William Hazlitt

On The Pleasure of Hating

Gavin

Toty brace of magazine pieces in which he philosophises bare-knuckle fights, juggling, and yes petty hatred. He’s cute, what with his italicised phrases that are now clichés (“blue ruin”), his enthusiasm for enthusiasm, his mid-sentence verse quotations, his Latinate insults (“O procul, este profani”), and enthusiastic woe. is reaction to seeing someone juggle four balls at once: 

  It makes me ashamed of myself. I ask what there is I can do as well as this? Nothing. What have I been doing all my life? … What abortions are these Essays! How little is made out, and that little how ill! Yet they are the best I can do.

The essay that’s from is about juggling and the concept Greatness and the character of a dear dead sportsman friend – and all this in 20 pages. Big man, only sometimes clotted in the seven-clause sentences of his age.

On The Pleasure of Hating

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