Nineteenth-century essayist William Hazlitt’s attention to the complex interplay of aesthetics and politics in his criticism deepens our understanding of “romantic” rhetoric as reflexive and politically engaged. In sketches of orators and authors, Hazlitt criticizes their moribund deployments of classical rhetoric and its damaging consequences on British parliamentary politics, literature, and society. However, he also reworks classical rhetorical exercises and revives their civic potential in his dynamic prose.