Note 70 — V WILLIAM HAZLITT 1778-1830

This was the spirit of Henry Fielding on his last voyage, hoisted aboard among the watermen at Redcliffe, and hearing his emaciated body made the subject of jeers and laughter. “No man who knew me,” he writes in his journal, “will think I conceived any personal resentment at this behavior; but it was a lively picture of that cruelty and inhumanity in the nature of man which I have often contemplated with concern, and which leads the mind into a train of very uncomfortable and melancholy thoughts.” It is a fine passage, and a strong heart, not given to boasting, penned it. Poor Hazlitt could not bear even an unintentional slight without imputing diabolical malice to the offender. Yet it was certainly true that, in his saner hours, he could suffer personal discomfort in public without flinching, and deplore the habit which imposed it, rather than the act.