GODWIN, WILLIAM, was born on the 3rd of March 1756, at Wis beach ireCambridgeshire, where his father had then the charge of a dissenting congregation. He was placed when eleven years old with a private tutor at Norwich : and when seventeen was sent to the Inde pendent Theological College at. Iloxton, with a view to being educated for the ministry. In 1778 he became minister to a congregation in the neighbourhood of London, and continued to officiate in that capa city fur five years. At the end of this period he removed to the metropolis, and henceforth sought eubsisteuce by authorship.
The first work which Godwin published with his name was the well known treatise on 'Political Justice.' It appeared iu the beginning of 1793, but sixteen months, as he states iu his preface, after its com position was commenced. It appeared at a time when a panic had seized men's minds, and when the government, scared by the progress of events in France, were carrying on prosecutions against such as, by speech or writing, showed, or were thought to show, a dispositiou to sympathise with the French revolutionary principles. The freshness of tone pervading the treatise on Political Justice,' and the novelty and extravagance of many of its views, reodered it likely, under these circumstances, that the author would be exposed to danger, at least so Godwin thought, and he expressed his belief and his resolution to brave the consequences, in a characteristic passage of remarkable diguity. The ' Political Justice' entailed no prosecution upon its author, but it brought much obloquy. Obloquy, displeasing in itself, is however a sure path to notoriety, which, whatever may be its origiu or character, is pleasing. The 'Political Justice' imparted to Godwin a great notoriety ; and he now rose, as he himself ex presses it, "like a star upon his contemporaries." (' Thoughts on Man,' p. 338.) In the year following its publication, he published his novel of 'Caleb Williams,' the ultimate object of which was an illustration of seine of the views contained in the ' Political Justice,' and a realisation in the person of Caleb of many complaints centaiued in the Political Justice' of the prevailing state of society, designed to work upon minds for which the disquisitions] character of the latter treatise was unsuited. The success of Godwin as a novelist, added to
his previous notoriety as a political writer, raised his fame to its height.
Towards the close of 1794 some of Godwin's chief friends, Holcroft, Home Tooke, Thelwall, Hardy, and others, were arrested, and brought to trial on charges of high treason. Godwin had himself studiously kept aloof from those societies, which were then the chief object of fear to the government, and as being members of which his friends were arraigned ; for however great, nay extravagant, might be the changes which he contemplated, he had always advocated a quiet and gradual mode of attaining them, and avowed himself, whether in writing or conversation, the enemy of revolution. But to his friends in danger he now tendered a valuable assistauce. His Cursory Strictures' on the charge delivered by Judge Eyre to the jury, which were published instantly in the Morning Chronicle,' were thought at the time to have contributed greatly to the acquittal of the accused.
In 1797 he published the 'Enquirer,' a collection of essays on metal and literary subjects. It was in April ,of this year that he married Mary Wollatonecraft, having, In pursuance of the opinions which he then entertained, and in which she concurred, against the institution of marriage, previously cohabited with her for a period of six months. His wife died in childbed in September of the same year, leaving Godwin a daughter, who subsequeutly married the poet Shelley, and who gam ample proofs that she inherited much of the powers of her parents. In 1793 Godwin edited the posthumous works of his wife, and also published a small memoir of her, which is eminently marked by feeling, simplicity, and truth.