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
Recollections of the Lake Poets father to be insightful and generally fair. De Quincey wrote about the figures of the "Lake School," especially Wordsworth and Coleridge, repeatedly throughout his canon. The essays that make up the collection are primarily these (each year links to its corresponding "[year] in poetry" article): After their initial publication, several of the essays appeared in the second volume of "Selections Grave and Gay" (1854), the first British collected edition of De Quincey's works. For that edition, the author edited his essays, trimming some passages but adding others. The essays were reprinted again in a separate volume, as "Recollections of the