Mr. P. P. Howe has collected a volume of Ncw
Writings, by Hazlitt (Seeker). There are thirty-three pieces,. dug up from newspaper files ; and it is really true that they give Hazlitt at the height of his -powers. Whether he is criticizing Leigh Hunt, Byron, and Lander or writing articles on phrenology or on travelling abroad, he is at his freest and his most delightful. It may be that Hazlitt had the least inter- esting mind of all our great English critics, as Mr. T. S. Eliot states ; but the turn of his sentences will always rejoice our hearts ; and even when he writes a mere pastiche, as in his account of Beau Brummell, he does it with a lighter and a more efficient touch than any of his contemporaries could attain. He retells one of the best anecdotes of
Brummell " A friend one day called upon him, and found him confined to his room from a lameness in one foot, upon which he expressed his concern at the accident. ' I am sorry for it too,' answered Brummell very gravely, particularly as it's my favourite leg.' "
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