ABSTRACT
This chapter explores William Hazlitt’s writings on the relationship between literary genius and political power, focusing on two periods of his career: the winter of 1816–1817, when he wrote for the Examiner, and 1823, when he was a contributor to the Liberal and the Edinburgh Review. In the first period, Hazlitt published a series of damning articles on ‘modern apostates’, and even went so far as to argue that ‘poetry is right royal’ and inevitably opposed to democracy. Hazlitt believed that through journals that the government either directly sponsored or indirectly influenced, the values associated with ‘Legitimacy’ – respect for rank, wealth, tradition – were imposed on literary culture and propagated to the burgeoning reading public. In John Milton’s poem, the Fall of Man, like the failure of the Commonwealth, is something that is both pre-ordained and freely chosen: at this stage in his career, Hazlitt understands the ‘degradation’ of genius in similar terms.
