The first
half of this observation neatly describes adolescents of any age. Some of us
grow up and if we pay even minimal attention to what’s in front of us, life
has a way of turning us into independent realists. Self-seeking can slip away.
Outrageousness loses its allure and our opinions and those of most others
become unworthy of notice. My generation – the so-called Boomers – often embarrass
me. (I think of William Hazlitt as a premature Baby Boomer with a magnificent prose
style.)
On Friday we
were talking to our son who is a second-year midshipman at the U.S. Naval
Academy. He noted that people his age tend to blame Baby Boomers for all the
nation’s troubles, and I can’t argue except to note that subsequent generations
have carried on our pioneering work. Our most lasting legacy is the legitimization
of unashamed, undisguised, much aggrieved self-centeredness – thus, Hazlitt the Boomer.
The second
half of the passage from George Saintsbury’s article on Hazlitt in Essays in
English Literature, 1780-1860 (1895) characterizes people for whom fashion
holds no charm. They see no advantage in joining the herd for the sake of affability,
convenience or peer-approval. Granted, there’s a price to be paid for independence.
It can be hard work but you’ll have no trouble sleeping at night. After his qualifications, Saintsbury defends Hazlitt:
“In most
writers, in all save the very greatest, we look for one or two, or for a few
special faculties and capacities, and we know perfectly well that other
(generally many other) capacities and faculties will not be found in them at
all. We do not dream of finding rollicking mirth in Milton, or gorgeous
embroidery of style in Swift, or unadorned simplicity in Browne. But in Hazlitt
you may find something of almost everything, except the finer kinds of wit and
humour; to which last, however, he makes a certain side-approach by dint of his
appreciation of the irony of Nature and Fate. Almost every other grace of
matter and form that can be found in prose may be found at times in his.”
2 comments:
I am what the demographers call a late Boomer. In the late Sixties & early Seventies I wore my hair in a Beatles mop, wore hideous striped flared pants, a turtleneck sweater and a leather peace pendant. But I was in elementary school at the time!
Speaking of George Saintsbury, I'm sad that his grave is in such bad condition; wish Southampton would take more pride in it.
I always enjoy it when the name of the now nearly-forgotten George Saintsbury comes up. Very influential in his time, he was an expert in both French and English literature and was, as you know, a prolific writer. I'm getting around to reading his "The Peace of the Augustans: A Survey of Eighteenth Century Literature as a Place of Rest and Refreshment" (1916), a first edition of which I recently found in a used bookshop.
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