When William Hazlitt died, in 1830, his literary fame was obscured by his political views. The man who admired Napoleon and wrote a biography of him and who championed the radical creed of the French Revolution could hardly have been expected to be popular among Englishmen of the early nineteenth century. During the past twenty-five years, however, several volumes containing selections from his essays have been issued; and most editions of Shakespeare enrich themselves by quoting his opinions. His Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, printed in 1817, is still very much alive. Heine, in his volume Shakespeare's Mädchen und Frauen (1838), declared: “With the exception of William Hazlitt, England has given us no Shakespearean commentator of any consequence.” And this verdict, though decidedly exaggerated, gains new interest when we append the Teutonic explosion: “It takes the very heart out of me when I remember that Shakespeare is an Englishman, and belongs to the most repulsive race which God in his wrath ever created.”