Sketches of the Living Poets.

First published in The Examiner, XIV, 21 October 1821, pp. 664–7. Hunt’s sketch of Coleridge reinforces his priorities about poetic achievement – imagination remains one of the qualities he most admires – and enriches his nuanced way of assessing the first-generation writers of the romantic era. He finds Coleridge, like Wordsworth and Southey, an apostate to the cause of political liberty. Yet Hunt can still praise Coleridge’s sheer powers of imagination, which differentiates him from the reactionary place-seekers denounced in the essay on a ‘Proposed Royal Academy of Literature’ (The Examiner, XIV, 5 August 1821, pp. 481–2 and above, pp. 436–50).