Introduction: The Spider on the Floor
In his 1826 essay “On the Pleasure of Hating,” William Hazlitt, one of the great masters of the English familiar essay, delivers a blisteringly honest and psychologically astute inquiry into a forbidden facet of human nature. Moving from a simple anecdote about a spider to a sweeping condemnation of mankind’s moral and social failings, Hazlitt argues that hatred, malice, and schadenfreude are not mere aberrations but vital, energizing forces in human life. This newsletter provides a comprehensive guide to this challenging work, offering a summary, critical analysis, exploration of major themes, important quotes, and an examination of Hazlitt as a critic and prose stylist. Designed for students, literature enthusiasts, and anyone intrigued by the psychology of negativity, this deep dive explains why this nearly 200-year-old essay feels alarmingly modern.
Summary: The Argument in Brief
Hazlitt begins with a personal moment: watching a spider cross his floor. He spares it, but confesses to a lingering “mystic horror and superstitious loathing.” This leads to his central thesis: while civilisation teaches us to curb violent actions, we cannot eradicate the underlying sentiments of hostility. Hatred, he claims, is the “very spring of thought and action.” Without it, life would be a “stagnant pool.”
He then catalogs evidence for this “pleasure of hating”: animals torment each other; crowds gawk at fires and executions; society scapegoats outsiders; nations need enemies to define themselves. He extends this principle to personal relationships, showing how old friendships inevitably curdle into indifference or dislike, and how we tire of our favourite books and opinions. The essay culminates in a despairing personal and political lament. Hazlitt confesses his disillusionment with his former liberal ideals, seeing only hypocrisy and tyranny everywhere, and concludes that his greatest error was “not having hated and despised the world enough.”
Critical Analysis: Deconstructing Hazlitt’s Dark Vision
1. Structure and Rhetoric:
The essay is a masterclass in persuasive writing. It employs a associative, digressive structure typical of the Romantic familiar essay, moving seamlessly from the personal (the spider, old friends) to the universal (human nature, politics). This creates an unsettling effect: a private observation is shown to have monstrous, global implications. Hazlitt uses accumulation—piling example upon example—to overwhelm the reader with the ubiquity of malice. His rhetoric is fiercely concessive: he admits his own philosophy forbids killing the spider, yet insists the hateful impulse remains, thus disarming potential criticism.
2. Psychological Insight:
Hazlitt operates as a pre-Freudian psychologist. He identifies what we now call schadenfreude (joy in others’ misfortune), confirmation bias (seeking out news of “accidents and offences”), and the unifying power of a common enemy. His analysis of decaying friendship is painfully acute, noting how familiarity breeds contempt, and how we eventually “criticize each other’s dress, looks, general character.” He probes the addictive quality of negative emotion, comparing it to a “poisonous mineral” and noting that “we cannot bear a state of indifference and ennui.”
3. Historical and Biographical Context:
Written in the post-Napoleonic era of conservative reaction, the essay is saturated with Hazlitt’s political disillusionment. References to the “Bourbons,” the “Inquisition,” and “Legitimacy” (the restoration of monarchies) point to his despair over the defeat of revolutionary ideals. His bitterness towards former friends like Coleridge and Wordsworth, who turned conservative, fuels the sections on betrayal. The essay is thus a fusion of personal grievance and political polemic.
4. Tone and Persona:
The tone is cynical, hyperbolic, and impassioned. Hazlitt creates a persona of the disillusioned idealist, whose intellectual “philosophy” is at war with his visceral instincts. This internal conflict makes the argument more compelling; he implicates himself in the very malice he diagnoses. Moments of lyrical beauty (e.g., the description of a Titian painting) briefly relieve the gloom, only to be dismissed as unsustainable, reinforcing the core argument.
Major Themes Explored
The Universality of Malice: Hatred is not an anomaly but a fundamental, energizing human drive. It provides the “contrast” that makes life feel vivid.
The Hypocrisy of Civilization: Society represses overt brutality but does nothing to quell the inner spirit of hostility, which merely finds new, subtle outlets (gossip, criticism, schadenfreude).
The Fragility of Affection: Love, friendship, and admiration are inherently unstable. They inevitably sour into indifference, envy, or hatred due to familiarity, changing circumstances, or simply the mind’s hunger for stimulation. “Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful.”
Disillusionment and Political Despair: The essay reflects a Romantic crisis of faith in progress, liberty, and human goodness. Public life is revealed as a theater of folly, knavery, and tyranny.
The Aesthetics of Negativity: Hazlitt suggests there is a perverse artistic and intellectual pleasure in dissection, criticism, and mockery. The “decoction of spleen” keeps well; analyzing human folly is a durable pastime.
Important Quotes and Analysis
“We learn to curb our will and keep our overt actions within the bounds of humanity, long before we can subdue our sentiments and imaginations to the same mild tone.”
Analysis: The essay’s cornerstone. It distinguishes civilised behaviour from innate feeling, arguing that moral progress is superficial. The real, wild self remains untamed.
“Without something to hate, we should lose the very spring of thought and action. Life would turn to a stagnant pool.”
Analysis: Hazlitt’s most shocking claim. He positions hatred as a vital, animating force, the necessary friction that prevents existential inertia.
“Pure good soon grows insipid, wants variety and spirit. Pain is a bittersweet… hatred alone is immortal.”
Analysis: Positions negative emotions as more complex, enduring, and stimulating than positive ones. Goodness is bland; hatred has a compelling, dramatic intensity.
“We hate old friends: we hate old books: we hate old opinions; and at last we come to hate ourselves.”
Analysis: Charts the inevitable trajectory of the pleasure of hating. It is a self-consuming fire that, having exhausted external objects, turns inward, leading to self-loathing.
“Have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough."
Analysis: The devastating conclusion. It inverts conventional morality. For Hazlitt, his failure was excessive idealism and trust; true wisdom would have been a more profound and protective misanthropy.
Modal Questions:
William Hazlitt as a Critic
Key Traits: Impressionistic, passionate, and conversational. Unlike his contemporary Coleridge, who was systematic and philosophical, Hazlitt’s criticism springs from “gusto”—his term for intense, empathetic appreciation. He describes the experience of a work of art.
Manifesto in this Essay: His approach is exemplified in his literary references. He doesn’t dryly analyse Chaucer or Spenser; he complains that liking them looks like “pedantry and egotism” in a world obsessed with fashionable trash. His criticism is always personal, engaged, and morally charged.
Strengths: Unparalleled ability to convey the living spirit of a work. His writing on Shakespeare is some of the best ever penned.
Weaknesses: Can be subjective, digressive, and biased by personal or political animus (as seen in his scorn for the “Lake School” poets who turned Tory).
Prose Style of William Hazlitt
Energetic and Muscular: His sentences are periodic and cumulative, building momentum through rhythmic clauses and forceful verbs (“we throw aside the trammels… the wild beast resumes its sway”).
Conversational Yet Eloquent: He masterfully blends the idiom of speech with literary resonance. The prose feels like passionate, intelligent talk, filled with rhetorical questions, exclamations, and direct address.
Figurative and Vivid: Relies on powerful metaphors and similes. Hatred is a “poisonous mineral”; the mind “abhor[s] a vacuum”; a decaying friendship is a “carcase” not worth “embalming.”
Allusive: Freely references history, literature (Shakespeare, Milton, Restoration drama), mythology, and contemporary events, assuming a literate reader.
Critical Appreciation of the Essay in British Literary Tradition
A Peak of the Familiar Essay: Stands with the works of Charles Lamb and Thomas De Quincey in perfecting the Romantic familiar essay—subjective, reflective, and stylistically brilliant.
Bridge Between Romanticism and Modernity: Its psychological depth and cynical modernity look forward to writers like Thomas Hardy or even 20th-century existentialists. It exposes the Romantic faith in feeling to its own darkest implications.
A Masterpiece of Rhetoric: Despite its gloomy theme, the essay is exhilarating to read due to its uncompromising honesty, intellectual vigour, and stylistic verve. It is persuasive precisely because it is so unsettlingly enthusiastic about its own bleak thesis.
Enduring Relevance: In an age of online vitriol, cancel culture, and polarized politics, Hazlitt’s exploration of the communal “pleasure of hating” feels more relevant than ever. It serves as a caustic mirror to our own society’s dynamics.
Conclusion: The Uncomfortable Truth
William Hazlitt’s “On the Pleasure of Hating” is not a comforting read. It is a savage, brilliant, and unforgettable tour of the human heart’s capacity for negativity. It challenges our self-conception as progressively civilized beings, suggesting instead that our social peace is a thin veneer over a seething core of ancient hostilities. While we may not accept its thesis in full, its power lies in its fearless confrontation of truths we are usually keen to avoid. As a work of literature, it remains a testament to the power of prose to explore, with glorious intensity, the most shadowy corners of our nature. It confirms Hazlitt not just as a great critic of art, but as one of humanity’s most unflinching critics.
