Contrariness of the kind manifest in the literary output and general disposition of the nineteenth century English essayist and journalist, William Hazlitt, has much to teach contemporary intellectuals working in the academy about how better to be critical, offering important lessons on the necessity for self-consistency and independence of…

William Hazlitt (1778-1830), one of the most important critics of the English Romantic Period, held and published highly developed views about the nature of the creative imagination, the function of criticism and what it means to be truly learned. Although he never advanced an explicit theory of education, least of all one about the purposes of…