L

Godwin, from a painting by Northcote. | and possibly saved the lives of twelve in

There was no giving up the work after commencing it, and we read till morning. We saw palpably before us the stern, brutal Tyrrel, the gentle Miss Melville, the gay, gallant and accomplished Falkland, the inquisitive Williams, the honest, manly Hawkins. Scenes of thrilling interest agitated us, such as the abduction of Miss Melville by her clownish admirer. We perceived Williams worming himself into the confidence of Falkland, learning his secret, and then experiencing all the tortures of a prison. We witnessed the escape of Williams from his dungeon, his finding a home with the robbers in the forest, the attempt of an old hag to murder him with a butcher's cleaver-a being loathsome in the extreme, "outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild"-his various disguises and hair-breadth escapes on his journey to London-his many places of concealment in that huge metropolis-the keen scent and unceasing pursuit after Williams by the bloodhound Jones-the death of Falkland--all these incidents written in an unpolished, but in vehement and expressive language, charmed my senses and witched me from myself. A powerful interest is sustained throughout, the "energy divine" never slackens; the miserable system of prison discipline, the law's delay, are bitterly depicted and unsparingly condemned. Talfourd observes, "Perhaps this work is the grandest ever constructed out of the simple elements of humanity without any extrinsic aid from imagination, wit, or memory."

Godwin next appeared in a pamphlet entitled "Cursory Strictures on Judge Eyre's Charge to the Jury." Holcroft, Thelwall, Horne Tooke, and others were thrown into the Tower on a charge of high treason. Godwin, however obnoxious to the party in power, had not rendered himself amenable to the laws. He was now ready to defend his friends with his pen. Judge Eyre, in his charge to the Grand Jury, laid down principles very different from those of our author, and the latter immediately published his Remarks, "the legal acuteness of which," says Hazlitt, "would have raised any briefless barrister to the height of his profession." This temporary effusion did more: it gave a turn to the trials for high treason in 1794,

nocent individuals at a time when ministers, "in synod unbenign," determined to crush all liberal principles. Horne Tooke afterwards, at his own table, called Godwin to him, took his hand and pressed it to his lips, saying, "I can do no less for the hand that saved my life." This pamphlet we have never been able to procure, nor have we ever seen a copy of it. "The Enquirer: Reflections on Education, Manners, and Literature, in a series of Essays," appeared in 1797, and was republished in Edinburgh in 1823. Godwin, in the advertisement to the later edition, remarks: "More than twenty-five years have passed since these essays were written. It is, perhaps, twenty years since I have perused them. My bookseller has invited me to the task, and I owe it to the public not again to commit them to the press without some revision. But I have little leisure for the business. My mind is at this moment wholly engrossed in a work which, if my life and my faculties are sufficiently prolonged, and the precariousness of my outward circumstances will admit it, I should gladly finish, and make it perhaps my last legacy to my fellow-men. În reading over these essays, I find scarcely a thought that is my present thought, or which, at least, if I were now called upon to write upon their subjects for the first time, I should not express somewhat differently from the way in which it is here expressed. Our minds change like our bodies by insensible degrees, till they cannot, but with some looseness of phraseology, be called the same. Twenty-five years ago, I was in the full vigor of animal life. I am so no longer, but in a green old age. When I wrote these essays, I was a bachelor; I have since become a husband and a father. Yet the difference here expressed, and the thoughts I now entertain, are not fundamental, and to a careless observer would in most instances be imperceptible. Nor do I wish to change the texture of the publication. To those who feel any interest in my writings, such a change would scarcely be acceptable. In the volume to which these lines are prefixed, I appear such as I then was, and in a dress correspondent to the period of life I had reached. In what I may yet publish, there may perhaps be found something of

the garrulity of age, and I hope also something of gray-headed reflection, and a more mature and well-ripened cast of thought. But, alas! to what does it all amount? The toys of childhood, the toys of manhood, and the toys of old age, are still toys. And if it were hereafter possible for me to look down upon them from a future state, I should find them to be all alike laborious trifles. As it is, and seeing with my present imperfect organs, I am more than half inclined to despise them. But I know not that I could have done any better." These essays, some twentyeight in number, afford food for much reflection, and are sufficiently varied to please all tastes. We remember that somewhere in the volume he exclaims, "When I read Milton, I become Milton; when I read Thomson, I become Thomson. I find myself a sort of intellectual cameleon, assuming the color of the substances on which I rest."

mountains of Switzerland, the obtaining the philosopher's stone, his escape from the officers of the Inquisition, bis renewing his youth by means of the elixir vitæ, his interview with his children, where "he stifles the mighty hunger of the heart," are passages of incredible interest, pathos, and beauty; and as to the language, we know nothing like it for melody and beauty. The short, plain sentences are clear as crystal, "woven close, both matter, form, and style." St. Leon's wife, Marguerite de Damville, is a pattern for all women, wives, and mothers; an example of as pure, generous, and devoted love, as ever warmed the human heart. Hazlitt thinks that it is not improbable that the author found the model of this character in nature. We hope so. It makes one proud of existence to think that a being of such lofty purposes, wisdom, kindness, radiant loveliness, consoling her husband, cleaving to him in his broken fortunes, watching over the welfare of her children, and mor

existence here on earth. Bethlem Gabor
is a terrific character,

"Which any print of goodness will not take,
Being capable of all ill."

Godwin's Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft are minute in their detail, and possessing about like a guardian angel, ever had much interest, but interest of an unpleasant kind. She was a woman of genuine talents, fearless and persevering, and formed in a generous mould; but unhappily she chose to live on the most intimate terms with the ruder sex, without going through the usual preliminary forms of marriage, and "she bore unhusbanded a mother's name." She and Godwin were married merely to legalize their offspring, and the only child by the marriage was the accomplished Mrs. Shelley.

In 1799, "St. Leon, a Tale of the 16th Century," was issued from the press. The brilliant success of Caleb Williams induced publishers to solicit Godwin again to try his hand on a work of fiction. He hesitated long, despairing of finding again a topic so rich in interest and passion. In those days it was deemed a daring thought to attempt to compose a novel with the hope that it might hereafter rank among the classics of a language. Godwin succeeded in his bold attempt, and in the gross and scope of our opinion," produced the most magnificent romance ever written. Count St. Leon's campaigns in Italy under the command of Francis I., his total surrender of himself to the vicious and debasing habit of gambling, his leaving France,

66

description of the storm among the

He glares around like the lightning on a murky night, and where he stalks, death and ruin follow in his footsteps.

Godwin, perhaps from his great success
as a novelist, now turned his attention to
the drama; and in 1800, produced a plaṛ
with the title, Antonio, or the Soldier's
Return." It was accepted, and announced
for representation on Saturday, the 13th
of December, 1800. Lamb supplied the
epilogue. Talfourd writes, in his Life and
Letters of Lamb, "Alas, for human hopes
The play was decisively damned, and th
epilogue shared its fate. The tragedy
turned out a miracle of dullness for the
world to wonder at, although Lamb insist
ed it had one fine line, which he was fond
of repeating, sole relic of the else-forgotten
play. Kemble and Mrs. Siddons, th
brother and sister of the drama, tuled
through four acts and a half without ap
plause or disapprobation.
was not more vapid than another, and so
dead was the level of the dialogue, that.
although its destiny was seen from afar, i

One speech

1

presented no opportunity of hissing; but |
as the play drew towards a close, when,
after a scene of frigid chiding not vivified
by any fire of Kemble's own, Antonio
drew his sword and plunged it into the
heroine's bosom, the sad civility' of the
audience vanished: they started as at a
real murder, and hooted the actor from the
stage. Philosophy,' which could not
make a Juliet, sustained the author through
the trial. He sat on one of the front
benches of the pit, unmoved amidst the
storm. When the first act passed off
without a hand, he expressed his satisfac-
tion at the good sense of the house; the
proper season of applause had not arrived;
all was exactly as it should be. The sec-
ond act proceeded to its close in the same
uninterrupted calm. His friends became
uneasy, but still his optimism prevailed;
he could afford to wait. And though he
did at last admit the great moment was
somewhat tardy, and that the audience
seemed rather patient than interested, he
did not lose his confidence till the tumult
arose, and then he submitted with quiet
dignity to the fate of genius, too lofty to
be understood by a world as yet in its
childhood. Notwithstanding this repulse,
Mr. Godwin retained his taste for the thea-
tre to the last. On every first night of a
new piece, whether tragedy, comedy, or
farce, whether of friend or foe, he sat with
gentle interest in a side box, and bore its
fate, whatever it might be, with resignation,
as he had done his own."

Charles Lamb, in a letter to his friend Manning, gives a most facetious description of Godwin's ill luck. Campbell, in his Life of Siddons, thinks that "a potent drama" might well have been expected

It

Godwin's other play. The Biographia Dramatica says it was deservedly condemed after a few nights' performance. It was founded on the novel of Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress. The story wanted variety to make it interesting, and as to the morality of the piece, the less we say the better. Hazlitt remarks on these dramatic productions, "Peace be with their manes.'

Godwin's next work was "Thoughts occasioned by the Perusal of Doctor Parr's Spital Sermon, preached at Christ's Church, April 15, 1800: Being a Reply to the attacks of Dr. Parr, Mr. Mackintosh, the author of an Essay on Population, and others. London: 1801."

This is a well written and able pamphlet. There is nothing in Godwin's character that pleases us more than his forbearance and dignity when his principles were unjustly assailed, and his calm, gentlemanly, and eloquent replies to his assailants; all of whom seemed to have adopted the practice of Croaker, in Goldsmith's comedy, who philosophically declares, "When I am determined I always listen to reason, because it can then do no harm." We cannot resist giving one quotation from this publication:

"I know that Dr. Parr and Mr. Mackintosh look with horror upon this doctrine of the progressive nature of man. They cling with all vices, the weaknesses, and the follies which the fervors of affection to the opinion, that the have hitherto existed in our species, will continue undiminished as long as the earth shall endure. I do not envy them their feelings. I love to contemplate the yet unexpanded powers and capabilities of our nature, and to believe that they will one day be unfolded to the infinite advantage and happiness of the inhabitants of the globe. Long habit has so trained me to bow to the manifestations of truth wherever I recognize them, that, if arguments were presented to me sufficient to establish the uncomfortable doctrine of my antagonists, I would weigh, I would resolve them, and I hope I should not fail to submit to their authority. fated to die in it, I cannot afflict myself greatly But, if my own doctrine is an error, and if I am with the apprehension of a mistake, which cheers my solitude, which I carry with me into crowds, and which adds somewhat to the pleasure and peace of every day of my existence."

from the author of Caleb Williams. went, however, only through three nights. Godwin, in two respects, may compare notes with his brother novelist, Fielding. They both tried the drama without success, and they could both afford to pay for the disappointment out of their ample fame for original genius. By the kindness of Edwin Forrest, Esq., we read Antonio, and certainly a duller play was never exhibited. We searched in vain for the line that Lamb was in the habit of quoting and calling it good. It has neither plot nor language. We have not been able In the Life of Geoffrey Chaucer, Godto obtain a copy of Faulkner, (1807,) | win displayed great research, though he has

added but little to our previous knowledge | dustrious and patient writers, as is shown

of the poet; but he has given a complete history of that period, the history of the English stage, the diversions of that time, the state of architecture, sculpture, and painting; and excellent criticisms on Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio.

Fleetwood, or the New Man of Feeling, was published in 1805, and re-printed by Bentley, London, 1832. The title is an unfortunate one, for it brings to mind Mackenzie's tender story with its pathethic interest, and its hero, the mild, gentle and charitable Harley, and the sweet character of Miss Walton, with "a gush of household memories." We take but little interest in Godwin's hero, who is a selfwilled egotist with a strong infusion of insanity, who has no claims on our sympathy, and whom we are disposed to regard with considerable aversion. Fleetwood's early life, passed in Merionethshire, at the foot of Cader Idris his rambles-the mountain scenery, with its wild torrents-the clear, sweet, bracing atmosphere, producing health and vigor-his college life-his amours in Paris with the charming Marchioness and the Countess de B, are glowingly described. M. Ruffigny's narrative, his Swiss home, Fleetwood's first meal with him, when the table was spread before the cottage door on the smooth turf, and they feast on melons, grapes, wall fruit and bread, with a flagon of wine, and their tour afterwards on the lake, are deliciously written, with a pure, genial and refreshing tone. Essay on Sepulchres," (1809.) This was a favorite work of Lamb's. Its style is sweet and subdued, full of refinement and beauty, with musings on life, death, fame and immortality. Godwin dwells with fond delight on his reading, one fine evening in the beginning of autumn, Spenser's beautiful Hymn to Love under the ruins of Valle Crucis Abbey-"And it is incredible how much sweetness the sentiment gained, by contrast with the sacred and austere chastity once professed there, with the monks who formerly dwelt within those walls, and still who slept beneath my feet." "Lives of Edward and John Philips, Nephews and Pupils of Milton," were published in 1815. This work contains a portrait of John Bradshaw, William Lilly, (the astrologer,) and Titus Oates. These Philipses were in

by their translations of the never-ending novels of d'Urfé, Scuderie and Calprenede. In the age in which they lived they were as well known, and as much objects of attention to literary men, as falls to the lot of authors of a subordinate class. Edward Philips's life of Milton is the foundation of all the memoirs of the poet. His personal knowledge of the bard authenticates all that he relates of him, and yet "how much more interesting it would have been had it been written in the amiable and sentimental, though half-gossipping, style of old Isaac Walton," as Sir E. Brydges truly observes. This work also contains excellent and judicious remarks on Cromwell, Charles II., and Judge Jeffreys, and some loving commentaries on the sterling merits and eloquence displayed in the old English translations, especially in "Shelton's Version of Don Quixote," "Mornay's Worke concerning the Trewnesse of Christian Religion," by Sir Philip Sidney and Arthur Golding, "Phaer's Virgil ;" and he ob serves, "It is to our version of the Bible that we above all things are indebted for the sober, majestic and copious flow of our English tongue." "The old English translation of Plutarch's Lives, by Sir Thomas North, published in 1579, has the disadvantage of being avowedly taken from the French of Amyot, and yet, I must confess, till this book fell into my hands I had no genuine feeling of Pu tarch's merit, or knowledge of what sort of a writer he was. The philosopher d Cheronea subjects himself in his biogra phical sketches to none of the rules of i writing-he has not digested the laws and ordonnance of composition and the dignfied and measured step of an historian; but rambles just as his fancy suggests, and a ways tells you without scruple or remorse what comes next in his mind. How bea tiful does all this show in the simplicity the old English. How aptly does the dres correspond to the tone and manner thinking in the author. While I mad Plutarch in Sir Thomas North methinki see the gray-headed philosopher full of a formation and anecdote; a veteran in reflection and experience, and smitten w the love of all that is most exalted in nature, pouring out without restraint the collections of his wisdom; and he recize

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