Lectures on the English Poets
This book collects together lectures on English poetry Hazlitt delivered at London’s Surrey Institution in 1818, ranging from ‘On Poetry in General’, through acknowledged classics such as Chaucer, Spenser and Shakespeare, and on to ‘The Living Poets’.
Lecture I.—Introductory on Poetry in General
The best general notion which I can give of poetry is, that it is the natural impression of any o...
Lecture II. On Chaucer and Spenser.
Having, in the former Lecture, given some account of the nature of poetry in general, I shall pro...
Lecture III. On Shakspeare and Milton.
In looking back to the great works of genius in former times, we are sometimes disposed to wonder...
Lecture IV. On Dryden and Pope.
Dryden and Pope are the great masters of the artificial style of poetry in our language, as the p...
Lecture V. On Thomson and Cowper.
Thomson, the kind-hearted Thomson, was the most indolent of mortals and of poets. But he was also...
Lecture VI. On Swift, Young, Gray, Collins, &c.
I shall in the present Lecture go back to the age of Queen Anne, and endeavour to give a cursory ...
Lecture VII. On Burns, and the Old English Ballads.
I am sorry that what I said in the conclusion of the last Lecture respecting Chatterton, should h...
Lecture VIII. On the Living Poets.
"No more of talk where God or Angel guest With man, as with his friend, familiar us'd ...