Lives of the Great Romantics, Part III 1851965122, 9781138754515, 9780429348259

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Lives of the Great Romantics Ill Godwin Ed,1ed by P;1.mtl:I Ckmit

William Godwin by}ames Northcote, 1802

By courtesy 0/ the National Portrait Gal/ery, London

LIVES OF THE GREAT ROMANTICS III

GENERAL EDITOR: JOHN MULLAN VOLUME EDITORS:

PAMELA CLEMIT HARRIET JUMP BETTY T. BENNETT

LIVES OF THE GREAT ROMANTICS III GODWIN, WOLLSTONECRAFT & MARY SHELLEY BY THEIR CONTEMPORARIES

VOLUME

1

GODWIN EDITED BY

PAMELA CLEMIT

First published 1999 by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX14 4RN 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an iriforma business Copyright © Taylor & Francis 1999

© I'amela Clemit introduction and notes 1999

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. IIHITISII LIIlHAHY CATALOGlJING IN PI:J1LlCATION DATA

Lives of the great romantics 3: Godwin, WolIstonccraft and Mary Shelley 1. Godwin, William, 1756-1836 - Biography 2. Wollstonecraft, Mary, 175!}--1797 - Biography 3. Shelley, Mary WolIstonecraft, 1797-1851- Biography I. Clemit, I'amela. William Godwin Il. Jump, Harrict Devine. Mary Wollstonecraft Ill. Bennctt, Betty T. Mary Shelley 820.9'007 Set ISBN 1 851965122 LIIlHAHY OF CON(an:ss CATALO(aN(;-IN-PIJIlI.ICATION DATA

Livcs ofthc grcat romantics I I I : Godwin, Wollstonecraft, and Mary Shelley by thcir contemporarics. p. cm. Includes bibliographical refcrences and index. Contents: v. 1. William Godwin I edited by I'amcla Clcmit -- v. 2. Mary Wollstonecraft I edited by Harriet Devine .Jump -- v. 3. Mary Shelley I edited by Betty T. Bennett. ISBN 1-85196-512-2 (set) 1. Godwin, William, 1756-1836.2. WolIstonecraft, Mary, 175!}--1797. 3. Shelley, Mary Wollstonccraft, 1797-1851.4. Women authors, English--18th century-Biography. 5. Women authors, English--19th century--Biography. 6. Novelists, English--19th century--Biography. 7. Rcvolutionaries--Great Britain--Biography. 8. Philosophers--Great Britain--Biography. 9. Feminists--Great Britain-Biography. 10. Romanticism--Great Britain. I. Clemit, Pamcla. Il. Jump, Harriet Dcvine. Ill. Bennett, Betty T. PR105.L585 1999 820.9'OO6--dc21 98-56142 IB] CIP

Typeset by Waveney Typesetters Wymondham, Norfolk

ISBN 13: 978-1-13875-451-5 (hbk) (Vol-l)

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348259

For David Julier

CONTENTS Acknowledgements Note Introduction Bibliography Chronology Copy Texts

vu viii ix xxv XXXlll

xliii

1. Hamilton, Elizabeth, Translation 0/ the Letters 0/ a Hindoo Rajah

2. Hays, Mary, Memoirs o/Emma Courtney 3. [Fenwick,John], 'Mr Godwin', in Public Characters 0/ 1799-1800 4. Austin, William, Letters from London 5. Dunlap, William, Memoirs 0/ George Fred. Cooke, Esq. 6. Hazlitt, William, 'On the English Novelists', in Lectures

1 7 15 29 35

on the English Comic Writers

39

the Age

43

R.A.

65 71

7. [Hazlitt, William], 'William Godwin', in The Spirit 0/ 8. Hazlitt, William, Conversations o/James Northcote, Esq., 9. Mackenzie, Sir G. S., Illustrations o/Phrenology 10. Lamb, Charles, 'The Old Actors' 11. [Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft], 'Memoirs ofWilliam Godwin'

12. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 'Life ofWilliam Godwin' 13. [Maginn, William], 'Gallery of Literary Portraits, No. LIII:

77

81 95

William Godwin, Esq.'

116 121

Opium-Eater'

127

Scott, Bart.

131

14. Gerrald,Joseph, The Trialo/Joseph Gerrald 15. De Quincey, Thomas, 'Autobiography of an English 16. Lockhart, John Gibson, Memoirs 0/ the Ltfe 0/ Sir Waiter v

vi

LIVES OF THE GHEAT ROMANTICS Ill: GODWIN

17. [Smith, Horacc], 'A Graybeard's Gossip about his Literary Acquaintance' 135 18. Talfourd, Thomas Noon, Final Memorials 0/ Charles Lamb 139 19. Martineau, Harriet, The History o/England 153 20. Martineau, Harriet, Autobiography 157 21. Binns, John, Recollections 0/ the Lz/e o/John Binns 163 22. Brightwell, Cecilia Lucy, Memorials 0/ the Lz/e 0/Amelia Opie 167 23. Hogg, Thomas Jefferson, The Lz/e o/Percy Bysshe Shelley 175 24. Lady Uane] Shelley (ed.), Shelley Memorials 189 25. Redding, Cyrus, Yesterday and To-day 205 26. Robinson, Henry Crabb, Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence 209 27. Channing, William Ellery, Correspondence o/William Ellery Channing, D. D. and Lucy Aikin 219 223 28. Owen, Robert Dale, Threading My Way 29. Kegan Paul, Charles, William Godwin: His Friends and 227 Contemporaries 255 30. Ticknor, George, Lz/e, Letters, and Journals 31. Trelawny, EdwardJohn, Records o/Shelley, Byron, and the 259 Author 32. Froude, James Anthony, Thomas Carlyle 265 269 33. Blakey, Robert, Memoirs o/Dr Robert Blakey 34. Wallas, Graham, The Lz/e o/Francis Place 273 279 35. Burr, Aaron, The Private Journal 0/ Aaron Burr 283 36. MacFarlane, Charles, Reminiscences 0/ a Literary Lz/e 289 37. Gisborne, Maria, 'Journal'

Editorial Notes Biographical Glossary

299 320

ACKNOWLEDG EMENTS I should like to thank the following colleagues and friends who provided help of various kinds during my work on this volume: T. W. Craik, John Creaser, Nora Crook, David Fuller, Gary Kelly, A. A. Markley, Michael O'Neill, Lisa Vargo, and Gina Luria Walker. Jeanne Moskal kindly made her unpublished work available to me. I am grateful to Bridget Frost, formerly ofPickering & Chatto, who invited me to edit the volume; to Rebecca Saraceno, who saw it through the press; and to John Mullan, the General Editor of the series, who gave constructive advice throughout. This project was completed during my tenure of a Research Fellowship of the Leverhulme Trust. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of that body in this and in other areas of my research. Acknowledgments for the copy texts are listed below on pp. xliii-xliv. My personal thanks are due to Lord Abinger for his permission to transcribe sections of Mary Shelley's 'Life of William Godwin', held in the Abinger Collection in the Bodleian Library, and to Bruce Barker-Benfield and the staff of the Bodleian Library for their kind assistance.

vii

NOTE The extracts in this volume contain a large number of references to contemporary personalities. For the sake of convenience, information concerning all such figures who are mentioned more than once, other than authors of extracts, is to be found in the Biographical Glossary rather than in the Editorial Notes.

viii

INTRODUCTION William Godwin was the central English public intellectual during the unprecedented crisis in political discourse caused by the French Revolution and by British reaction to events in France. His career as a critic of the established political order began at the time of the War of American Independence and ended in the period of the first Reform Act, spanning the whole of the revolutionary era. In addition to An Enquiry concerning Polz'tical Justice, a major treatise of political philosophy, Godwin wrote novels, works of educational theory, children's books, plays, philosophical biographies, essays, and political pamphlets. The generic diversity of his writings reflected a keen sense of the opportunities for ideological change presented by the increasingly commercialised print market, and his ideas had a major impact on different classes of readers throughout the Romantic period. Moreover, throughout his long career, he actively sought to further his vision of intellectual and moral progress through his correspondence and personal contact with a large number of people who sought him out as teacher, counsellor, or friend. His diverse and shifting circle of like-minded acquaintances included, at one time or another, nearly all the 'Great Romantics' in this series, and his reformist teachings influenced many of the foremost literary, cultural, and political commentators of the time. Yet Godwin, unlike many of his closest colleagues and friends, was not honoured with a full-scale official biography or a comprehensive edition of his writings published shortly after his death. The first full-length biographical study, Charles Kegan Paul's Wt'!!t'am Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries, commissioned by Godwin's surviving relatives, did not appear until 1876. The length and diversity of Godwin's career, combined with the absence of an official posthumous record, meant that multiple and competing views of his life and works - which were generally held to be inseparable - flourished throughout the nineteenth century. Appropriately, given Godwin's lifelong position as an opponent of orthodoxy and dogma, this volume of memoirs does not illustrate the development ix

X

LIVES OF THE GREAT ROMANTICS 111: GODWIN

of a single, authoritative biographical image. Instead it presents a collective biographical portrait, made up of a series of different viewpoints, many of which come from outside the political and literary establishment. Though some memoirs, read in isolation, convey a fragmentary or occluded biographical image, when the memoirs are read together they tell a larger story concerning the struggle by nineteenthcentury writers to assimilate Godwin's revolutionary social and political vision. As in other volumes in the series, extracts are presented chronologically by year of publication, inviting analysis as a developmental narrative. However, they may also be studied thematically for their wide spectrum of political interpretations. Many contributors, rather than attempting to provide a comprehensive evaluation of Godwin's significance, seize on particular aspects of his achievement according to their own political affiliations. For example, intellectuals sharing his educational background in eighteenth-century political and religious Dissent defend his philosophical principles; Tory journalists, seeking to trivialise his beliefs, invoke the standard 'anti-Jacobin' caricature of him as an embodiment of abstract reason; late Victorian moral critics draw attention to his financial inefficiency as an index of his character. To examine the history of nineteenth-century memoirs of Godwin is thus not to gain access to some 'essential' truth of character, but to uncover a pattern of special emphases, inaccuracies, and elisions, many of which continue to shape the views of modern biographers and critics. That history begins with the first, unsuccessful attempt to provide an official biographical record of Godwin's life and writings. The task of writing an authorised posthumous biography fell to Godwin's daughter Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, an accomplished and versatile author in her own right, who was named as his literary executor in his will (see Ingpen, p. 612). Shortly after Godwin's death on 7 April 1836, she began work on a two-volume edition of his memoirs and correspondence, to be published for the benefit of her step-mother, Mary Jane Godwin, but the project was never finished or published. It survives in the form of a fragmentary manuscript draft, entitled 'Life of William Godwin', of which selected passages are transcribed and published for the first time in this volume. Despite its incompleteness, Mary Shelley's project deserves attention. It occupies a special place in the history of nineteenth-century memoirs of Godwin as the first comprehensive attempt to assimilate - and reinterpret - his social and political vision. In addition, it formed a model for Kegan Paul's belated official

INTRODUCTION

Xl

biography, Wtlliam Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries, which is still regarded as a major source of primary materials. For Mary Shelley, writing an official memoir of Godwin involved more than a sense of family duty towards a father 'whose passion was posthumous fame' (Bennett, vol. 2, p. 281). It was also the culmination of the reformist project that she and Godwin had been engaged in together for more than a decade. During the years following Mary Shel ley's return to England as a widow in 1823, she and Godwin developed a creative literary partnership, assisting each other in the production of works in different genres (see Clemit, 'Mary Shelley', passim). These works were designed not only to earn money but also to promote their shared vision of gradual reform through education and private discussion. Their joint attempt to ensure the posthumous survival and prosperity of Godwin's writings had begun in the early 1830s, with the republication of three of his novels, Caleh Williams, St Lean, and Fleet­ wood, alongside Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In 1831 and 1832 all four novels were published in Bentley's Standard Novels, First Series (1831-55), a monthly series of one-volume reprints of 'classic' works, which marked one of the first sustained efforts by a publisher to exploit the developing cheap market for fiction (Altick, pp. 274-5). Each novel was accompanied by new prefatory material, written by the respective authors - except for Mary Shelley's anonymous memoir of Godwin in Caleh Williams (see pp. 83-93) - which offered accounts of each work's composition, highlighting biographical and aesthetic concerns. This presentation of the Godwinian novel in terms of the cultural values of the early 1830s ensured the preservation of its radical vision for a later generation of reform-minded readers. In addition, Godwin was inspired by the passing of the first Reform Bill in the spring of 1832 to plan a new edition of Political Justice, for which he drafted a six-page prospectus in consultation with Mary Shelley - though it was not until 1842 that a new edition appeared. Again, during the last two years of his life Godwin sorted through his mass of autobiographical and literary papers, and left Mary Shelley instructions concerning what should be published after his death. His attempt to participate in the construction of his own posthumous image makes the 'Life ofWilliam Godwin', in part at least, their final shared project. However, the successful realisation of Godwin's projected self-image depended on the fidelity with which Mary Shelley carried out her father's instructions. At first, her research for Godwin's memoir was entirely in keeping with the essentially editorial conception indicated

xii

LIVES OF THE GREAT ROMANTICS I I1: GODWIN

by his notes. She planned the work according to the 'life and letters' format which, even before John Gibson Lockhart's monumental work, Memoirs 0/ the Ltfe 0/ Sir WaIter Scott, Bart. (1837-8), was fast becoming the dominant nineteenth-century biographical mode. There were several recent examples of this type of posthumous memoir by and concerning other members of Godwin's circle, notably The Ltfe 0/ the

Right Honourable John Philpot Curran, Late Master 0/ the Rolls in Ire­ land (1819), by his eldest son, William, and Literary Remains 0/the Late William Hazlitt, with a Notice 0/ his Life (1836), by William Hazlitt, Jr..

Mary Shelley wrote to the latter on 10 October 1836: 'I wish I may perform my task as well as you have done yours' (Bennett, vo!. 2, p. 277). In the 'life and letters' format, the biographer appeared to be as much a compiler as an author, and this editorial role may have appealed to Mary Shelley as a way of avoiding detailed authorial commentary. She was well aware that a high degree of biographical explicitness could be misunderstood, as in the example of Godwin's notoriously frank biography of her mother, Memoirs 0/ the Author 0/ a Vindication 0/ the Rights o/Woman. As noted below, this work prompted a hostile critical reaction against both author and subject which reverberated for several decades. By contrast, the 'life and letters' mode permitted indirect analysis and comment through the selection and arrangement of primary materials. Thus Godwin's autobiographical notes, written at various points in his life, formed the core of Mary Shelley's narrative, and were supplemented by carefully chosen samples of his voluminous correspondence. Yet Mary Shelley's role was more than that of an editor. Through her linking passages of biographical commentary, as through her selection and arrangement of material, she also shaped the narrative according to her father's beliefs. For example, in keeping with Godwin's notion of character as a product of environmental forces, she provided information concerning key historical events of the 1790s, and included biographical portraits of his reformist colleagues and friends. By depicting Godwin as the centre of this like-minded group, Mary Shelley drew attention to his efforts to live a life based on his philosophical commitment to gradual social change through private conversation and debate. This presentation of Godwin's intellectual and social contexts was more than an act of fidelity to his belief in the inseparability of public and private realms: it also formed a way of safeguarding his privacy. Godwin himself had strong views on the potentially intrusive aspects of biography. In 1809, for example, he had objected to Hazlitt's decision to

I NTRO Dl'CTI 0 N

Xlll

include in Memoirs 0/ the Late Thomas Holcro/t (1816), a posthumous biography of Godwin's closest friend (see Biographical Glossary), portions of Holcroft's manuscript diary. In an undated letter to Holcroft's widow, Godwin argued that the diary, a record of private opinions and gossip, should not be published because Holcroft had not given his consent: 'I have always entertained the strongest antipathy to this violation of the confidence between man and man, that every idle word, every thoughtless jest I make at another's expense, shall be carried home by the hearer, put in writing, and afterwards printed' (Kegan Paul, vol. 2, p. 176). That Mary Shelley shared this view about the confidentiality of private papers is suggested by her letter of 20 April 1836 reassuring Mary Hays (see pp. 7-8) that she had no plans to include any of Hays's letters to Godwin in her biography: 'There is nothing more detestable or cruel', she wrote, 'than the publication of letters meant for one eye only' (Bennett, vol. 2, p. 270). By giving detailed attention to members of Godwin's circle, Mary Shelley circumvented the issue of biographical intrusiveness. In her memoir, Godwin's personal friends turn out to be public figures in their own right, who, like himself, did not make a distinction between private attachments and public principles. Despite her faithful, if cautious, representation of Godwin's gradualist beliefs, Mary Shelley was unwilling to represent other aspects of his social vision. She clearly felt unable to fulfil his most unequivocal testamentary wish, that she publish his last work, and this may have led her to abandon the whole enterprise of his posthumous rehabilitation for reasons of prudence. In his final years, Godwin wrote a vigorous and uncompromising critique of orthodox Christianity, 'The Genius of Christianity Unveiled: In a Series of Essays', in which he set out to complete the reformist project he had begun in Political Justice. In a letter to Mary Shelley, he urged the work's posthumous publication and outlined its aims: 'It is more than forty years since I applied myself in the best manner I could to the discovery of the remedies for our political evils. And now, in this posthumous work, I have given my attention to the removing that oppressive weight of religious prejudice, which has exerted an influence scarcely less fatal to the energies and independence of the intellectual part of our nature' (PPW, vol. 7, p. 79). It appears that Mary Shelley feared that the publication of such an outspoken, anti-religious work would lead to a renewal of the public hostility she had already experienced as the daughter of Godwin and as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley. In addition, as she wrote to Trelawny (see

xiv

LIVES OF THE GREAT HOMA~TICS Ill: GODWI~

pp. 259-60) in early 1837, she was reluctant to risk damaging the prospects of her teenage son: 'With regard to my Father's life - I certainly could not answer it to my conscience to give it up - I shall therefore do it - but I must wait ... [Percy] has to enter life at College - that this should be undertaken at a moment when a cry was raised against his Mother - & that not on the question of politics but religion, would mar all- I must see him fairly launched, before I commit myself to the fury of the waves' (Bennett, vol. 2, p. 280). Though this letter expresses deep misgivings concerning the biography of Godwin, it also suggests that she was determined to complete it, and two months later she was involved with discussions with Godwin's former ward Thomas Abthorpe Cooper (see p. 35) concerning an American edition (see Bennett, vol. 2, pp. 283-4). Shortly after that, however, it appears she set aside the Godwin project in favour of a comprehensive edition of Shelley's poetry, though she did not abandon it completely until 1840 (see Bennett, ii, pp. 298-300, and below, p. 95). Mary Shelley's views on Godwin may have found indirect expression in an intervening work, a life of Cervantes, published in 1837 in Dionysius Lardner's The Cabl~ net 0/ Biography (1829-49), in which she highlighted aspects of Cervantes' life-story that resembled Godwin's (see Moskal). 'The Genius of Christianity Unveiled' was not published until 1873. Though Mary Shelley abandoned her own attempt at an official memorial of Godwin, the project had a future in a carefully modified form. On her death in 1851, the vast archive of Godwin family papers passed to her son, Sir Percy Florence Shelley, and his wife Lady Jane (see pp. 189-90), whose campaign to rescue the reputations of their controversial relatives involved the destruction of embarrassing documents. In the early 1870s they commissioned a family friend, the former Anglican vicar Charles Kegan Paul (see pp. 227-8), to write an official biography of Godwin based on Mary Shelley's surviving papers. Kegan Paul's William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries, as the title indicates, is organised according to Mary Shelley's conception of a collective biography of the Godwin circle. The book includes many of Mary Shelley's linking passages, which are discreetly edited and manipulated to present Godwin and his associates as a group of genteel intellectuals, reassuringly distant from the popular reform movements of the time. And while Mary Shelley's 'Life of William Godwin' ended in the late 1790s, Kegan Paul's 'life and letters' covered the whole of Godwin's life. His biography thus has a comprehensiveness which, despite its textual inaccuracies, is often said to mark the start of serious scholarly

INTRODCCTION

XV

attention to Godwin. Later biographers, relying on Kegan Paul as a source for documents, have often adopted his limiting assumptions and interpretations. The unique status of Kegan Paul's biographical record was heightened by the continuing absence of a comprehensive edition of Godwin's writings. This meant that throughout the nineteenth century, and beyond, readers lacked primary information on which to base an opinion concerning his beliefs. Though Kegan Paul himself published an edition of 'The Genius of Christianity Unveiled' (see p. 317, note to p. 248. 1. 11), his belated authorised biography did not provide a catalyst for editorial scholarship. On the contrary, by proclaiming an interest in Godwin's associates as distinct from his writings, it was seen to pass a 'sentence of honourable obsoleteness ... on nearly all Godwin's works' (Civil Service Review, p. 292). Nor has scholarship of the middle twentieth century made up for the dearth of early standard editions, as in, say, the case of Coleridge. It was not until 1992 and 1993 that comprehensive editions of Godwin's major works appeared, and there is still no complete edition of his writings. At present, Godwin occupies a special position among the major writers of the Romantic period, including all of the 'Great Romantics' in this series, in that there is no comprehensive edition of his letters or journals. The legacy of the fifty years' official silence after Godwin's death is perhaps still being felt today. There were several reasons for this silence, and the preceding account of Mary Shelley's unfinished 'Life of William Godwin' has indicated some of them. Primarily, the controversial nature of Godwin's political, social, and religious beliefs led to his marginalisation during the nineteenth century. Though many of these beliefs were developed in his writings prior to the 1790s, it was this decade which established his longstanding reputation as a 'disturber of the status quo' (Said, p. x). Political Justice, in which he set out his theory of philosophical anarchism and presented a vigorous critique of monarchy and aristocracy, appeared in February 1793 and became an immediate success. Though this substantial philosophical treatise seemed unlikely to achieve a wide readership among radical artisans, it was published at a time when the debate on the French Revolution had developed into a struggle for practical reform of the British political system. During this period, there developed a coalition of artisans, educated Dissenters, and radical aristocrats, whose differences were temporarily overridden by their shared goal of parliamentary reform. Despite Godwin's principled

xvi

LIVES OF THE GREAT ROMANTICS Ill: GODWIN

opposition to the use of force, his trenchant criticism of traditional forms of political authority seemed to many radicals to offer a philosophical justification for their practical demands. That Godwin was aware of the controversial nature of his arguments is suggested by the preface to Political Justice, in which he made a case for immunity from prosecution by presenting the work as 'by its very nature an appeal to men of study and reflexion' (PPW, vol. 3, p. v). In the event, the price of the first edition (£1 16 s.) persuaded the government not to prosecute, though, as shown by several of the following memoirs, notably those by Francis Place and Or Robert Blakey, Political Justice did become a powerful influence on ordinary working men. The view that Godwin's precepts in Political Justice were a practical danger to social stability was heightened by his subsequent publications during the 1790s. The 1794 preface to Caleb Williams, provocatively dated to coincide with the arrest on 12 May of Thomas Hardy (see Biographical Glossary), the first of twelve leading radicals to be charged with high treason in October 1794, provided further evidence of Godwin's association with the radical cause. However, this preface was withheld from publication in 1794, and appeared only in the second edition of Caleb Williams in 1796. More immediately controversial was Godwin's publication of a defence of the twelve radicals, who included his friends Thomas Holcroft, John Thelwall' and John Horne Tooke (see Biographical Glossary). In Cursory Strictures on the Charge Deliv­ ered by Lord Chie/Justice Eyre to the Grand Jury, October 2, 1794, which appeared first in the Morning Chronicle and then as a pamphlet, he demonstrated that Eyre's 'new imaginary treason' of 'conspiring to subvert the Monarchy' had no basis in law, case, or precedent, and argued that the remainder of the charge was made up of 'hypothesis, presumption, prejudication, and conjecture' (PPW, vol. 2, p. 85). Such arguments virtually demolished the case for the prosecution, and the twelve radicals were either acquitted or had the charges against them dropped. Cursory Strictures, which marked the high point of the temporary alliance between radical intellectuals and the artisan reformers of the 1790s, was Godwin's most successful intervention in practical politics. When news of his authorship leaked out, he became a celebrity among radical leaders and was regarded with increased suspicion by the ruling order. That suspicion found a new focus when Godwin, following the death of Mary Wollstonecraft (see Biographical Glossary), published Mem­ oirs 0/ the Author 0/ a Vindication 0/ the Rights a/Woman in early 1798.

INTRODUCTION

XV"

This was a work of unprecedented biographical frankness, which covered every phase of Wollstoncraft's unconventional career. It included candid and intimate discussion of her friendship with the married painter Henry Fuseli, her liaison with the American merchant Gilbert Imlay - to whom she bore a child, Fanny Imlay - her two attempts at suicide, her marriage to Godwin, and her slow and painful death after the birth of her second daughter, Mary. From Godwin's point of view, such directness was, as in Cursory Strictures, an attempt to enact in the public sphere the revolutionary doctrine of sincerity advocated in Polit­ ical Justice: frank information about Wollstonecraft's domestic circumstances was necessary to make her individual history an effective agent of historical change. Contemporary readers, however, were shocked rather than liberated by what they perceived as callous revelations of Wollstonecraft's immorality. Godwin quickly became notorious for, in the words of his former disciple Robert Southey, 'the want of all feeling in stripping his dead wife naked' (Robberds, vol. 1, p. 507). The hostile response to Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman coincided with a broader reaction in literary circles against the radical optimism of the earlier part of the decade. Changes in the public mood became apparent as early as 1796 and 1797, when the first of many novels satirising Godwin's intellectual position appeared. In late 1797, the Anti-Jacobin, a satirical weekly periodical supported by government funds (succeeded in 1798 by the Anti-Jacobin Review), became the leader of a popular campaign to discredit Godwin's teachings. For the next four years his views were widely denigrated, not only in abusive verse and 'anti-Jacobin' fiction, but also in sermons and pamphlets written by middle-class intellectuals who had previously accorded him respect, even when they disagreed with him (see Marshall, pp. 211-33). The strength of this reaction was such that Godwin's revisions and modifications to his arguments had little impact. Just as Considera­ tions on Lord Grenville's and Mr Pitt's Bills, the pamphlet in which he warned of the dangers of popular agitation and distanced himself from the reform movements, was overlooked in favour of Cursory Strictures, so too his publication of a second edition of the Memoirs, which included a limited defence of marriage and private affections, went virtually unnoticed. By the end of the 1790s, Godwin was associated in the popular imagination with radicalism, atheism, and immorality. This association was reinforced by his later contact with the self-confessed 'democrat, great lover of mankind, and atheist' Percy Bysshe Shelley (White, vol. 1, p. 456), and continued to influence attitudes to Godwin's

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LIVES OF THE CHEAT HO:\IA!\TICS Ill: GODWI!\

life and writings in later years. The challenge presented by such moral and political censoriousness to nineteenth-century biographers was summed up by the anonymous reviewer of Cloudesley in the Benthamite Westminster Review, writing in 1830: 'Mr Godwin's character will be a curious subject for the biographer when it comes under critical discussion. He has had the reputation of an incendiary, when he was breathing nothing but brotherly love to all mankind: his moral reputation has been blasted because he was purer in his aims than other men, and when perhaps his main fault has been a want of passion, he has been held as the prophet and precentor of licentiousness' ([Anon.], p. 494). A further difficulty for early biographers was the complex nature of Godwin's career. Its length and diversity offered a challenge to the conventional organising structures of biographical narrative. Though it.is often assumed that Godwin was a near-contemporary of Wordsworth and Coleridge, he was in fact nearly the same age as Blake, and he outlived all of the major Romantic writers, except for Wordsworth. Godwin's spanning of different generations led Shelley to view him as a survivor of an earlier era of revolutionary change. As he wrote in Letter to Maria Gisborne, sent to the addressee during her visit to London in the summer of 1820: You will see That which was Godwin, - greater none than he Though fallen - and fallen on evil times - to stand Among the spirits of our age and land Before the dread tribunal of to come The foremost, - while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb. (11. 196-201)

Here Shelley adopts the phraseology used by Milton to allude to his situation in the persecutions that followed the Restoration: 'unchanged / ... though fallen on evil days, / On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues' (Paradise Lost, VII. 24-6). Thus he identifies Godwin with the revolutionary poet idealised by Shelley's generation for his defiance of tyranny in a period of political defeat - though the compliment is weakened by Shelley's use of the past tense. Contrary to this image of fallen greatness, Godwin's career did not follow a traditional pattern of rise and fall, but incorporated several different phases and authorial identities. Though modern critics often define his achievement by the books he produced during the 1790s, nineteenth-century commentators recognised that this was only the first phase of a prolific and varied career. For example, Edward Lytton Bulwer, writing in 1830, described

I NTRODVCTI ON

XIX

Godwin as 'a man, endowed with a mind as various and accomplished as it is inquiring and profound', and drew attention to his constant refashioning of himself as 'an historian, an essayist, a biographer, a dramatic writer, a philosopher', as he responded to changing political, historical, and literary circumstances ([Bulwer], p. 365). Such literary comprehensiveness, the product of eighteenth-century Dissenting culture, with its ideal of universal knowledge and its disregard of modern disciplinary boundaries, made Godwin all the more elusive as a biographical subject. Moreover, Godwin's diversity was not only a matter of his generic versatility: it was also a feature of his intellectual outlook, and this protean quality of mind made it even harder to establish a definitive interpretation of his writings. In Thoughts: Occasioned by the Perusal o/Dr Parr's Spital Sermon (see p. 301, note to p. 62, 11. 11-12), Godwin remarked: 'The human intellect is a sort of barometer, directed in its variations by the atmosphere which surrounds it' (PPW, vol. 2, p. 170). Though this observation is primarily directed at the behaviour of those who originally espoused the tenets of Political Justice and later changed their minds, it also provides a gloss on his own intellectual flexibility in the face of changing times. In his fragmentary autobiographical notes, Godwin retrospectively structured his intellectual development according to a series of 'revolutions of opinion' or conversion-experiences: 'Every four or five years I gain some new perception, or become intimately sensible to some valuable circumstance, that introduces an essential change of many of my preconceived notions and determinations. Every four or five years I look back astonished at the stupidity and folly of which I had a short time before been the dupe' (NM, vol. 1, pp. 52, 59). Even in the 1790s, there is ample evidence of such mental 'ductility' (ibid., p. 60) in his gradual modification of the rationalist and individualist doctrines of the first edition of Political Justice. In the second and third editions of the treatise, as in the third edition of Caleb Williams, Godwin placed increased emphasis on the role of sympathy and feeling in moral judgements; while in Memoirs 0/ the Author 0/ a Vindication 0/ the Rights o/Woman, St Leon, and Thoughts, he accorded a moral role to domestic affections. As the Unitarian intellectual Lucy Aikin observed, a philosophical justification for such flexibility could be found in the Dissenting concept of the pursuit of truth, 'whithersoever thou leadest', as a moral duty, which is invoked by Godwin in Thoughts on Man (see pp. 221 and 315, note to p. 221, 11. 13-15). For those who did not share Godwin's Dissenting background and training, however, such change-

XX

LIVES OF THE GHEAT

HO~IAKTICS

Ill: GODWI!\'

ability looked like inconsistency. Hostile critics such as Southey - himself frequently charged with political inconsistency - were quick to capitalise on his apparent 'weathercock instability of opinion' (Robberds, vol. 1, p. 507). Even Coleridge, a close friend of Godwin's by the late 1790s, claimed to be baffled by his changes in his philosophical views. After reading a review of Thoughts in John Fenwick's The Albion (see p. 15), he wrote to Godwin on 23 June 1801: It strikes me that both in this work & in your second Edition of the Political}ustice your Retractations have been more injudicious than the assertions or dogmas retracted. But this is no fit subject for a mere Letter. If I had time, which I have not, I would write two or three sheets for your sole Inspection, entitled, History of the Errors & Blunders of the literary Life of WilIiam Godwin. To the World it would appear a Paradox to say, that you are all too persuadible a man; but you yourself know it to be the truth' (Griggs, vol. 2, p. 736).

Here Coleridge, perhaps because of his own fabled resistance to orthodox categories (see Pite, pp. xiv-xvii), shows an unusual degree of insight into Godwin's 'ductility' of mind. At the same time, his airy postponement of a comprehensive statement - a typical Coleridgean strategy - foreshadows the elliptical, truncated quality of many nineteenth-century memoirs of Godwin. Godwin's apparent contradictions, along with his literary comprehensiveness, also meant that his character and writings could be interpreted in radically different ways. The biographical image of Godwin presented in this volume is shaped by many different perspectives and voices. One influential factor is the author's degree of intimacy with his or her subject. The majority of the contributors knew Godwin personally, though in some cases this does not mean a great deal: the opinions of family, friends, and colleagues are juxtaposed with those of critics and one-off acquaintances who visited him as one of the curiosities of literary London. However, there are several exceptions to this rule: there is no evidence that he met the novelist Elizabeth Hamilton, the phrenologist Sir G. S. Mackenzie, or the journalist William Maginn. Nevertheless, their commentaries are included because they were highly influential in shaping popular nineteenth-century perceptions of Godwin in, respectively, early, middle, and late career. For the same reason, Lady Shelley's and Kegan Paul's posthumous biographical records are accorded due prominence.

I!\TRODCCTIO!\

XXI

Extracts are taken from a generically diverse body of works, and each view of Godwin is moulded by a particular set of formal conventions. In biographies modelled on the nineteenth-century 'life and letters' format, he appears in several different guises. In some cases, as already mentioned, he is the principal subject of works which reflect the priorities of his own autobiographical writings; in others, he appears as a minor figure, and his image is shaped by the prevailing conception of the primary subject, whether it be his distant acquaintance Sir Waiter Scott, or his close friend Charles Lamb, or his son-in-law Shelley. Other memoirs of Godwin are taken from collective biographies - for example, the muIti-authored Public Characters 0/1799-1800, Hazlitt's The Spirit 0/ the Age: or, Contemporary Portraits - in which portraits of individual men and women of letters form part of a larger study of the character of the era. There are also a number of extracts from literary reminiscences, such as Thomas De Quincey's 'Literary Connexions and Acquaintances' {which forms part of his 'Autobiography of an English Opium-Eater'}, Horace Smith's 'A Graybeard's Gossip about his Literary Acquaintance', and Charles MacFarlane's Reminiscences 0/ a Liter­ ary Lt/e. Such works, published many years after the events to which they refer, present carefully composed vignettes, embellished by literary allusions, in which Godwin is glimpsed at a particular moment in his career. Passages from autobiographical recollections, such as Harriet Martineau'sAutobiography, though less self-consciously literary, are equally artful in their presentation of a brief encounter with Godwin as part of the author's retrospective construction of his or her own intellectual history. In addition, there are several extracts either centred on, or wholly comprising, private letters and journals. Whether or not they were originally written for publication, these documents were all composed for communication, and the images of Godwin they convey are shaped by a variety of styles and modes of address. Finally, several works which do not belong to the genre of biography or memoirs are included, as examples of other ways in which biographical images of Godwin achieved a wide circulation during the nineteenth century. Thus Martineau's The History a/England outlines Godwin's contribution to nineteenth-century progress; Mackenzie's Illustrations 0/ Phrenology gives a quasi-scientific gloss to a subject of lasting interest to memoir-writers, the dimensions of Godwin's head; portraits and engravings present visual interpretations of Godwin; novels offer a dramatised view of his character. As well as being structured by formal considerations, each memoir is

XXII

LIVES OF THE GREAT ROMANTICS Ill: GODWIN

shaped by the political persuasion of the author. In the period covered by this volume, a number of different interpretations of Godwin develop concurrently. The anthology begins with two fictional portraits which reflect the polarisation of political opinion during the mid-1790s and which, broadly speaking, set the terms of later debate concerning Godwin's reputation. The first item is Elizabeth Hamilton's novelistic satire on Godwin's theory of philosophical anarchism in Letters 0/ a Hindoo Rajah. This early caricature of Godwin as 'Mr Vapour', the intoxicated rationalist whose precepts lead to a breakdown in social order, establishes the essentials of the Tory view of Godwin as it is replayed by politically hostile critics throughout the nineteenth century. By contrast, Mary Hays's portrait of Godwin as 'Mr Francis' in Memoirs 0/ Emma Courtney offers a counter-image of the philosopher as socially responsible, benevolent, and sincere. This novel appeared in the same year as Hamilton's work but was written from within the group of middle-class reformers satirised by her. Hays is the first of several contributors to present a sympathetic, insider's view of Godwin, based on a shared body of Dissenting beliefs and values. Within this group, figures active in the public sphere, such as John Fenwick and Hazlitt, present condensed overviews of Godwin's achievement, while observers, such as Amelia Opie, Henry Crabb Robinson, and Lucy Aikin, offer private glimpses of his character at different stages of his life. Yet this broad division of opinion into two sides does not wholly define Godwin's nineteenth-century reputation. Other memoirs introduce additional perspectives and concerns. For example, visitors from different cultures, such as the American intellectuals William Austin and George Ticknor, present contrasting images of Godwin's social circles which are shaped by their own respective backgrounds and responses to British society as a whole. Again, theatre critics such as William Dunlap and Charles Lamb provide indirect political commentaries by focusing, ostensibly, on Godwin's links with actors and acting. Further readings of Godwin's early career appear in the posthumously published memoirs of 1790s radicals, such as those of] oseph Gerrald and John Binns, which claim him as an active supporter of the cause of reform, while representatives of a later generation of social reformers, such as Harriet Martineau and Robert Dale Owen, portray him ambivalently in his final years. A small group of Shelley's friends, in the course of their self-serving recollections of Shelley, present competing, semifictionalised versions of Godwin's role as the younger man 's political mentor. Late Victorian critics, such as the Fabian socialist Graham

INTRODUCTION

xxiii

Wallas, promote a morally disapproving attitude to Godwin's financial inefficiency as a means of discrediting his political beliefs - a view which gained a wider circulation in Leslie Stephen's DNB entry on Godwin. Finally - though it should be remembered that date of publication and date of writing do not always coincide - private journals, written for an intimate audience of family and friends, provide nuanced accounts of the pleasures and vicissitudes of daily life in the Godwin household. Multiple perspectives such as these demonstrate how Godwin's versatility, as both man and writer, led him to be interpreted according to different political, moral, and cultural attitudes at particular historical moments. This collective view of Godwin as a multi-dimensional, complex figure contributes to the wider critical debate concerning biographical constructions of the 'Great Romantics', both in the nineteenth century and in the modern era. Certain recurring emphases and themes in this anthology suggest that Godwin's life and career exemplified a different set of values from those of other major writers of the period. For nineteenth-century readers, Godwin's life was not shaped by a single defining event or theme, such as Keats's fatal illness or Scott's financial catastrophe: instead, individual memoirs focus on different episodes in his life, building up a picture of a long and varied career. Again, nineteenth-century opinion of Godwin, unlike much recent scholarship, was not shaped by exclusive attention to his early works. On the contrary, memoir-writers read widely, and made an informed decision to focus on particular texts according to their own interests. Nor was Godwin's oeuvre defined by a small number of 'essential' themes, as it often is today. Individual memoir-writers address different aspects of his writings, demonstrating the diversity of his literary-political interests, and the variety of early interpretations of Godwin's 'message', as in the case of Coleridge, highlights his protean quality of mind. The most striking collective nineteenth-century theme, however, is that of Godwin's sociability. In contrast to other 'Great Romantics', who are often characterised in terms of the concepts of individual genius or solitary inspiration developed in their own works, Godwin is rarely portrayed in meditative isolation, but is consistently presented among a group of like-minded friends and colleagues. This depiction of Godwin as a member of a distinct social circle, with its own discursive conventions - often misunderstood by visitors - challenges the modern view of him as a 'fantasist of reason', divorced from social reality. Moreover, the continuing proliferation of Godwin's social contacts, even in

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LIVES OF THE GREAT ROMANTICS Ill: GODWIN

advanced old age, suggests that statements concerning his later obscurity should be read, in part at least, as rhetorical rather than as literal. Throughout his life, Godwin was perceived, for better or worse, as a vanguard intellectual not only in his political beliefs but also in his lifelong fidelity to the ideal of egalitarian social relationships between men and women.

BIBLIOGRAPHY References are by the author's or editor's name, followed by volume and page number. In cases where an author or editor appears more than once in the bibliography, an abbreviated form of the work's title is used (eg. Pollin, 'Nicholson's Lost Portrait', p. 57). Exceptions are made for three multi-volume editions, The Collected Novels and Memoirs 0/ William Godwin, The Political and Philosophical Writings 0/ William Godwin, and Shelley and his Circle: 1773-1822, which are abbreviated as, respectively, NM, PPW, and S&C. The spelling of all quotations follows the idiosyncrasies of the original. Manuscript Sources

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 'Life of William Godwin' [1836-40], Abinger Manuscripts, Bodleian Library, Oxford Primary Texts

[Anon.], 'Cloudesley: A Tale. By the Author of "Caleb Williams"', Westminster Review, 12 (April 1830), pp. 491-4 Austin, William, Letters from London: Written During the Years 1802 & 1803 (Boston: W. Pelham, 1804) Binns, John, Recollections 0/ the Lt/e o/John Binns: Twenty-Nine Years in Europe and Ft/ty-Three in the United States (Philadelphia: privately printed, 1854) Blakey, Robert, Memoirs 0/ Dr Robert Blakey, ed. Rev. Henry Miller (London: Triibner, 1889) [Bulwer, Edward Lytton], 'The Lounger, No. 1', New Monthly Maga­ zine, 28 (April 1830), pp. 361-7 Brightwell, Cecilia Lucy, Memorials 0/ the Lt/e 0/ Amelia Opie, Selected and Arranged from her Letters, Diaries, and Other Manuscripts (Norwich: Fletcher & Alexander; London: Longman, Brown & Co., 1854) Burr, Aaron, The Private Journal 0/ Aaron Burr: Reprinted in Full from xxv

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LIVES OF THE GHEAT HOMANTICS Ill: GODWIN

the Original Manuscript in the Library 0/ Mr William K. Bixby, 0/ St Louis, Mo., 2 vols (Rochester, NY: privately printed, 1903) Channing, William EUery, Correspondence o/William Ellery Channing, D.D. and Lucy Aikin, from 1826 to 1842, ed. Anna Letitia Le Breton

(London: Williams & Norgate, 1874) De Quincey, Thomas, 'Autobiography of an English Opium-Eater: Literary Connexions or Acquaintances', Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (March 1837), pp. 169-76 De Quincey, Thomas, 'Notes on Gilfillan's "Gallery of Literary Portraits"', Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, NS 7 (November 1845), pp. 724-7 Dunlap, William, Memoirs 0/ George Fred. Cooke, Esq., Late o/The The­ atre Royal, Covent Garden, 2 vols (London: Henry Colburn, 1813) Dunlap, William, History 0/ the American Theatre, 2 vols (London: Richard Bentley, 1833) [Fenwick, John], 'Mr Godwin', Public Characters 0/ 1799-1800 (London: R. Phillips, 1799) Froude, James Anthony, Thomas Carlyle: A History 0/ the First Forty Years 0/ his Lt/e, 1795-1835,2 vols (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1882) Gerrald, J oseph, The Trial 0/ Joseph Gerrald, be/ore the High Court 0/

Justiciary, at Edinburgh, on the 13 th and 14th o/March, 1794,/orSedi­ tion; with an Original Memoir, and Notes (Glasgow: Muir, Gowans

& Co., 1835) Gisborne, Maria, Maria Gisborne & Edward Williams, Shelley's Friends: Their Journals and Letters, ed. Frederick 1. Jones (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1951) Hamilton, Elizabeth, Translation a/the Letters 0/ a Hindoo Rajah; Writ­

ten Previous to, and During the Period 0/ his Residence in England; To Which is Prefixed a Preliminary Dissertation on the History, Religion, and Manners 0/ the Hindoos, 2 vols (London: G. G. & J. Robinson,

1796) Hays, Mary, Memoirs o/Emma Courtney, 2 vols (London: G. G. &J. Robinson, 1796) Hazlitt, William, Lectures on the English Comic Writers: Delivered at the Surrey Institution (London: Taylor & Hessey, 1819) [Hazlitt, William], The Spirit 0/ the Age: or Contemporary Portraits (London: Henry Colburn, 1825) Hazlitt, William, Conversations o/James Northcote, Esq., R.A. (London: Henry Colburn & Richard Bentley, 1830)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

XXVII

Hogg, Thomas Jefferson, The Lt/e 0/ Percy Bysshe Shelley, 2 vols (London: Edward Moxon, 1858) Hunt, James Henry Leigh, The Autobiography 0/ Leigh Hunt, with Reminiscences o/Friends and Contemporaries, 3 vols (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1850) Lamb, Charles, 'The Old Actors', London Magazine, 5 (April 1822), pp. 305-11 [Lockhart,John Gibson], 'Remarks on Godwin's New Novel, Mandev­ ille', Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 2 (December 1817), pp. 268-79 Lockhart, John Gibson, Memoirs 0/ the Lt/e 0/ Sir WaIter Scot!, Bart., 7 vols (Edinburgh: Robert Cadell, 1837-8) MacFarlane, Charles, Reminiscences 0/ a Literary Life (London: John Murray,1917) Mackenzie, Sir G. S., Bart., Illustrations o/Phrenology: With Engravings (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable; London: Hurst, Robinson & Co., 1820) [Maginn, William], 'Gallery of Literary Portraits, No. LIII: William Godwin, Esq.', Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country, 10 (October 1834), p. 463 [Martineau, Harriet], 'Godwin's Thoughts on Man', Monthly Reposi­ tory, NS 55 (July 1831), pp. 433-40 Martineau, Harriet, The History 0/ England During the Thirty Years' Peace: 1816-1846,2 vols (London: Charles Knight, 1849-50) Martineau, Harriet, Harriet Martineau's Autobiography, with Memorials by Maria Weston Chapman, 3 vols (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1877) Owen, Robert Dale, Threading My Way: Twenty-Seven Years 0/Autobi­ ography (London: Triibner, 1874) Paul, Charles Kegan, William Godwin: His Friends and Contem­ poraries,2 vols (London: H. S. King, 1876) Redding, Cyrus, Yesterday and To-day: Being a Sequel to 'Ft/ty Years' Recollections, Literary and Political', 3 vols (London: T. Cautley Newby,1863) Robinson, Henry Crabb, Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence 0/ Henry Crabb Robinson, Barrister-at-Law, FS.A., ed. Thomas Sadler, 3 vols (London: Macmillan, 1869) Shelley, Lady Uane] (ed.), Shelley Memorials: From Authentic Sources (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1859) Shelley, Lady Uane] (ed.), Shelley and Mary, 4 vols (privately printed, 1882)

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LIVES OF THE GREAT ROMANTICS Ill: GODWIN

[Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft], 'Memoirs ofWilliam Godwin', prefixed to Caleb Williams (London: Henry Colbum & Richard Bentley, 1831) [Smith, Horace], 'A Graybeard's Gossip about his Literary Acquaintance', New Monthly Magazine, 82 (March 1848), pp. 338-9 [Smith, James, and Smith, Horace], Horace in London: Consisting 0/ Imitations 0/ the First Two Books 0/ the Odes 0/ Horace (London: John Miller, 1813) [Talfourd, Thomas Noon], 'On the Living Novelists - No. III: Godwin', New Monthly Magazine, 14 (July 1820), pp. 54-7 Talfourd, Thomas Noon, Final Memorials 0/ Charles Lamb; Consisting

Chiefly 0/ his Letters not be/ore Published, with Sketches 0/ Some 0/ his Companions, 2 vols (London: Edward Moxon, 1848) Ticknor, George, Lt/e, Letters, and Journals 0/ George Ticknor, ed.

George Stillman Hillard, 2 vols (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1876) Trelawny, Edward John, Records 0/ Shelley, Byron, and the Author, 2 vols (London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 1878) Wallas, Graham, The Lt/e 0/ Francis Place: 1771-1854 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1898) Secondary Texts

Altick, Richard D., The English Common Reader: A Social History 0/ the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1957) [Anon.], 'William Godwin', Civil Service Review, 6 May 1876, pp. 291-3 Baylen, Joseph 0., and Gossman, NorbertJ. (eds), Biographical Dictio­ nary o/British Radicals, volume 1: 1770-1830 (Hassocks: Harvester Press; Atlantic Highland: Humanities Press, 1979) Bennett, Betty T. (ed.), The Letters 0/ Mary Wollstonecra/t Shelley, 3 vols (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980-8) Boaden, James (ed.), Memoirs 0/ Mrs Inchbald: Including her Familiar

Correspondence with the most distinguished Persons

0/ her Time, 2

vols (London: Richard Bentley, 1833) Cafarelli, Annette Wheeler, Prose in the Age 0/ Poets: Romanticism and Biographical Narrative from Johnson to De Quincey (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990) Cameron, Kenneth Neill, and Reiman, Donald H. (eds), Shelley and his Circle: 1773-1822, 8 vols to date (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961-)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

XXIX

Clemit, Pamela, The Godwinian Novel: The Rational Fictions 0/ Godwin, Brockden Brown, Mary Shelley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) Clemit, Pamela, 'Lamb and Godwin's Antonio', Charles Lamb Bulletin, NS 85 (January 1994), pp. 17-22 Clemit, Pamela, 'Mary Shel1ey and William Godwin: A Literary-Political Partnership, 1823-1836', Women's Writing, 6, No. 3 (forthcoming,1999) Constable, Thomas, Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspon­ dents, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas, 1873) [Conway, Moncure Daniel], 'South-Coast Saunterings in England', Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 38 (March 1869), pp. 449-65 Corfield, PenelopeJ., and Evans, Chris (eds), Youth and Revolution in the 1790s: Letters 0/ William Pattison, Thomas Amyot and Henry Crabb Robinson (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1996) Courtney, Winifred F., Young Charles Lamb: 1775-1802 (London: Macmillan, 1982) Curran, William Henry, The Ltle 0/ the Right Honourable John Philpot Curran, Late Master 0/ the Rolls in Ireland, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable; London: Hurst, Robinson & Co., 1819) Feldman, Paula R., and Diana Scott-Kilvert (eds), The Journals o/Mary Shelley: 1814-1844 (1974; repr. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995) Gilfillan, George, A Gallery 0/ Literary Portraits (Edinburgh: William Tait,1845) Godwin, William, The Collected Novels and Memoirs 0/ William Godwin, ed. Mark Philp et al., 8 vols (London: Pickering & Chatto, 1992) Godwin, William, The Political andPhilosophical Writings 0/ William Godwin, ed. Mark Philp et al., 7 vols (London: Pickering & Chatto, 1993) Goodwin, Albert, The Friends 0/ Liberty: The English Democratic Movement in the Age 0/ the French Revolution (London: Hutchinson, 1979) Grierson, H.]. c., et al. (eds), The Letters 0/ Sir WaIter Scott, 12 vols (London: Constable, 1932-7) Griggs, Earl Leslie (ed.), Collected Letters o/Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956-71) Hazlitt, William, The Complete Works 0/ William Hazlitt, ed. P. P. Howe, 21 vols (London:]. M. Dent & Sons, 1930-4)

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LIVES OF THE GHEAT ROMANTICS Ill: GODWIN

Howe, P. P., The LIfe o/William Hazlitt (1922; repr. Penguin Books: Harmondsworth, 1949) Ingpen, Roger, Shelley in England: New Facts and Letters from the Shelley­ Whitton Papers (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co., 1917) Jones, Frederick 1. (ed.), The Letters 0/ Percy Bysshe Shelley, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964) Kelly, Gary, Women, Writing, and Revolution: 1790-1827 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) Kelly, Gary, and Edd Applegate (eds), Dictionary o/LiteraryBiography, volume 158: British Re/orm Writers, 1789-1832 (Detroit, Washington, D.e, London: Gale Research, 1996) Lamb, Charles, Elia & Last Essays 0/ Elia, ed. Jonathan Bate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987) Lewis, W S., et at. (eds), Horace Walpole's Correspondence with Hannah More (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961) Locke, Don, A Fantasy 0/ Reason: The Li/e and Thought 0/ William Godwin (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980) Luria, Gina M., 'Mary Hays: A Critical Biography', Ph. D. thesis (New York University, 1972) Malone, Dumas (ed.), Dictionary 0/ American Biography, 20 vols (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928-36) Marrs, Edwin W, Jr. (ed.), The Letters 0/ Charles and Mary Anne Lamb, 3 vols (Ithaca, New York and London: Cornell University Press, 1975-8) Marshall, Peter H., William Godwin (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984) Millgate, Michael, Testamentary Acts: Browning, Tennyson, James, Hardy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) Milton, John, Paradise Lost, ed. Alastair Fowler (London: Longman, 1968,1971) Morley, Edith J. (ed.), Henry Crabb Robinson on Books and their Writ­ ers, 3 vols (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1938) Moskal, Jeanne, 'Cervantes and the Politics of Mary Shelley's History 0/ a Six Weeks' Tour', in Mary Wollstonecra/t Shelley in her Times, ed. Betty T. Bennett and Stuart Curran (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming, 2000) Paulin, Tom, The Day-Star 0/ Liberty: William Hazlitt's Radical Style (London: Faber & Faber, 1998) Peck, Walter E., Shelley: His Life and Work, 2 vols (London: Ernest Benn, 1827)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

XXXI

Philp, Mark, Godwin's Political Justice (London: Duckworth, 1986) Pollin, Burton R., Godwin Criticism: A Synoptic Bibliography (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967) Pollin, Burton R., 'Nicholson's Lost Portrait of William Godwin: A Study in Phrenology', Keats-Shelley Journal, 16 (Winter, 1967), pp. 51-60 Price, Richard, Political Writings, ed. D. O. Thomas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) Robberds, J. W. (ed.), A Memoir 0/ the LIfe and Writings 0/ the Late William Tayloro/Norwich, 2 vols (London: John Murray, 1843) Rollins, Hyder E. (ed.), The Letters ofJohn Keats: 1814-1821,2 vols (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958) Said, Edward, Representations 0/ the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lec­ tures (London: Vintage, 1994) St Clair, William, Trelawny: The Incurable Romancer (London: John Murray, 1977) St Clair, William, The Godwins and the Shelleys: The Biography 0/ a Family (London and Boston: Faber & Faber, 1989) Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, [with others? J, Lives 0/ the Most Eminent

Literary and Scientific Men

0/ Italy,

Spain, and Portugal, volume 3,

volume 88 of The Cabinet 0/ Biography, Conducted by the Rev. Dionysius Lardner [Lardner's Cabinet CyclopediaJ (London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1837) Shelley, Percy Bysshe, Shelley: Poetical Works, ed. Thomas Hutchinson, corr. G. M. Matthews (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970) Sikes, Herschel Moreland, et al. (eds), The Letters 0/ William Hazlitt (New York: New York University Press, 1978) Southey, Cuthbert C. (ed.), The Life and Correspondence 0/ Robert Southey, 6 vols (London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1849-50) Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sir Sidney Lee (eds), Dictionary 0/ National Biography, 66 vols (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1885-1901) Stocking, Marion Kingston, with the assistance of Stocking, David Mackenzie (eds), The Journals o/Claire Clairmont: 1814-1827 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968) Thale, Mary (ed.), The Autobiography 0/ Francis Place (1771-1854) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972) Thurman, William Richard, Jr., 'Letters about Shelley from the Richard Garnett Papers, University of Texas', PhD thesis (University of Texas, 1972)

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LIVES OF THE GREAT ROMANTICS Ill: GODWIN

Todd, Janet (ed.), A Dictionary 0/British and American Women Writers: 1600-1800 (London: Methuen, 1984) Wedd, A. F. (ed.), The Love-Letters 0/ Mary Hays (1779-1780) (London: Methuen, 1927) White, Newman !vey, Shelley, 2 vols (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940)

CHRONOLOGY 1756 William Godwin born at Wisbech in Cambridgeshire (3 March). 1758 Godwin's family moves to Debenham in Suffolk. 1759 Mary Wollstonecraft born in London. 1760 Godwin's family moves to Guestwick in Norfolk. 1761

Godwin attends the village school of Mrs Gedge.

1764

Following Mrs Gedge's death, Godwin is sent to attend Robert Akers's school in nearby Hindolveston.

1766 Mary Jane Clairmont (nee Vial) born. 1767

Godwin is sent to Norwich as the solitary pupil of the Reverend Samuel Newton.

1770 Godwin returns to Akers's school. 1771

Godwin returns to Newton (March) but is dismissed by his tutor, and returns to Akers's school as an usher (December).

1772 Godwin's father, John Godwin, dies (November). Mrs Godwin and the family move to Wood Dalling, a few miles from Guestwick. 1773 Godwin is rejected by Homerton Dissenting Academy on the grounds of suspected Sandemanianism (April), but gains a place at Hoxton Dissenting Academy (September), where he meets J ames Marshall. 1777 Godwin preaches at Yarmouth and Lowestoft. 1778 Godwin graduates from Hoxton Dissenting Academy (May) and becomes minister at Ware in Hertfordshire (June), where he meets J oseph F awcett. 1779 The congregration at Ware rejects Godwin (August). He moves xxxiii

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LIVES OF THE GREAT ROMANTICS Ill: GODWIN

to London, taking lodgings in Colman Street, near Cripplegate, then takes up another post as minister at Stowmarket in Suffolk (December) . 1781 Godwin meets Frederick Norman, who introduces him to the writings of the French philosophes. 1782 Godwin is dismissed by his church and moves to London, lodging in Holborn (April). He takes up a post as minister at Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire (December). 1783 Godwin publishes, anonymously, The History 0/ the Ltfe 0/ William Pitt, Earl 0/ Chatham Uanuary) and A De/ence 0/ the Rockingham Party, in their Late Coalition with the Right Hon­ ourable Frederic Lord North, his first political pamphlet (May). He leaves Beaconsfield, abandons the ministry for good, and returns to London to live, lodging in the Strand Uune). He publishes, anonymously, An Account 0/ the Seminary that will be opened on Monday the Fourth Day 0/ August at Epsom in Surrey Uuly), a school prospectus, but not enough pupils apply, and he abandons the scheme and turns to writing as a full-time career. He publishes, anonymously, The Herald 0/ Literature: or, A Review 0/ the Most Considerable Publications that will be made in the Course 0/ the Ensuing Winter, a collection of literary parodies, and Sketches 0/ History. In Six Sermons (November). 1784 Godwin publishes, anonymously, the pamphlet Instructions to a Statesman. Humbly Inscribed to the Right Honourable George Earl Temple (January), and three short novels: Damon and Delia: A Tale (January/February); Italian Letters; or, The History 0/ the Count de St Julian (July); Imogen: A Pastoral Romance. From the Ancient British (July). He is employed to write the literary sections of the English Review (February), and appointed as writer of the 'British and Foreign History' section of the Whig New Annual Register (July), a job he continues until 1791. 1785 Godwin becomes private tutor to Willis Webb for a year. He is invited to work for the Political Herald and Review, a new journal established by the Whig party leaders (July), and becomes acting editor (August), a post he retains until the journal collapses in 1787. He moves lodgings twice, to Tavistock Row (March), then to Broad Street, Soho (June).

CHRONOLOGY

XXXV

1786 Godwin becomes a regular guest at the literary parties of the publisher George Robinson, where he meets Thomas Holcroft and William Nicholson. He moves lodgings twice, first to Newman Street (June), then to Upper Berkeley Street, Portman Square (September). 1787 Godwin applies unsuccessfully for a post at the British Museum (January), and moves lodgings again, to New Norfolk Street, Grosvenor Square (March). He begins to attend the tea-time literary gatherings of Helen·Maria Williams. He dines at Richard Brinsley Sheridan's, where he meets George Canning and George Grey (June). His History of the Internal Affairs of the United Provinces is published anonymously (September). 1788 Godwin begins his diary (6 April), which he keeps every day until 26 March 1836. He becomes a regular guest at Thomas Brand Hollis's house, where he meets George Dyson and many leading Dissenting intellectuals. He takes to live with him until July 1792 another teenage pupil, Thomas Cooper, his second cousin, and moves with him into lodgings in Great Marylebone Street shared with Marshall (September). 1789 Godwin attends the annual dinner of the Revolution Society, preceded by Richard Price's Old Jewry sermon, A Discourse on the Love of Our Country (November). 1790 Godwin dines with the 'Anti-Tests', those campaigning to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts (February), attends a celebration at the Crown and Anchor Tavern on Bastille Day (July), and dines with the Revolution Society (November). He applies unsuccessfully for another post at the British Museum, and composes a drama based on the story of St Dunstan (unpublished). He publishes, anonymously, The English Peerage; or a View ofthe Ancient and Present State·of the English Nobility. He moves to lodgings in Titchfield Street (December). 1791 Godwin and Holcroft help to arrange the publication of Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, Part One (March), and write two anonymous letters to Fox and Sheridan respectively, urging them to stay true to their reformist principles (April). Godwin gives up his post on the New Annual Register and signs a contract with Robinson for a book on 'Political Principles' (July). He attends the celebration of the second anniversary of the fall

xxxvi

LIVES OF THE GREAT HO)IANTICS Ill: GODWIN

of the Bastille at the Crown and Anchor Tavern (July) and the annual Revolution Society dinner (November). He meets Mary Wollstonecraft (and Paine) at Joseph Johnson's (November). 1792 Godwin meets J ames Mackintosh (March). Percy Bysshe Shelley born (August). Godwin meets Elizabeth Inchbald (October), and begins attending John Home Tooke's regular dinners at Wimbledon (November). He attends Paine's trial in absentia for seditious libel, and moves lodgings to Chalton Street, Somers Town (December). 1793 Godwin writes a series of letters to the Morning Chronicle, signed 'Mucius', concerning government reaction to the spre,ad of radicalism (January). He publishes An Enquiry concerning

Political Justice, and its Influence on General Virtue and Happi­ ness (February). He meets Thomas Wedgwood (February), John Thelwall (March), and Maria Reveley (later, Gisborne) (September). He begins to attend the regular fortnightly meetings of the Philomathean Society (a debating club to which John Binns, Holcroft, and Thelwall also belonged), and visits the radicals Thomas Muir and Thomas Fyshe Palmer, awaiting transportation in the hulks at Woolwich (December). 1794 Godwin regularly visits the radical J oseph Gerrald in Newgate, both before and after his trial for sedition. Fanny Imlay born (May). Godwin publishes Things As They Are; or, The Adven­ tures 0/ Caleb Williams, with preface (withheld by the publisher) dated 12 May, the date of the arrest for high treason of twelve leading radicals, including Holcroft and Thelwal1. He publishes, anonymously, Cursory Strictures on the Charge Deliv­ ered by Lord Chie/Justic Eyre to the Grand Jury, October 2, 1794, first in the Morning Chronicle and then as a pamphlet, and attends the treason trials (November-December). All twelve radicals are acquitted or discharged. He meets Samuel Parr (February), Amelia Alderson (June), William Hazlitt (September), and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (December). 1795 Godwin meets William Wordsworth (February) and Mary Hays (May). Charles Clairmont born (June). Godwin publishes, anonymously, Considerations on Lord Grenville's and Mr Piu's

Bills, concerning Treasonable and Seditious Practices, and Unlaw­

CHRONOLOGY

xxxvii

/ul Assemblies. By a Lover 0/ Order (November), and Political Justice, second edition, revised (November, dated 1796). 1796 Godwin meets Wollstonecraft again at Hays's Uanuary): their intimacy begins to develop after she calls on him (April), and they become lovers (August). He is invited to several of Lord Lauderdale's political dinners, where he meets Adair, Fox, Grey, and others. First performance of George Colman the Younger's The Iron Chest, a stage adaptation of Caleh Williams (March). 1797 Godwin begins dining regularly at Johnson 's with Fuseli and others, a practice continued until Johnson's death in 1809. He meets Robert Southey (February) and Robert Bage Uune). He publishes The Enquirer: Reflections on Education, Manners, and Literature. In a Series 0/ Essays (February). Godwin and Wollstonecraft marry (March) and together move into 29, The Polygon, Somers Town; he also takes separate rooms at 17 Evesham Buildings, Chalton Street (April). He publishes his translation of Memoirs 0/ the Ltfe 0/ Simon Lord Lovat, Written by Himself (April). Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin born (August). Wollstonecraft dies (September). Godwin publishes Political Justice, third edition, revised (November, dated 1798). 1798 The publication of Godwin's Memoirs 0/ the Author 0/ a Vindi­ cation 0/ the Rights o/Woman Uanuary, second edition, revised, 1798) and Posthumous Works 0/ Mary Wollstonecra/t Godwin Uanuary) gives rise to a hostile critical reaction. For the next three years, his views are denigrated in abusive verse, satirical novels, sermons, and pamphlets. Jane (Claire) Clairmont born (April). 1799 Holcroft leaves England for Hamburg Uuly). Hazlitt Uuly) and Coleridge (November) call on Godwin, marking the start of new friendships. Godwin mets John Philpot Curran (October) . He publishes St Leon: A Tale 0/ the Sixteenth Century (December). 1800 Godwin meets Charles and Mary Lamb (February), who become longstanding friends, and visits Curran in Dublin, where he meets other leading Irish nationalists Uune-August). His play Antonio; or, The Soldier's Return, with an epilogue by

xxxviii

LIVES OF THE GREAT ROMANTICS Ill: GODWIN

Lamb, is performed at Drury Lane Theatre (13 December) and subsequently published. 1801 Godwin meets Mary Jane Clairmont (May) and marries her (December). He publishes Thoughts: Occasioned by the Perusal o/Dr Parr's Spital Sermon, preached at Christ Church, April 15,

1800: Being a Reply to the Attacks o/Dr Parr, Mr Mackintosh, the Author 0/an Essay on Population, and Others (June). His manuscript play, 'Abbas, King of Persia', is rejected by Drury Lane (September).

1802 Mrs Godwin has a miscarriage or a still-born baby (January). Holcroft returns to England from Paris (September). Godwin, as William Scholfield, publishes Bible Stories. Memorable Acts

1803

0/ the Ancient Patriarchs, Judges, and Kings: extracted from their Original Historians. For the Use 0/ Children . William Godwin,Jr., born (March). Godwin publishes Ltfe 0/ Geoffrey Chaucer, the Early English Poet, including Memoirs 0/ his Near Friend and Kinsman, John 0/ Gaunt, Duke 0/ Lancaster: With Sketches 0/ the Manners, Opinions, Arts and Literature 0/

England in the Fourteenth Century (October).

1805 Godwin publishes Fleetwood; or, The New Man o/Feeling (February). During the summer he and his wife establish a shop and publishing house, the Juvenile Library, at Hanway Street, which to avoid controversy is registered in the name of the manager Thomas Hodgkins. Godwin publishes, as Edward Baldwin,

Fables, Ancient and Modern. Adapted for the Use

0/ Children

and, as Theophilus Marcliffe, The Looking Glass: A True His­ tory 0/ the Early Years 0/ an Artist, a biography of the artist William Mulready (both October). 1806 Godwin publishes, as Marcliffe, Life 0/ Lady Jane Grey, and 0/ Lord Guild/ord Dudley, her Husband; as Baldwin, The History 0/ England. For the Use o/Schools and Young Persons (June); and, as Baldwin, The Pantheon: or Ancient History 0/ the Gods 0/ Greece and Rome (December). Shortly after the death of Fox, Godwin's 'Character ofMr Fox' appears in the London Chroni­ cle (November). 1807

The Godwins open a new shop at 41 Skinner Street, Snow Hill, Holborn, where the Juvenile Library is registered in the name

CHRONOLOGY

xxxix

ofM.J. Godwin (May), and the family takes up residence above the shop (November). Godwin's play Faulkener, A Tragedy is performed at Drury Lane (16-19 December). 1808 Godwin meets Aaron Burr (October). 1809 Godwin publishes Essay on Sepulchres; or, A Proposal/or erect­

ing some Memorial 0/ the Illustrious Dead in all Ages on the Spot where their Remains have been Interred (February). Holcroft dies (March) . Godwin publishes, as Baldwin, The History 0/ Rome: From the Building 0/ the City to the Ruin 0/ the Republic (July). His mother, Ann Godwin, dies (August). He publishes

Mylius's School Dictionary 0/ the English LAnguage. To which is prefixed A New Guide to the English Tongue, by Edward Bald­ wm. 1810 Godwin meets Francis Place (February). He publishes, as Baldwin, Outlines o/English Grammar, partly abridged/rom Hazlitt's New and Improved Grammar 0/ the English Tongue (June/July). 1811 Charles Clairmont takes up an apprenticeship with Godwin's Edinburgh publisher Archibald Constable (November). 1812 Godwin begins corresponding with Shelley (January) and meets him (October) . Mary Godwin meets Shelley (November). 1813 Godwin meets Robert Owen (January). A government agent reports on the allegedly subversive activities of the Juvenile Library, but no action is taken. Godwin meets Byron (August). 1814 Charles Clairmont returns from Edinburgh (January). Shelley and Mary Godwin elope to the Continent (July), accompanied by Claire Clairmont, returning six weeks later. William Godwin, Jr., runs away for two days (August). 1815 Mary Godwin prematurely gives birth to a daughter (February), which dies ten days later. Godwin publishes Lives 0/ Edward

and John Philips, Nephews and Pupils 0/ Milton. Including Vari­ ous Particulars 0/the Literary and Political History 0/their Times (May). His first 'Letter of Vera x' appears in the Morning Chron­ icle (25 May). It is republished with a second letter as a pam-

phlet (June) , withdrawn by Godwin when he hears of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo.

1816 William Shelley born (January). Godwin goes on a tour to

xl

LIVES OF THE GREAT ROMANTICS Ill: GODWIN

Edinburgh, visiting Archibald Constable, J ames Ballantyne, Sir Waiter Scott, Wordsworth, and others (April-May). Charles Clairmont leaves for the Continent (April). The Shelleys and Claire Clairmont go to Geneva (May-September). Sheridan dies (July) . Fanny Godwin commits suicide (October). Following the suicide of his first wife Harriet, Shelley marries Mary Godwin (December). 1817 Godwin becomes a regular visitor at the Shelleys' house at Marlow, where he meets Keats, among others. Claire Clairmont's daughter by Byron, Alba (later, Allegra) born (January). Clara Shelley born (September). Curran dies (October). Godwin publishes Mandeville: A Tale 0/ the Seventeenth Cen­ tury in England (December). 1818 Godwin's Letter 0/ Advice to a Young American: On the Course 0/ Studies it might be Most Advantageous for him to Pursue appears in Constable's Edinburgh Magazine (March) and is reprinted by Godwin as a pamphlet for private distribution. The original addressee,Joseph Bevan, arranges for its republication in several American journals. The Shelley party leaves for Italy (March). Godwin meets Lady Caroline Lamb (May). He receives notice to quit Skinner Street because of non-payment of rent (June), marking the start of a legal battle. 1819 William SheIley dies (June). Percy Florence Shelley born (November). Charles Clairmont settles in Vienna (November). 1820 Maria Gisborne visits England and renews her friendship with Godwin (June-July). He publishes O/Population. An Enquiry concerning the Power 0/ Increase in the Numbers 0/ Mankind, being an Answer to Mr Malthus's Essay on that Subject (November). 1821 Inchbald dies (August). Godwin publishes, as Baldwin, History 0/ Greece: From the Earliest Records 0/ that Country to the Time in which it was reduced into a Roman Province. 1822 Allegra dies (April). A writ of eviction is served upon the Godwins (May), who leave Skinner Street and re-establish the Juvenile Library at 195, The Strand (July). Shelley dies (July). Claire Clairmont goes to Vienna (September). Godwin 's landlord Read obtains a judgement for payment of three years' back rent:

CHRONOLOGY

xli

Lamb and Mackintosh start a private appeal to cover Godwin's debts (December). 1823 Publication of Mary Shelley's Valperga; or, The Life and Adven­ tures 0/ Castruccio, Prince 0/ Lucca (February), revised by Godwin during the previous year. Lamb and Mackintosh turn their appeal into a public subscription for £600 (July), but only half the amount is raised. Godwin publishes a revised edition of The Enquirer (July). Mary Shelley returns to London (25 August). 1824 Godwin publishes History 0/ the Commonwealth 0/ England. From its Commencement, to the Restoration 0/ Charles the Second, Volume 1 (February). Claire Clairmont goes to Russia. 1825 The Juvenile Library is declared bankrupt (March), and the Godwins move to 44 Gower Place (May). 1826 Godwin meets Edward Bulwer (January). He publishes History o/the Commonwealth, Volume 2 (April). Claire Clairmont goes to Dresden (May). 1827 Godwin publishes History (June).

0/ the Commonwealth,

Volume 3

1828 Charles Clairmont and family arrive in London (July), followed by Claire (October). Godwin publishes History 0/ the Common­ wealth, Volume 4 (October). 1829 Claire Clairmont returns to Dresden (September), Charles to Vienna (November). 1830 William Godwin, Jr., and Emily Eldred marry (February). Godwin publishes Cloudesley; A Tale (March). He begins to attend Mary Shelley's parties, where regular guests include Bulwer, Washington Irving, and Thomas Moore, and becomes a frequent guest at the gatherings ofJohn Martin, where he meets many of the leading artists of the day, including Landseer, Turner, and Wilkie. 1831 Godwin publishes Thoughts on Man, his Nature, Productions and Discoveries. Interspersed with some Particulars respecting the Author (February). Revised editions of Caleb Williams (April) and St Leon (June) are published in Bentley's Standard Novels,

xlii

LIVES OF THE GREAT ROMANTICS Ill: GODWIN

First Series (1831-55). William Godwin, Jr., dies of cholera (September). Marshall dies (October). 1832 Godwin drafts a 'Prospectus' for a new edition of Political Jus­ tice (October) (unpublished). Fleetwood, prefaced by Godwin's new account of the composition of Caleb Williams, appears in Bentley's Standard Novels (November). 1833 Godwin publishes 'Fragment of a Romance' in the New Monthly Magazine (January) and Deloraine (February). Grey's Whig ministry appoints Godwin Office Keeper and Yeoman Usher of the Receipt of the Exchequer, a post that carries a salary of £200 p.a. (April). The Godwins move to free accommodation in New Palace Yard, adjoining the Houses of Parliament (May). 1834 Godwin meets Harriet Martineau (March). He publishes Lives

of the Necromancers; or, An Account of the Most Eminent Per­ sons in Successive Ages, who have claimed for themselves, or to whom has been imputed by Others, the Exercise of Magical Powers (June). The Whig government decides to abolish

Godwin's post, but action is delayed when fire destroys the Palace of Westminster (October). 1835 The new Tory administration, headed by Sir Robert Peel, permits Godwin to maintain his post (February). Godwin publishes 'Memoirs of the Author, by his Father', in Transfusion, by William Godwin, Jr.. The Godwins move to Exchequer Building, Whitehall Yard (November). 1836 Godwin finishes writing 'The Genius of Christianity Unveiled: In a Series of Essays' (February) (published 1873). William Godwin dies (7 April).

COPY TEXTS The following extracts are reproduced in facsimile, except in one case where a transcription has been made. Breaks between excerpts (which may cover paragraphs, chapters or whole volumes) are indicated by three asterisks:

* * * In order to fit texts comfortably on to the pages of this edition certain liberties have been taken with the format of the original: occasionally right-hand pages have become left-hand pages (and vice versa) and text from consecutive pages has been arranged onto a single page. Endnotes in this edition refer to Pickering & Chatto page and line numbers. Readers wishing to consult the passages in the original are referred to the table below: TEXT NO. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

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Texts are reproduced by kind permission of: BL - the British Library Board; CUL - the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; LL - the London Library. We should also like to thank Lord Abinger and the Bodleian Library for granting permission to transcribe and publish extracts from Mary Shelley's 'Life of William Godwin', and the University of Oklahoma Press for allowing us to reprint the Maria Gisborne extract.

WILLIAM GODWIN

HAMILTON: LETTERS OF A HINDOO RAJAH

1

Elizabeth Hamilton, Translation 0/ the Letters 0/ a Hindoo Rajah; Written Previous to, and During the Period 0/ his Res­ idence in England; To Which is Prefixed a Preliminary Dis­ sertation on the History, Religion, and Manners 0/ the Hindoos, 2 vols (London, 1796) Elizabeth Hamilton (1758-1816) was born in Belfast and brought up by her aunt and uncle, a fanner, near Stirling in Scotland. She was educated until the age of thirteen by a master in a mixed school, though she did not receive any instruction in the classics. As she finished her formal schooling her brother Charles (?1753-92) left Britain to begin a military career in the service of the East India Company under Warren Hastings (see p. 314, note to p. 214, 11. 21-4). For the next fourteen years, Elizabeth Hamilton pursued her education through a lengthy correspondence with her brother. Under his mentorship she embarked on a literary career, and came to share his intellectual and political interests. While in India, Charles Hamilton became involved with the group of Orientalists surrounding Sir William Jones (1746-94) at the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, which was dedicated to the reform of both colonial administration and Indian society and government. In 1787 he published An Historical Relation 0/ the Origin, Progress, and Final Dissolu­ tion 0/ the Government 0/ the Rohilla A/ghans, which justified British intervention in India as an attack on decadent courtly society, both in India and at home. In the following year, he returned to England on leave to translate a commentary on the Islamic law code, and Elizabeth Hamilton visited him in London. In 1790 she went to live with him there, and joined his circle of liberal but anti-revolutionary friends. He was preparing to leave for India again when he died of tuberculosis in 1792. As the title suggests, Elizabeth Hamilton's first novel, Translation 0/ the Letters 0/ a Hindoo Rajah, reflects the interests of Charles Hamilton and his fellow-Orientalists, who sought through their scholarship to increase knowledge of Indian culture among British politicians and administrators. Indeed, by presenting her work as a translation, and by including a long 'Preliminary Dissertation on the History, Religion, and Manners of the Hindoos', Elizabeth Hamilton directly allies her work with the Orientalists' reform programme. At the same time, the novel

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348259-1

2

LIVES OF THE GREAT ROMANTICS Ill: GODWIN

presents a comprehensive critique of European society and culture from several different angles. Following eighteenth-century predecessors such as Montesquieu and Goldsmith, Hamilton satirises European society through the device of letters from apparently naIve Oriental visitors. Yet while her criticism of aristocratic society gives the novel a reformist edge, she also includes an attack on the middle-class radicals of Godwin's circle and their proletarian sympathisers. Though Transla­ tion 0/ the Letters 0/a Hindoo Rajah was published by the firm of G. G. & J. Robinson (see Biographical Glossary), which also published Godwin, there is no evidence that Elizabeth Hamilton and Godwin ever met. The passage selected here belongs to the third movement of the novel. Having gathered some preliminary impressions of Europe from British soldiers in India, Zaiirmilla, the Rajah of the title, visits England and describes his experiences there. On a visit to Ardent Hall, the country residence of Sir Caprice Ardent, he meets a heterogenous group of philosophers who 'perform poojah ['The performance of worship to the Gods', according to Hamilton's gloss] to different systems: and seem to have no opinion in common, except the expectation of the return of the Suttee ]ogue, which they distinguish by the name of The Age o/Reason' (Hamilton, vol. 1, p. 204). Among this group are several teachers of the 'faith of Atheism' (ibid., p. 210), of which the foremost is Mr Vapour, whose speech presents a parody of the leading arguments of Political Justice. In the remainder of the Ardent Hall episode, Elizabeth Hamilton adumbrates what was to become the standard pattern of 'anti-Jacobin' fiction: the precepts of Godwinian rationalism, when put into practice, are seen to lead to social breakdown and crime. Vapour advocates a rational utopia: 'By destroying the domestic affections, what an addition will be made to human happiness! And when man is no longer corrupted by the tender and endearing ties of brother, sister, wife, and child, how greatly will his dispositions be meliorated!' (see below). Yet when the gullible young nephew of another philosopher, Dr Sceptic, uses this argument as a plea for free love and tries to seduce his cousin, she kills herself, and so does he (Hamilton, vol. 2, pp. 267-73 ).

HAMILTON: LETTEHS OF A HINDOO HA.JAH

3

Mr. Vapour is particularly tenacious of his faith, which is, indeed, of a very extraordinary nature. RejeCting all the received opinions that have hither.. to prevailed in the world) and utterly difcrediting the circumftances upon which they have been founded; he referves his whole frock of credl1lity for futurity. Here his faith is fo ltrong~ as to bound

over the barriers

or probability,

to unite all that is difcordant in nature, and to believe in things irnpoffible.

The age of reafon, is thought, by Mr. Vapour, to be very near at hand. Nothing, he fays, is fo ea(y, as co bring it aboutimmediately. Itis only to perfuade the people in power to refign its exercife; the rith to part with their property'; and with one confent, to abolifh all laws, and putanend to all government: "Then," rays this credulous philofopher, cc £hall we fee the perfection of virtue ," Not fuch virtue, it is true, as has heretofore pa{fed current in the world. Benevolence will not then be heard of; gratitude will be confide red as a crime, and punilhed with

4

LI YES OF THE G IU:AT HOMANTICS II I: GODWIN

the contempt it fo juftfy deierves. Filiul aff'eCl:ion would, no doubc, be treated as a crime of a frill deeper dye, but that"

to prevent the poffibility of fuch a breach of virtue, no man, in the age of rtafon" 1hall be able to guefs who his father is;

nor any woman to (ay to her hulband J behold your fon. Chafticy, 1hall then be conlidered as a weaknefs, and the virtue of a female eftimated according as {be has had fufficient energy to break its mean reftraints. cc To what fublime heights/· exclaims this fapient philofopher, may we not expeCt thac virtue will then be feen to foar l---By deftroying the domeftic affections, what an addition will be made to human happinefs! And when man is no longer corrupted by the tender and endearing ties of brother, fifter) wife" and child, how greatly will his difpolitions be meliorated! The fear of puniiliment too, that ignoble bondage, which, at prefent, reftrains the energies of fo many great men, will no longer damp the noble ardour of the daring robber, or the midnight thief. Nor will any man then be degraded by working for (C

HAMILTON: LETTERS OF A IIINDOO HAJAH

5

another. The divine energies of the foul will not then be ftifled by labouring for fupport. What is nece£rary, every individual may, without difficulty, do for himfeIf. Every man iball then till his own field, and cultivate his own garden. tt_cc And pray how are the Ladies to be clothed in the age of reafon ~" aiked Mifs Ardent.-" Any Lady," replied the philofopher, "who choofes to wear clothes, which, in this cold climate, may by fame be conCidered as a matter of neceffity, mufr herfelf pluck the wool from the back of the {beep, and fpin it on a difraff; of her own making." cc But, 1he cannot weave it," rejoined Mifs Ardent, "without a loom; a loom cannot well be made without iron tools, and iron tools can have no exiftence without the aggregated labours of many individuals." cc True," returned Mr. Vapour J "and it is therefore probable, that in the glorious rera I fpeak of, men will again have recourfe to the flcins ofbeafts for covering i and thefe will be procured according to the ftrengch and capacity of the individual. A fummer's drefs,

6

LIVES OF TilE GREAT ROMANTICS Ill: GODWIN

may be made of the !kins of mice, and

fuch animals; while thofe of fheep, hares, horfes, dogs, &c. may be worn in winter. Such things may, for a time, take place. But as the human mind advances to that perfection, at which, when deprived of religion, laws, and government, it is defHned to arrive, men will, no doubt, polTefs fufficient energy, to refill: the effeCls of cold; and to exift, not only without clothing, but without food al(o. When reafon is thus far advanced, an effort of the mind will be fufficient to prevent the approach of difeafe, and frop the progrefs of decay. People will not then be fo foolifh as to die." "I can believe, that in the age of reafoD, wo.. men won't be troubled with the vapours," replied MiiS Ardent, "but, that they !bould be able to live without food and clothing, is another affair." cc Women I" repeated Mr. Vapour, with a contemptuoUS fmile; cc we {ball not then be trQubled with-women. In the age of reafon, the world {hall contain only a race of men! 1"

HAYS: MEMOIRS OF EMMA COURTNEY

Mary Rays, Memoirs 1796)

7

0/ Emma Courtney, 2 vols (London,

Mary Hays (1760-1843) was born into a middle-class Dissenting family in Southwark. She educated herself through a series of epistolary exchanges with leading radical intellectuals, notably Robert Robinson (1735-90), William Frend (1757-1841), with whom she fell in love, and Godwin. Towards the end of the 1780s, she attended lectures by tutors at the newly-established Hackney Dissenting Academy. In 1791 she published a pamphlet called Cursory Remarks on an Enquiry into the Expediency and Propriety 0/ Public or Social Worship, signed 'Eusebia', in which she defended the Dissenting practice of public worship against the recent attack on it by Gilbert Wakefield (1756-1801), a teacher at Hackney. Thereafter Hays became a member of the group of radical writers and intellectuals centred round the Unitarian publisher JosephJohnson (see Biographical Glossary), an affiliation confirmed by her publication in 1793 of Letters and Essays, Moral and Miscellaneous, a work greatly influenced by the feminist arguments of Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication 0/ the Rights o/Woman (1792). Hays's friendship with Godwin began when she wrote to him on 14 October 1794 asking to borrow a copy of Political Justice, a work which Frend had recommended, and setting out her credentials as a likeminded radical: Disgusted with the present constitutions of civil society, an observance of which the storms which have lately agitated the political hemisphere has forced upon every mind not absolutely sunk in apathy or absorbed in selfishness, the writer of this has been roused from a depression of spirits, at once melancholy and indignant, by an attention to the 'few puissant and heavenly endowed spirits, that are capable of guiding, enlightening and leading the human race onward to felicity!' Among these, fame has given a distinguished place to the author of 'Political Justice.' (Wedd, p. 227)

The pair first met for tea in the following May, after which they agreed that Hays should write to Godwin for philosophical advice, while he replied in person. In her letters she told Godwin the story of her failed relationship with Frend and asked him to explain how she could

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LIVES OF THE GHEAT ROMANTICS Ill: GODWIN

combat the excessive feelings that threatened to overwhelm her. Apparently Godwin's advice included the suggestion that she set down her thoughts in the form of a novel (Luria, p. 229) . The result was Memoirs 0/ Emma Courtney, a frankly autobiographical account of her unrequited love, in which personal experience is generalised, in the manner of Caleb Williams, to create a new political awareness on the part of the reader. In the novel Hays included material from her correspondence with Godwin, who served as the model for Mr Francis, the philosopher who becomes Emma's confidant and epistolary adviser. Following the loss of her mother at birth, Emma Courtney is brought up by her indulgent uncle and aunt in their house in the country, where indiscriminate reading leads her to be ruled by excessive sensibility. After the death of her aunt and father, she is forced to live as a dependant with her paternal uncle and his family, the Mortons, though she inwardly rebels against this constraint. At their house she meets two visitors, Mr Montague, the 'imperious' and 'stubborn' son of a local doctor, and Mr Francis, who is d~scribed as 'in his fourtieth year, his figure slender and delicate, his eye piercing, and his manner impressive' (Hays, vo!. 1, pp. 61,60). The following passage dramatises the pedagogical relationship which develops between Emma and Mr Francis. The behaviour of Mr Francis exemplifies the Dissenting theory of education, which should aim, in Richard Price's words, 'to teach how to think, rather than what to think' (Price, p. 137). As the exchange shows, Mr Francis's aim is not simply to state directly Godwinian precepts, but by his actions to encourage the development of Emma's rational autonomy.

IIAYS: MEMOIRS OF EMMA COUHTNEY

9

Mr. Francis, on the evening preceding the day on which he purpored leaving Monon Park, pafiing under the open window of my ch-amber, in which I was fitting with a book to enjoy the refrefhing breeze, invited me to come down, and accompany him in a ramble. I immediately complied with his requeft, and joined him in a few minutes, with a countenance clouded with regret at the idea of his quitting us. ee You are going," faid I, as I gave him my hand (which he paffed under his arm), "and I lore my friend and " counfellor." cc Your concern is obliging; but yot! le are capable of fianding alone, and

10

LIVES OF THE GREAT ROMANTICS Ill: GODWIN

your mind" by fo doing, will acquire " ftrenQ'th. ..., I feel as if this would not be the (~ cafe: the world appears to me a thorny cc and a pathlefs wildernefs j I ftep with caution, and look around me with dread. cc -That I require protection and affift" ance, is, I confefs, a proofof weaknefs> c. but it is neverthelefs true." "Mr. Montague," replied he, with fome degree of ar.chnefs in his tone and is a gallant knight, a pattern manner, " of chivalry, and appears to be particuH larly calculated for the defender of dif-" tre1fed damfe Is !" " I have no inclination to truft myfelf " to the guidance of one, who feems him­ cc [elf entangled in an inextricable Inaze cc of error, and whofe verfatile character (( affords little ballS for confidence." " Tell me what it is you fear ;--are u your apprehenfions founded in reafan r' cc Recollect my youth, my [ex, and my « precarious fituation." " I thought you contemned the plea of "fix, as a fanction for weaknefs !" (C

JJ

(C

(C

(C

BAYS: MEMOIRS OF EMMA COUUTNEY

11

cc Though I difallow it as a natural, r " admit it as an artificial, plea.." " Explain yourfelf. cc The charaCter, you te]] me, is modicc fied by circumftances: the cuftoms of JUR 1\fARY,

this moment reccivcd n. copy of Sir Timothy Shellcy'8 lcttcr to Lonl Byron, dated Fcbruary 6th, and which thercfore you "..ill have scen long bcfore this reaches you. You will ca!'ily imaginc how anxious I am to hear from you, and to know the state 0(' yonr feelings under this, which seems likc the last hlow of f:lte. " I need not uf conr~c attclllpt to assist your judgment upon thc proposition of taking the child from you. I nm sure your feelings would never allow you to entertain such a proposition. 11

I

HAVE

'"

'"

*

'"

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LAD Y S 11 ELL E Y : S 11 ELL E Y M E MOH J A L S

203

"I requested you to let Lord Byron's letter to Sir Timothy Shcllcy pass through my hands, and you did so; but, to my great mortification, it renched me scaled with his Lordship's arm~, so that I remain wholly ignorant of its contents. If you could send me a copy, I should then be much better acquainted with your present situation. " Your novel is now fully printed and ready for publication. 1 haye taken great liberties with it, and I fear y~ur amour pl'opre will bc proportionahly shocked. I need not tell you that all the merit of the book is exclusively your own. Reatrice is the jewel of the book; not but that I greatly admire Euthanasia, and I think the characters of Pepi, Binda, and the witch, decisive efIol'ts of original genins. I am promised a character of the work in the i.Worning Chronicle and the Herald, and was in hopes to have sent you the one or the other by this time. I also sent a copy of the book to the Examiner, for the same purpose. " Tuesday, Feb. 18th. "Do not, I ent.reat you, be cast down about your worldly circumstances. You certainly contain within yonrself the mcnns of' your subsistence. Your talents are truly extraordinary. Franllensieill is universally kno,vn, amI, though it can ncycr be (L book for vulgar reading, is everywhere respectcd. It is the most wonderful work to have bcen writtcn at twenty years of age ~, that I ever heard of. You are now fivc-and-twcnty, antI, most fortunately, you havc pursued a course of reading, and cultivated your mind, in a manncr thc most mlmirably adaptcd to makc you a great and successful author. If you cannot hc indepcnuent, who should be? "Your talents, as far as I can at prescnt discc1'll, arc turned for the 'vriting of fictitious advcntures. " If it shall ever happen to you to be placed ill suuden and urgent want of a. small sum, I cntrcat you to let me know immcdiately. 'Vc must sce what I can do. 'Ve lUust help onc another. " Your affectionate father, "'VU,LIAM GODWIN."

'" Frankenstein was written by Mrs. Shellcy when she 'Tas only eighteen, but not published until she was twenty.-ED.

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L I V E S 0 F THE G REA T ROM ANT I C S I II: GOD WIN

** * From Godwin to Mrs. Sltelley. "No. 195, Strand, lJfay 6th, 1823. " IT certainly i~, my clear l\Iary, with great pleasure that I anticipate that we Rhall once again meet. It is a long, long time now since you have spent onc night under my roof. You are grown a woman, haye been a wife, n mother, a widow. You have realized talents which J hut faintly and doubtfully anticipated. I am grown an old man, and want a child of my own to smile on and console me. ""~hen you first set your foot in London, of course I expect that it. will he in this house; but the house is smaller, one floor less, than the house in Skinner-street: it will do well enough for you to make shift with for a few days; but it would not do for a perm:ment re~idence. Dut I hope we shall at least have you near us-within a call-how different from your being on the shores of the Mediterranean! " Your novel has sold five hundred copies-half the impression. I ought to have written to you sooner. Your letter reached me on the 18th nit.; but I have been unusually surrounded with perplexities. "Your affectionate father,

" 'Y lol. GODWIN.

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Cyrus Redding, Yesterday and To-day: Being a Sequel to 'pz/ty Years' Recollections, Literary and Political', 3 vols (London, 1863) Cyrus Redding (1785-1870) was the son of Robert Redding (1755-1807), a Baptist minister in Cornwall and a staunch supporter of Charles James Fox (see Biographical Glossary). Redding was educated mainly at home, though he also attended some classes at Truro grammar school. He settled in London in about 1806, after which he pursued a career as a versatile and prolific journalist in London, Paris, and the English provinces, and came to share his father's Whig political views. From 1821 to 1830 he was working editor of the New Monthly Magazine, begun under the nominal editorship of the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell (see p. 311, note to p. 196,1. 15). Redding's new position brought him into contact with many literary figures of a reformist persuasion, including Godwin himself, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (see pp. 81-2), and Dr John Wolcot (see Biographical Glossary). During this period, Redding also wrote a series of biographical essays for Galignani's Paris edition of The Poetical Works 0/ Coleridge, Sheliey, and Keats (1829), for which Mary Shelley provided information about Shelley. From 1831 to 1833, Redding, again with Campbell, edited the Metropolitan, a monthly journal of literature, science, and the arts. He later moved into provincial journalism, and, after 1841, devoted most of his time to writing books. The following passage is taken from Yesterday and To-day, one of several volumes of autobiographical reminiscences by Redding. It is written from the point of view of one who shared Godwin's belief in reform through the gradualist means of enquiry and discussion rather than through political agitation. Looking back to the celebrated political trials of 1794, in which twelve leading radicals were indicted for high treason, Redding presents Godwin as a heroic figure standing fast against political despotism. Like John Binns (see p. 165), Redding erroneously assumes that Godwin was one of the twelve men charged. This may be simply a mistake: Redding, unlike Binns, was scarcely old enough to remember the event at first hand, and may have read Godwin's pamphlet Cursory Strictures, written in support of his jailed

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friends, as a defence of his own position. Yet Redding's confusion also suggests that Godwin's reputation as an active figure, closely associated with the leaders of the reform societies of the 1790s, lasted well into the nineteenth century.

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Godwin's "Fleetwood" I had not read, but had read several of his other works as they came out, indicative of great power and imagination. I am and ever was, of his opinion that the vox populi is not the vox Dei. I am of those who believe that nine times out of ten going with the crowd is to" go with the multitude to do evil." If the multitude is ever right it is upon plain matters of feeling in which the promptings of simple nature come to the rescue. I would go any length in favour of rational liberty, and have consistently in my humble way again and again suffered for the stern conviction of that truth, and now pay for it in the uge that has brought no compensation. In religion, in politics, in the artsscience is beyond the attempt of the multitude to comprehend-the many are right or wrong, by chance. Long years afterwards William Curran who was very intimate with Godwin wished me to meet him. The opportunity thus afforded was a mere accidel1t. I knew his daughter too, who became Mrs. Shelley, and had a great respect for her, as a lady of very superior talents. The fearless and independent sentiments of Godwin had marked him out for the axe and embowelling, under the arguments used

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by Scott, afterwards Lord Eldon, and the ministry in 1794. England had nearly reflected the scenes of blood that were acted on the other side of the channel, in the death of men for advocating the crime of parliamentary reform against the combination of European despotisms. Where are those despotisms? Can the differences of a few years make real demerit venial? Can it extinguish truth? Has not that parliamentary reform since placed the sovereignty of England on a rock, from which it sees the wreck of holy alliances, and the like tyrannies scattered to the winds? " Bowed their stiff necks, laden with stormy blasts, Or torn up sheerl-"

With what a revulsion did I read all those procoedings, and saw such borough transactions to sustain them, as would hardly now be credited, though my young eyes did not until afterwards, fClr want of experience, penetrate to the bottom of the corruption carried on by men who passed for " honourable \"

ROBINSON: DIARY, REMINISCENCES, AND CORRESPONDENCE

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Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence 0/ Henry Crabb Robinson, Barrister-at-Law, FS.A., edited by Thomas Sadler,3 vols (London, 1869)

The Unitarian Henry Crabb Robinson (1775-1867) is chiefly known for his diary of extensive reading and literary contacts, which he began to keep in 1812 and continued until the end of his life. In 1795, while he was an attorney's clerk in Colchester, he read Political Justice and became an enthusiastic disciple of Godwin's views. Partly as a result of reading Godwin, a trenchant critic of the legal system, he became dissatisfied with his professional calling. He responded to the general decline of radical hopes in the late 1790s by going to Germany, where he spent the years from 1800 to 1805 travelling and studying German philosophy and literature. On his return to England, he became a journalist on The Times from 1806 to 1809. He was finally called to the bar in 1813 and practised on the Norfolk circuit until 1828. Such a varied career allowed Robinson the freedom to cultivate a wide circle of literary and political acquaintances, both in East Anglia and in London. He met Godwin for the first time in July 1799, before he went to Germany, though their friendship did not develop until 1810, after which Robinson became a regular caller whenever he was in London. Sadler's three-volume selection of Robinson's diary publishes only a small amount of the available materials. It has been largely superseded by a series of volumes dividing the materials into different topics, edited by Robinson's twentieth-century biographer, Edith J. Morley. Sadler's collection is preferred here because it presents an authentic nineteenthcentury view of Godwin. However, where the passages selected from Sadler differ from the corresponding passage in Morley's Henry Crabb Robinson on Books and Their Writers, the changes are recorded in the footnotes. The following extracts present a view of Godwin at different points in his career, and from a variety of angles. The first, dated 1795, may be usefully compared with Hazlitt's retrospective account of the impact of the publication of Political Justice in The Spirit 0/ the Age (see p. 47), since it offers a further commentary on Godwin's profound appeal for young, liberal-minded professionals and writers of the early 1790s. The

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next two passages, both dated 1811, shed light on the personal and literary friendship between Godwin and Coleridge, a matter of some dispute among critics. Contrary to the traditional view that, after a brief turn-of-the-century intimacy, the two men went their separate ways by 1804, these passages show that Coleridge remained a staunch defender of Godwin, whose Lzfe 0/ Chaucer he greatly admired, while Godwin continued to attend to, if not to agree with, Coleridge's literary opinions. The fourth passage describes the occasion on 18 October 1813 when Godwin attended a dinner party at the house of Anne-LouiseGermaine Necker, Madame de Stael (1766-1817), the celebrated French writer, currently living in exile because of Napoleon's hostility towards her. Though Madame de StaeI had praised Caleh Williams in her Essaisur les/ictions (1795), she does not, in this account, get on well with its author. The evening is presented in terms of a clash of different cultures: while Madame de StaeI reminisces about Napoleon, Godwin's friends recall the Whig triumphs of the 1780s, and Godwin himself appears as the defender of an older republican tradition represented by Milton and Cromwell. The next two extracts, both dated 1815, shed further light on the tenacious character of Godwin's radicalism. The first, dated 22 June, describes a political quarrel on the very day of the publication of Godwin's pamphlet, Letters o/Verax, in which he had protested at the decision of the Allies to outlaw and depose Napoleon after his triumphant return from exile on Elba. The second, describing Robinson's call on John Thelwall (see Biographical Glossary) eight days later, after news of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo had come through, places Godwin among a small but distinguished group of veteran radicals and attempts to explain their longstanding support for Napoleon. The last two extracts from Robinson's diary, dated 1817 and 1818, provide further evidence that Godwin's large circle of political and literary friends continued to flourish well into the nineteenth century.

ROBINSON: DIAHY, HEMINISCENCES, AND CORRESPONDENCE

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I t was in the spring of this year and before I left Colchester that I read a book which gave a turn to my mind, and in effect directed the whole course of my life -a book which, after producing a powerful effect on the youth of that generation, has now sunk into unmerited oblivion. This was Godwin's Political Justice. I was in some measure prepared for it by an acquaintance with Holcroft's novels, and it came recommended to me by the praise of Catherine Buck. I entered fully into its spirit, it left all others behind in my admiration, and I was willing even to become a martyr for it i for it soon became a reproach to be a follower of Godwin, on account of his supposed atheism. I never became an atheist, but I could not feel aversion or contempt towards G. on account of any of his views. In one respect the book had an excellent effect on my mind-it made me feel more gC1tcroTls/y. I had never before, nor, I am afraid, have I ever ginc:e felt so strongly the duty of not living to onc's self, but of having for one's sole object the good of the community. His idea of justice I then adopted and still retain; nor was I alarmed by the declamations so generally uttered against his opinions on the obligations of gratitude, the fulfilment of promises, and the duties arising out of the personal relations of life. I perceived then the difference between principles as universal laws, and maxims of conduct as prudential rules. And I thought myself qualified to be his defender, for which purpose I wrote a paper which was printed in Flower's Cambridge Intelligencer. But one practical effect of Godwin's book was to make me less inclined to follow the law, or any other profession as a means of live-

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lihood. I determined to practise habits of rigid economy, and then I thought my small income would suffice with such additions as might be gained by literature.

*** ,March 30tlz.-At C. Lamb's. Found Coleridge and Hazlitt there, and had a half-hour's chat. Coleridge spoke feelingly of Godwin and the unjust treatment he harl met with. In apology for Southey's review of Godwin's "Life of Chaucer," Coleridge ingeniously observed that persons who are themselves very pure, are sometimes on that account bltl1tt in their moral feelings. This I believe to be a very true remark indeed. Something like this I have expressed respecting - - - . She is perfectly just herself, and expects everybody to be equally so. She is consequently severe, and occasionally even harsh in her judgments. " For right too rigid hardens into wrong."

Coleridge used strong language against those who ,vere ' once the extravagant admirers of Godwin, and afterwards became his most bitter opponents. I noticed the infinite superiority of Godwin over the French writers in moral feeling and tendency. I had learned to hate Helvetius and Mirabeau, and yet retained my love for Godwin. This was agreed to as a just sentiment. Co[eridge said there was more in Godwil1, after all, than he was once willing to admit, though not so much as his enthusiastic admirers fancied. He had openly opposed him, but nevertheless visited him. Southey's

IWBINSON: DIAHY, HEMINISCENCES, AND COHHESPONDENCE

213

severity he attributed to the habit of reviewing. Sou they had said of Coleridge's poetry that he was a Dutch imitator of the Germans. Coleridge quoted this, not to express any displeasure at it, but to show in what way Southey could speak of him. 1>:

*

1>:

December 15th.- Called on Godwin, who thinks Coleridge's lectures far below his conversation. So far from agreeing with Coleridge, that Shakespeare's plays ought only to be read and not acted, Godwill said, "No plays but Shakespeare's deserve to be represented, so admirably fitted are his for performance." 1>:

*

1>:

October IS/h.-Dined with Madame de Stael-a party of liberals at her house, viz :-Lady Mackintosh, Robert Adair the diplomatist, Godwin, Curran, and Murray, &c. Our hostess spoke freely of Buonaparte. She was introduced to him when a victorious general in Italy i even then he affected princely airs, and spoke as if it mattered not what he said-he conferred honour by saying anything. He had a pleasure in being rude. He said to her,- after her writings were known, that he did not think women ought to write books. She answered, c, It is not every woman who can gain distinction by an

214

LIVES OF THIvith painting, were their al-1noft conftant topics ofconverfation;and they found them inexhaufiible. It cannot b~ doubted, but that this was a fpe ... cies of exer,cife very conducive to the improvement of Mary's mind. Nothin-g human ho'\-vever is unmixed. If Mary derived in1prove1nent from Mr. Fufeli, fhe may alfo be fufpeB:ed of having caught the infection of fome of his faults. In early life !vlr. Fufeli was ardently attached to literature ; but the demands of his profeffion have prevented him from keeping up that extenfive and indifcriminate acquaintance with it, that beHes-lettres fcho]ars frequently poff efs. Of confequence, the favourites of his boyifh years remain his only favourites.

28

1.1\'FS OF TIIF ( ; 1n: . \T llved to Paris. Mary was now arrived at the fituation, which, for two or three preceding years, he·r reafon had pointed out to hex .as affording the moft: fubfrantial profpeel of ha.ppinefs.

1;01)\\'I:--- : .\ IE\IOIIIS OF TIIE ,\l'TIIOII OF ,\ ,·1:---lltl" ,\TIO:---

41

She brough t then, in the prefent in-

fiance, a wounde d and fick heart, to take refuge in the bofom of a chofen friend. Let it not howeve r be imagined, that fhe brough t a heart, Guerulous, and ruined in its tafi:e for plea.. fure. No ; her vvhole characl:er fcemed to change with a change of fortune . 1-"Ier farrows , the depreffi on of her fpirits, were forgotte n, and fhe alfumed all the fimplic ity and the v-ivacity of a youthfu l n1ind. She was like a ferpent upon a rock, that cafi:s its flough, and appears again with the brillian cy, the :fieeknefs, and the elafi:ic activity of its

42

1.1\'ES OF TIIE (;HEAT HO~L\!\Tlt'S Ill: WOI.LSTO!\El'I L\FT

She was playful, full of con£denc e,kindnef s and fympathy. Her eyes affumed ne\v lufire, and her cheeks new colour and fmoothnefs. Her voice became chearfuJ; her temper overflowing with univerfal kindnefs ; and that happieft age.

fmile of be\vi tching tendernef s from day to day illuminat ed her counte• nan·ce, which all ,vho knew her will fo well recollect, and ,vhich won, both heart and foul, the affeaion of almoft every one that beheik of traytls that- fo .irrefifiibly -feiEes ort tlie lieart, :never, ifl any: othat. infi'an~e, fouud its :way ·(rom- tlie prefs. The oc€afidnai hadhnefs· and rugg~dnefs of charaa-~t> that diveffify herVindicadon· of the ·Ri'ghts of W()man, n~re totally di:fap·pear~ · ~fever· there· ,vas .a . book. calau.iated t-b make a-man in Juve wlth ifs- author;. this a_ppears to me: to be fh~ book?.-. She fpe-aks of her ferraws-~ f'n a way that Blls us. with melancholy,, •and diffolves tt-s· in tenderrrefs.,. at the .fame ttm·e, that fh:e· difpla-ys. a geniu.s which c--omman