ABSTRACT

I called on Wordsworth for the first time at his lodgings. He was luckily at home, and I spent the forenoon with him, walking. We talked about Hazlitt in consequence of a malignant attack on Wordsworth by him in Sunday’s Examiner. Wordsworth that very day called on Hunt, who, in a manly way, asked whether Wordsworth had seen the paper of the morning, saying, if he had, he should consider his call as a higher honour. He disclaimed the article. The attack by Hazlitt was a note in which, after honouring Milton for being a consistent patriot, he sneered at

Wordsworth as the author of ‘paltry sonnets upon the royal fortitude,’ etc. and insinuated that he had left out the Female Vagrant, a poem describing the miseries of war sustained by the poor. This led to Wordsworth’s mentioning the cause of his coolness towards Hazlitt. It appears that Hazlitt, when at Keswick, narrowly escaped being ducked by the populace, and probably sent to prison for some gross attacks on women. 〈He even whipped one woman, more puerorum2 for not yielding to his wishes.〉 The populace were incensed against him and pursued him, but he escaped to Wordsworth, who took him into his house at midnight, gave him clothes and money (from three to five pounds). Since that time Wordsworth, though he never refused to meet Hazlitt when by accident they came together, did not choose that with his knowledge he should be invited.