Each talk will present a story of its own, told to a considerable extent (about one fifth) in Hazlitt’s own words.

Five: The end of the ‘mechanical theory’

Wordsworth did not take to Hazlitt, and wrote a couple of poems ridiculing him. Coleridge too was a little frustrated: he wanted Hazlitt to share his admiration not only for Hartley and Priestley but also for the newest thing in philosophy – ‘the most unintelligible Emanuel Kant.’ But Hazlitt was not ready to comply: he admired Coleridge but did not trust him intellectually, and when he got back to Wem he started working again on his own problems in his own way. On a walk in Nether Stowey he had challenged Coleridge to a philosophical argument about a footprint in the sand, and had been disappointed by his obtuseness. He continued work on the problem for six years, developing a soaring argument about how personal identity is not a matter of given fact, but of active imagination. He had to conclude that all the ‘modern philosophers’ were wrong, including his own father; and that truth was a more elusive prey than they had ever imagined.