Table-Talk by William Hazlitt (best pdf reader for ebooks txt) 📕
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William Hazlitt was a well-regarded critic and essayist in his day, and Table-Talk, a collection of some of his more popular short essays, is perhaps his best-remembered work.
The essays themselves range in subject from philosophy, to art, to literature, culture, society, and politics, with titles like “On the Pleasures of Painting” and “On Corporate Bodies.” Hazlitt’s intimate style and deep familiarity with many different aspects of art culture (not only was he a literary success, but he studied under Joshua Reynolds to be a portrait painter) make his essays fascinating multi-disciplinary reads.
Table-Talk was originally published in two separate volumes, and, largely due to Hazlitt’s political activism, was received poorly by his contemporaries. Today it’s considered one of his masterpieces.
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- Author: William Hazlitt
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In short, as a conclusion to this argument, I will mention a circumstance which fell under my knowledge the other day. A friend had bought a print of Titian’s Mistress, the same to which I have alluded above. He was anxious to show it me on this account. I told him it was a spirited engraving, but it had not the look of the original. I believe he thought this fastidious, till I offered to show him a rough sketch of it, which I had by me. Having seen this, he said he perceived exactly what I meant, and could not bear to look at the print afterwards. He had good sense enough to see the difference in the individual instance; but a person better acquainted with Titian’s manner and with art in general—that is, of a more cultivated and refined taste—would know that it was a bad print, without having any immediate model to compare it with. He would perceive with a glance of the eye, with a sort of instinctive feeling, that it was hard, and without that bland, expansive, and nameless expression which always distinguished Titian’s most famous works. Anyone who is accustomed to a head in a picture can never reconcile himself to a print from it; but to the ignorant they are both the same. To a vulgar eye there is no difference between a Guido and a daub—between a penny print, or the vilest scrawl, and the most finished performance. In other words, all that excellence which lies between these two extremes—all, at least, that marks the excess above mediocrity—all that constitutes true beauty, harmony, refinement, grandeur, is lost upon the common observer. But it is from this point that the delight, the glowing raptures of the true adept commence. An uninformed spectator may like an ordinary drawing better than the ablest connoisseur; but for that very reason he cannot like the highest specimens of art so well. The refinements not only of execution but of truth and nature are inaccessible to unpractised eyes. The exquisite gradations in a sky of Claude’s are not perceived by such persons, and consequently the harmony cannot be felt. Where there is no conscious apprehension, there can be no conscious pleasure. Wonder at the first sights of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and novelty; but real admiration and permanent delight in them are the growth of taste and knowledge. “I would not wish to have your eyes,” said a good-natured man to a critic who was finding fault with a picture in which the other saw no blemish. Why so? The idea which prevented him from admiring this inferior production was a higher idea of truth and beauty which was ever present with
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