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
Sir George Beaumont, 7th Baronet and Dutch painting and landscaping the grounds at Coleorton Hall, Beaumont's country house in Leicestershire. Coleorton was later to become Beaumont's main place of residence, and was rebuilt to a design by George Dance the Younger from 1804 to 1808. A friend of the Lake Poets, with whom he considered himself a kindred spirit, Beaumont lent out the farm of the estate to William Wordsworth and his family in the winter of 1806. They were briefly joined there by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but Beaumont was unable to establish the same rapport with this poet as with Wordsworth, who proved a