William Godwin

William Godwin (1756-1836) was first a dissenting minister, then an atheist and a philosopher with anarchist ideas. He married Mary Wollstonecraft, who died giving birth to their daughter, the Mary who was to become Percy Bysshe Shelley’s second wife and supposed author of Frankenstein.

Coleridge writes of him: I was once and only once in company with Godwin. He appeared to me to possess neither the strength of intellect that discovers truth, nor the powers of imagination that decorate falsehood; he talked sophisms in jejune language.

Mark Twain observes of him later (In defence of Harriet Shelley): He lived serene in his lofty world of philosophy, far above the mean interests that absorbed smaller men, and only came down to the ground at intervals to pass the hat for alms to pay his debts with, and insult the man that relieved him. Several of his principles were out of the ordinary. For example, he was opposed to marriage. He was not aware that his preachings from this text were but theory and wind; he supposed he was in earnest in imploring people to live together without marrying, until Shelley furnished him a working model of his scheme and a practical example to analyze, by applying the principle in his (Godwin's) own family; the matter took a different and surprising aspect then. The late Matthew Arnold said that the main defect in Shelley's make-up was that he was destitute of a sense of humor. This episode must have escaped Mr Arnold's attention.

Robert Southey found him: intolerably dull and tho' without harm, equally good-for-nothing, and, though he could see some value in Godwin's Political Justice, detested the cursed mingle-mangle of metaphysics and concubinism and atheism with which he polluted it. (quoted by Marshall, Peter, William Godwin, p125, Yale University Press, 1984.)

Wordsworth himself writes to William Matthews from Racedown on 21 March 1796: I have received from Montagu, Godwyn's second edition. I expect to find the work much improved. I cannot say that I have been encouraged in this hope by the perusal of the second preface, which is all I have yet looked into. Such a piece of barbarous writing I have not often seen. It contains scarce one sentence decently written. I am surprised to find such gross faults in a writer, who has had so much practice in composition.

The second edition referred to is the second edition of Political Justice, published in 1796.