[1] The first papyrus publication has been credited to Goodwin, who published for the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, one of the Papyri Graecae Magicae V, translated into English with commentary in 1853.

[2] In 1860 he wrote one of the articles in Essays and Reviews, to which he was the only lay contributor, writing alongside such great theologians as Rowland Williams and Henry Bristow Wilson.

In a speech, "The Growth and Nature of Egyptology: an inaugural lecture" by Stephen Ranulph Kingdon Glanville,[3] Glanville said of Goodwin: "By the time Goodwin left Cambridge, he was a first class Greek scholar, an accomplished Hebraist, and an authority on Anglo-Saxon with valuable editions of new texts to his credit.

In London, where his practice was not large, he wrote music and art criticism; was for a time editor of Literary Gazette; was the only layman among the seven contributors to the much talked of Essays and Reviews (1860); and, because of his Greek and Hebrew scholarship, was frequently consulted by the Revisers of the New Testament.

He was in close touch with Samuel Birch, then Keeper of the Oriental Department and was constantly exchanging information by correspondence with other leading Egyptologists of his day."