The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 07 (of 12) — Context and Discussion

Recurring Images of Performance and Exhaustion

Throughout the excerpt, Hazlitt returns to metaphors drawn from public performance and physical depletion. He describes the excitement of leading in the House of Commons as acting 'upon the brain like brandy or laudanum upon the stomach,' producing 'debilitating effects afterwards.' The orator is likened to a 'confirmed dram-drinker' who cannot be satisfied with 'a glass of fair water.' These images are not incidental; they form a pattern that links the essay’s argument about style to a broader concern with the costs of public life. Hazlitt also invokes the 'tributary roar of applause' and the 'whispering gallery to all Europe,' suggesting that the orator’s power is inseparable from the architecture of fame. The writer, by contrast, rides 'the hobby-horse of his own thoughts and fancies,' a less glamorous but more self-sufficient steed. This recurring contrast between external stimulus and internal resource gives the essay a cohesive figurative logic.

Movement Between High and Low Subjects

Hazlitt’s method in this essay is to shift abruptly between registers, pairing a statesman with a sportsman, a historical figure with a personal memory. He moves from Pitt and Fox to 'Jack Davies, the unrivalled racket-player,' who 'never said any thing at all in company.' The effect is both comic and analytical: by placing these figures side by side, Hazlitt suggests that the same principle—the loss of a defining activity—governs their silence. Later, he recalls hearing Fox 'in the Louvre,' describing paintings 'rapidly, but very unaffectedly.' This sudden shift to a specific scene, complete with quoted speech about 'blues and greens and reds,' grounds the abstract argument in a concrete moment. The essay’s structure thus mirrors its content: it enacts the very mobility of attention that Hazlitt values in conversation and criticizes when it is absent in writing.

The Role of the Audience in Shaping Expression

Hazlitt’s central claim about oratory is that it depends on the presence of listeners: 'The habit of speaking is the habit of being heard, and of wanting to be heard.' The orator 'sees his subject in the eager looks of his auditors' and feels 'doubly impressed with it in the glow of their sympathy.' The writer, by contrast, 'can only look for encouragement in a blank piece of paper.' This distinction is not merely descriptive; it carries a judgment about the sustainability of each mode. Hazlitt implies that oratory, for all its immediate power, leaves the speaker depleted and dependent, while writing, though solitary, may foster a more durable kind of thought. The essay does not resolve this tension, but it returns to it repeatedly, using the figure of Fox as a case study in the costs of public brilliance. The excerpt’s final image—of Fox describing paintings in the Louvre—offers a rare glimpse of the orator in a private, unguarded moment.

Hazlitt’s Use of Personal Anecdote as Evidence

Hazlitt does not rely solely on abstract reasoning; he inserts himself into the argument through a brief first-person recollection. 'I myself have heard Charles Fox engaged in familiar conversation,' he writes, placing the reader in the Louvre alongside him. This move does several things at once: it authenticates his authority, breaks the essay’s rhetorical distance, and provides a concrete illustration of his claims. The anecdote is modest in scale—Fox sets Opie right about a painting—but it carries weight because it shows the orator in a setting where his knowledge is not performative. Hazlitt’s willingness to use his own experience as evidence is characteristic of his essayistic method. It also aligns with the volume’s broader interest in the principles of human action, since it treats a famous figure not as a monument but as a person subject to the same psychological laws as anyone else.

Readers approaching this volume should attend to the way Hazlitt’s sentences enact the principles they describe: his prose is itself a performance, full of sudden turns and unexpected comparisons. The philosophical essays that follow 'The Plain Speaker' extend his interest in motivation and habit, but they lack the conversational texture of the earlier pieces. Taken together, the collection rewards those who read for structure as much as for argument, noticing how Hazlitt’s recurring images and shifts in register create a distinctive critical voice.