William Godwin, his friends and contemporaries. With portraits and illustrations

I. By The Same ^writer

GOETHFS FAUST. A New Translation in Rime. Crown 8vo. 6s.

This is translated line for line in the metres of the original, and while it is hoped that not all the spirit has evaporated, it claims to reproduce the outward form in which that spirit dwelt.

**His translation is the most minutely accurate that has yet been produced- , . ." — ExaiitiJier.

** Mr Paul is a zealous and a faithful interpreter." — Saturday Review.

WILLIAM Godwin's unpublished essays.

THE GENIUS OF CHRISTIANITY UNVEILED : Being Essays, never before pubhshed. By William Godwin. Edited, with a Preface, by C. Kegan Paul, i vol. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.

In all these essays Mr Godwin pointed in the direction along which we, the children of a later day, have advanced, even if he did not indicate the precise path we have travelled.

'* Few have thought more clearly and directly than William Godwin, or expressed their reflections with more simplicity and unreserve." — Exainijier.

" The deliberate thoughts of Godwin deserve to be put before the world for reading and consideration." — Athenceiim,

SHELLEY MEMORIALS FROM AUTHENTIC SOURCES. With (now first printed) an Essay on Christianity, by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. With Portrait. Price 5s.

Henry S. King & Co., London.

The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text.

AFTER A PORTRAIT BY NORTHCOTE

HIS FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIES

BY

C KEGAN PAUL.

WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

VOL. I.

Henry S. King & Co., London.

Lb

SJf^X\

The rights of Translation and of Reproduction are reserved.

Preface

My best thanks are due to Sir Percy Shelley, the grandson of William Godwin, for the generous manner in which he has placed at my disposal the whole of the papers in his possession which relate to his grandfather. These included a vast quantity of letters and other MSS., some of which had never been opened since they were laid aside by Godwin s own hand, many years before his death. Mrs Shelley began to arrange them for publication soon after that event, in 1836, but many packets had apparently not been examined by her. This fact renders it the more necessary that I should state that while Sir Percy Shelley has sanctioned my work as a whole, he is in no way whatever answerable for details. I only am responsible for the selections made and inferences drawn from the papers, as well as for every opinion expressed in the book.

A very few of the letters have been already printed — some of Godwin's by Lady Shelley" in her " Shelley Memorials,'' and some of Coleridge's by Mr Garnett in a Magazine article.

In all cases where there appeared to be the smallest

doubt in regard to the publication of documents, I have

consulted, where possible, the representatives of the persons

concerned, and have obtained their permission to print the

letters.

C. K. P.

February 1876.

Contents

PAGE

CHAPTER I. CHAPTER n

CHAPTER HI.

POLITICAL WRITINGS. 1788 — 1792, .... 59

CHAPTER IV.

LITERARY LIFE AND FRIENDS. 1793, ' • 1 • 71

CHAPTER V.

GODWIN'S WORKS AND POLITICS. 1 783 — 1 794, . . '99

CHAPTER VI.

FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES. 1794 — 1796, . . . 138

CHAPTER VII.

THE WOLLSTONECRAFTS. 1759— 179I, . . . . 161 viii CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VIII.

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. 179I — 1796?

PAGE

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

MARY GODWIN'S DEATH. 1 797, . . • • • 272

CHAPTER XI.

A SINGULAR COURTSHIP — FRIENDS. 1 798, . - .292

CHAPTER XII.

ST LEON. MRS REVELEY. 1 799, . . . .328

CHAPTER XIII.

VISIT TO IRELAND — LITERARY SQUABBLES. iSoo, . . 354

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

William Godwin. After a Portrait by Northcote. Frontispiece,

Facsimile of Mary Wollstonecraft^s Handwriting, . . ,

WisBEACH. — Godwin's Birthplace, . o

HIS FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIES.

CHAPTER L

To those conversant with the literary history of the close of the last, and the first quarter of the present century, few names are more familiar than that of William Godwin. The husband of Mary Wollstonecraft, the father-in-law of Shelley, the confidential friend of Coleridge and Lamb, his life was so closely intertwined with the lives of those whose story has been often written, as to render some record of him valuable, even had the man himself been less remarkable than he was. But though the present generation has read his works but little, this age owes more to him than it recognizes ; many opinions now clothed in household words were first formulated by him, and the publication of his ''Political Justice," in 1793, marked a distinct epoch in the growth of liberal thought. During a large part of his life younger men looked on him as a kind of prophet-sage, dnd he exercised a remarkable influence over all with whom he came in contact.

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

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

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

ANCESTORS. 3

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

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

" Edward, my great-grandfather, was the fifth son of William, and was born in the year 1661. He married, probably in the

year ] 694, Mary ■ , fifteen years younger than himself, and

in the year 1706 was chosen Mayor of the town of which he was a native. He was educated to the profession of an attorney, and possessed at the time of his death in 17 19 the office of town clerk of the corporation of Newbury.

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

This Samuel Jones was a remarkable man. He was the son of the Rev. Malachi Jones, a " minister of the gospel in Pennsylvania,'' who had emigrated to America early in life. Samuel was sent to Europe, and received his education in great measure at Leyden, '' under the learned Perizonius," Professor of History and Greek, who died 1715. In 171 1 we find him, still quite a young man, taking fifteen pupils, who were not, however, all constant to the nonconformist training of their tutor. Not only Dr Isaac Watts, but Thomas Seeker, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, and Joseph Butler, Bishop of Durham, author of the Analogy, were among his pupils. From Tewkesbury, while still a schoolboy, Butler '' conducted a correspond- - ence with Dr Samuel Clarke on the subject of certain propositions in Clarke's treatise, entitled ' A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God,^ which were afterwards printed as an appendix to that work/'

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

" To go back to my grandfather. He was a fellow-student of Butler and Seeker, and" on the death of Mr Jones in October 17 19 ''was invited to undertake the conduct of the seminary in which he had been educated." This offer he declined. '' On the 12th of April 17 2 1 he married the widow of his late tutor. He resided at this time in his professional character of a minister at Hungerford, in the county of Wilts, and in 1723 was called to take charge of a congregation in Little St. Helens, Bishopsgate Street, London, in which situation he continued for the rest of his life. My grandfather maintained in his advancing years the character he had acquired in early life, and was frequently consulted by his brethren as a reviser of their works. He, in particular, superintended the ' Family Expositor' of Dr Philip Doddridge in its passage through the press."

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

PORTRAIT OF HIS FA THER. 5

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

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

^' My paternal grandfather, as I have said, was esteemed a man of learning ; my father was certainly not a man of learning. But he was something better than a merely learned man can ever be ; he v/as a man of a warm heart and unblemished manners, ardent in his friendships, eager for the relief of distress whether of mind or of circumstances, and decent and zealous in the discharge of his professional duties. He had so great a disapprobation for the constitution and discipline of the Church of England, as rather to approve of his children's absenting themselves from all public worship than joining in her offices; yet he lived on terms of friendship with many of her members and of her clergy. He was scrupulous and superstitious respecting most of the succours oi religion, particularly the observance of the Lord's day. My father, at the time I was most capable of noticing his habits, was extremely nice in his apparel, and delicate in his food. He spent much of his time on horseback. This habit grew out of a sentiment of duty, when he resided in a village, the scene of my early reveries and amusements, where his flock lay variously dispersed through a circle of from twelve to sixteen miles in diameter. He was attached to the intercourses of society, yet of the most unvaried temperance. He was extremely . affectionate, yet at least to me, who Avas perhaps never his favourite, his rebukes had a painful tone of ill humour and asperity. He was fond of reading aloud in his family, but the age of novels and romances, of Tom Jones and Cleopatra, was over with him before my memory. I scarcely ever heard him read anything but expositions and sermons. His study occupied but little of his time. His sermon, for in my memory he only preached once on a Sunday, was regularly begun to be written in a very swift short-hand after tea on Saturday evening. I believe he was always free from any desire of intellectual distinction on a large scale ; I know that it was with reluctance that he preached at any time at Norwich, in London, or any other place where he suspected that his accents might fall on the ear of criticism. He was regarded by his neighbours as a Avise as well as a good man, and he desired no more. He died at fifty years of age, but it was with considerable reluctance that he quitted this sublunary scene. The last time I stood by his bedside, two or three days before he expired, he repeated with an anxious voice a hymn from Dr Watts' collection, the first stanza of which is as follows : —

' When I can read my title clear To mansions in the skies, ril bid farewell to every fear And wipe my weeping eyes. ' ''

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

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

EARLY TRAINING. 7

whom the voice of calumny itself had less to urge than my father and mother. I speak here of her character during the life of my father. After his death it became considerably changed. She surrendered herself to the visionary hopes and tormenting fears of the methodistical sect, and her ordinary economy became teazingly parsimonious."

It may be added, and indeed will hereafter be sufficiently evident, that Mrs Godwin was far from being a highly educated person.

Of this marriage, ^' which proved extremely prolific," William was the seventh child of thirteen. Mrs Godwin did not suckle her children, and the child was *' sent from home to be nourished by a hireling." When he was again taken home at the age, apparently, of two years, there was added to his family circle a first cousin of his father. Miss Godwin, afterwards Mrs Sothren, ''who out of her decent income, as it was considered, of ^40 a year, paid ;^i6 to my father as a stipend for lodging and board." Miss Godwin had a considerable amount of literary culture, and still more of literary instinct. This, however, was qualified and checked by a strongly Calvinistic turn of mind, which impressed the child whom she made her chief favourite and companion, but increased the breach between them, when in after years he adopted opinions widely different from those in which he had been so carefully nurtured. To this lady William Godwin owed his first teaching and initiation into literature. His earliest books were the '' Pilgrim's Progress," and an *' Account of the Pious Deaths of Many Godly Children," by James Janeway. '' Their premature eminence," he writes, '' suited to my own age and situation, strongly excited my emulation. I felt as if I were willing to die with them, if I could with equal success engage the admiration of my friends and mankind/' But . while thus nursed in a very hotbed of forced piety, he was physically a puny child, and records that the persons about him were much less solicitous for the health of his body than the health of his soul.

In 1758 Mr Godwin, senior, removed from Wisbeach to Debenham, '' a small market town in the vicinity of Suffolk. But here his congregation was divided into two factions, Arian and Trinitarian. The Trinitarians had just before expelled an heretical pastor, and the defeated Arians were resolved to grant no suspension of arms to his more orthodox successor." He therefore went in about 1760 to Guestwick, sixteen miles north of Norwich, ''one of the smallest order of villages in the county of Norfolk," and here, where it may be hoped the simple villagers did not know the subtle differences of rival creeds, he passed the remainder of his life. The emolument of none of his prefermxcnts exceeded the amount of £60 a year.

William Godwin's school-life was subject to the same influences which surrounded him at home. His earliest teacher beyond his own family was the mistress of a dame's school at Guestwick, and, like all the persons who had hitherto had any charge of him, she '' was much occupied in the concerns of religion. She was considerably stricken in years, and had seen twenty years of the preceding century. I recollect her bitter lamentations respecting the innovation in the Style," September 1752, ''and the alteration of Christmas Day." Under her tuition he read throuo-h the whole of the Old and New Testaments, and gained, before he was eight years old, a great familiarity with the phraseology and manner of the Bible ; and this, he himself thought, had a considerable share in the formation of his

HILDERSON SCHOOL. 9

character. He was a precocious child, in whose mind the most characteristic features ^^were rehgion and love of distinction." Having determined even thus early to be a minister, he afterwards recorded that he ''preached sermons in the kitchen, every Sunday afternoon, and at other times, mounted in a child's high chair, indifferent as to the muster of persons present at these exhibitions, and undisturbed at their coming and going." His education at this time Vv^as puritanically strict. "One Sunday, as I walked in the garden, I happened to take the cat in my arms. My father saw me, and seriously reproved my levity, remarking that on the Lord's-day he was ashamed to observe me demeaning myself with such profaneness."

In March 1764, upon the death of his aged schoolmistress, the boy was sent with one of his brothers to a school at Hindolveston, or Hilderson, about two miles and a half from his home. The school consisted of thirty boarders, and seventy day scholars, among which last were the Godwins. The name of the master was Akers ; he was celebrated as " the best, or second best, penman in the -county of Norfolk, or, for aught he knew, in England." This w^ill account for the admirable quality of Godwin's own handwriting, which remained, even to the end of his long life, as legible as print, yet with a distinct personal character about it. ''Akers was bred a journeyman tailor, and had never had more than a quarter of a year's schooling in his life. The rest was the fruit of his own industry. He was a moderate mathematician, and had a small smattering of Latin. Few men ever excelled him in the rapidity and truth of his arithmetical operations." Godwin says further : " I was perhaps the only one of his scholars that ever loved him ; " and this is likely enough from the account given of the master, and of the conduct of his lo WILLIAM GODWIN.

school. All, however, that was taught was w^ell taught, and Godwin was an eager and ambitious pupil.

At this school was also '' a poor lad of the village, whose name was Steele," who seemed to Godwin a proper subject on whom to exercise his old practice of preaching. He talked to Steele "of sin and damnation, and drew tears from his eyes.'' He privily got possession of the key of the meeting-house, that he might preach to and pray over Steele from his father's pulpit. His whole soul was vexed within him, because he thought that very few of his schoolfellows discovered any tokens of God's grace.

In the following year Mrs Sothren took the boy on a tour to Norwich, Lynn, and Wisbeach ; and as at Wisbeach it was the time of the races, he was then, for the only time in his life, a spectator of that amusement, to which he *^ attended with great interest and passion." At Norwich he saw the play of Venice Preserved ; and it is a curious instance of the changeableness and inconsistency that there is in the repudiation of amusements by those who are very strict in their religious views, that he was taken to the theatre by Mrs Sothren, with the full consent of his parents. In September 1767 he was sent to Norwich, to become the solitary pupil of Mr Samuel Newton, minister of the Independent congregation in that city. Of this man he gives a most unpleasant picture, physically and intellectually. But this is evidently the impression of his riper manhood, not of his childhood. For at the time Newton had a great influence over him, and of a kind scarcely possible but where sympathy exists. It is probable that he only grew to detest Newton when he grew to detest Newton's creed. This was " drawn from the writings of Sandeman, a celebrated north country apostle, who, after Calvin had damned ninety-nine in a hundred of mankind, has contrived a scheme for damn-

MR SAMUEL NEWTON. li

ino- ninety-nine in a hundred of the followers of Calvin." Of himself at this time he writes as follows, and there is no reason to doubt the accuracy of his self-introspection : —

" It was scarcely possible for any preceptor to have a pupil more penetrated with curiosity and a thirst after knowledge than I was when I came under the roof of this man. All my amusements were sedentary ; I had scarcely any pleasure but in reading ; by my own consent, I should sometimes not so much have gone into the streets for weeks together. It may well be supposed that my vocation to literature was decisive, when not even the treatment I now received could alter it. Add to this principle of curiosity a trembling sensibility and an insatiable ambition, a sentiment that panted with indescribable anxiety for the stimulus of approbation. The love of approbation and esteem, indeed, that pervaded my mind was a nice and delicate feeling, that found no gratification in coarse applause, and that proudly enveloped itself in the consciousness of its worth, when treated with injustice."

But his new tutor did not think so highly of the abilities w^hich thus panted for recognition as Mrs Sothren and Akers had done. After the fashion of those days, Newton speedily proceeded to birch his self-complacent pupil, prefacing the application of the rod by a long exhortation, full of facetious metaphor.

''To this discourse," says Godwin, ''I listened at first with astonishment, and afterwards with increduHty. It had never occurred to me as possible that my person, which hitherto had been treated by most of my acquaintances, and particularly by Mrs Sothren and Mr Akers, who had principally engaged my attention, as something extraordinary and sacred, could suffer such ignominious violation. The idea had something in it as abrupt as a fall from heaven to earth. I had regarded this engine as the appropriate lot of the very refuse of the scholastic train."

In the spring of the following year, 1768, he had an attack of the smallpox, having on religious grounds steadily refused to allow himself to be inoculated ; and during his illness he was conscious of entire ''detachment" from life, and willingness to die. After his recovery, he found that his tutor's son had much difficulty and bashfulness in praying before others, and he therefore used to take the lad to his own room, and there pray with him. He remained with Mr Newton three years, and finally left him in 177 1. There had been in this time one short break, during which he went back to Hindolveston, but returned to Newton at his own request. It is plain, therefore, that his dislike of his tutor could not have been great, while his ow^n attainments in after-life speak well for the teaching he had received. Godwin also had gained much intellectually from having been allowed — or at least not checked in — the free range of his tutor's library.

'' The books I read here," he says, ^' with the greatest transport were the early volumes of the English translation of the Ancient History of Rollin. Few bosoms ever beat with greater ardour than mine did while perusing the story of the grand struggle of the Greeks for independence against the assaults of the Persian despot ; and this scene awakened a passion in my soul which will never cease but with life."

Another extract, and it is one displaying that inordinate vanity which was traceable through life, amid much that v/as loveable, will close this period of mere boyhood.

'' When I was about thirteen or fourteen years of age I went by myself one day at the period of the assizes to the Sessions House. Having gone early, I had my choice of a seat, and placed myself immediately next the bench. The judge was Lord Chief-Justice De Grey, afterAvards Baron Walsingham. As I stayed some hours I at one time relieved my posture by leaning my elbow on the corner of the cushion placed before his lordship. On some occa-

PROJECTED AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 13

sion, probably when he was going to address the jury, he laid his hand gently on my elbow and removed it. On this action I recollect having silently remarked, if his lordship knew what the lad beside him will perhaps one day become I am not sure that he would have removed my elbow/'

Thus ends the fragment of detailed autobiography. In 1805 Godwin wrote of this MS., — "I shall probably never complete it. My feelings on the subject are not what they were. I sat down with the intention of being nearly as explicit as Rousseau in the composition of his Confessions." But finding that so minute a portrait would not be after all the truest which could be written, he hints that posterity will judge him by his w^orks. There rem.ain, however, many short notes of the years 1772-1795, but scarcely more than a summary of the leading events. Such as they are, these notes are almost the only authority for that portion of the life. The greater part of his correspondence with his relatives after he left his father's house was destroyed by his mother shortly before her death, and there were but few letters of interest addressed to him during the period in which he was young and unknown.

Enough has been said to show the school in w^hich the religious opinions of the growing lad were formed. In politics his father was a moderate whig, but in that household politics were rarely discussed. Of Mr Newton his pupil says again —

^^ Ductility is a leading feature of my mind. I was his single pupil, and his sentiments speedily became mine. He v/as rather an intemperate Wilkite, but first and principally he was a disciple of the supra-Calvinistic opinions of Robert Sandeman."

Such was the boy, who made an early start in life, at the age of fifteen, by accepting the post of usher in the school of his old master, Mr Robert Akers of Hindolveston. He continued in this occupation during the whole of the year 1772, and probably during the spring of the following year. He read during this period the whole of Shakspere, '' and planned an epic poem of Brute/' Mr Godwin, senior, died on November 12, 1772, but the event did not cause his son any profound emotion. The circumstances in which the family were left were slender, but some small sum seems to have been available for the completion of William's education. In April 1773 he came to London with his mother, intending to enter Homerton Academy, but was rejected when examined by Mr Stafford and Mr Noah Hill, at the instance of the former, on suspicion of Sandemanianism. After spending the summer in Kent with his mother's relatives, he entered Hoxton College as a student in September, the authorities being either more tolerant than those at Homerton, or having a less keen scent for possible heresy. He planned during that summer *' two tragedies, one on the subject of Iphigenia in Aulis, and the other of the death of Caesar, and constructed a harmony of the evangelists from the gospels themselves, without the assistance of any commentators." He procured also from the circulating library at Rochester the works of Robert Sandeman, that he might compare them with his previous habits of thinking, and know whereof he was accused.