Keeping to William Hazlitt

Abstract

That style mattered to Hazlitt cannot be in doubt. ‘An author’s style’ he judged ‘not less a criterion of his understanding than his sentiments’; a test of character, as of sensations and ideas, it bodied forth the perpetually shifting relationships between human beings and the objects of their love, hatred, and indifference (in Hazlitt, even the absence of feeling is vehemently felt). An author who lacked style therefore lacked sympathetic involvement with other people, the greatest failing imaginable, since ‘Whatever interests, is interesting’.