ABSTRACT
Godwin, Thoughts on Parr’s Spital Sermon (1801); review by Sydney Smith, Edinburgh Review, I (Oct. 1802), 24-26. Godwin’s calm logic — occasionally rising to impassioned reasoning — was more to the taste of the Edinburgh’s reviewers than the “mysticism” of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, or the “misanthropy” of Byron. Those backsliding liberals Sir James Macintosh and Dr. Samuel Parr, who turned against Godwin and publicly disavowed his ideas without warning, were joined with Thomas Robert Malthus as objects of Godwin’s masterly reply — and, though all of them were personal and/or political friends of the Edinburgh reviewers, Godwin’s tract is given fair treatment.
