The Spirit of the Age to have inaugurated the Romantic movement in English poetry with the publication in 1798 of their "Lyrical Ballads". Hazlitt was introduced to Wordsworth by Coleridge, and both had a shaping influence on him, who was privileged to have read "Lyrical Ballads" in manuscript. Though Hazlitt was never close with Wordsworth, their relationship was cordial for many years. As between Coleridge and Hazlitt, as well as Southey and Hazlitt, differences between Wordsworth and Hazlitt over politics were a major cause of the breakdown of their friendship. But there was another cause for the rupture. Hazlitt had reviewed Wordsworth's "The Excursion" in
The Spirit of the Age and writer ... ." Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) was a Scottish poet and the editor of the "New Monthly Magazine", where several of the essays that were later incorporated into "The Spirit of the Age" were first published. With the 1799 publication of his poem "The Pleasures of Hope", written in the formal language and rhymed couplets characteristic of an earlier period (though also with some traits of the emerging Romantic period), Campbell was catapulted into fame, becoming one of the most popular poets of the day, far more so than his Romantic contemporaries Wordsworth and Coleridge, whose "Lyrical Ballads" had