In 1785 Godwin was fairly started as a literary man in London, and became gradually known as a useful political writer on the liberal side. He was a constant contributor to the Political Herald, of which Dr Gilbert Stuart was editor, a publication the aim of which is sufficiently described by its title, and which expired at the close of the following year. Some attempts were made to revive it under Godwin’s own editorship, and Sheridan, as representing Mr Fox’s party, had repeated interviews with Godwin on the subject. It was proposed to him that he should receive a regular stipend from the funds set apart for political purposes by the adherents to the party of Mr Fox, but this he declined, resolving to limit his pecuniary advantages to the fair profits of the pamphlet. He was at this time, and indeed long afterwards, struggling with great pecuniary difficulties, having no fixed income whatever, with the payment for one pupil sent him by Dr Kippis, as the only addition to the small and precarious sum obtained by his fugitive writings.

Through Murray he became known to many literary men, who were accustomed to meet at Murray’s, and at the house of Mr Robinson the publisher in Paternoster Row, while through Sheridan he made the acquaintance of some who were already, or were soon to be known in the world of politics. At Sheridan’s he met at dinner “Mr Canning, then an Eton schoolboy, just become known to the public by the paper of the Microcosm, &c., &c. Mr Canning was very pressing with me for the cultivation of my acquaintance.” Sheridan and his circle, finding him not venal, soon dropped him, but not before he had fairly taken his place in the best London literary and scientific society. Fawcet, the dear and chosen friend of a few years back, was not in London, but his place was soon supplied by Holcroft. This name is the second among those of the four men who profoundly influenced the tone of his mind. The acquaintance was made in 1786, but it was not till the year 1788 that he writes of himself and Holcroft as “extremely intimate.” The outward facts of Holcroft’s life are well known, or may be read in his life by Hazlitt. The son of a shoemaker, he had been himself a stable-boy, shoemaker, and actor, before he became a dramatic author, and, self-educated as he was, a successful translator of works from French and German. His home life was far from happy, as will in part appear in these pages. He died in 1809, aged 65. Mrs Shelley writes of him:—

“The name of Holcroft at once gives rise to a crowd of recollections to those who are conversant with the history of the times, and that particular circle of literary men of which my father was one. The son of a shoemaker, he rose to eminence through the energy of his character, and the genius with which nature had endowed him. To think of Holcroft as his friends remember him, and to call to mind whence at this day he principally derives his fame as an author, present a singular contrast. He was a man of stern and irascible character, and from the moment that he espoused liberal principles, he carried them to excess. He was tried for life as a traitor on account of his enthusiasm for the objects of the French Revolution. He believed that truth must prevail by the force of its own powers, but he advocated what he deemed truth with vehemence. He warmly asserted that death and disease existed only through the feebleness of man’s mind, that pain also had no reality. Rectitude and Courage were the gods of his idolatry, but the defect of his temper rendered him a susceptible friend. His Comedy, ‘The Road to Ruin,’ will always maintain its position on the English stage, so long as there are actors who can fitly represent its leading characters. He was a man of great industry, unwearied in his efforts to support his family. When they first became acquainted neither he nor Mr Godwin had yet imbibed those strong political feelings which afterwards distinguished them. It required the French Revolution to kindle that ardent love of Political Justice with which both were afterwards, according to their diverse dispositions, warmed.”

The notes already mentioned, which are mainly the authority for the facts of this portion of Godwin’s life, are supplemented by a diary begun by him on the 6th of April 1788, and continued to the end of his life. It was contained in thirty-two small notebooks, all of which have been preserved. They are ruled and dated most carefully in black and red ink, for those were not days in which such diaries could be purchased ready to hand, and are marvels of neatness and method. This record is extremely concise, and contrary to the usual practice of journal keepers, is even more laconic at the beginning than towards the end. The use made of this diary was to mention the portion of writing accomplished each day, the books read, the persons seen, the places visited. In the earlier volumes many days, and even weeks are sometimes left without an entry, and the most full account extends to but a few words. But for the last forty years of his life there is no omission of even a single day. It appears that he was at this time widely extending his circle of acquaintance, and nearly all the names mentioned are those of men worth knowing.

The following specimens of two weeks may prove of interest:—

In 1793 Godwin published “Political Justice,” and it becomes necessary to examine this important work, as well as the various writings which preceded it. Any attempt to form an estimate of his literary labours has hitherto been deliberately set aside, and the next chapter will be devoted to the task. In the meantime Godwin shall give his own account of his mode of life at this period:—

“In the beginning of the year 1793 I removed to a small house in Challon Street, Somers Town, which I possessed entirely to myself, with no other attendance than the daily resort of a bedmaker for about an hour each day. No man could be more desirous than I was of adopting a practice conformable to my principles, as far as I could do so without affording reasonable ground of offence to any other person. I was anxious not to spend a penny on myself, which I did not imagine calculated to render me a more capable servant of the public, and as I was averse to the expenditure of money, so I was not inclined to earn it but in small portions. I considered the disbursement of money for the benefit of others as a very difficult problem, which he who has the possession of it is bound to solve in the best manner he can, but which affords small encouragement to any one to acquire it who has it not. The plan, therefore, I resolved on was leisure—a leisure to be employed in deliberate composition, and in the pursuit of such attainments as afforded me the most promise to render me useful. For years I scarcely did anything at home or abroad without the enquiry being uppermost in my mind whether I could be better employed for general benefit; and I hope much of this temper has survived, and will attend me to my grave. The frame in which I found myself exalted my spirits, and rendered me more of a talker than I was before or have been since, and than is agreeable to my natural character. Certainly I attended now, and at all times, to everything that was offered in the way of reasoning and argument, with the sincerest desire of embracing the truth, and that only. The ‘Enquiry concerning Political Justice’ was published in February. In this year also I wrote the principal part of the novel of ‘Caleb Williams,’ which may, perhaps, be considered as affording no inadequate image of the fervour of my spirit; it was the offspring of that temper of mind in which the composition of my ‘Political Justice’ left me. In this year I acquired the friendship of many excellent persons—Thomas Wedgwood, Richard Porson, Joseph Gerrald, Robert Merry, and Joseph Ritson.”

Of these, Porson’s name needs no remark; of Gerrald and Wedgwood more hereafter. Merry was a Harrow and Cambridge man, afterwards in the Guards. He wrote plays and poetry, now forgotten, under the signature “Della Crusca.” He married Miss Brunton, a well-known actress, emigrated to America, and died there in 1798.

Ritson was a lawyer, but better known as the collector of old English songs and ballads. He was a vegetarian, and died in 1803, aged fifty-one.

Mrs Shelley’s affectionate note on Wedgwood demands insertion:—

“Godwin cemented this year his acquaintance with a man known to himself and all his literary contemporaries, as the most generous, the most amiable of men; Thomas Wedgwood of Etruria, in Staffordshire, a name dear to all who reverence virtue and goodness. His enthusiasm in the cause of knowledge, his earnest desire to serve his fellows, rank him high among good men. He was afflicted with bad health, which acted on his nerves, and frequently rendered him low-spirited to a painful degree. At one time he and Godwin contemplated making a common household together; their establishment was to be conducted on the most economical plan, as suited the narrow circumstances of the one, and the generous views of the other, which led him to limit his personal expenses, that he might have more to spare for others.”

This scheme, however, fell through, and Godwin continued to live, now alone, as he tells us, in Challon Street, Somers Town. He furnished only a part of his house, and keeping strictly to his intention of earning little and spending little, he lived during three successive years on the several annual sums of £110, £120, and £130.

His habits were exceedingly regular, and remained the same to the end of his life.

“He rose,” says his daughter, “between seven and eight, and I read some classic author before breakfast. From nine till twelve or one he occupied himself with his pen. He found that he could not exceed this measure of labour with any advantage to his own health, or the work in hand. While writing ‘Political Justice,’ there was one paragraph which he wrote eight times over before he could satisfy himself with the strength and perspicuity of his expressions. On this occasion a sense of confusion of the brain came over him, and he applied to his friend Mr Carlisle, afterwards Sir Anthony Carlisle, the celebrated surgeon, who warned him that he had exerted his intellectual faculties to their limit. In compliance with his direction, Mr Godwin reduced his hours of composition within what many will consider narrow bounds. The rest of the morning was spent in reading and seeing his friends. When at home he dined at four, but during his bachelor life he frequently dined out. His dinner at home at this time was simple enough. He had no regular servant; an old woman came in the morning to clean and arrange his rooms, and if necessary she prepared a mutton chop, which was put in a Dutch oven.”

With the publication of “Political Justice” Godwin first became known as an author, and appeared before the world under his own name, except so far as the “Sketches of History” were an exception.

The six sermons which bear that wholly inappropriate title are on the characters of Aaron, Hazael and Jesus—four sermons being devoted to the last. They are fair specimens of Nonconformist pulpit oratory, and, with the exception of one or two sentences, are remarkable chiefly for the extreme lucidity of style. Then, as always, it was impossible to mistake Godwin’s meaning. Simple and straightforward, his language rose sometimes to a rare eloquence, not because he desired it, or valued rhetoric for its own sake, but because the words he used were the fittest to clothe his most intimate convictions, and therefore appealed to the hearts of other men. An early and a diligent student of French literature, there is something in his own style of the characteristics of the better French writers, where the thoughts are seen through rather than in the language, like pebbles in a deep well, and invested with a beauty beyond their own.

Other points for which the Sermons are noticeable are these. Writing nominally as a strong Calvinist, and believing himself to uphold the absolute sovereignty of God, he yet strikes a note which, though he knew it not, was dissonant to all the rest. “God himself,” he says in Sermon I., “God himself has no right to be a tyrant.” Of this passage the English Review, in a very favourable article, says: “In some instances his vivacity transports him beyond the bounds of decorum.” It was the enunciation of a principle from which he was afterwards to draw unexpected conclusions.

Again, writing as an orthodox believer, he no doubt thought that he held that Jesus Christ was God, and by that fact different from all men, not to be compared or placed on the same level with them. But at the bottom of his mind was the feeling that if Jesus were to be loved and venerated, it was not as God, but for his likeness to, and his oneness with, humanity. And this found expression in the sentence which ends the Sermon on the Resignation of Aaron.

“May we all of us exemplify the quietness of an Aaron, and the unresentful mildness of a redeemer, that so we may be united with these great and illustrious characters for ever hereafter.”

Little can here be said of the three novels which issued in such rapid succession from Godwin’s brain and pen during the years 1783-4—“Damon and Delia,” “The Italian Letters,” and “Imogen; a Pastoral Romance,” professing to be a translation from an old Welsh MS. These appear to have vanished into nothingness as well as forgetfulness, and the most diligent researches have as yet obtained only slight indications that once they were deemed interesting. But this need scarcely be regretted. The emotional part of Godwin’s nature had never as yet been stirred, while he had gained no such experience of life as was his when he wrote “Caleb Williams.”

It is, however, a real misfortune that much else which Godwin wrote at this date is buried in the pages of reviews, some of them extinct and hard to discover, and some, like the older volumes of the Annual Register, reposing dusty, worm-eaten, and seldom handled, on the more inaccessible shelves of libraries. The sketch of English History which Godwin contributed to the Annual Register from 1785 onward is well worthy to stand alone and to live. It is entitled “The History of Knowledge, Learning, and Taste in Great Britain,” and the portion contributed by him begins with the reign of Henry VII. In addition to his invariable clearness and method in the grouping and presentation of his facts, there is much curious learning and research displayed, much wide reading, sympathy with art, keen power of criticism, and a kindly toleration for views the most opposed to his own. It may be suspected that the apparent research of some of his contemporaries is really Godwin’s research alone. It is scarcely likely that he, Charles Lamb, and Coleridge were all reading the Schoolmen at the same time, all picking out the same absurd questions from Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas! yet there is a most suspicious resemblance in the selections made by all three, ending with the enquiry whether a million of angels might not sit upon a needle’s point; and these selections certainly appeared first in the Annual Register.

The paragraphs in which the Schoolmen and their influence are dismissed after a fairly full account may serve to show the calm and judicial tone of the writer, and the work done for the Annual Register is an adequate specimen of the manner in which he performed the whole of that class of work, anonymous, underpaid, and almost unnoticed.

“With all the misapplication of their talents, the school divines and philosophers were many of them great men. Thomas Aquinas in particular had extraordinary abilities which, if they had been properly directed, might have rendered him very useful to mankind. Nor is it to be imagined that everything in him is trifling and ridiculous. There are, it is believed, parts of his works which might even now be read with pleasure and advantage.

“So far as it is an honour to have produced the Schoolmen our own country had its full share in that honour. Not to mention Lanfranc and Anselm, Duns Scotus was a Briton, probably born in Scotland, and William Occam was an Englishman. Alexander Hales, John Baconthorpe, Thomas Bradwardine, and a large list of names might be produced, if it were necessary to rescue them from the oblivion in which they have long slept.”—New Annual Register, 1786, p. viii.

Though, however, the “Sketches of History” were the firstfruits of Godwin’s pen, his first published work was the “Life of Lord Chatham.” It was issued anonymously, probably because it was a first effort, and its author was as yet uncertain of his own powers, as well as his own opinions; and even up to the date at which these lines are written, it stands in the British Museum catalogue with a query as to whether it is really Godwin’s.

The book is rare, but, for those who can lay hands on it thoroughly worth reading in itself, and also as showing how the commanding figure of the great tory statesman drew the enthusiastic admiration of one who was so soon to startle his contemporaries, by asserting in “Political Justice” that all government whatever was an infringement of the Rights of Man. A few sentences of the concluding chapter may be given.

“Like the first king of the Jews, he walks, elevated by the head above his compatriots, who seem as they were born his subjects. Men of genius and attraction, a Carteret, a Townshend, and I had almost said, a Mansfield, however pleasing in a limited view, appear evidently in this comparison to shrink into narrower dimensions, and walk a humbler circle. All that deserves to arrest the attention in taking a general survey of the age in which he lived is comprised in the history of Chatham.

“No character ever bore the more undisputed stamp of originality. Unresembled and himself, he was not born to accommodate to the genius of his age. While all around him were depressed by the uniformity of fashion, or the contagion of venality, he stood aloof. He consulted no judgment but his own, and he acted from the unstained dictates of a comprehensive soul. He loved fame too much, but it was the weakness of a noble mind. He loved power too much, but it was power of a generous strain. And he had passions that had nothing selfish in their texture. No spirit ever burned with a purer flame of patriotism.”   Life of Chatham, pp. 287, 288.

These writings were, however, one and all, provisional and preparatory. They were soon forgotten; the fate, with the rarest exceptions, of all anonymous writing. But the publication of “Political Justice” marked an epoch in English thought. It was coincident with the rise of a school of philosophic radicals, and in large measure placed in clear words the views of that school, on many, though perhaps not all, of the subjects treated. There were, however, very few who carried out logical conclusions so consistently and unshrinkingly as Godwin. He alone formulated, among his political judgments, the extreme severity of social principles, the denial of all play to feeling and affection, which Fawcet and Holcroft had more loosely held as matters for informal discussion.

By the words “Political Justice,” the author meant “the adoption of any principle of morality and truth into the practice of a community,” Vol. I. p. 19, and the book was therefore an enquiry into the principles of society, of govern-ment, and of morals. The first volume deals with principles only; the second with the mode in which those principles would exhibit themselves in politics and in society.

Twelve years before he wrote his preface, that is, when living under the influence of Mr Frederic Norman at Stowmarket, Godwin “became satisfied that monarchy was a species of government unavoidably corrupt,” Vol. I. p. viii. The ideas suggested by the French Revolution induced him to desire a government of the simplest construction, and he gradually became aware that “government, by its very nature, counteracts the improvement of original mind,” Vol. I. p. x. Believing in the perfectibility of the race, that there are no innate principles, and therefore no original propensity to evil, he considered that “our virtues and our vices may be traced to the incidents which make the history of our lives, and if these incidents could be divested of every improper tendency, vice would be extirpated from the world,” Vol. I. p. 18. Education, literature, and political justice “are three principal causes by which the human mind is advanced towards a state of perfection,” Vol. I. p. 19; hence what is really required is that the truth should be placed before men, and free discussion allowed; they would then, in the widest sense of the words, “know the truth, and the truth would make them free.” Hence all control of man by man is more or less intolerable, and the day will come when each man, doing what seems right in his own eyes, will also be doing what is in fact best for the community, because all will be guided by principles of pure reason. But all was to be done by calm discussion, and matured change resulting from discussion. Hence, while Godwin thoroughly approved of the philosophic schemes of the precursors of the Revolution, he was as far removed as Burke himself from agreeing with the way in which they were carried into practical life, and he strongly disapproved of the mode in which some English politicians of his own school from time to time endeavoured to hasten the course of events. He says, in a note to his first chapter, that the foregoing “arguments are for the most part an abstract, the direct ones from Locke on the ‘Human Understanding,’ those which relate to experience from Hartley’s ‘Observations on Man,’ and those respecting education from the ‘Emile’ of J. J. Rousseau.” In these views he never wavered, and his life was thoroughly consistent. He never allowed himself to be converted to the expediency of giving and taking in politics, or to see that principles can be applied to facts only by losing a portion of their gloss and of their truth. He never could have been a worker on the active stage of life. But he was none the less a motive power behind the workers, and “Political Justice” may take its place with the “Speech for Unlicensed Printing,” the “Essay on Education,” and “Emile,” among the unseen levers which have moved the changes of the times.

The first edition of the book—to which all references are made—so well deserves reading for its own sake, even at this date, that. no exhaustive extracts need here be given: it is enough to describe the scope of the book. But some points in which the writer touched on matters still under discussion, and full of interest for us, may yet detain us awhile. In the chapter on the Perfectibility of Man, entitled “Human Inventions capable of perpetual improvement,” Godwin found himself face to face with the problem of the origin of language. It would be difficult even now to put forward the interjectional, and probably sound theory on this subject more clearly and excellently than is here done:—

In all the storm and stress of politics, when his male friends were almost all more or less in trouble, when Mrs Reveley was putting herself into the semi-hysterical state in which we have seen her, the friendship of Mrs Inchbald, who was no politician but only a very clever and very charming woman, was a great comfort to Godwin. Their correspondence was frequent, as also were their meetings; all Mrs Inchbald’s letters are worth reading, but only a few can be given. Godwin sent the proofs of “Caleb Williams” to her, and her opinion of it must have pleased him as much as Marshal’s criticism displeased him. The early tales from his pen had been forgotten, and he appeared before the world as a new novelist.

The letters which follow were written while the story was still in reading, and she wrote in far too hot haste to dream of dating her letters, and usually to sign them.

She could take as well as give criticism in a thoroughly good-humoured manner. She had sent Godwin a MS., which was probably afterwards destroyed. It is, however, no doubt that to which a letter from Mr Hardinge, quoted in Boaden’s “Life of Mrs Inchbald,” alludes, under the title, “A Satire on the Times,” and about which Boaden remarks that Hardinge’s remark is unintelligible. “Oh! that I may be for ever called stupid by the person who wrote ‘A Satire on the Times,’ by setting a ship on fire and burning every soul in the book except a Lord of the Bedchamber, by whom she meant the k——.”—Memoirs of Inchbald, Vol. I., p. 328.

Some extracts from a letter to a young man, whose name is not preserved, may be interesting, for they represent Godwin in yet another light, and show at once his versatility, and his unceasing desire to help others in all their various needs. There is no date, but it belongs to this time, and seems to have been written to an Oxford man who was in some trouble of mind.

The remaining letters of value during this year are those from Tom Cooper, which follow. They relate, as will be seen, to different periods of the year, but equally to his professional engagements, and are best presented consecutively. The most truculent game preserver may, at this distance of time, feel tenderly towards the poor stroller, who would not have dined at all but for his venial poaching.

The note for the year 1795 records that Godwin’s literary work during the course of it consisted mainly in the revision of his two lately published works. He continues:—

“In the beginning of this year I accepted the offer of a certain degree of acquaintance with a man, in doing which I thought myself right, but in which I did not escape censure. The man was John King, a notorious Jew money-lender, who was married to the Countess Dowager of Lanesborough. My motive was simple—the study to which I had devoted myself was man, to analyse his nature as a moralist, and to delineate his passions as an historian, or a recorder of fictitious adventures; and I believed that I should learn from this man and his visitors some lessons which I was not likely to acquire in any other quarter. My system prompted me to express my thoughts of him as freely, though without the same scurrility and ill-temper, as Apemantus at the table of Lord Timon. An incident worthy to be mentioned occurred to me on the 21st of May in this year. I dined on that day with Mr Horne Tooke and a pretty numerous company at the house of a friend. The great philologist had frequently rallied me in a good-humoured way upon the visionary nature of my politics—his own were of a different cast. It was a favourite notion with him that no happier or more excellent Government had ever existed than that of the English nation in the reigns of George the First and George the Second. From disparaging my philosophy, he passed by a very natural transition to the setting light, either really or in pretence, by the abilities for which I had some credit. He often questioned me with affected earnestness as to the truth of the report that I was the author of the ‘Cursory Sketches on Chief Justice Eyre’s Charge to the Grand Jury,’ of which pamphlet he always declared the highest admiration, and to which he repeatedly professed that he held himself indebted for his life. The question was revived at the dinner I have mentioned. I answered carelessly to his enquiry that I believed I was the author of that pamphlet. He insisted on a reply in precise terms to his question, and I complied. He then requested that I would give him my hand. To do this I was obliged to rise from my chair and go to the end of the table where he sat. I had no sooner done this than he suddenly conveyed my hand to his lips, vowing that he could do no less by the hand that had given existence to that production. The suddenness of the action filled me with confusion; yet I must confess that when I looked back upon it, this homage thus expressed was more gratifying to me than all the applause I had received from any other quarter.

Godwin’s increasing intimacy with Mary Wollstonecraft has been already noticed. She had not made any great impression on him at their earliest meetings, nor, when he first knew her, had she ceased to consider herself as virtually the wife of Imlay, whose name she bore. The treatment she had received from this person, however, was such that when the connection was finally dissolved, the bitterness of parting was already past, and the affectionate friendship existing between herself and Godwin passed easily into a warmer feeling. There were, however, many reasons on both sides which rendered the idea of marriage distasteful. Mrs Shelley has left a note in regard to her father which must be given at length.

“He was very averse to marriage. Poverty was a strong argument against it. When he concocted a code of morals in ‘Political Justice,’ he warmly opposed a system which exacted a promise to be kept to the end of life, in spite of every alteration of circumstance and of feeling. Objections to marriage are usually supposed to infer an approval, and even practice, of illicit intercourse. This was far from being the case with Godwin. He was in a supreme degree a conscientious man, utterly opposed to anything like vice or libertinism, nor did his sense of duty permit him to indulge in any deviation from the laws of society, which, though he might regard as unjust, could not, he felt, be infringed without deception and injury to any woman who should act in opposition to them. The loss of usefulness to both parties, which the very stigma brings, the natural ties of children, entailing duties which necessitate the duration of any connection, and which, if tampered with, must end in misery, all these motives were imperative in preventing him from acting on theories, which yet he did not like to act against.

“Among his acquaintance were several women, to whose society he was exceedingly partial, and who were all distinguished for personal attraction and talents. Among them may be mentioned the celebrated Mary Robinson, whom to the end of his life he considered as the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but though he admired her so greatly, their acquaintance scarcely attained intimate friendship. It was otherwise with Mrs Inchbald; he saw her frequently, he delighted in her manners, her conversation, her loveliness; yet he was not in love, and, above all, never thought of marrying her. He was intimate with Miss Alderson, afterwards Mrs Opie, but their friendship is purely such as is formed every day in society. He admired her beauty and sprightliness. She liked his conversation and respected his talents.

“There was yet another favourite. She was married, and this circumstance was a barrier to every sentiment except friendship, but he certainly experienced for her more of tenderness and preference than for any other among his acquaintance.”

It will be plain from what has been already said that Mrs Shelley may possibly have been misinformed about Miss Alderson. There seems reason to believe that Godwin did contemplate marriage with her, and did make a proposal on the subject to Dr Alderson, if not to the lady herself. The lady to whom Mrs Shelley alludes in the last paragraph is of course Mrs Reveley, afterwards Mrs Gisborne. It may be added that Godwin’s dislike of what in “Political Justice” he terms “co-habitation,” i.e., in his use of the word, the living perpetually in the same house with another person, and having no time or place which can be considered absolutely one’s own, without unkindness or incivility, worked greatly in aid of his graver theoretical objections to marriage. It is now necessary to give a detailed account of her who broke the even tenor of Godwin’s passionless existence, who for his sake altered not a little her own views, and whose character has been a mark for severer censure than those of women who to a far greater extent than herself have run counter to the prejudices and instincts of ordinary society.

In her lonely lodging near Blackfriars, Mary Wollstonccraft had been writing an original work during the scant time she could give to it from her labours of translation. It was one which has ever been more known by name than by perusal, on a subject which even now excites acrimony rather than calm discussion. The very words, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” which was the title of the book, are held, without examination, to claim emancipation alike from law, from custom, and from morality. Yet it is evident that the writer, as she has shown herself in her letters, must have changed far more suddenly than is wont to be the case, if such were indeed the object she set before her in writing her treatise.

It is not among the least oddities of this singular work that it is dedicated to M. Talleyrand Perigord, late Bishop of Autun. Mary Wollstonecraft, always confiding and always charitable, still believed in him. She little knew how unstable was the liberalism for which she gave him credit, and though well aware that some of her opinions were opposed to those which Talleyrand had put forward in his pamphlet on National Education, she yet thought him quite sincere and working in the same direction as herself. Mary Wollstonecraft, like so many others, turned to France as the land from which was rising the day-star of a new time, yet, unlike many, she was far from considering that all French manners were worthy of imitation. Even in the Dedication to Talleyrand are some noble words in defence of English cleanliness in life and talk, even of seeming prudery, rather than much which is still tolerated in France.

“The main argument” of the work “is built on this simple principle, that if woman be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge, for truth must be common to all, or it will be inefficacious with respect to its influence on general practice. And how can woman be expected to co-operate, unless she know why she ought to be virtuous?—unless freedom strengthen her reason till she comprehend her duty, and see in what manner it is connected with her real good. If children are to be educated to understand the true principle of patriotism, their mother must be a patriot; and the love of mankind, from which an orderly train of virtues springs, can only be produced by considering the moral and civil interest of mankind; but the education and situation of woman at present shuts her out from such investigations.”—P. viii.

In the carrying out of this argument the most noticeable fact is the extraordinary plainness of speech, and this it was which caused all or nearly all the outcry. For Mary Wollstonecraft did not, as has been supposed, attack the institution of marriage, she did not assail orthodox religion, she did not directly claim much which at the present day is claimed for women by those whose arguments obtain respectful hearing. The book was really a plea for equality of education, a protest against being deemed only the plaything of man, an assertion that the intellectual rather than the sexual intercourse was that which should chiefly be desired in marriage, and which made its lasting happiness. In maintaining these theses, in themselves harmless and to us self-evident, she assailed the theories not only of Rousseau in “Emile,” which would have been easily borne, but those of Dr Fordyce, whose sermons had long made a part of a young woman’s library, of Dr Gregory and others whose words were as a gospel to the average English nation, when she would teach her daughters less from her own experience than in sounding periods whose gravity simulated real authority. She did but carry out what Day had sketched in “Sandford and Merton,” and Miss Simmons was a young lady who might have been trained by Mary Wollstonecraft herself.

It may, however, be admitted that her frankness on some subjects is little less than astounding, and that matters are discussed which are rarely named even among members of the same sex, far less printed for both, while side blows are administered to much which was then unquestioned, at least in the society to which a woman’s book would gain admission. The insistance on the reception of the Sacrament in our colleges, the relics of Popery retained in them, the weekly services she had noticed the Eton boys unwillingly attend, which was “only a disgusting skeleton of the former state,” in which “all the solemnity that interested the imagination if it did not purify the heart is stripped off”—in fact, the whole system which had come before her in her residence with Mr Prior was rudely criticised. Nor were other sacred institutions dealt with more gently than our schools and universities. The fallacy by which virtue is confounded with reputation was laid bare, and she by no means shrinks from uncovering the worst sores of society.

Yet for extreme plain speaking, there was much reason and excuse. The times were coarser than ours, the days were not so far distant when the scenes were possible and the dangers real which Richardson’s novels pourtray. The very book she assails, “Dr Fordyce’s Sermons,” contains words spoken from the pulpit to young women which would now be considered an outrage on the congregation. Mary Wollstonecraft shrunk from no directness in dealing with the most dangerous and explosive subjects.

It was not only the plain speaking which alarmed, and not only that a woman spoke, but every page showed that she too was affected by the thoughts which claimed rights for men, and the demand for these had issued in the French Revolution.

The faults of the book are grave over and above those of the time; it is ill-considered, hasty, and rash, but its merits are great also; there is much that is valuable for these days also—it is fresh, vigorous, and eloquent, and most remarkable as the herald of the demand not even yet wholly conceded by all, that woman should be the equal and friend, not the slave and the toy of man.

One passage only shall here be quoted. It is one in which Mary Wollstonecraft gives her views on elementary education, and in favour of mixed schools.

“Day schools should be established by Government in which boys and girls might be educated together. The school for the younger children, from five to nine years of age, ought to be absolutely free, and open to all classes, . . . where boys and girls, the rich and the poor, should meet together. To prevent any of the distinctions of vanity, they should be dressed alike, and all obliged to submit to the same discipline, or leave the school. The school-room ought to be surrounded by a large piece of ground, in which the children might be usefully exercised, for at this age they should not be confined to any sedentary employment for more than an hour at a time. But these relaxations might all be rendered a part of elementary education, for many things improve and amuse the senses when introduced as a kind of show, to the principles of which dryly laid down children would turn a deaf ear. For instance, botany, mechanics, and astronomy. Reading, writing, arithmetic, natural history, and some simple experiments in natural philosophy might fill up the day, but these pursuits should never encroach on gymnastics in the open air. The elements of religion, history, the history of man, and politics might also be taught by conversations in the Socratic form.

“After the age of nine, girls and boys intended for domestic employments or mechanical trades ought to be removed to other trades, and receive instruction in some measure appropriated to the destination of each individual, the two sexes being still together in the morning, but in the afternoon the girls should attend a school where plain work, mantua making, millinery, &c., would be their employment.

“The young people of superior abilities or fortune might now be taught in another school the dead and living languages, the elements of science, and continue the study of history and politics, on a more extensive scale, which would not exclude polite literature.

“Girls and boys still together? I hear some reader ask. Yes. And I should not fear any other consequence than that some early attachment might take place, which, whilst it had the best effect on the moral character of young people, might not perfectly agree with the views of the parents, for it will be a long time, I fear, before the world is so enlightened that parents only anxious to render their children virtuous will let them choose companions for life themselves.”—A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, pp. 386-389.

That the publication of “The Rights of Woman” should prove startling and even shocking to the author’s sisters as it did to many other people, is not surprising, but the exhibition of small spite which is to be found in the following letter is unworthy of one for whom the writer had made, and was again ready to make, such great sacrifices. Charles the worthless had been taken to London, wholly by the kindness of his sister Mary, who, since the issue of her book, which had made her in some degree a public character, took the brevet rank of Mrs Wollstonecraft.

The scheme of going to France, of which Mrs Bishop speaks above, had been announced to her sister Everina shortly before. Everina Wollstonecraft had spent a few weeks in France for the sake of perfecting her French accent; and there was a plan that Mrs Bishop also should go for the same purpose.

A candid friend who published anonymously in 1803, “A Defence of the Character and Conduct of the late Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin,” but whose “Defence” is mingled with a good deal of venom, says that “though we are not expressly informed,” there seems a probability that she had experienced a disappointment in her earlier years, and that such disappointment “tended to increase her irritability.” The writer goes on to say,

“The first sexual attachment that is plainly avowed was towards Mr Fuseli. . . . She had reason to esteem him as a particular friend, but on finding that her regard for him had gradually assumed a more interesting form, mark her prudence and resolu-tion. No sooner had she analysed her feelings, traced them to their real source, discovered their tendency, and weighed them in the balance of moral obligation, than, with a just respect for herself as well as for the other parties interested, she determined to make a sacrifice of her private desires upon the altar of Virtue; and in order to snap the tie that seemed likely to occasion uneasiness either to herself or her friends, she prudently resolved to retire into another country, far remote from the object who had unintentionally excited the tender passion in her breast.”—(Pp. 58 60.)

The same story, told with much greater circumstance, appears in Knowles’s “Life of Fuseli,” and is supposed to be confirmed by extracts from her letters which are given. But one of them, the last written after her return from France, most certainly does not refer to any attachment to Fuseli; and Mr Knowles is so extremely inaccurate in regard to all else that he says of her, that his testimony may be wholly set aside, finding, as it does, no confirmation whatever from her correspondence, and very little from a few ill-natured remarks of Mrs Bishop, which do not justify the malignant gossip.

Godwin himself, in his Memoir of his wife speaks also of her intimacy with Fuseli, saying that had he been unmarried, he would probably have been the man of her choice. He goes on to declare that the friends were only friends, but his mention of the matter at all is only one of those strange instances of his somewhat morbid habit of dwelling on matters of which it would have been well to take no notice. It is probable that he had only heard of the more unfavourable version of the story at second-hand, and, even after careful attention to her husband’s words, the correspondence and the uninterrupted friendship with Mrs Fuseli would seem wholly to clear Mary Wollstonecraft’s memory from the imputation of any feeling for Fuseli in which there is reason for blame even by the most censorious.

The Fuselis and Mr Johnson having given up the tour, Mary went to France alone in December, and certainly no object whatever finds place in her letters but the one of rendering herself as good a French speaker as she was already a reader, and incidentally of finding a situation for her sister, Mrs Bishop, among the many leading Frenchmen who were then so eager for all that was English. She found a home at first in the house of Madame Filiettaz, neé Bregantz, the daughter of Madame Bregantz, in whose school at Putney Mrs Bishop and Everina Wollstonecraft had both been teachers. The following extract gives her first impressions of Paris at a critical time, though none then knew how critical.

Two days afterwards she addressed a letter to Mr Johnson. It has already been printed in the “Posthumous Works of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin: London, 1798.” These volumes were edited by Godwin, but are so very unlikely to be known to many readers at the present day, that the letter deserves quotation here.

The news which reached England from France was of the most scanty kind, and little was heard of individuals after the troubles in Paris really began. Mrs Bishop’s letters are full of complaints that she so seldom has news of Mary; for, in her ignorance of what was really occurring, she even professes herself ready to join her. Those among whom she lived did not wish to hear more, and marvelled that anyone, especially a woman, should take any interest in politics.

In the following year some refugee French priests were lodging at Pembroke, and Mrs Bishop went from Saturday to Monday in each week to that town, spending nearly all her time with two of them, an aged bishop and his brother, for the sake of learning French more thoroughly. The following extract describes their reception in Pembrokeshire:—

In the meantime, Mary Wollstonecraft’s position in France had become extremely difficult, if not precarious. It was impossible that she should receive remittances from England, nor could she return when once war was declared. It was at this juncture, at some time in the spring or summer of 1793, that she met Mr Gilbert Imlay, an American then living in Paris. He had been a captain in the American army during the late war, and was afterwards a commissioner for laying out land in the back settlements. He appears to have been a speculator in many ways, without real fortune, but with some command of money, and to have been an attractive person. He certainly was an able man, for a work published by him, called “A Topographical Description of the Western Territory of North America,” is a model of what a monograph on a new country should be. It is clear, full, and condensed, yet not so much as to hinder the reader even now from finding it an interesting work, and in its own day it went through many editions. The kindness he showed Mary Wollstonecraft disposed her to look on him favourably, and she soon gave him a very sincere affection. Opposed as were her views to those of the majority of women in her own, and even in this day, yet they were those which now are, except on one point, held by very many cultivated women, without a shadow of blame attaching to them. Her opinions on the equality of the sexes, on the social and political position of women, might now be held without remark, and it would not be too much to say that she was simply in advance of her age in giving expression on those subjects to thoughts which arc held increasingly by men and women of advanced political views, but of many shades of devout religion. On the question alone of the relation of the sexes, there is no indication of any approximation to her theories. Her view had now become that mutual affection was marriage, and that the marriage tie should not bind after the death of love, if love should die. It must be remembered that her own experience of family life was not likely to ennoble it in her eyes. Her father, Mr Blood, Mr Bishop, and Lord Kingsborough, in whom chiefly she had seen what husbands may be, were not favourable specimens; her sister was living as an unwived wife, without any prospect of such a separation as would enable her to form another tie. Men who were far from acting on these theories as did Rousseau, yet who were moving the minds of men to an unprecedented extent, were proclaiming that man should return to a more “natural” system; the accidental defects of certain marriages were pointed out as the inherent vices of all.

Yet it is probable that what Mary Wollstonecraft held, as a theory, in common with others who did not put their theories into act, would have been held by her most blamelessly, had it not been for the untoward circumstances which seemed to claim that she should act upon them. A legal marriage with Mr Imlay was difficult, if not impossible. Her position as a British subject was full of danger; a marriage would have forced her openly to declare herself as such. It may be doubted whether the ceremony, if any could have taken place, would have had validity in England. Under the protection of Imlay, and passing as his wife without such preliminary declaration, her safety was assured. Imlay, long after this period, declared her to be his wife in a document which in some cases would be considered as constituting a marriage. She believed that his love, which was to her sacred, would endure. No one can read her letters without seeing that she was a pure, high-minded and refined woman, and that she considered herself, in the eyes of God and man, his wife. Religious as she was, and with a strong moral sense, she yet made the grand mistake of supposing that it is possible for one woman to undo the consecrated custom of ages, to set herself in opposition to the course of society and not to be crushed by it. And she made the no less fatal mistake of judging Imlay by her own standard, and thinking that he was as true, as impassioned, as self-denying as herself.

Mary Wollstonecraft was living with Imlay as his wife in August 1793, in Paris, but he was soon afterwards called to Havre on business, and was absent for some months. During this period letters passed between them, of which her own were afterwards returned to her, and were published after her death. “They are,” as Godwin said of them, “the offspring of a glowing imagination, and a heart penetrated with the passion it essays to describe.” But they are the letters of a tender and devoted wife, who feels no doubt of her position. Towards the close of 1793, Imlay had established himself in some commercial business at Havre, where Mary joined him, and there, in the spring of 1794, she gave birth to a girl, who received the name of Fanny, in memory of the dear friend of her youth.

Some rumours of all these circumstances had reached the sisters in England, but only such as to render them extremely perplexed as to the true state of the case.

In September 1794, business called Mr Imlay to London, and Mary returned to Paris. A separation of some months chilled his affection, and though they met again, his desertion of her had now really begun.

The fragmentary notes which Mrs Shelley left, in reference to her mother, are all full of very peculiar interest. They serve to manifest not only the sympathy, partly intellectual, partly physical, felt by the gifted daughter for the still more gifted mother, who died in giving her birth, but also the estimate in which that mother was held by Godwin and by such friends as Mrs Reveley, from whom Mrs Shelley learned all that she knew of her dead mother. Some of these notes are too incomplete for quotation, mere drafts and hints of sentences, which might afterwards be finished; but one, more entire, may here be given, describing the estimate which she had been led to form of Mary Wollstonecraft at the time of her marriage.

“Mary Wollstonecraft was one of those beings who appear once perhaps in a generation, to gild humanity with a ray which no difference of opinion nor chance of circumstances can cloud. Her genius was undeniable. She had been bred in the hard school of adversity, and having experienced the sorrows entailed on the poor and the oppressed, an earnest desire was kindled within her to diminish these sorrows. Her sound understanding, her intrepidity, her sensibility and eager sympathy, stamped all her writings with force and truth, and endowed them with a tender charm that enchants while it enlightens. She was one whom all loved who had ever seen her. Many years are passed since that beating heart has been laid in the cold still grave, but no one who has ever seen her speaks of her without enthusiastic veneration. Did she witness an act of injustice, she boldly came forward to point it out, and induce its reparation. Was there discord among friends or relatives, she stood by the weaker party, and by her earnest appeals and kindliness awoke latent affection, and healed all wounds. ‘Open as day to melting charity,’ with a heart brimful of generous affection, yearning for sympathy, she had fallen on evil days, and her life had been one course of hardship, poverty, lonely struggle, and bitter disappointment.

“Godwin met her at the moment when she was deeply depressed by the ingratitude of one utterly incapable of appreciating her excellence; who had stolen her heart, and availed himself of her excessive and thoughtless generosity, and lofty independence of character, to plunge her in difficulties and then desert her. Difficulties, worldly difficulties, indeed, she set at nought, compared with her despair of good, her confidence betrayed, and when once she could conquer the misery that clung to her heart she struggled cheerfully to meet the poverty that was her inheritance, and to do her duty by her darling child. It was at this time that Godwin again met her, at the house of her friend Miss Hayes,” having before done so occasionally before she went to Norway.

Godwin’s first impression of her was not a pleasing one. He wished to hear Tom Paine talk, who was also of the party, and always a silent man, and he considered that Mrs Imlay talked too much. He was also an extremely fastidious critic, and had been offended at some slight verbal inaccuracies, as they seemed to him, in her earlier works. But after reading the letters from Norway, his views about her culture were wholly altered. He saw that the blemishes, if indeed they had really existed, were but superficial, and he speedily yielded to the charm which all that knew her recognised. His own exquisitely written description of their love is published in the Memoirs of his wife, but a passage may here be extracted from a book which now is scarce, and but little known. He says,

“The partiality we conceived for each other was in that mode which I have always considered as the purest, and most refined style of love. It grew with equal advances in the mind of each. It would have been impossible for the most minute observer to have said who was before and who was after. One sex did not take the priority which long established custom has awarded it, nor the other overstep that delicacy which is so severely imposed. I am not conscious that either party can assume to have been the agent or the patient, the toil spreader or the prey, in the affair. When, in the course of things, the disclosure came, there was nothing, in a manner, for either party to disclose to the other. . . . There was no period of throes and resolute explanation attendant on the tale. It was friendship melting into love.”

The description of their married happiness is equally striking. The slight clouds which will appear in the correspondence which passed between them, were of an extremely transient character, and arose from Mary Wollstonecraft’s extreme sensitiveness and eager quickness of temper, which were perhaps now and then tried by Godwin’s confirmed bachelor habits, and also by the fact that he took au pied de la lettre all that she said about the independence of women, when in truth she leant a good deal on the aid of others. Into one plan of Godwin’s, which may seem strange, his wife willingly fell. His strong view on the possibility that families may easily weary of the society of their different members, led him to take rooms in a house about twenty doors from that in the Polygon, Somers Town, which was their joint home. To this study he repaired as soon as he rose in the morning, rarely even breakfasting at the Polygon, and here also he often slept. Each was engaged in his and her own literary occupations, and they seldom met, unless they walked together, till dinner time each day.

Mary Godwin had been in remarkably good health during the whole period of her pregnancy. It will have been seen in the correspondence that she consulted Dr Carlisle during this time, but not for any serious indisposition. She had no alarm or even uneasiness on the subject of her approaching trial, since she had suffered but little at the birth of Fanny, and had conceived the idea that women in general made far too much of the difficulties and inconveniences of child-bearing. She had a strong opinion that in all normal and natural cases women were the proper persons to attend their own sex, and therefore engaged Mrs Blenkinsop, matron and midwife to the Westminster Lying-in Hospital to be with her. When Mrs Blenkinsop arrived, soon after Mary Godwin was taken in labour on Wednesday, August 30, all seemed well. She had wished that Godwin should not be in the house, and the notes that follow, written to him during her labour, have probably but few parallels.

The child, not the William so anxiously expected, but Mary, afterwards Mrs Shelley, was born at twenty minutes past eleven, and for some hours all seemed well. But some circumstances then alarmed the midwife, and Dr Poignard, physician and accoucheur to the same hospital, was called in. He did what was deemed necessary, and the danger, which was extreme till about eight the next morning, then appeared at an end. Godwin called in Dr Fordyce, a very old friend of his wife, who confirmed Dr Poignard’s opinion that the patient was doing well; indeed, he quoted Mrs Godwin’s case the same day “in corroboration of a favourite idea of his, of the propriety of employing females in the capacity of midwives. Mary had had a woman, and was doing extremely well.” On Sunday, however, a very alarming change took place, and after a week of terror, alternating with some gleams of hope, she sunk and died on the following Sunday morning, September 10, at twenty minutes before eight.

All that medical skill could do was done in the case. Dr Fordyce and Dr Clarke were constant in their attendance, and Mr, afterwards Sir Anthony, Carlisle never left the house from Wednesday, Sept. 6th, till the time of the patient’s death. Mr Basil Montagu was constantly with Godwin, and was full of kindness and sympathy. Through the whole time Godwin tells us “nothing could exceed the equanimity, the patience, and affectionateness of the poor sufferer.”

Godwin’s diary during these days is very curious. All that he felt most deeply is recorded in his usual businesslike way; the hand-writing never falters, the same precise abbreviations and stops, are used, till the last, when occur the only lines and dashes which break the exceeding neatness of the book. It is as follows:—

It is not easy to characterize the frame of mind in which Godwin sat down a few hours after these agitated pen-marks were drawn, to write himself to those friends to whom as he thought he owed the duty of himself communicating the loss he had sustained. It was probably an attempt to be stoical, but a real indulgence in the luxury of woe. Among the first of these friends was Holcroft.

He also wrote to Mrs Inchbald, and the whole of the letters which ensued are given consecutively, before passing to other correspondence. Mrs Shelley who had the letters before her, was certainly lenient in her judgment of Mrs Inchbald in her note quoted above. Smart writing and an argumentative temper were sadly out of place over the death-bed of Mary Godwin.

Mrs Cotton, an old and intimate friend of Mary Godwin, wrote a touching letter of condolence, from Sonning, near Reading. Godwin thus replied,—

Early in the year of which the domestic record has been given, Godwin published the “Enquirer.” It is a collection of essays, based, as he says in his preface, on conversations. It embraces a great variety of subjects, very much of the character which we have already found he and his friends met to discuss, such as “Of Awakening the Mind,” “Of Co-habitation,” “Of Riches and Poverty,” and the like. The volume elaborated in this manner many of the points which had been treated cursorily in “Political Justice.” It did not in any degree detract from his fame, and is admirably written, but since it merely reasserted principles already known as his, it excited no special attention, though it went through several editions. A very furious onslaught on the clergy, however, was one of the causes of a coolness which grew between him and Dr Parr. The Doctor had apparently not seen the book when Godwin paid his visit to Hatton with Basil Montagu.

The beginning of the year 1798 saw Godwin restored to the usual tenor of his life, yet with a sense, constantly expressed in his letters, of a great void in his existence which nothing could fill, with pecuniary cares pressing upon him, and an almost bewildered feeling in regard to the nurture and education of the children his wife had left him. Little Fanny had, from an early period, won his warm affection; she bore his name, and was always treated by him as a daughter. The Diary of this year shews him again much in society; indeed, rarely at home in the evening. He had no companion there, and it has been seen already that his health did not allow of literary work beyond the time so closely devoted to it in the morning. Yet the amount of work recorded is surprising. Not only was his pen constantly employed, the early part of this year, on the “Memoirs” of his wife, and afterwards on one of the numerous books, of which he had always one or more in hand; but his reading was varied as ever, and the range was still more extended. He read in this year much Latin literature, chiefly the Poets; many French works, mainly the older and standard authors; the old English dramatists; and kept himself au courant with all the books of merit which issued from the English press. And there is a curious proof that this reading was, on the whole, thorough and methodical, his extreme honesty with himself leading him always to note in his private Diary whenever he merely dipped into a book, and read it here and there. Those who have turned over his MS. notebooks, have been greatly puzzled by an entry occurring at irregular intervals, consisting apparently of the mysterious word, “gala,” any explanation of which long seemed quite hopeless. A longer search, however, has shewn that whereas in the earlier note-books he occasionally wrote of an author that he studied him ça et là, this phrase gradually became ça là, and eventually “gala,” the conundrum so difficult to solve. The fact that this is occasional, and always in reference to books into which a man would only care to dip, especially when, as was mostly the case, they had been read before, shews clearly enough the thoroughness of the usual study.

The year 1799 began with a breach with Mackintosh, which afterwards grew wider. Mackintosh delivered early in that year, in the hall of Lincoln’s Inn, a course of lectures on the Law of Nature and Nations. To some expressions in the first of these Godwin objected, as unfairly directed against himself. His letter is not preserved, but its purport can be in great measure divined from the following reply:—

Godwin’s Diary for the year exhibits him engaged in the same, or even greater intellectual labour than before. The conscientious accuracy which impels him to state the fact when a book was read only superficially, “ça et la” serves to bring into greater prominence the number of books of all kinds, and in many languages, which were read thoroughly. He wrote in this year his novel of “St Leon,” on which he bestowed extreme pains, a tragedy, and many Essays and Articles. “Caleb Williams” had proved so great a success that he had been much urged to write a second novel, but he hesitated; he “despaired of finding again a topic so rich of interest and passion.” At length, however, he thought that if he could “mix human passions and feelings with incredible situations,” he might conciliate even the severest judges. The situations of “St Leon: a Tale of the Sixteenth Century,” are indeed sufficiently incredible, since the hero, St Leon, has the secrets of the Philosopher’s Stone and the Elixir Vitæ; and Godwin took as his motto to the work a quotation from Congreve, “Ferdinand Mendez Pinto was but a type of thee, thou liar of the first magnitude.” The aim of the tale is to show that boundless wrath, freedom from disease, weakness and death, are as nothing in the scale against domestic affection, and “the charities of private life.” For more than four years he had desired to modify what had been said under that head in “Political Justice,” while he reasserted his conviction of the general truth of his system.

Though it had a considerable reputation, and went through many editions, it never had the popularity of “Caleb Williams;” its even greater improbability removed it still more from the region of human sympathies. But the description of Marguerite, drawn from the character of Mary Wollstonecraft, and of St Leon’s married life with her, idealized from that which Godwin had himself enjoyed, are among the most beautiful passages in English fiction, while the portrait of Charles, St Leon’s son, stands alone. No such picture has elsewhere been drawn of a perfectly noble, self-sacrificing boy.

It does not appear that the tragedy was ever published, nor is any trace of it now to be discovered.

When his books were laid aside for the day, he entered into society, and very few days indeed are now mentioned as spent at home. There is little mention of the children, who, indeed, were a great and increasing embarrassment to him, but such allusions as there are in the Diary and Letters, show great tenderness and affection. He took Fanny out with him to the houses of his intimate friends, and there are two or three entries of “Astley’s with Fanny.” While his chosen friends and most constant companions remained the same as in former years, he was attracting to himself many literary men—Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Lamb,—though the intimacy with these scarcely ripened till the following year. Frequent visits also to Sheridan and other political men show a great revival of the old political interests. though the questions were not so burning nor were men’s minds so keenly exercised about them, as had been the case a few years before.

But neither literary work, politics, nor society, welcome as Godwin was to all his friends, could make up for the want of the home-life which he had so greatly enjoyed, even when from his dislike of constant “co-habitation,” he had striven to minimize the time he gave to it. The correspondence with Miss Lee has shown that he was anxious to contract another marriage, and in this year it seemed possible, at least it seemed so to him, that the way was open to such a marriage, in which his feelings no less than his reason might be once more deeply engaged. Mrs Shelley’s note will explain the circumstances.

“An event happened during this year which gave a new turn to Mr Godwin’s feelings: this was the death of Mr Reveley, which occurred suddenly from the breaking of a blood-vessel on the brain, on the 6th of July 1799.

“His widow has often described to me her horror at this event. He did not die at the moment of breaking the vessel; he became gradually stupefied, and his senses, one by one—first his taste, then his sight—failed him. He was unaware of his danger in the first instance, and as the thought that he was really dying flashed across his wife’s mind, her terror became ungovernable. Mrs Fenwick, the ever kind, cordial, womanly friend, had called in the morning, and finding Mr Reveley indisposed, remained to assist in waiting on him. At this moment of horror she looked out of the window, and saw Marshal passing up the street on horseback. She called to him, and he was in an instant with the frightened women, ready to devote his whole time to their assistance. A physician was called in, but it was a case past all medical aid from the moment the vessel broke. He died in a few hours.

“From the chamber of death his widow rushed to a remote and desolate room at the top of the house, in a state bordering on frenzy,—for a week she remained in the same place, in the same state. She and her husband had at times disagreed, and believed themselves unsuited to each other. But he was the husband of her early youth, the father of her adored son, the friend and companion of nearly fifteen years. She was endowed with the keenest sensibility, and her heart received a shock from which she could with difficulty recover.

“Mr Godwin heard of Mr Reveley’s death at the house where he dined on the same day.” [This is a mistake of Mrs Shelley’s, as it appears from the Diary that on Saturday, July 6, Godwin did not dine out, and he went to the theatre in the evening. But on the next day, Sunday, he dined with his sister, Harriet Godwin, to meet Mr and Mrs Fenwick, and there probably heard of what had occurred on the previous evening.] “He became thoughtful and entirely silent—he already revolved the future in his mind. Maria Reveley had been a favourite pupil, a dear friend, a woman whose beauty and manners he ardently admired. After his wife’s death, his visits and attentions had excited Mr Reveley’s jealousy, and they became to a great degree discontinued. His uprightness and candour of character made him disdain the suspicion, but he withdrew, unwilling to be the cause of domestic feud. It was, however, his plan to yield but little to form and etiquette, and before Mr Reveley had been dead a month, he did not scruple to ask to see his widowed friend, and to make her understand the feelings and prospects with which her visits would be paid. She at first refused to see him, and several letters passed between them.”

Mrs Reveley’s letters have not been preserved, but copies of those which Godwin sent to her still remain.