Yet Hazlitt also--for, leaving Coleridge, we may now confine ourselves
to him--is open to attack. His fine critical powers were marred by the
strain of bitterness in his nature. And the result is that his judgment
on many poets, and notably the poets of his own day, too often sounds
like an intelligent version of the _Edinburgh_ or the _Quarterly_. Or,
to speak more accurately, he betrays some tendency to return to
principles which, though assuredly applied in a more generous spirit,
are at bottom hardly to be distinguished from the principles of Johnson.
He too has his "indispensable laws", or something very like them. He
too has his bills of exclusion and his list of proscriptions. The
poetry of earth, he more than suspects, is for ever dead; after Milton,
no claimant is admitted to anything more substantial than a courtesy
title. This, no doubt, was in part due to his morose temper; but it
was partly also the result of the imperfect method with which he
started.
The fault of his conception--and it was that which determined his
method--is to be too absolute.
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