Lake Poets was mostly a prose writer and did not particularly subscribe to the Wordsworthian vision of the Lakes. Southey, like Wordsworth, started out on the republican left, but, by the time the threat from Napoleon had dwindled, he had become the embodiment of a Tory extolling the virtues of nation and patriotism, and using the Lakes as a touchstone, and as "the symbol of the nation's covenant with God." Letitia Elizabeth Landon's sketch, "Grasmere Lake, A Sketch by a Cockney", in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1834, is a spoof on the Lake Poets, whom she admired (especially Wordsworth) but regarded
The Spirit of the Age in British society. He was befriended in his early years by the poets Wordsworth and Coleridge, who at that time shared his radical thinking, and soon he entered the circle of reformist philosopher William Godwin. His brother John was also responsible for helping him connect with other like-minded souls, leading him to the center of London intellectual culture, where he met others who, years later, along with Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Godwin, would be brought to life in this book, particularly Charles Lamb and, some time afterward, Leigh Hunt. Although Hazlitt had aimed at a career in philosophy, he was unable