Note 518 — Chapter I · WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE: THEIR COMPANIONS AND ADVERSARIES. (continued 2)

Below Hazlitt (who as well as Lamb praised him, though the former more suo fell foul of him as well) may be best placed, in the note which is as much as he deserves, that much-written-of “curiosity of literature,” the poisoner, connoisseur, and coxcomb, Wainewright. “Janus,” however, was too much occupied with pictures, plays, bric-à-brac, Montepulciano, veal-pies in red earthenware dishes, the prize-ring, and other fancies or fopperies, to busy himself directly with literature, save, perhaps, in the curious paper “Janus Weatherbound,” which seems to have been his “farewell to essay-writing.” It is, however, fair to say that, odious as he was in ways not merely moral, he had something of “a taste” here also. His quotations, which are numerous, are singularly well selected; he admired not merely Fouqué but Shelley long before it was the fashion to do so; and you may pick out of the works, rather probably than certainly his (Essays and Criticisms, by T. G. Wainewright, ed. W. C. Hazlitt: London, 1880), stray literary notes not without value.