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The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits by William Hazlitt
page 19 of 255 (07%)
turns wooden utensils in a lathe for exercise, and fancies he can turn
men in the same manner. He has no great fondness for poetry, and can
hardly extract a moral out of Shakespear. His house is warmed and
lighted by steam. He is one of those who prefer the artificial to the
natural in most things, and think the mind of man omnipotent. He has a
great contempt for out-of-door prospects, for green fields and
trees, and is for referring every thing to Utility. There is a little
narrowness in this; for if all the sources of satisfaction are taken
away, what is to become of utility itself? It is, indeed, the great
fault of this able and extraordinary man, that he has concentrated his
faculties and feelings too entirely on one subject and pursuit, and has
not "looked enough abroad into universality."[B]


[Footnote A: Now Lord Colchester.]

[Footnote B: Lord Bacon's Advancement of Learning.]





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WILLIAM GODWIN

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