N.B.

Mr. [Charles] Lamb has a distaste to new faces, to new books, to new buildings, to new customs. . . . He evades the present, he mocks the future. His affections revert to, and settle on, the past, but then, even this must have something personal and local in it to interest him deeply and thoroughly.

-- William Hazlitt, quoted in Phillip Lopate's introduction to The Art of the Personal Essay.

Comments

[stephenesque]

And Hazlitt also superbly lambasted the poet Shelley for exactly the opposite prejudice: being too much of a neophiliac. The old groucher is well worth reading in the original if you ask me. He could take anyone down a peg or two with admirable ease and faultless prose.