Poems and Prose Writtings Volume II

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1850. Excerpt: ... HAZLITT'S LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS. Considering the rank which the works of the late Mr. Hazlitt now justly hold in English literature, the manner in which he is spoken of in this article may sound somewhat strange to readers of the present day. It must be borne in mind, that it was written thirty years ago, when, I believe, little besides these Lectures was known of him in this country. I need hardly add, that, had I now to express an opinion of them for the first time, though that opinion would be much the same as before, my manner of expressing it would, very properly, be modified by the deep respect which a further acquaintance with his works compels me to feel for his great intellectual powers. Perhaps I should state, that, in the present republication, I have added somewhat to the original review, mainly by carrying out more at full the parts relating to Pope, Thomson, and Cowper. Here is a book of large and stately type, and fair and ample margin, which, with eighty pages of extracts, and a good stretch of blank at the beginnings and endings of chapters, leaves, after the deduction of a general introductory chapter, a little more than two hundred pages in which to treat upon the English poets, beginning with old Chaucer, and closing with criticisms upon those of the present day. From the North American Review for 1819. Lectures on the English Poets. Delivered at the Surrey Institution. By William Hazlitt. Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson & Son. 1818. 8vo. pp. 331. Though we have been thus minute in our calculation, we do not take into our reckoning the marvellously free use which Mr. Hazlitt has made of the orts and ends, as well as the good things, of other authors, with which to patch out his sentences. Indeed, we could hardly have done this if ...