William hazlitt my first acquaintance with poets. Exploring the Self: A Study of Hazlitt’s My First... 2022-10-21

William hazlitt my first acquaintance with poets Rating: 6,6/10 263 reviews

My First Acquaintance with Poets: William Hazlitt

I remember the moment I first encountered the work of William Hazlitt vividly. I was in my high school English class, and my teacher had assigned a selection of his essays for us to read. As I began to delve into Hazlitt's writing, I was immediately struck by his passion, his intelligence, and his ability to convey complex ideas with wit and clarity.

Hazlitt was a man of many talents – a philosopher, a critic, and a journalist – but it was his role as a poet that first captured my attention. His poems are characterized by their intense emotion and their ability to convey powerful and universal truths about the human experience.

One of the things that I found most compelling about Hazlitt's poetry was his ability to convey deep and complex emotions with a simplicity and clarity that made them all the more powerful. He had a rare gift for finding just the right words to express his feelings and convey his ideas, and this made his poetry both engaging and thought-provoking.

Another aspect of Hazlitt's poetry that I found particularly interesting was the way in which he used language to explore the deeper meanings of human experience. His poetry is often infused with a sense of introspection and self-examination, and he was not afraid to delve into difficult or uncomfortable subjects in order to better understand them.

Overall, my first encounter with the work of William Hazlitt was a truly transformative experience. His poetry spoke to me in a way that few other poets had before, and I found myself deeply moved by the power and depth of his words. Hazlitt's poetry has continued to inspire and challenge me in the years since, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to encounter such a brilliant and thought-provoking writer.

My First Acquaintance With Poets 1823 by William Hazlitt

william hazlitt my first acquaintance with poets

I forget a great number of things, many more than I remember; but the day passed off pleasantly, and the next morning Mr. I broached to him an argument of mine to prove that likeness was not mere association of ideas. I returned home, and soon after set out on my journey with unworn heart, and untired feet. . He was quaintly dressed according the costume of that unconstrained period in a brown fustian jacket and striped pantaloons. This delay did not damp, but rather increased my ardour. He did not own the obligation, and stated some distinction without a difference, in defence of his claim to originality.

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Hazlitt; selected essays : Hazlitt, William, 1778

william hazlitt my first acquaintance with poets

We, however, knocked the people of the house up at last, and we were repaid for our apprehensions and fatigue by some excellent rashers of fried bacon and eggs. I slept that night in an old room with blue hangings and covered with round-faced family-portraits of the age of George I and II, and from the wooded declivity of the adjoining park that overlooked my window, at the dawn of day, could ---"hear the loud stag speak. He had been a poor Irish lad, carefully brought up by his parents, and sent to the University of Glasgow where he studied under Adam Smith to prepare him for his future destination. The face of nature had not then the brand of JUS DIVINUM on it: Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe. In digressing, in dilating, in passing from subject to subject, he appeared to me to float in air, to slide on ice.


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Which of the following poets does William Hazlitt call ?Don Quixote

william hazlitt my first acquaintance with poets

On this occasion Coleridge spoke of Virgil's " Georgics," but not well. It was not till some time after that I knew his friends Lamb and Southey. He died of stomach cancer on September 18, 1830. Returning that same evening, I got into a metaphysical argument with Wordsworth, while Coleridge was explaining the different notes of the nightingale to his sister, which we neither of us succeeded in making ourselves perfectly clear and intelligible. The Analogy is a tissue of sophistry, of wire-drawn, theological special-pleading; the Sermons with the Preface to them are in a fine vein of deep, matured reflection, a candid appeal to our observation of human nature, without pedantry and without bias.

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"My first acquaintance with poets" by William Hazlitt

william hazlitt my first acquaintance with poets

There was a chaunt in the recitation both of Coleridge and Wordsworth, which acts as a spell upon the hearer, and disarms the judgment. The female part of my acquaintance entertain an odd opinion, that a bachelor is not in fact a rational creature. I did not suffer in his opinion by my silence. But in the Thorn, the Mad Mother, and the Complaint of a Poor Indian Woman, I felt that deeper power and pathos which have been since acknowledged, "In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite," as the characteristics of this author; and the sense of a new style and a new spirit in poetry came over me. During those months the chill breath of winter gave me a welcoming; the vernal air was balm and inspiration to me. We parted at the six-mile stone; and I returned homeward, pensive, but much pleased.

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My First Acquaintance With Poets 1823 by William Hazlitt

william hazlitt my first acquaintance with poets

His essay, "My First Acquaintance with Poets," reveals the deep respect, even reverence, with which he regarded those he admired. I was called down into the room where he was, and went half-hoping, half-afraid. He had been asked if he was not much struck with him, and he said, he thought himself in more danger of being struck by him. He said "he hardly knew which to prefer. Hazlitt tells us that he walked ten miles through freezing mud in January, 1798, to hear Coleridge preach, and that he was transfixed by the power of the man's imagination and imagery; so impressed was he that he arranged a meeting and a visit at the poet's home.


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My First Acquaintance with Poets

william hazlitt my first acquaintance with poets

Elliston's and the Drury-lane boards. It might seem that the genius of his face as from a height surveyed and projected him with sufficient capacity and huge aspiration into the world unknown of thought and imagination, with nothing to support or guide his veering purpose, as if Columbus had launched his adventurous course for the New World in a scallop, without oars or compass. We set off together on foot, Coleridge, John Chester, and I. The golden sun-sets, the silver star of evening, lighted me on my way to new hopes and prospects. In a day or two after we arrived at Stowey, we set out, I on my return home, and he for Germany. It was in this room that we found a little worn-out copy of the " Seasons," lying in a window-seat, on which Coleridge exclaimed, " That is true fame! So, at least, I comment on it after the event.

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My first acquaintance with poets (1993 edition)

william hazlitt my first acquaintance with poets

I can write fast enough now. Mr Rowe had scarce returned to give an account of his disappointment when the round-faced man in black entered, and dissipated all doubts on the subject by beginning to talk. Would that I could go back to what I then was! I saw it but the other day, after an interval of twenty years, from a hill near Taunton. The country about Nether Stowey is beautiful, green and hilly, and near the sea-shore. I dipped into a few of these with great satisfaction, and with the faith of a novice. I told Coleridge I had written a few remarks, and was sometimes foolish enough to believe that I had made a discovery on the same subject the Natural Disinterestedness of the Human Mind —and I tried to explain my view of it to Coleridge, who listened with great willingness, but I did not succeed in making myself understood.

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My First Acquaintance With Poets, By William Hazlitt Quotes

william hazlitt my first acquaintance with poets

A line of communication is thus established, by which the flame of civil and religious liberty is kept alive, and nourishes its smouldering fire unquenchable, like the fires in the Agamemnon of Æschylus, placed at different stations, that waited for ten long years to announce with their blazing pyramids the destruction of Troy. He held the good town of Shrewsbury in delightful suspense for three weeks that he remained there, "fluttering the proud Salopians, like an eagle in a dove-cote"; and the Welsh mountains that skirt the horizon with their tempestuous confusion, agree to have heard no such mystic sounds since the days of High-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lay. In fact, Hazlitt mocks his youthful feelings and poetry with his mature feelings, subordinating poetry to his prose in the above-mentioned essay. We walked for miles and miles on dark brown heaths overlooking the Channel, with the Welsh hills beyond, and at times descended into little sheltered valleys close by the sea-side, with a smuggler's face scowling by us, and then had to ascend conical hills with a path winding up through a coppice to a barren top, like a monk's shaven crown, from one of which I pointed out to Coleridge's notice the bare masts of a vessel on the very edge of the horizon, and within the red-orbed disk of the setting sun, like his own spectre-ship in the Ancient Mariner. I broached to him an argument of mine to prove that likeness was not mere association of ideas. Coleridge, in truth, met me half-way on the ground of philosophy, or I should not have been won over to his imaginative creed. Blackwood's when they sat down at the same table with the King, was not more so.

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Hazlitt’s “My First Acquaintance with poets”: the contest between a poetic feminine and antipoetic masculine form: Prose Studies: Vol 41, No 1

william hazlitt my first acquaintance with poets

The sermon was upon peace and war; upon church and state, not their alliance, but their separation -- on the spirit of the world and the spirit of Christianity, not the same, but as opposed to one another. From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. He could hardly have been more surprised or pleased, if our visitor had worn wings. It was agreed, among other things, that we should make a jaunt down the Bristol Channel, as far as Linton. Romanticism: An Oxford Guide.

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