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
To William Wordsworth The poem ends with the narrator describing the overall effect that "The Prelude" had upon him: "To William Wordsworth" summarises the themes within "The Prelude" and deals with Wordsworth's understanding of his mind and its relationship with nature. As such, Coleridge favours Wordsworth's own views and contradicts feelings found within his own poetry, especially in "Dejection". The poem also attacks Coleridge in a masochistic manner and places the writer and his own ideas in an inferior position. One such emphasis was on Wordsworth being able to find bliss from solitude and Coleridge being unable to find anything but pain, which