However much readers and critics psychoanalyze William Hazlitt’s persona in Liber Amoris (1823), it is abundantly clear that “H” simply wants what he cannot have–sex with “S.” In the first part of Liber Amoris, William Hazlitt constructs–supposedly re-constructs–conversations he had with Sarah Walker, the daughter of the landlord of a boarding house where he lived from 1820 until 1822, when he moved to Scotland to facilitate his divorce from his first wife. He persists in his attempts to seduce her but is met with chaste resistance, despite his assertions that she sits in his lap, kisses him, and lets him “take other liberties” with her (302). The ambiguity of the “other liberties” he takes with the young woman makes us wonder if he is closer to his goal–literally and figuratively–than literary propriety permits him to reveal; but, more importantly, the linguistic ambiguity raises questions about the veracity of Hazlitt’s portrayal of her in his short “book of love,” the literal translation of Liber Amoris. Considering the liberties he claims she has allowed him to take, no elaborate linguistic &construction is necessary to reverse the title to read Amor Liberis–or “free love”–which is essentially what “H” wants from her in the first part of the book. Such linguistic confusion is apparent throughout as language opens up an interconnectedness of meanings, verbal similarities, and associations in Hazlitt’s text, leaving him linguistically caught on the semantic difference between “her lover” (himself) and his “love of her” (his desire; my emphasis): “The gates of Paradise were once open to me too, and I blushed to enter but with the golden keys of love! I would die; but her lover–my love of her–ought not to die. When I am dead, who will love her as I have done?” (325). These similar sounds further point to the wordplay in the rifle. The text calls into question, therefore, whether we can accept this as actual experience or as Hazlitt’s highly literary and textual creation.
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