SOURCE: "William Hazlitt's Curious Concept of Taste," in South Atlantic Review, Vol. 57, No. 2, May, 1992, pp. 1-9.

In the essay that follows, originally published in 1991, Bratton explores some examples of Hazlitt's judgments of taste in an effort to determine the paradoxes of his overarching theory and its relevance to the twentieth century.

John Keats praised William Hazlitt's "depth of taste" as one of "three things superior in the modern world" (Letters 1: 204-05)—even when that taste was negatively employed. "Hazlitt," Keats wrote, "is your only good damner, and if ever I am damn'd—(damn me if) I shoul'nt like him to damn me" (Letters 1: 252). Not everyone responds to Hazlitt so generously. Virtually all the world agree on his contrariness and his bad habit of letting his personal experience obtrude on the "real" subjects of his essays and criticism. In order accurately to reflect Hazlitt's methods here, therefore, I shall...