work affords one more proof of the writer's unquenchable passion for the discovery of truth.

In 1797, a third edition of Political Justice was published. A second and a third edition of Caleb Williams were published in 1795 and

1797.

There is but one publication more from Mr. Godwin's pen that we have to notice, and that is connected with a story of peculiar interest. We allude to the Memoirs of Mrs. Godwin's Life. The story connected with that work deserves to be told at length, if it could come within our limits. It exhibited Mr. Godwin in that difficult moment for him when the lofty doctrines he had taught made heavy claims on his own practice. He had loudly proclaimed his objections to marriage, and his hatred of that state was indeed inveterate enough. The time came, when he was to subject the woman of his choice to unmerited obloquy, or comply with forms he could not approve. The situation was trying. But Mr. Godwin conceived the production of happiness to be the true criterion of morality; and he did not hesitate to choose, where unlimited mischiefs were to be incurred on one hand, and a definite and comparatively small evil endured on the other.

Mr. Godwin was married to Mrs. Wolstonecraft in 1797. He had slightly known that most cèlebrated and most injured woman before her residence in France. After her return, accident brought him into her company. He learnt her

sorrowful

sorrowful situation at that period; and, with a zcal, the vulgar are accustomed to call romantic, attached himself to the design of restoring a noble mind to itself and society. The elevated talents, and perhaps still more elevated temper, of Mrs. Wolstonecraft, were almost universally known in the world; and the sweetest of the feminine attractions were not less the qualities of this extraordinary woman than the grandeur of mind so generally acknowledged in her. She was one of those, that the powers of nature and the cultivation of society sometimes unite to form, for whom every sensible and polished mind almost loses its veneration in the excess of its love.

The manner in which Mr. and Mrs. Godwin lived together may be presented as a model for conjugal life. Mr. Godwin's former dislike of marriage was occasioned chiefly by the tyranny it almost always includes. It is not surprising, therefore, that his enlightened views of that intercourse should enable him to shun that rock. But it is not by the mere absence of prominent mischiefs that we can describe Mr. Godwin's roof while his wife lived. To all that is dignified in the delicate relation of married persons, we must add those innumerable requisites of domestic peace that are found in cheerfulness, good-will, and mutual deference to the adverse opinions that, in two minds of great vigour, must almost necessarily exist. One of the passions that has the most powerful hold on Mr. Godwin's mind is, a fondness for conversation

versation with persons of superior talents. He has always asserted it to be among the most fertile causes of intellectual improvement, when rich and congenial souls chance to meet. We shall not,

therefore, be very much in danger of exaggerating, if we endeavour to form a picture of the perfection to which he now carried this favourite scheme of pleasure and improvement. So many accessory temptations as conversation offered him, in his intercourse with Mrs. Godwin, would not fail to bring its cultivation, in this instance, to a very unusual degree of excellence.

Mrs. Godwin died in September, 1797. In the scenes that belong to that afflicting period, Mr. Godwin was still to be exhibited in an unexpected light to those who were accustomed to regard him as a hard unfeeling theorist. He watched over the means attempted for her recovery with a fortitude and presence of mind that recalled to his friends the recollection of the philosopher they had been used to contemplate in his writings; but, when hope was gone, he abandoned himself to sorrow that seemed to assimilate him with the weakest of mankind: and, when Mrs. Godwin was no more, he admitted of no consolation, in the first moments of his anguish, but that of paying a superstitious respect to her remains.

It was in January, 1798, that Mr. Godwin published his Memoirs of the Life of Mrs. Godwin. In May, of the same year, a second edition of that work appeared. A painful choice seems to

present

present itself to every ingenuous person who composes memoirs of himself or of any one so nearly connected with himself as in the present instance. He must either expose himself with disadvantage to the illiberal and malicious temper that exists in the world, or violate the honour and integrity of his feelings. Yet, that the heart should be known in all its windings, is an object of infinite importance to him who would benefit the human race. Mr. Godwin did not prefer a cowardly silence, nor treachery to the public, having chosen to write. Perhaps such works as the Memoirs of Mrs. Godwin's Life, and Rousseau's Confessions, will ever disgrace their writers with the meaner spirits of the world; but, then, it is to be remembered, that this herd neither confers, nor can take away, fame.

Of Mr. Godwin's character, both as a man and a writer, the chief features are obvious in this slight sketch of his life. His writings display greatness of talent; and his life, virtue practised on principles supposed to be too refined to be applicable to ordinary affairs. Without laying claim to the power of raising his conduct to the elevation of his doctrines, which he does not hold to be necessary to their solidity, he perhaps is foremost among those who approach that rule, of making the happiness of society the object of moral conduct. And, if society never reaches that state of improvement in which that fine maxim is the general law, Mr. Godwin has, nevertheless, this recompense

for

for his labours, tuous class to whom his speculations will have afforded new motives for the exertion of their humanity, to alleviate at least the miseries to which men, on that supposition, are unhappily doomed:

that there will always be a vir

K.

THE REV. MR. GRAVES.

(OF CLAVERTON.)

IT is now nearly forty years since the public were first acquainted with the subject of this memoir, as the intimate friend and correspondent of the late Mr. Shenstone, of the Leasowes. From that period, he has grown into more extensive notice, in the literary world, as the editor and reputed author of several amusing publications which have been well received by the public.

Mr. Graves is a younger son of the late Richard Graves, Esq. of Mickleton, in the northern extremity of the county of Gloucester, where he was. born in the year 1715. His father was esteemed a very learned man, and a good antiquary, being honoured with the appellation of "Gravesius Noster" by Mr. Thomas Hearn, the Oxford antiquary; and Mr. Ballard, who wrote the lives of "The Learned Ladies," speaks highly of him, in a manuscript letter,* preserved in the Bodleian Library, as "a gentleman endowed with every good quality, admirably skilled in the Roman and British antiquities, an excellent historian, antiquary, and *See Dr. Nash's History of Worcestershire, vol. i. p. 199. 1799-1800. medalist;'

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