figure on the stage which he and his friends alike hoped that he would do: life was sustained with difficulty on ten shillings a week and a chance partridge. Hence he accepted a clerk's situation in an office, and appears to have been under a regular agreement. He was ill-treated, or thought himself so, and discharged himself by running away. No trouble, however, was taken by Mr Dorset, his employer, to recover the young man, who probably had not been the most docile of clerks, and he then went to study his chosen profession with Holcroft. How he supported himself, or if Godwin again helped him, does not appear. With these few words the letters speak for themselves.

Thomas Cooper to William Godwin.

"January 20, 1795.

"The die is, I believe, now finally cast, and if it be, the result is insignificance, nonentity, death to the hopes my ambition has oftentimes formed, and on which my mind has continually brooded with enthusiasm. The little portion of mind I (perhaps) have hitherto retained has now yielded. It receives its fetters, not indeed without murmuring, but the curses it pours forth and the tortures it endures are equally unavailing. The love of fame, which you consider a bad motive for praiseworthy conduct, has been with me the only spur to intellectual exertion. Perhaps it is for want of the better motive for action that my mind has now given up the contest, and that I consent to become totally an everyday man. Your last words to me on Sunday night were, And thou become a mere vegetable.' The damned idea has harassed me ever since. But why do I complain? Have I not given my consent to become a slave? Have I not even sought for the means of becoming so? What right then have I to assume the phraseology or to pretend to the feelings of a man? They are the last faint struggles of an expiring mind, and to you therefore I address them, as being the first cause of producing

that mind.

COOPER AS A CLERK.

153

I feel half inclined to go and quarrel with Mr Holcroft. I do not know, and have not inquired, why I feel that inclination (I state facts: of causes I am ignorant), though at the same time I have the utmost veneration and love for him. The purport of my present letter is to tell you that I am under treaty with Mr Dorset (fiends!) to become a clerk in his house, and by this means I intend to advance towards riches. "THOMAS COOPER."

The Same to the Same.

"EXETER, July 25, 1795.

"I am at a loss to discover wherein consists the singularity of requesting a letter from one I have been in the habit of considering my most immediate and intimate friend. That you should think it singular, I do not wonder, as you presently take care to inform me that in so considering I labour under a mistake . . . You say that I shall probably be sorry for having asked you to write, when I have read a certain portion of your letter. This would be the case, perhaps, if anything any man could say to me would make me sorry. But I am not easily moved to contrition or repentance, either by falsehood or truth; and it does not in the least operate in that way. When truth is presented to me, I hope I shall grow better under the perception of it. When falsehood blows her foul breath upon me, it passes by like the idle wind I regard not. Since, therefore, I am invulnerable, I rejoice rather than repent that I requested a letter, as the reception of it has, in some measure, let me into the state of your feelings.

"You say that my pretence of a ten days' ramble appears to be a cloak for a visit to Bath. What criminality there is in a visit to Bath that should require a cloak, I cannot perceive; but take my word for it, whatever desperate villany I may engage in shall not be under a cloak; and when, as you express it, I sink into vice, it shall not be into its sourness; it shall be into the dashing whirlpool that openly destroys everything around it. Therefore, whenever vice becomes my object, notorious shall be the fact.

"THOMAS COOPER."

Godwin writes, of 1796:

"In the preceding year the Earl of Lauderdale had requested the favour of my acquaintance, and now I was almost a regular attendant at his most select parties. The persons I met at them were Mr Fox, General Fitzpatrick, Lord Derby, Sir Philip Francis, Mr Adam, Mr Tierney, Mr Courtenay, Mr Dudley North, Mr William Smith, Mr Robert Adair, &c., &c. In my little deserted mansion I received, on the 22d of April, a party of twelve persons, the most of whom good-humouredly invited themselves to dine with me, and for whom I ordered provisions from a neighbouring coffee-house. Among this party were Dr Parr and his two daughters, Mr and Mrs Mackintosh, Mr Holcroft, Mrs Wollstonecraft, and Mrs Inchbald. I was also introduced about this time by Merry, the poet, to a most accomplished and delightful woman, the celebrated Mrs Robinson. In the course of this summer I paid a second visit to Norfolk, in the company of Merry, and had the happiness, by my interference and importunity with my friends, to relieve this admirable man from a debt of £200, for which he was arrested while I was under his roof, and would otherwise have been thrown into jail."

To this the Diary adds but little. It records, in scarce intelligible private notes, the increasing intimacy with Mary Wollstonecraft, of which more hereafter; and there is some evidence that Godwin during this year might, even at his mature age, have said in reference to her as Proteus said of Julia

"Thou hast metamorphos'd me,

Made me neglect my studies, lose my time;'

for the record of work is slender, and there is less evidence of interest in public questions.

Two letters, however, claim insertion. King, the Jew bill-broker already named, was concerned in a trial arising

KING THE MONEY LENDER.

155

out of his not altogether creditable business. He wrote to Godwin, requesting him to appear as his friend and supporter, and to use his influence with "some nobleman" to do the same. This letter is worded somewhat vaguely; and it does not appear whether he wanted evidence to character given in his favour, or merely the moral support in the eyes of the public which would have been afforded by such appearance of distinguished men in court by his side. The following very characteristic letter is an answer to this application :

William Godwin to John King.

"Jan. 24, 1796.

"I am extremely surprised at the note I have just received from you, and hasten to oppose the false statement it contains. From the first moment I was acquainted with you, it was a contest between me and several of my friends, and partly in my own mind, whether or no I ought to be acquainted with a man, of whom, to say the least, the world entertained a very ill opinion, respecting the justice of which I could be no competent judge. Upon what grounds, do you think, I decided that contest? I said, 'It would be absurd for me to attempt to associate only with immaculate persons; nor do I believe that the right way to attempt to correct the errors of the vicious, is that all honest men should desert them.' As to the frequency of my visits, I appeal to your own memory whether I ever sought that frequency. Did you imagine that your dinners were to be a bribe, seducing me to depart from the integrity of my judgment? That would be a character meaner than that of the poorest pensioner of the vilest court that ever existed.

"You seem to insinuate that I ought to appear in court as your friend and supporter. I have always avoided connecting myself with any set of men, even though Charles Fox should be at their head. I will stand or fall by my own character, and my own principles. Are you ignorant that, if I were to show myself as your supporter, it would be considered as a declaration, not merely

that I thought you injured by Alex. Champion, Esq., of Winchester Street, but that I approved of the general spirit of your transaction with Philips, and other similar transactions? If I were asked in open court whether, upon the whole, I believed that your money transactions were immaculate, or that they had in some instances been very exceptionable, what do you think would be my answer? "You call upon me for an act of friendship, and the act you demand would be scarcely of any imaginable use to you. At the same time you show very little friendship in the demand. Why should my character be involved with yours, which however as you may conceive undeservedly labours under a very extensive odium? Why should I bring obloquy upon all my future, and all my past labours? No sir, I will retain my little portion of usefulness undiminished. Whatever may be my share of good opinion with the world, it shall be injured by no man's vices but my own. Should I not be both fool and knave if I did otherwise?

"You oblige me to treat you unceremoniously. But I must venture that rather than be misunderstood. Otherwise I certainly would have refused to give you pain, especially at the present moment. If there were anything I could do for your service that I could be brought to think reasonable, I would most cheerfully do it. I wish you all imaginable happiness, but I cannot sacrifice my independence and my judgment. Upon this footing, and this explanation being given, I am willing that our acquaintance should either cease or continue, as best suits your inclinations. It is perhaps impossible that one human being should have a repeated good humoured intercourse with another, without increasing in kindness towards him. But, remember, I can dine at a man's table, without being prepared to be the partisan of his measures and proceedings.

"What a strange dilemma do you create for your acquaintance! If I had ceased to visit you, you would have censured me, as unnecessarily squeamish and fastidious. I have continued to visit you, and you conclude that I ought to be ready to proceed all lengths with you.

"W. GODWIN."