Romantic literature in English an English essayist, best known for his "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" (1821), an autobiographical account of his laudanum use and its effect on his life. William Hazlitt (1778–1830), friend of both Coleridge and Wordsworth, is another important essayist at this time, though today he is best known for his literary criticism, especially "Characters of Shakespeare's Plays" (1817–18). The second generation of Romantic poets includes Lord Byron (1788–1824), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) and John Keats (1795–1821). Byron, however, was still influenced by 18th-century satirists and was, perhaps the least 'romantic' of the three, preferring "the brilliant wit of Pope to
Romantic literature in English Southey (1774–1843) and journalist Thomas de Quincey (1785–1859). However, at the time Walter Scott (1771–1832) was the most famous poet. Scott achieved immediate success with his long narrative poem "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" in 1805, followed by the full epic poem "Marmion" in 1808. Both were set in the distant Scottish past. The early Romantic poets brought a new emotionalism and introspection, and their emergence is marked by the first romantic manifesto in English literature, the "Preface" to "Lyrical Ballads" (1798). In it Wordsworth discusses what he sees as the elements of a new type of poetry, one