William Hazlitt and Hate

It is a fortunate spider who resides in the first paragraph of William Hazlitt’s essay “On the Pleasure of Hating” (1826). Its cantilevered body stands initially rigid. Its wide-set eyes observe the monster seated before it. It plods on, seemingly all too aware of an excess of legs. It stops, plods on again and then, adopting a more urgent and less confused gait, it scurries across the floor’s matting. A lowering shadow belongs to him who watches. He lifts the edge of the matting and this allows the creature to escape.

Hazlitt’s rooms were normally bleak, usually empty save perhaps for a table and a chair. The painter William Bewick tells of being captivated by a vacant space above the chimney mantelpiece in one such room. Here where normally a mirror or picture might hang were scribbled:

all manner of odd conceits … abbreviations —words—names—enigmatical exclamations—strange and weird sentences, quotations—snatches of rhyme—bits of arithmetical…