ABSTRACT
Coleridge, The Statesman’s Manual (1816); reviews by William Hazlitt, Examiner, Sept. 8, 1816, pp. 571-573; December 29, 1816, pp. 824-827. The first of these articles contains Hazlitt’s bitterest attack on Coleridge and some of his most forceful rhetoric. As usual, Hazlitt’s allusions are so numerous that there is not room to identify them in full, but as a sample of his range we can note that the centered quotations in the first article come from Shakespeare, Macbeth I.iii.140–142; Milton, Paradise Lost, III, 480; Pope, Essay on Man, I, 96 (“wise” substituted for “blest”); Burns, Tam o’ Shanter, lines 61-64; and Milton, Paradise Lost, I, 593-594. “Mr. Howard” (p. 572, column 1) was John Howard (1726-1790), famed as a prison reformer and “philanthropist.” The omitted title indicated by a dash on page 572, column 2, is “Poet Laureate” (Robert Southey). John Buncle, in the next paragraph, is the title character in a novel by Thomas Amory (?1691-1788).
