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RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD.

287

who has never seen you since. You, I daresay, have done so many kind actions since, that this may well be obliterated from your mind.

"We met at Mr Christian's dancing-school at Norwich. You were almost a man grown, and I was perhaps about twelve years of age. You and your sister and a Miss Carter were, I believe, at the head of the school. Miss Carter was a very plain girl, but a good dancer. I was in reality no dancer at all. It so happened that one day in your hearing I said, thinking perhaps of nothing, I should like for once to dance with Miss Carter. You immediately answered, I will take care that you shall, and accordingly you brought it about. This is altogether a trifle, but it has a hundred times recurred to my memory.

"We have since run a different career. I have written 'Caleb Williams' and 'St Leon,' and a number of other books. Did you ever hear of those books? And if you did, did your quondam school-fellow at the dancing-school ever occur to your mind? You have been perhaps more usefully employed in an honourable profession. The consequence is, you are rich, and I am—something else.

"I have been twice married: my first wife was Mary Wollstonecraft. My present wife, fifteen years ago, looked with anxiety to the precariousness of our situation: my resources were those I derived from my pen and persuaded me to engage in a commercial undertaking as a bookseller. We were neither of us fit for business, and we made no great things of it, but we subsisted. Till at length I was inevitably engaged in a lawsuit which, after being several times given in my favour, was at length last year decided against me.

But

"The consequence was heavy losses: costs of suit, the purchasing the lease of a new house, the fitting it up, and many more. These I have encountered, and I am doing tolerably well. there is an arrear due on the lawsuit (which was respecting the title to a house), under the name of damages, &c., to the amount of £500, which will come against me in the most injurious form the law can give it, in the beginning of November.

"Several noblemen and gentlemen a few months ago formed themselves into a committee for the purpose of collecting this sum. . . . But many delays occurred in forming this committee, and it was not completed till July last. . . . My subscription falls short. This is principally owing to the time of year. My friends tell me that if I could keep it open till the meeting of Parliament it would still answer. But the beginning of November must decide my good or ill fortune. In this emergency I am reduced to think of persons whom I suppose to be in opulent circumstances, and respecting whom I can imagine they may be kindly disposed towards me, to fill up the subscription. It is by a very slender, and almost invisible thread that I can hope to have any hold upon you, but I am resolved not to desert myself. The subscription has gone about half way.

"Thus, Sir, I have put you in possession of my story; and begging pardon for having intruded it on your attention, I remain, not without hope of a favourable issue to my impertinence,--Your most obedient servant, W. GODWIN."

Sir James Mackintosh to William Godwin.

"WEEDON LODGE, Tuesday.

"DEAR GODWIN,--I am more grieved than you perhaps would have expected by what you consider, I hope too precipitately, as the final result of our projects. If you should be driven from the respectable industry which, with your talents, reputation, and habits, you have undertaken for your family, it will, in my cool opinion, be a scandal to the age. The mortification of my own disability is aggravated by my natural, though not very reasonable repugnance to an avowal of its full extent, and of all its vexatious causes. But you must not give up. Be of good heart. New publications, I grant to you, are not likely to increase your fame. But they will refresh your reputation, and give you all the advantages of present popularity. When liberality and friendship are quickened by public applause, they are more trustworthy aids than in their solitary state. The great are to be pushed on by the

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movement given to the many. I see your novels advertised to-day. Could you ask Mr Hazlitt to review them in the Edinburgh Review. He is a very original thinker, and notwithstanding some singularities which appear to me faults, a very powerful writer. I say this, though I know he is no panegyrist of mine. His critique might serve all our purposes, and would, I doubt not, promote the interests of literature also.

"I shall receive the two books with much thankfulness, for, after much research, I have not yet traced the accounts of Kirke and Jefferies to the original witnesses.

"Can you tell me whether L'Estrange continued the 'Observator' during James II.'s reign?

"I am sorry to hear of Mrs Godwin's illness. Lady Mackintosh begs her kindest remembrances, and I am most truly yours,

"J. MACKINTOSH."

In 1824 Mrs Shelley submitted to her father the MS. of a tragedy on which his opinion was unfavourable. The letter has in great degree lost value now, except one sentence of keen, far-reaching criticism, and another paragraph which shows that his own dramatic disappointments rankled still.

William Godwin to Mrs Shelley.

"Feb. 27, 1824.

Is it not strange that so many people admire and relish Shakespeare, and that nobody writes, or even attempts to write like him? To read your specimens I should suppose that you had read no tragedies but such as have been written since the date of your birth. Your personages are mere abstractions, the lines and points of a Mathematical Diagram, and not men and women. If A crosses B, and C falls upon D, who can weep for that? ..

“For myself, I am almost glad that you have not (if you have not) a dramatic talent. How many mortifications and heart-aches

would that entail on you. Managers to be consulted, players to be humoured, the best pieces that were ever written negatived and returned on the author's hands. If these are all got over, then you have to encounter the caprice of a noisy, insolent, and vulgar-minded audience, whose senseless non-fiat shall in a moment turn the labour of a year into nothing."

CHAPTER XI.

LAST LITERARY LABOUR.

1824-1832.

IN the four years, 1824-28, Godwin published his "History of the Commonwealth of England." Once more his interest in his work had overpowered the paralysis of energy which so often attends the mere writing for bread, and the book produced is vigorous, able, and, on the whole, wonderfully correct. Subsequent historians have had access to documents which Godwin never saw, but in the last volume, wholly devoted to Cromwell's life, he has given a portrait of that great man which deserves to stand by the side of that which Mr Carlyle has painted for the world. No one before him had so fathomed the character of that extraordinary man, who, as his historian says, having had to struggle against all parties, religious and political, which divided England, succeeded in subduing them all, while he raised the power of the nation to a degree unknown before his day.

It was the last of his greater works. The "Thoughts on Man," published in 1830, were essays already lying by him, and written during many previous years, and which required but slight revision. They contain his mature convictions on religion and philosophy, but, like his posthumous volume edited for his representatives in 1870, the difficulties discussed are not our difficulties, still less are the solutions our solutions.

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