Of the many books which Robert Louis Stevenson planned and discussed with his friends in his correspondence there is none, perhaps, which would have been more valued than the biography of William Hazlitt. Whenever Stevenson refers to Hazlitt, whether in his essay on “Walking Tours” or in his letters, he makes one wish he would say more. This is what he writes to Mr. Hammerton:

If the qualification of a biographer is to understand his subject, Stevenson may be said to have been well qualified to write on Hazlitt. Mr. Leslie Stephen has given us a fine critical estimate of Hazlitt the writer, and the late Mr. Ireland’s prefatory memoir to his admirable selection from the Essays, with its enforced limitations, is an excellent piece of biographical condensation, but the life of the essayist has yet to be written. The subject has been tried by many others, but no one has quite captured the spirit of Hazlitt. Had the details of Hazlitt’s life, with his passionate hates and loves, been told by himself in the manner of his beloved Rousseau, he might have produced a book which for interest would have rivalled the Confessions, but failing such a work one must deplore that Stevenson was not encouraged to write on the subject.

I. R., in London Academy.