“As to writing poetry, or doing anything else that is rational in this floating Inferno, it is almost next to a moral impossibility.”

Expresses frustration at naval life blocking literary work · Letter from HMS Venerable (1809)

• Frustration
• Poetry
• Writing

“A poet in our times is a semi-barbarian in a civilized community. He lives in the days that are past. His ideas, thoughts, feelings, associations, are all with barbarous manners, obsolete customs, and exploded superstitions. The march of his intellect is like that of a crab, backward.”

Satirical dismissal of contemporary poetry as regressive amid advancing reason · Essay, The Four Ages of Poetry (1820)

• Poetry
• Poets
• Progress

“While the historian and the philosopher are advancing in, and accelerating, the progress of knowledge, the poet is wallowing in the rubbish of departed ignorance, and raking up the ashes of dead savages to find gewgaws and rattles for the grown babies of the age.”

Contrasts useful knowledge with poetry's outdated nostalgia · Essay, The Four Ages of Poetry (1820)

• Knowledge
• Poetry
• Progress