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Atrocious Burke Scholarship

The Portable Edmund Burke edited by Isaac Kramnick states on page xxviii of the introduction that:
Beginning in 1929 and 1930, Burke's reputation was subjected to the most serious assault on it since the radical crew of Wollstonecraft, Priestly, Paine, William Godwin, and others had finished with it one hundred and thirty-five years earlier.
This is false. Godwin did not assault Burke's reputation. Here is a well known quote by Godwin about Burke:

http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/godwin/pj8/pj8_10.html
Whilst this sheet is in the press for the third impression, I receive the intelligence of the death of Burke, who was principally in the author's mind, while he penned the preceding sentences. In all that is most exalted in talents, I regard him as the inferior of no man that ever adorned the face of earth; and, in the long record of human genius, I can find for him very few equals. In sublety of discrimination, in magnitude of conception, in sagacity and profoundness of judgement, he was never surpassed.
This was followed with a bit of criticism; Godwin considered Burke to be one of the best men ever, but flawed. There is no way to take it as an assault on Burke's reputation. Godwin also praised Burke on several other occasions.

Elliot Temple on November 22, 2009

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