tivated Englishman. His allusions to the Greek and Latin writers are in
the most general terms, but with a note of reverence which did not enter
into his speech concerning even Shakespeare. "I would have you learn Latin
(he is writing to his son) because there is an atmosphere round this sort
of classical ground, to which that of actual life is gross and
vulgar."[55] His knowledge of Italian was no more thorough, though here he
was more nearly on a level with his contemporaries. For Boccaccio indeed
he showed an intense affection, and he could write intelligently, if not
deeply, concerning Dante and Ariosto and Tasso.[56] With French he
naturally had a wider acquaintance, but still nothing beyond the reach of
the very general reader. The notable point is that he refrains from
passing judgment on the entire body of French poetry because it is unlike
English poetry. He is not infected with the wilful provincialism of Lamb
nor with the spirit of John Bullishness which seriously proclaims in its
rivals "equally a want of books and men."[57] "We may be sure of this,"
says Hazlitt, "that when we see nothing but grossness and barbarism, or
insipidity and verbiage in a writer that is the God of a nation's
idolatry, it is we and not they who want true taste and feeling."[58]
Having this wholesome counsel ever before him, he can be more generously
appreciative of the genius of Moliere, more justly discerning in his
analysis of the spirit of Rousseau,[59] and more free of the puritanical
clatter against Voltaire than any of his fellow-critics. With German
literature his familiarity was bounded on the one hand by Schiller's
"Robbers," on the other by the first part of "Faust," the entire gap
between these being filled by the popular versions of Kotzebue's plays and
Mme. de Stael's book on Germany. Yet he dared to write a character of the
German people which is almost worth quoting.[60]

In English his range of reading was correspondingly narrow. Such a piece
of waywardness as his enthusiasm for John Buncle,[61] derived no doubt
from Lamb, is unique. Broadly speaking, he prefers to accept the
established canon and approaches new discoveries with a deep distrust. He
is very little concerned with writers of the second order, and in his
Lecture on the Living Poets he shocked his audience unspeakably, when he
came to the name of Hannah More, by merely remarking, "She has written a
great deal which I have never read." He looked upon most l