Abstract
Abstract ‘Do you like Sterne?’ asked William. ‘Yes, to be sure. I should be hanged if I didn’t!’ He was talking to Joseph Fawcett, ‘almost the first literary acquaintance I ever made’. Twelve years his senior, Fawcett was an energetic, excitable Unitarian preacher. A decade before, he started to give his Sunday evening lectures at the Old Jewry Meeting House in London, and became the most popular dissenting clergyman of the day. Crowds flocked to hear him, including Sarah Siddons, the Kembles, and Wordsworth. But Hazlitt did not meet him until introduced by Godwin in early 1795, shortly before Fawcett resigned to become a farmer at Edge Grove, near Aldenham in Hertfordshire. As Hazlitt recalled, ‘the conversations I had with him on subjects of taste and philosophy (for his taste was as refined as his powers of reasoning were profound and subtle) gave me a delight such as I can never feel again.’
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