startle. . . . I suspect that half which the unobservant have taken literally, he meant secretly in sarcasm. As Johnson in conversation, so Hazlitt in books, pushed his own theories to the extreme, partly to show his power, partly perhaps from contempt of the logic of his readers. He wrote rather for himself than others. He had a keen sense of the beautiful and the subtle; and what is more, he was deeply imbued with sympathies for the humane. . . . His intellectual honesty makes him the Dumont of letters, even where his fiery eloquence approaches him to the Mirabeau." Hazlitt died at London of a species of cholera on the 18th September, 1830, in his fifty-second year. "I confess," remarks the author of Eugene Aram, "that few deaths of the great writers of my time ever affected me more painfully than his. . . . Hazlitt went down to dust, without having wore the crown for which he had so nobly struggled. Men with meagre talents and little souls could command the ear of thousands; but to the wisdom of the teacher it was deafened. Vague and unexamined prejudices, aided only by some trivial faults or some haughty mannerism of his own, had steeled the public—who eagerly received the doctrines filched from him second-hand—to the wisdom and eloquence of the originator." Of his publications, the following is a correct list arranged in chronological order—"Essay on the Principles of Human Action," 1805-35; "Free Thoughts on Public Affairs," 1806; "Reply to Malthus," 1807; "Abridgment of Tucker's Light of Nature Pursued," 1807; "The Eloquence of the British Senate," 1807, 2 vols.; "A New Grammar of the English Tongue," 1810; "Memoirs of Thomas Holcroft," 1816, 3 vols.; "Characters of Shakspeare's Plays," 1817, 1818, 1838, 1818, 1854, and Boston, U.S., 1818; "The Round Table," 1817, 2 vols. (in conjunction with Leigh Hunt), third edition, 1841; "A View of the English Stage," 1818, 1821, 1851; "Lectures on the English Poets," 1818, 1819, 1841; "Lectures on the English Comic Writers," 1819, &c.; "Political Essays," 1819, 1822; "Table Talk, or Original Essays," 2 vols., 1821-22, 1821, 1845-46; "Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth," 1821, 3rd ed., 1841; "Characteristics in the Manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims," 1823, n. d., 1837; "Liber Amoris, or the New Pygmalion," 1823; "Sketches of the Principal Picture Galleries of England, with a Criticism on Marriage a la Mode," 1821; "Notes of a Journey through France and Italy," 1825; "Spirit of the Age, or Contemporary Portraits," 1825, 3rd ed., 1858; "Select Poets of Great Britain," 1825; "Plain Speaker, or Opinions on Books, Men, and Things," 2 vols., 1826, 1851, 1852; "Life of Napoleon Bonaparte," 4 vols., 1828-30, 1852; "Conversations with James Northcote," 1830; "Life of Titian" (attributed wrongly to Northcote), 1830. Of his abridgment of Tucker, Dr. Parr, a thorough master of the original in seven volumes, used to say that he never could tell what had been omitted.—W. C. H.  HEAD,, Bart, governor-general of Canada, was born in 1805 at Wiarton Place, near Maidstone, Kent. Educated at Oriel college, Oxford, he took a first class in classics at the university examination in 1827, was elected fellow of Merton college, and in 1834 university examiner in classics. In 1836 he married, and in 1838 succeeded his father, the Rev. Sir John Head, as eighth baronet. In 1841 he was appointed commissioner of the poor-laws. The administrative ability shown in this office prepared the way for his appointment in 1847 as lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick; whence he was promoted, in 1854, to succeed the earl of Elgin as governor-general of Canada. This important position he held till 1861, when he was made one of the civil service commissioners. He wrote the article "Painting," and some of the artistic biographies in the Penny Cyclopædia. He also edited and annotated the translation of Kugler's Hand-Book of Painting—the German and Dutch Schools; and wrote a companion volume, the "Spanish and French Schools," 8vo, 1848; second edition, 1854. Sir Edmund was likewise the author of a small volume entitled "Shall and Will," or two chapters on future auxiliary verbs, which went through a second edition. He died in January, 1868—J. T—e.  * HEAD,, Bart., ex-lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, a versatile and popular writer, was born on the 1st of January, 1793, at the Hermitage, near Rochester. He entered the royal engineers, and was on duty in Edinburgh as a captain of that corps, when, in 1825, he accepted an invitation to manage the working of gold and silver mines in Rio de la Plata. The enterprise was an unsuccessful one; but to his share in it the reading public was indebted for his "Rough Notes taken during some rapid journeys across the Pampas," &c., which appeared in 1826. In 1830 Major Head (as he now was) contributed to the Family Library a "Life of Bruce the African Traveller;" and in 1833 he published anonymously, "Bubbles from the Brunnen of Nassau, by an Old Man." In the November of 1835 he was offered the lieutenant-governorship of Upper Canada—then in a state of discontented excitement—with the further promise of a baronetcy, and consented to accept the post. His rule of Upper Canada was marked by an insurrection; and his own feelings being in favour of the loyalist party in that colony, he resigned in the autumn of 1837. Created a baronet, and returning to England in 1838, he published in the same year a "Narrative (followed by a supplementary chapter) in defence of his Canadian administration." "The Emigrant," published in 1846, combines with his views of Canadian politics sketches of Transatlantic life and scenery. His "Defenceless State of Great Britain" was published in 1850, and his "Faggot of French Sticks" in 1851. In 1852 appeared his "Fortnight in Ireland;" and in 1857 his "Descriptive Essays," contributed to the Quarterly Review. In 1860 he published "The Horse and his Rider." Sir Francis Head enjoys a pension of £100 a year "for his services to literature;" and married in 1816 a daughter of the Hon. Hugh Somerville.—F. E.  HEAD,, brother of the foregoing, was born in 1782, and educated at the Charter-house. In 1808, as a captain in the West Kent militia, he paid a visit to Portugal, to become a commissariat clerk in the British army in the Peninsula; and in this department he rose to be intrusted with the charge of the commissariat of Picton's division. In 1814 he was despatched to Lake Huron to manage the commissariat department of a naval establishment to be formed on the Canadian lakes, in consequence of the war with the United States. On the speedy restoration of peace he returned to England, but was soon sent again to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he remained several years. His Nova Scotian and Canadian experiences were recorded in an interesting and successful volume, "Forest Scenes and Incidents in the Wilds of North America," published in 1829. Knighted in 1831, he published in 1836 his "Home Tour through the Manufacturing Districts of England;" which was 