Hazlitt’s ‘On Living to One’s-Self’

 Among the English essayists, I loved Lamb and never knew what to make of Hazlitt.

But then there are passages like this:

 

What I mean by living to one’s-self is living in the world, as in it, not of it; it is as if no one knew there was such a person, and you wished no one to know it: it is to be silent spectator of the mighty scene of things, not an object of attention or curiosity in it; to take a thoughtful, anxious interest in the world, but not to feel the slightest inclination to meddle with it.

 

It also contains this sentence:

 

For many years of my life I did nothing but think.

 

In places, I can see sentences that I almost might have written. I can almost see, in other words, a family resemblance. It’s as if Hazlitt were some distant uncle, kin to me in a bewildering way. The differences between us are many. The resemblances are few but striking, or so it seems to me.

• Source: William Hazlitt, “On Living to One’s-Self.” My old notes say I found it in A Century of English Essays: From Caxton to Belloc, edited by Ernest Rhys and Lloyd Vaughan; New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1951.