<P> Byron, observes Hazlitt, was born an aristocrat, but "he is the spoiled child of fame as well as fortune ." Always parading himself before the public, he is not satisfied simply to be admired; he "is not contented to delight, unless he can shock the public . He would force them to admire in spite of decency and common sense...His Lordship is hard to please: he is equally averse to notice or neglect, enraged at censure and scorning praise ." In his poetry--Hazlitt's example is the drama Cain--Byron "floats on swelling paradoxes" and "panders to the spirit of the age, goes to the very edge of extreme and licentious speculation, and breaks his neck over it ." </P> <P>--William Hazlitt, "Lord Byron", The Spirit of the Age </P> <P> In the course of characterising Byron, Hazlitt glances back to Scott, subject of the preceding chapter, and forward to Wordsworth and Southey, each of whom secures his own essay later in The Spirit of the Age . Scott, the only one of these writers who rivals Byron in popularity, notes Hazlitt in a lengthy comparison, keeps his own character offstage in his works; he is content to present "nature" in all its variety . Scott "takes in half the universe in feeling, character, description"; Byron, on the other hand, "shuts himself up in the Bastile of his own ruling passions ." </P> <P> While Byron's poetry, with all its power, is founded on "commonplaces", Wordsworth's poetry expresses something new, raising seemingly insignificant objects of nature to supreme significance . He is capable of seeing the profundity, conveying the effect on the heart, of a "daisy or a periwinkle", thus lifting poetry from the ground, "creat (ing) a sentiment out of nothing ." Byron, according to Hazlitt, does not show this kind of originality . </P>

William hazlitt the spirit of the age summary