tence proves how
accurately he could catch the rhythm of the seventeenth century. "That we
should wear out by slow stages, and dwindle at last into nothing, is not
wonderful, when even in our prime our strongest impressions leave little
trace but for the moment, and we are the creatures of petty
circumstance."[104] Other passages in the same essay echo this manner only
less strikingly:

"Life is indeed a strange gift, and its privileges are most mysterious. No
wonder when it is first granted to us, that our gratitude, our admiration,
and our delight, should prevent us from reflecting on our own nothingness,
or from thinking it will ever be recalled. Our first and strongest
impressions are borrowed from the mighty scene that is opened to us, and
we unconsciously transfer its durability as well as its splendour to
ourselves. So newly found we cannot think of parting with it yet, or at
least put off that consideration _sine die_. Like a rustic at a fair, we
are full of amazement and rapture, and have no thought of going home, or
that it will soon be night. We know our existence only by ourselves, and
confound our knowledge with the objects of it. We and nature are therefore
one. Otherwise the illusion, the 'feast of reason and the flow of soul,'
to which we are invited, is a mockery and a cruel insult. We do not go
from a play till the last act is ended, and the lights are about to be
extinguished. But the fairy face of nature still shines on: shall we be
called away before the curtain falls, or ere we have scarce had a glimpse
of what is going on? Like children, our step-mother nature holds us up to
see the raree-show of the universe, and then, as if we were a burden to
her to support, lets us fall down again. Yet what brave sublunary things
does not this pageant present, like a ball or _fete_ of the
universe!"[105]

In Hazlitt's vocabulary there is nothing striking unless it be the
scrupulousness with which he avoids the danger of commonplaceness and of
pedantry. It is easy to forget that the transparent obviousness of his
style was attained only after many years of groping. We may well believe
that "there is a research in the choice of a plain, as well as of an
ornamental or learned style; and, in fact, a great deal more."[106] Though
he did not go in pursuit of the word to the extent of some later refiners
of style, he had a clear realization that the appropriate word was what
chiefly gave vitality to writing.[107] Fo