sentiment of honour and justice to say, 'In these respects we approve of the piece, in these other respects we lament that the subject has not been otherwise treated.' It would be lunacy to attempt to alter it to please I know not whom, who object to I know not what, but who simply communicate to me their disapproval in toto.

"The principal alteration I have myself meditated, consists in elevating the principal character, the exhibiting in every scene in which he appears (which I perceive I have not properly done) sensitive, jealous, the slave of passion, bursting out on the most trifling occasions into uncontrollable fits of violence, at the same time that his intentions are eminently virtuous. But I have no doubt that other alterations might be suggested to me by men of sense and experience, which reflection would lead me to approve and enable me to execute."

Godwin has here touched on a question which must ever be of great importance to all literary men, and on which they are always sufficiently sensitive. His position is, however, as it seems, an essentially false one, built on the fallacy that literary wares offered for sale are to be treated in quite another way to that in which all other wares are treated, and that those who buy ought also to be able to produce. Literary goods are offered for sale, much as in the old days when shops were fewer, and communication difficult, the weaver would bring his web to the houses of his customers. The thrifty housewife oftentimes knew at once, and always after a close examination, whether the stuff would suit her, and often whether it was well or ill made, it was not her business, however, in the latter case to suggest possible improvements, nor was she to be denounced as incompetent if she were thoroughly unable to do so.

Kemble's answer would have been convincing to any other than Godwin.

REJECTION OF MANUSCRIPT.

7. P. Kemble to William Godwin.

"No. 89 GREAt Russel Street, Bloomsbury Square.

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"MY DEAR SIR,—If it could be supposed that a Play of your writing resembled the Production of those unfortunate ‘Sempstresses, Hairdressers and Taylors' you condescend to waste your contempt on, I should not wonder if after a reading of 'three or four pages of it, it had been thrown aside out of despair of finding in it a glimmering of Common Sense from one end to the other,' and I fancy too that under such a Supposition there would be nothing outrageously reprehensible in the matter. If instead of 'fifty or a hundred Manuscripts' you talked of five or six hundred, you would go nearer the Truth, I assure you, and he must be prodigal of Patience indeed, who would persevere through a toil, when the mere entering on it had at once convinced him that it would be fruitless.

"Your Play, there is no room to doubt, has been read with the attention due to it, and I have all the reason in the world to believe that the answer you have received was dictated by an upright regard to the Interests of the Proprietors of the Theatre and yours.

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"You love Frankness:-now give me leave to ask you whether or not it is quite fair to seem to draw me into a difference with you, by telling me that 'I hint at alterations.' If I do, which is more than I own, you will be so good as to remember that I only take a hint of your own offering. In the Letter, which I had the honour of receiving with your Manuscript, you say, The Play is too long, there are parts which ought to be omitted, and Parts which might be improved. Shorten it, exchange what you think objectionable, amend what seems to you imperfect, if there are any men whose Sense and Experience' you can rely on, take their opinions. In the very note I have this moment opened from you you allow that your 'principal Character' is unfinished. When you have completed it, I shall have the Honour of presenting your Piece for a Re-perusal, and be assured that the Theatre will

be as well pleased to receive a good Tragedy, as you to be the Authour of it. I am, very dear Sir, your very obedient Servant, "J. P. KEMBLE.”

Two more letters on Godwin's side remain, and one curt and final on Kemble's, but they only repeat, and in much the same words, the statements of those already presented.

Closely connected with the question of the rejection of Manuscripts is that of how far an Editor or Publisher is justified in altering that which he undertakes to place before the world. It is one which can scarcely be answered categorically, but Godwin's position in the following letter is undoubtedly far stronger than it was in his controversy with Kemble.

It is not clear to what "papers "it refers; there is no entry in the Diary which throws light on it, the MS. is the rough draft unaddressed. But it was evidently written to Phillips-his publisher since Robinson's death, which had taken place on May 6th-and personally has reference to a prospectus circulated in regard to the forthcoming life of Chaucer.

It is here given, not in strict date, as connected with what has gone before.

William Godwin to Mr Phillips.

"1801.

"DEAR SIR,-I thank you for your attention to the paper I sent you, and for the civility of enclosing me one of the printed copies.

Here, however, my gratitude stops. I never did, and I never will thank any man for altering any one word of my compositions without my privity. I do not admit that there is anything indecorous or unbecoming in the statement which you have omitted. But that is not material. I stand upon the principle, not upon the detail. If the part omitted had been to the last degree solecistical and

HOLCROFT'S TRANSLATIONS.

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absurd, my doctrine is the same. 'No syllable to be altered, without the author's privity and approbation.' It is highly necessary, my dear Sir, that I should be explicit on this point. I am now writing a book, of which you are to be the publisher. It is to be "Godwin's Life of Chaucer," and no other person's. My reputation and my fame are at stake upon it. The moment therefore, I find you alter a word of that book (and you cannot do it without my finding it) that instant the copy stops, and I hold our contract dissolved, though the consequence should be my dying in a jail. I know you have contracted that worst habit of the worst booksellers (the itch of altering) and I give you this fair and timely warning. Yours truly, W. GODWIN.

"In glancing over the Prospectus you have sent me, I find (in the 4th line from the end of the paragraph in the middle of page 2, the word untried for untired, which makes nonsense.'

The following Memorandum is connected with the subject of the above letter, and was also addressed to his Publisher.

"It is my will that in any future Editions of Enquiry concerning Political Justice, my pamphlet in answer to Dr Parr be annexed to the work, in Place immediately following the prefaces to the different Editions, not so much to perpetuate the fugitive and obscure controversies which have been excited on the subject, as because it contains certain essential explanations and elucidations with respect to the work itself. Let the title then stand, "Defence of the Enquiry concerning Political Justice." The index, in consequence of this arrangement, should be removed from the place it at present occupies, and thrown to the end of the work."

The only other matter of literary interest, and that not directly connected with Godwin himself, yet deserves record. Holcroft had completed a translation of Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea. The price which Messrs Longman+

offered, though less than that expected by the sanguine author and his friend, shows the solid fame which Goethe had acquired even at a time when we have been taught to believe that he was scarcely known in England.

William Godwin to Holcroft.

"March 6, 1801.

"The purpose of my writing now is simply to inform you of my having put the manuscript of Hermann and Dorothea into the hands of Messrs Longman and Rees, and of their answer. They say they cannot think of giving more than sixty guineas, but it seems to me not impossible that they may be prevailed on to give an hundred."

The following draft of a Letter (in Marshal's hand) has no address, but it is important as indicating Godwin's mind at this period, and it is, in fact, a fragment of autobiography :

William Godwin to

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Aug. 29, 1801. "DEAR SIR,—I thank you most sincerely for the kindness of your letter. Human creatures, living in the circle of their intimates and friends, are too apt to remain in ignorance of the comments and instructions which may be made of what they say and do in the world at large. I entertain a great horror of this ignorance. I do not love to be deceived, and to spend my days in a scene of delusions and chimera. I feel it is an act of unequivocal friendship that you have thus communicated to me a fact in which I must hold myself interested, though you deemed the communication to be ungracious.

"Good God! and so you heard me gravely represented in a large company yesterday as an advocate of infanticide. I have been so much accustomed to be the object of misrepresentation