Editing William Hazlitt (section)

====Itinerant painter====
Meanwhile, the fact remained that Hazlitt had chosen not to follow a [[Pastoral care|pastoral vocation]]. Although he never abandoned his goal of writing a philosophical treatise on the disinterestedness of the human mind, it had to be put aside indefinitely. Still dependent on his father, he was now obliged to earn his own living. Artistic talent seemed to run in the family on his mother's side and, starting in 1798, he became increasingly fascinated by painting. His brother, John, had by now become a successful painter of [[Portrait miniature|miniature portraits]]. So it occurred to William that he might earn a living similarly, and he began to take lessons from John.<ref>Wardle, pp. 60–61.</ref>

Hazlitt also visited various picture galleries, and he began to get work doing portraits, painting somewhat in the style of [[Rembrandt]].<ref>Wardle, p. 61.</ref> In this fashion, he managed to make something of a living for a time, travelling back and forth between London and the country, wherever he could get work. By 1802, his work was considered good enough that a portrait he had recently painted of his father was accepted for exhibition by the [[Royal Academy]].<ref>Wardle, p. 67.</ref>

Later in 1802, Hazlitt was commissioned to travel to Paris and copy several works of the [[Old Masters]] hanging in [[The Louvre]]. This was one of the great opportunities of his life. Over a period of three months, he spent long hours rapturously studying the gallery's collections,<ref>Eighteen years later, Hazlitt reviewed nostalgically the "pleasure in painting, which none but painters know", and all the delight he found in this art, in his essay "On the Pleasure of Painting". Hazlitt, ''Works'', vol. 8, pp. 5–21.</ref> and hard thinking and close analysis would later inform a considerable body of his [[art criticism]]. He also happened to catch sight of [[Napoleon I of France|Napoleon]], a man he idolised as the rescuer of the common man from the oppression of royal "[[Legitimacy (political science)|Legitimacy]]".<ref>Wardle, pp. 68–75.</ref>

Back in England, Hazlitt again travelled up into the country, having obtained several commissions to paint portraits. One commission again proved fortunate, as it brought him back in touch with Coleridge and Wordsworth, both of whose portraits he painted, as well as one of Coleridge's son [[Hartley Coleridge|Hartley]]. Hazlitt aimed to create the best pictures he could, whether they flattered their subjects or not, and neither poet was satisfied with his result, though Wordsworth and their mutual friend [[Robert Southey]] considered his portrait of Coleridge a better likeness than one by the celebrated [[James Northcote]].<ref>Wardle, pp. 76–77.</ref>

Recourse to prostitutes was unexceptional among literary—and other—men of that period,<ref>Wu, pp. 59–60.</ref> and if Hazlitt was to differ from his contemporaries, the difference lay in his unabashed candour about such arrangements.<ref>Hazlitt's honesty about sex in general was unusual in that increasingly prudish age, as shown in his later confessional book ''Liber Amoris'', which scandalised his contemporaries. See Grayling, p. 297.</ref> Personally, he was rarely comfortable in middle- and upper-class female society, and, tormented by desires he later branded as "a perpetual clog and dead-weight upon the reason,"<ref>Wu, p. 60.</ref> he made an overture to a local woman while visiting the [[Lake District]] with Coleridge. He had however grossly misread her intentions and an altercation broke out which led to his precipitous retreat from the town under cover of darkness. This public blunder placed a further strain on his relations with both Coleridge and Wordsworth, which were already fraying for other reasons.<ref>Wardle, pp. 78–80. For another account of this contretemps, see Maclean, pp. 198–201.</ref>