William Hazlitt (Unitarian minister)
William Hazlitt | |
---|---|
Crediton Parish Church | |
Occupation | Unitarian minister |
Alma mater | University of Glasgow |
Spouse | Grace Loftus (1746 – 1837) |
Children | John, Margaret, William[1] |
Signature | |
William Hazlitt (18 April 1737 – 16 July 1820) was a Unitarian minister and author, and the father of the Romantic essayist and social commentator of the same name.[2] He was an important figure in eighteenth-century English and American Unitarianism, and had a major influence on his son's work.[2][3][4][5]
Biography
Early life
Hazlitt was born to
Preaching in England and Ireland
In 1770 William and Grace Hazlitt, along with their sons John and Loftus, moved to Maidstone in Kent.[2] Soon after their arrival, their son Loftus, only two and a half years old, died. A daughter, Margaret, was born in December.[7][8] During this period Hazlitt maintained ties with figures such as Joseph Priestley, Richard Price and Benjamin Franklin, and was an active writer, contributing to Priestley's Theological Repository under the pseudonyms "Philalethes" and "Rationalis", and publishing five religious volumes.[4][9][10] His work provoked a substantial body of writing by other authors.[11] In 1778 his son William was born.[2]
Hazlitt's writings at this time included pamphlets entitled The Methodists Vindicated (1771) and Human Authority in Matters of Faith Repugnant to Christianity (1774).[12] Stephen Burley, who has investigated Hazlitt's authorship of these works, describes Hazlitt's position in Methodists Vindicated as follows:
He sets out to subvert preconceptions about social and ecclesiastical hierarchies in a sweeping attack on the legitimacy of the Established Church and its clergy. He argues for a distinctly egalitarian faith which comprehends both men and women, rich and poor.[13]
Hazlitt was, in the words of
In 1780 Hazlitt returned to Ireland,
America, 1783–6
Hazlitt's sympathy with the American cause, and the threats of physical harm which he received in Ireland, led him to emigrate to America in April 1783, sailing on the first ship which departed following the conclusion of the
When
Hazlitt had an important influence on
Hazlitt also criticised Roman Catholic, Anglican and Episcopalian practices in his writings. He questioned the Biblical basis for praising the
Minister at Wem
Despite achieving some success as a writer, Hazlitt was unable to secure a permanent post, and in 1786 he returned to England. After failing to obtain a steady income in London, Hazlitt settled with his family at Wem in Shropshire. Hazlitt ministered at a dissenting meeting house in the town, for which he received a meagre annual stipend of £30, and ran the local school.[34] He devoted much attention to the education of his son, William, with the intention that he would also become a Unitarian minister. While the Reverend William Hazlitt's intensive tutoring of his son may explain in part the brilliance of the latter's subsequent writings, it was also responsible for his physical and mental breakdown under the strain of his father's expectations.[35] When the younger Hazlitt left the New College at Hackney after only two years, thereby signalling that he would never follow his father into the Unitarian ministry, the latter was bitterly disappointed.[36] In 1798, Samuel Taylor Coleridge visited Hazlitt at Wem – an encounter which was later described by Hazlitt's son in the essay "My First Acquaintance with Poets".[2] In the essay, Hazlitt's life at Wem is described as follows:
After being tossed about from congregation to congregation in the heats of the Unitarian controversy, and squabbles about the American war, he had been relegated to an obscure village, where he was to spend the last thirty years of his life, far from the only converse that he loved, the talk about disputed texts of Scripture, and the cause of civil and religious liberty. Here he passed his days, repining, but resigned, in the study of the Bible and the perusal of the Commentators – huge folios, not easily got through, one of which would outlast a winter! ... My father's life was comparatively a dream; but it was a dream of infinity and eternity, of death, the resurrection, and a judgment to come![37]
While Hazlitt's failure to secure a powerful position in the Unitarian ministry may have been a source of disappointment for him, he continued to participate in Unitarian debate on a national level. In addition to producing three volumes of sermons while living at Wem, he was a regular contributor to periodicals such as the Protestant Dissenter's Magazine and the Universal Theological Magazine.[38]
In 1801 (possibly early 1802), Hazlitt's son William returned to Wem to paint his portrait. Sitting in the chapel at Wem, with the winter sun raking across the subject's face, the painter described his 64-year-old father as "then in a green old age, with strong-marked features, and scarred with the
In his retirement, Hazlitt lived at Addlestone in Surrey, at Bath in Somerset, and at Crediton in Devon, where he died in 1820.[2]
Notes
- ^ Wardle 1971, pp. 4, 5.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wu 2007.
- ^ Burley 2009, pp. 259, 273–5.
- ^ a b c d e Wu 2006, p. 222.
- ^ Burley 2010, p. 275.
- ^ Wu 2000, pp. 172–3.
- ^ Wardle 1971, p. 5.
- ^ Wu 2008, p. 25.
- ^ Burley 2009, p. 261.
- ^ Wu 2005, p. 761.
- ^ Burley 2009, pp. 271–2.
- ^ Burley 2010, p. 259.
- ^ Burley 2010, p. 263.
- ^ Burley 2010, pp. 264–6.
- ^ Paulin 1998, pp. 3–4.
- ^ Paulin 1998, p. 2.
- ^ a b Wardle 1971, p. 6.
- ^ Wu 2008, p. 27.
- ^ Moyne 1964, p. 289.
- ^ Wu 2005, p. 764.
- ^ Moyne 1964, p. 295.
- ^ Moyne 1964, p. 297.
- ^ Wu 2008, pp. 27–8.
- ^ Wu 2006, pp. 222–3.
- ^ Wu 2006, pp. 223–6.
- ^ Wu 2006, p. 223.
- ^ a b Grayling 2000, pp. 351–2.
- ^ Burley 2009, p. 260.
- ^ Moyne 1961, p. 300.
- ^ Wu 2006, pp. 226–8.
- ^ a b c d Wu 2006, p. 227.
- ^ Wu 2006, pp. 229–31.
- ^ Burley 2010, pp. 261–2.
- ^ Grayling 2000, pp. 9–12.
- ^ Wu 2008, pp. 43, 49.
- ^ Grayling 2000, pp. 41–2.
- ^ "My First Acquaintance with Poets" (1823).
- ^ Burley 2010, pp. 9–10.
- ^ Grayling 2000, pp. 70–1; Wu 2008, p. 78. This episode was recounted in the essay "On the Pleasure of Painting". The painting itself can be seen at "Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society". Unitarian Historical Society. Retrieved 10 July 2021.
- ^ Paulin 1998, p. 5.
References
- Burley, Stephen (2009). "The Lost Polemics of William Hazlitt (1737-1820)". The Review of English Studies. 61 (249): 259–275. .
- Burley, Stephen (2010). "'In this Intolerance I Glory': William Hazlitt (1737–1820) and the Dissenting Periodical", The Hazlitt Review (3), 9–24.
- Grayling, A. C. (2000). The Quarrel of the Age: The Life and Times of William Hazlitt. London: Phoenix Press.
- Moyne, E. J. (1961). "The Reverend William Hazlitt and Dickinson College". The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 85 (3): 289–302. JSTOR 20089418.
- Moyne, E. J. (1964). "The Reverend William Hazlitt: A Friend of Liberty in Ireland during the American Revolution". The William and Mary Quarterly. 21 (2): 288–297. JSTOR 1920390.
- Paulin, Tom (1998). The Day-Star of Liberty: William Hazlitt's Radical Style. London: Faber & Faber. ISBN 9780571174218.
- Wardle, Ralph M. (1971). Hazlitt. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 9780803207905.
- Wu, Duncan (2000). "'Polemical divinity': William Hazlitt at the University of Glasgow", Romanticism (6), 163–77.
- Wu, Duncan (2005). "William Hazlitt (1737-1820), the Priestley Circle, and the Theological Repository: A Brief Survey and Bibliography". The Review of English Studies. 56 (227): 758–766. .
- Wu, Duncan (2006). "The Journalism of William Hazlitt (1737-1820) in Boston (1784-5): A Critical and Bibliographical Survey". The Review of English Studies. 57 (229): 221–246. .
- Wu, Duncan (2007). "Hazlitt, William (1737–1820)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press accessed 25 Nov 2011.
- Wu, Duncan (2008). William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.
Further reading
- Burley, Stephen (2011). "Hazlitt the Dissenter: Religion, Philosophy, and Politics, 1766–1816", Ph.D. thesis (Queen Mary, University of London).
External links
- Burley, Stephen. A Bibliography of the Writings of William Hazlitt (1737–1820) (PDF)
- Obituary in the Monthly Repository (1820)