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
Romanticism and the French Revolution historically. It must be put beside the literary standards of the eighteenth century. These standards impose limits upon the Elysian fields of poetry; poetry must be confined to the common experience of average men… The Romantic Movement then means the revolt of a group of contemporary poets who wrote, not according to common and doctrinaire standards, but as they individually pleased… there are no principles comprehensive and common to all except those of individualism and revolt." Although the poets mentioned earlier (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley) all share the common theme of approving the French Revolution, they each have their