literary than personal and social. But to write such a life was then possible to one alone, to Godwin's daughter, Mrs Shelley. She only would have known what to preserve and what to reject from the mass of papers left by one who never willingly destroyed a written line, and whose life and opinions had clashed to so great an extent with the susceptibilities of men then living. But from causes into which there is here no need to enter, Mrs Shelley was only able in a measure to select those papers which seemed to her fittest for publication, and to draw up a few valuable notes, explanatory of otherwise forgotten circumstances. Much as this is to be regretted, it may yet be that a freer handling than is possible to a daughter was needed for such a life and correspondence as is here presented. Not however that a veil is lifted from particulars which Godwin's daughter would have desired to hide; she wished to conceal nothing of interest except in cases where some living person might be wounded, or some dear memory of the dead, and such danger has now almost or wholly ceased.

For the record of Godwin's early years we are mainly dependent on an autobiographical fragment, drawn up by him in the year 1800, when he was forty-four years of age. But interest in the extreme detail in which the facts of his earlier life are presented in this fragment would at all times have been restricted to the members of his own family, nor was there anything especially remarkable in the surroundings of his earlier years. For these reasons but a small portion of his narrative is reproduced in the following pages.

William Godwin was born March 3rd, 1756, at Wisbeach in Cambridgeshire, at which place his father was a Dissenting Minister. He sprang on both sides from respectable middle-class families, that of his father having been estab

lished for some generations at Newbury in Berkshire, that of his mother, whose name was Hull, had originally held. landed property in Durham. Mr Hull had married and settled in Wisbeach, had been originally in the Merchant Service, and was at the time of his daughter's marriage to Mr Godwin, the owner of vessels engaged in the coasting trade; he also sent an occasional venture to the Baltic.

The earliest traceable ancestor on the Godwin side was a great-great-grandfather, William Godwin, of Newbury, described in the Parish Register as "Mr," who died, leaving six sons and three daughters. The following are among the family traditions, recorded by William Godwin :

"Edward, my great-grandfather, was the fifth son of William, and was born in the year 1661. He married, probably in the year 1694, Mary, fifteen years younger than himself, and in the year 1706 was chosen Mayor of the town of which he was a native. He was educated to the profession of an attorney, and possessed at the time of his death in 1719 the office of town clerk of the corporation of Newbury.

"Edward," his eldest son, was born 10th November 1695. He was destined to the profession of a dissenting minister, and was placed at a suitable age under the reverend Mr Samuel Jones, who conducted an academy for preparing young persons for the profession of the ministry at Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire."

This Samuel Jones was a remarkable man. He was the son of the Rev. Malachi Jones, a "minister of the gospel in Pennsylvania," who had emigrated to America early in life. Samuel was sent to Europe, and received his education in great measure at Leyden, "under the learned Perizonius," Professor of History and Greek, who died 1715. In 1711 we find him, still quite a young man, taking fifteen pupils, who were not, however, all constant to the nonconformist training of their tutor. Not only Dr Isaac Watts,

but Thomas Secker, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, and Joseph Butler, Bishop of Durham, author of the Analogy, were among his pupils. From Tewkesbury, while still a schoolboy, Butler "conducted a correspondence with Dr Samuel Clarke on the subject of certain propositions in Clarke's treatise, entitled 'A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God,' which were afterwards printed as an appendix to that work."

"A ridiculous mistake," says Godwin, "has been fallen into by some persons who, have written concerning this Samuel Jones, in supposing that he married the daughter of Mr John Weaver, one of the ministers ejected in the reign of Charles II., who was born about the year 1632, and whose daughter may be supposed to have been about sixty at the time of Mr Jones's marriage." He did in fact marry a young woman named Judith Weaver from Radnorshire.

"To go back to my grandfather. He was a fellow-student of Butler and Secker, and" on the death of Mr Jones in October 1719 "was invited to undertake the conduct of the seminary in which he had been educated." This offer he declined. "On the 12th of April 1721 he married the widow of his late tutor. He resided at this time in his professional character of a minister at Hungerford, in the county of Wilts, and in 1723 was called to take charge of a congregation in Little St. Helens, Bishopsgate Street, London, in which situation he continued for the rest of his life. My grandfather maintained in his advancing years the character he had acquired in early life, and was frequently consulted by his brethren as a reviser of their works. He, in particular, superintended the 'Family Expositor' of Dr Philip Doddridge in its passage through the press."

Edward Godwin had two sons, Edward, who having run "a certain career of wildness and dissipation, became a convert to the tenets and practices of Mr George Whitfield. He was for a short time, for the thread of his life

PORTRAIT OF HIS FATHER.

5

was soon broken, a distinguished preacher in the Methodist connection, and an eager publisher of experiences, devout allegories and hymns." John, the younger of the two sons, was born Feb. 21, 1723. He was a pupil of Dr Doddridge, "for whom he retained during life a more affectionate veneration than for any other human being," became a dissenting minister, as has been said, and the father of William Godwin.

The son's portrait of the father is amusing and characteristic. Aiming at the most scrupulous fairness, he succeeds only in giving a very distinct impression that he had but little love for his father, and no very high opinion of his mental powers.

"My paternal grandfather, as I have said, was esteemed a man of learning; my father was certainly not a man of learning. But he was something better than a merely learned man can ever be; he was a man of a warm heart and unblemished manners, ardent in his friendships, eager for the relief of distress whether of mind or of circumstances, and decent and zealous in the discharge of his professional duties. He had so great a disapprobation for the constitution and discipline of the Church of England, as rather to approve of his children's absenting themselves from all public worship than joining in her offices; yet he lived on terms of friendship with many of her members and of her clergy. He was scrupulous and superstitious respecting most of the succours of religion, particularly the observance of the Lord's day. My father, at the time I was most capable of noticing his habits, was extremely nice in his apparel, and delicate in his food. He spent much of his time on horseback. This habit grew out of a sentiment of duty, when he resided in a village, the scene of my early reveries and amusements, where his flock lay variously dispersed through a circle of from twelve to sixteen miles in diameter. He was attached to the intercourses of society, yet of the most unvaried temperance. He was extremely affectionate, yet at

least to me, who was perhaps never his favourite, his rebukes had a painful tone of ill humour and asperity. He was fond of reading aloud in his family, but the age of novels and romances, of Tom Jones and Cleopatra, was over with him before my memory. I scarcely ever heard him read anything but expositions and sermons. His study occupied but little of his time. His sermon, for in my memory he only preached once on a Sunday, was regularly begun to be written in a very swift short-hand after tea on Saturday evening. I believe he was always free from any desire of intellectual distinction on a large scale; I know that it was with reluctance that he preached at any time at Norwich, in London, or any other place where he suspected that his accents might fall on the ear of criticism. He was regarded by his neighbours as a wise as well as a good man, and he desired no more. He died at fifty years of age, but it was with considerable reluctance that he quitted this sublunary scene. The last time I stood by his bedside, two or three days before he expired, he repeated with an anxious voice a hymn from Dr Watts' collection, the first stanza of which is as follows:

'When I can read my title clear

To mansions in the skies,

I'll bid farewell to every fear
And wipe my weeping eyes.""

The notice of his mother is more favourable, and, as will appear from letters which are extant, not other than deserved.

"My mother, so long as her husband lived, was the qualifier and moderator of his austerities. Some of the villagers were impertinent enough to allege that she was too gay in her style of decorating her person. She was facetious, and had an ambition to be thought the teller of a good story, and an adept at hitting off a smart repartee. She was a most obliging, submissive, and dutiful wife. She was an expert and active manager in the detail of household affairs. Two persons perhaps never lived against