The Spirit of the Age His masterwork, "An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice", "gave ... a blow to the philosophical mind of the country". To those with a penchant for thinking about the human condition, Godwin was "the very God of our idolatry" who "carried with him all the most sanguine and fearless understandings of the time" and engaged the energy of a horde of "young men of talent, of education, and of principle." These included some of Hazlitt's most famous former friends, the poets Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey. Twenty-five years later, Hazlitt looks back in astonishment that, in the interval, Godwin's reputation "has sunk below
Lake Poets friend Wordsworth). Her guide to the Lakes ("Complete guide to the Lakes", 1855) was a rather factual and clear-eyed description about what to find there and about the condition of the people. De Quincey moved into Dove Cottage in 1809 after having met his hero Wordsworth a couple of times before at Allan Bank, where the Wordsworths lived during 1808-1811, and then at Rydal Mount ("Recollections of the Lake Poets", edited essays, 1834-1840). His worship of Wordsworth turned sour after De Quincey married a local girl and the Wordsworths refused to meet her. Instead, according to Nicholson, he turned more