302
HERBERT MARCUSE
troversy between Lenin and Trotsky on the one hand, and Bernstein,
Kautsky,
et al.,
on the other. Lichtheim's discussion is by far the
most
thorough and even the most convincing effort along this line. I only
wish to raise the question whether Lichtheim, in arguing his thesis, does
not underrate the revolutionary content of the economic analysis
in
Capital,
of the
Critique of the Gotha Program
and of the
Civil
War
in France.
Herbert Marcuse
THE FORGOTTEN SELF
WILLIAM HAZLIn. By Herschel Baker. Belknap Press, of HMvMd Uni·
versity Press. $10.00.
I wish I could say that in this big, handsome, monumental
book Hazlitt had at last risen to something like his true stature as one
of the great English critics. But the bigness of the book turns out to
be an ironic memorial to Hazlitt as a critic ; and this final irony is not
to be confused with the bemused and rather patronizing irony that
Professor Baker so often assumes toward his man. He claims to feel for
Hazlitt "affection and respect," but he seems fonder of speaking of him
as "a busy hack." and he gives his scholarly respect less to Hazlitt's
mind or to his prose than
to
what is called his "whole immense produc–
tion," as "almost an index of the period." But he remains unaware of
what a presumption it would be really to try to "assess as a whole" the
work of a critic who wrote not only on literature, but on politics,
painting, theology, Malthusian economics, the theatre, Napoleon,
gram–
mar, Parliament, prizefighting, metaphysics and epistemology and ethics,
the English press, education, capital punishment, theories of language–
to mention only some of Hazlitt's more general concerns, not particular
men and events ; the list is encyclopedic, and far longer than even this
huge book can accommodate except in its index.
Yet the fact that Hazlitt can still arouse an irritated response and
never mere indifference suggests why his memory will always be a
force in criticism-or why, as his many detractors today would put it,
the prospect of his being seriously honored remains a threat
to
the
modern critical tradition. There have always been two main objections
made to Hazlitt's reputation as a major critic: one, that he
was
