to determine by a study of each particular work of
art; that art, being vital and organic, assumed different shapes at
different epochs of human culture; that only the spirit of poetry
remained constant, while its form was molded anew by each age in
accordance with the demands of its own life; that it was no more
reasonable to judge Shakespeare's plays by the practice of Sophocles than
to judge sculpture by the rules of painting. "O! few have there been among
critics, who have followed with the eye of their imagination the
imperishable yet ever wandering spirit of poetry through its various
metempsychoses; or who have rejoiced with the light of clear perception at
beholding with each new birth, with each rare _avatar_, the human race
frame to itself a new body, by assimilating materials of nourishment out
of its new circumstances, and work for itself new organs of power
appropriate to the new sphere of its motion and activity."[45] This rare
grasp of general principles was combined in Coleridge with poetic vision
and a declamatory eloquence which enabled him to seize on the more ardent
and open-minded men of letters and to determine their critical viewpoint.

William Hazlitt was among the earliest to fall under Coleridge's spell.
Just how much he owed to Coleridge beyond the initial impulse it is
impossible to prove, because so much of the latter's criticism was
expressed during improvised monologues at the informal meetings of
friends, or in lectures of which only fragmentary notes remain. At any
rate, while Coleridge's chief distinction lay in the enunciation of
general principles, Hazlitt's practice, in so far as it took account of
these general principles at all, assumed their existence, and displayed
its strength in concrete judgments of individual literary works. His
criticism may be said to imply at every step the existence of Coleridge's,
or to rise like an elegant superstructure on the solid foundation which
the other had laid. Hazlitt communicated to the general public that love
and appreciation of great literature which Coleridge inspired only in the
few elect. The latter, even more distinctly than a poet for poets, was a
_critic for critics_,[46] and three generations have not succeeded in
absorbing all his doctrines. But Hazlitt, with a delicate sensitiveness to
the impressions of genius, with a boundless zest of poetic enjoyment, with
a firm common sense to control his taste, and with a gift of original
exp