Hazlitt, William, critic and essayist, born in Maidstone, of Irish descent; began life as an artist, but abandoned art for letters, and contributed to the reviews; wrote on the English poets and dramatists, the “Characters of Shakespeare's Plays,” “The Spirit of the Age,” a “Life of Napoleon,” &c.; criticism was his forte, and he ranks among the foremost devoted to that art; his life was not well regulated, his health gave way, and he died in poverty (1778‒1830).
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Hayward, Abraham * Head, Sir Edmund Walker, Bart.