SOURCE: Schoenfield, Mark. “Voices Together: Lamb, Hazlitt, and the London.” Studies in Romanticism 29, no. 2 (summer 1990): 257-72.

In the following essay, Schoenfield analyzes Lamb's essay “The Old and the New Schoolmaster” in the contexts of periodical publication in the early nineteenth century and of William Hazlitt's adjoining article, “Old Antiquity.”

At this instant, [Hazlitt] may be preparing for me some compliment, above my deserts, as he has sprinkled many such among his admirable books, for which I rest his debtor; or, for anything I know, or can guess to the contrary, he may be about to read a lecture on my weaknesses.

—Charles Lamb, London Magazine 1823

Mr. Lamb has succeeded not by conforming to the Spirit of the Age, but in opposition to it. … His style runs pure and clear, though it may often take an underground course.

—William Hazlitt, Spirit of the Age 1825

M M. Bakhtin, in The...