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
William Wordsworth work of original materialist philosophy entitled "The Apocalypse of Nature" (London, 1791), to which many of Wordsworth's philosophical sentiments may well be indebted. In 1807 Wordsworth published "Poems in Two Volumes", including "". Up to this point Wordsworth was known only for "Lyrical Ballads", and he hoped that this new collection would cement his reputation. Its reception was lukewarm, however. In 1810, Wordsworth and Coleridge were estranged over the latter's opium addiction, and in 1812, his son Thomas died at the age of 6, six months after the death of 3-year-old Catherine. The following year he received an appointment as