Editing William Hazlitt (section)

====Marriage, family, and friends====
On 22 March 1803, at a London dinner party held by William Godwin, Hazlitt met [[Charles Lamb]] and his sister [[Mary Lamb|Mary]].<ref>Grayling, p. 80; Wu, p. 86.</ref> A mutual sympathy sprang up immediately between William and Charles, and they became fast friends. Their friendship, though sometimes strained by Hazlitt's difficult ways, lasted until the end of Hazlitt's life.<ref>Reminiscing in 1866, [[Bryan Procter|Bryan Waller Procter]], who knew them both, thought meeting Hazlitt had been a "great acquisition" for Lamb; the same could justly be said for Hazlitt as well, as Catherine Macdonald Maclean noted. From that time onward, she writes, the two "had for each other...the easy unstrained affection of brothers". Maclean, pp. 206–207.</ref> He was fond of Mary as well, and—ironically in view of her intermittent fits of insanity—he considered her the most reasonable woman he had ever met,<ref>Wardle, p. 82.</ref> no small compliment coming from a man whose view of women at times took a [[Misogyny|misogynistic]] turn.<ref>E.g., "Women have as little imagination as they have reason. They are pure egotists", "Characteristics", Hazlitt, ''Works'', vol. 9, p. 213.</ref> Hazlitt frequented the society of the Lambs for the next several years, from 1806 often attending their famous "Wednesdays" and later "Thursdays" literary salons.<ref>Grayling, p. 102.</ref>

[[File:Charles Lamb by William Hazlitt.jpg|left|thumb|Portrait of [[Charles Lamb]] by William Hazlitt, 1804]]

With few commissions for painting, Hazlitt seized the opportunity to ready for publication his philosophical treatise, which, according to his son, he had completed by 1803. Godwin intervened to help him find a publisher, and the work, ''An Essay on the Principles of Human Action: Being an Argument in favour of the Natural Disinterestedness of the Human Mind'', was printed in a limited edition of 250 copies by [[Joseph Johnson (publisher)|Joseph Johnson]] on 19 July 1805.<ref>Burley, p. 114; Wu, p. 104.</ref> This gained him little notice as an original thinker, and no money. Although the treatise he valued above anything else he wrote was never, at least in his own lifetime, recognised for what he believed was its true worth,<ref>Throughout his life, Hazlitt held this to be his most original work. Its thesis is that, contrary to the prevailing belief of the moral philosophy of the time, benevolent actions are not modifications of an underlying fundamental human selfishness. The fundamental tendency of the human mind is, in a particular sense, disinterest. That is, an interest in the future welfare of others is no less natural to us than such an interest in our own future welfare. See Bromwich, pp. 46–57; Grayling pp. 362–65.</ref> it brought him attention as one who had a grasp of contemporary philosophy. He therefore was commissioned to abridge and write a preface to a now obscure work of mental philosophy, ''The Light of Nature Pursued'' by [[Abraham Tucker]] (originally published in seven volumes from 1765 to 1777), which appeared in 1807<ref>Wardle, pp. 82–87.</ref> and may have had some influence on his own later thinking.<ref>See Bromwich, p. 45 and elsewhere.</ref>

Slowly Hazlitt began to find enough work to eke out a bare living. His outrage at events then taking place in English politics in reaction to Napoleon's wars led to his writing and publishing, at his own expense (though he had almost no money), a political pamphlet, ''Free Thoughts on Public Affairs'' (1806),<ref>The title echoed that of a pamphlet by [[John Wesley]],''Free Thoughts on Public Affairs in a Letter to a Friend,'' (1770). See Burley, p. 191, note 23.</ref> an attempt to mediate between private economic interests and a national application of the thesis of his ''Essay'' that human motivation is not, inherently, entirely selfish.<ref>Burley, p. 191, note 25. On the argument of the ''Essay'', see Grayling, pp. 363–65.</ref>

Hazlitt also contributed three letters to [[William Cobbett]]'s ''Weekly Political Register'' at this time, all scathing critiques of [[Thomas Malthus]]'s ''[[An Essay on the Principle of Population|Essay on the Principle of Population]]'' (1798 and later editions). Here he replaced the dense, abstruse manner of his philosophical work with the trenchant prose style that was to be the hallmark of his later essays. Hazlitt's [[philippic]], dismissing Malthus's argument on population limits as sycophantic rhetoric to flatter the rich, since large swathes of uncultivated land lay all round England, has been hailed as "the most substantial, comprehensive, and brilliant of the Romantic ripostes to Malthus".<ref>Mayhew, pp. 90–91.</ref> Also in 1807, Hazlitt undertook a compilation of parliamentary speeches, published that year as ''The Eloquence of the British Senate''. In the prefaces to the speeches, he began to show a skill he would later develop to perfection, the art of the pithy character sketch. He was able to find more work as a portrait painter as well.<ref>Wardle, pp. 100–102.</ref>

In May 1808, Hazlitt married [[Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt|Sarah Stoddart]],<ref>[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263376113_Writing_the_Self_The_journal_of_Sarah_Stoddart_Hazlitt_1774-1843 Writing the Self: The journal of Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt, 1774–1843.] Gillian Beattie-Smith, Women's History Review 22(2), April 2013. DOI: 10.1080/09612025.2012.726110. Beattie-Smith gives the date of the marriage as 12 May, Sarah Hazlitt's death year as 1843 (she was born in 1774). According to Duncan Wu, they were married on 1 May 1808 and Sarah Hazlitt died in 1840. See Wu, pp. 123, 438.</ref> a friend of Mary Lamb and sister of [[John Stoddart]], a journalist who became editor of ''[[The Times]]'' newspaper in 1814. Shortly before the wedding, John Stoddart established a trust into which he began paying £100 per year, for the benefit of Hazlitt and his wife—this was a very generous gesture, but Hazlitt detested being supported by his brother-in-law, whose political beliefs he despised.<ref>Wu 2008, pp. 118, 160, 221.</ref> This union was not a [[wikt:love match|love match]], and incompatibilities would later drive the couple apart; yet, for a while, it seemed to work well enough, and their initial behavior was both playful and affectionate. Miss Stoddart, an unconventional woman, accepted Hazlitt and tolerated his eccentricities just as he, with his own somewhat offbeat individualism, accepted her. Together they made an agreeable social foursome with the Lambs, who visited them when they set up a household in [[Winterslow]], a village a few miles from [[Salisbury]], Wiltshire, in southern England.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|last=Wu|first=Duncan|date=2009-04-02|title=William Hazlitt: The lion in Winterslow|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/william-hazlitt-lion-winterslow-6110139.html|access-date=2021-03-06|website=The Independent|language=en}}</ref> The couple had three sons over the next few years, Only one of their children, [[William Hazlitt (registrar)|William]], born in 1811, survived infancy. (He in turn fathered [[William Carew Hazlitt]].)<ref>Maclean covers the marriage at length, pp. 233–75; for a briefer account, see Wardle, pp. 103–21.</ref>

As the head of a family, Hazlitt was now more than ever in need of money. Through William Godwin, with whom he was frequently in touch, he obtained a commission to write [[History of English grammars|an English grammar]], published on 11 November 1809 as ''A New and Improved Grammar of the English Tongue''.<ref>Grayling, pp. 130–31; Gilmartin, pp. 8–9.</ref> Another project that came his way was the work that was published as ''[[Thomas Holcroft|Memoirs of the Late Thomas Holcroft]]'', a compilation of autobiographical writing by the recently deceased playwright, novelist, and radical political activist, together with additional material by Hazlitt himself. Though completed in 1810, this work did not see the light of day until 1816, and so provided no financial gain to satisfy the needs of a young husband and father. Hazlitt in the meantime had not forsaken his painterly ambitions. His environs at Winterslow afforded him opportunities for landscape painting, and he spent considerable time in London procuring commissions for portraits.<ref>Wardle, pp. 104–123.</ref>

In January 1812 Hazlitt embarked on a sometime career as a lecturer, in this first instance by delivering a series of talks on the British philosophers at the [[Russell Institution]] in London. A central thesis of the talks was that [[Thomas Hobbes]], rather than John Locke, had laid the foundations of modern philosophy. After a shaky beginning, Hazlitt attracted some attention—and some much-needed money—by these lectures, and they provided him with an opportunity to expound some of his own ideas.<ref>Wardle, pp. 126–130.</ref>

The year 1812 seems to have been the last in which Hazlitt persisted seriously in his ambition to make a career as a painter. Although he had demonstrated some talent, the results of his most impassioned efforts always fell far short of the very standards he had set by comparing his own work with the productions of such masters as Rembrandt, [[Titian]], and [[Raphael]]. It did not help that, when painting commissioned portraits, he refused to sacrifice his artistic integrity to the temptation to flatter his subjects for remunerative gain. The results, not infrequently, failed to please their subjects, and he consequently failed to build a clientele.<ref>Wardle, pp. 130–131.</ref>

But other opportunities awaited him.