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 Feast of the Poets on the British Romantic poetry, including "Lyrical Ballads", that sought to overcome the standards of neoclassical poetry with emphasis on the problems inherent in the French standards created by those like Nicholas Despreaux-Boileau. As such, Hunt praises Wordsworth as the leader of a new type of poetry. Although Byron is not fully discussed in early editions of the poem, he is discussed in the notes as an individual who would become an important person who had already "taken his place, beyond a doubt, in the list of English Poets". By the 1815 edition, Byron was introduced and was praised by