It is amazing how soon the rich and titled, and even some of those who have wielded great political power, are forgotten.

A little rule, a little sway,
Is all the great and mighty have
Betwixt the cradle and the grave,

and, after its short date, they hardly leave a name behind them. "A great man's memory may, at the common rate, survive him half a year." His heirs and successors take his titles, his power, and his wealth--all that made him considerable or courted by others; and he has left nothing else behind him either to delight or benefit the world.

Posterity are not by any means so disinterested as they are supposed to be. They give their gratitude and admiration only in return for benefits conferred. They cherish the memory of those to whom they are indebted for instruction and delight; and they cherish it just in proportion to the instruction and delight they are conscious they receive. The sentiment of admiration springs immediately from this ground, and cannot be otherwise than well founded.¹
The effeminate clinging to life as such, as a general or abstract idea, is the effect of a highly civilised and artificial state of society. Men formerly plunged into all the vicissitudes and dangers of war, or staked their all upon a single die, or some one passion, which if they could not have gratified, life became a burden to them--now our strongest passion is to think, our chief amusement is to read new plays, new poems, new novels, and this we may do at our leisure, in perfect security, ad infinitum. If we look into the old histories and romances, before the belles-lettres neutralised human affairs and reduced passion to a state of mental equivocation, we find the heroes and heroines not setting their lives "at a pin's fee," but rather courting opportunities of throwing them away in very wantonness of spirit.

They raise their fondness for some favourite pursuit to its height, to a pitch of madness, and think no price too dear to pay for its full gratification. Everything else is dross. They go to death as to a bridal bed, and sacrifice themselves or others without remorse at the shrine of love, of honour, of religion, or any other prevailing feeling. Romeo runs his "seasick, weary bark upon the rocks" of death the instant he finds himself deprived of his Juliet; and she clasps his neck in their last agonies, and follows him to the same fatal shore. One strong idea takes possession of the mind and overrules every other; and even life itself, joyless without that, becomes an object of indifference or loathing. There is at least more of imagination in such a state of things, more vigour of feeling and promptitude to act than in our lingering, languid, protracted attachment to life for its own poor sake. It is, perhaps, also better, as well as more heroical, to strike at some daring or darling object, and if we fail in that, to take the consequences manfully, than to renew the lease of a tedious, spiritless, charmless existence, merely (as Pierre says) "to lose it afterwards in some vile brawl" for some worthless object. Was there not a spirit of martyrdom as well as a spice of the reckless energy of barbarism in this bold defiance of death? Had not religion something to do with it; the implicit belief in a future life, which rendered this of less value, and embodied something beyond it to the imagination; so that the rough soldier, the infatuated lover, the valorous knight, etc., could afford to throw away the present venture, and take a leap into the arms of futurity, which the modern sceptic shrinks back from, with all his boasted reason and vain philosophy, weaker than a woman! I cannot help thinking so myself; but I have endeavoured to explain this point before, and will not enlarge further on it here.

A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It not only gives us fortitude to bear pain, but teaches us at every step the precarious tenure on which we hold our present being. Sedentary and studious men are the most apprehensive on this score. Dr. Johnson was an instance in point. A few years seemed to him soon over, compared with those sweeping contemplations on time and infinity with which he had been used to pose himself. In the still-life of a man of letters there was no obvious reason for a change. He might sit in an arm-chair and pour out cups of tea to all eternity. Would it had been possible for him to do so! The most rational cure, after all, for the inordinate fear of death is to set a just value on life. If we merely wish to continue on the scene to indulge our headstrong humours and tormenting passions, we had better begone at once: and if we only cherish a fondness for existence according to the good we derive from it, the pang we feel at parting with it will not be very severe!<sup>2

1</sup> [Hazlitt's note: It has been usual to raise a very unjust clamour against the enormous salaries of public singers, actors, and so on. This matter seems reducible to a moral equation. They are paid out of money raised by voluntary contributions in the strictest sense; and if they did not bring certain sums into the treasury, the Managers would not engage them. These sums are exactly in proportion to the number of Individuals to whom their performance gives an extraordinary degree of pleasure. The talents of a singer, actor, etc., are therefore worth just as much as they will fetch.]

² In the third edition of Table-Talk (1845-46), Hazlitt's only surviving son, William, appended the following paragraph to his father's essay:

I will add a remark, which in some degree breaks the transition from life to death, and renders it less shocking to the imagination than it usually appears. Death is commonly represented as a monster that devours the whole man; the grave, as swallowing us entire; not only our future projects, but our past enjoyments as its prey, and all the pleasures of our lives collected together to make a rich banquet for the grim tyrant. But, in truth, Time has already anticipated the work of Death, and left him but half his spoils; for we die every moment of our lives. Death can only rob us of the future, the past he has no power over: our being gradually and silently slides from under us: our momentary pleasures follow each other as bubbles rise and disappear on the water, or the snow that melts as it falls: our attachments and friendships and desires wear out and are forgotten; the objects of them are dead to us, and we outlive not only them but ourselves. We ourselves have drunk up the cup of life, and have left only the lees. The stroke of death does not level the stately tree with all its blooming honours full upon it, but strikes the bare trunk and crumbling branches, and a few withered leaves. A shadow is all that remains of what we were, and we drag about a mockery of existence long after all the life is flown. It is the sense of self alone that makes death formidable and that hinders us from perceiving that our fleeting existence is long ago lost in itself.

Hazlitt's son was with him when he died of cancer on September 18, 1830. According to Ronald Blythe, "Bryan Proctor heard him speaking his last words in a voice 'resembling the faint scream I have heard from birds.' He was fifty-two."