“ The Spirit of the Age; or Contemporary Portraits (1825) , a series of criticisms on the leading intellectual characters of the day, is in point of style perhaps the most splendid and copious of his compositions. It is eager and animated to impetuosity, though without any trace of carelessness or disorder. ”

“ The circumstances of this early intercourse with Coleridge are related with inimitable skill in a paper in Hazlitt’s Literary Remains (1839) . On visits to his brother in London he made many acquaintances, the most important being a friendship with Charles Lamb, said to have been founded on a remark of Lamb’s interpolated in a discussion between Coleridge, Godwin and Holcroft, “Give me man as he is not to be.” ”

“ His criticisms on the English comic writers and men of letters in general are masterpieces of ingenious and felicitous exposition, though rarely, like Coleridge’s, penetrating to the inmost core of the subject. Moreover, at the time when the lectures were written, Hazlitt’s views, orthodox as they may seem now, were novel enough.
As an essayist Hazlitt is even more effective than as a critic. ”

“ He was essentially a critic, a dissector and, as Bulwer justly remarks, a much better judge of men of thought than of men of action. The paradoxes with which his works abound never spring from affectation; they are in general the sallies of a mind so agile and ardent as to overrun its own goal. ”

“ Hazlitt’s study of the Italian masters during this tour, described in a series of letters contributed to the Morning Chronicle, had a deep effect upon him, and perhaps conduced to that intimacy with the cynical old painter Northcote which, shortly after his return, engendered a curious but eminently readable volume of The Conversations of James Northcote, R.A. (1830) . The respective shares of author and artist are not always easy to determine. ”

“ Hazlitt delivered in 1812 a course of lectures at the Russell Institution on the Rise and Progress of Modern Philosophy. He soon abandoned philosophy, however, to give his whole attention to journalism. He was parliamentary reporter and subsequently dramatic critic for the Morning Chronicle; he also contributed to the Champion and The Times; but his closest connexion was with the Examiner, owned by John and Leigh Hunt. ”