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
William Wordsworth work of original materialist philosophy entitled "The Apocalypse of Nature" (London, 1791), to which many of Wordsworth's philosophical sentiments may well be indebted. In 1807 Wordsworth published "Poems in Two Volumes", including "". Up to this point Wordsworth was known only for "Lyrical Ballads", and he hoped that this new collection would cement his reputation. Its reception was lukewarm, however. In 1810, Wordsworth and Coleridge were estranged over the latter's opium addiction, and in 1812, his son Thomas died at the age of 6, six months after the death of 3-year-old Catherine. The following year he received an appointment as