ages, down to the famous trial of Amy Duny and Rose Cullender, for witchcraft at Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, in the year 1664, before Sir Matthew Hale, and when Sir Thos. Browne was in court who (on being asked his opinion by Sir Matthew Hale) gave it as his opinion that the accused were guilty. The poor wretches were hanged.

But with all his hard toil, Godwin's was a life of penury. In 1816, his poverty was so generally understood in literary circles, that Byron took steps (which, however, friends rendered ineffectual) to present him with £600. And during the period of his second marriage he endeavoured to increase his means by keeping a book shop in Skinner Street, and selling thereat children's books of his own com. position, under the assumed name of Edward Baldwin, his own being so hateful to the public. The late Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd states that these little books were published under the auspices of "M. J. Godwin and Co.," so we suppose the assumed title was changed during the course of the undertaking. The shop, however, did not prosper, for Talfourd tells, in his winningly simple and affectionate manner, a story of Godwin asking him to lend him £150, the very day after their introduction to each other. The young special pleader was sincerely annoyed at not being able to comply with the request, and with much confusion said so. "Oh dear," said the philosopher, "I thought you were a young gentleman of fortune; don't mention it, don't mention it; I shall do very well elsewhere." "And,” adds that delightful gentleman, Talfourd, "then, in the most gracious manner, he reverted to our former topics, and sat in my small room for half an hour, as if to convince me that my want of fortune made no difference in his esteem."

In his later years Godwin obtained a sinecure in the exchequer, worth about £200 a year, connected with the custody of the Records; and in the residence attached to this appointment in New Palace Yard, he died, on the 7th

of April, 1836, at the great age of eighty years, his only son having died four years before.

He was buried in the churchyard of St. Pancras, where, as has been seen, Mary Wollstonecraft was buried; and his funeral was attended by his grandson (the son of the poet Shelley), the poet Campbell, Dr. Unwins, and the Rev. J. H. Caunter.

From the remarks that have been made in the course of this Memoir, it may be seen that we have no very high estimate of Godwin's mental powers, or of his attainments, and that of all his productions we have the least respect for his works of fiction. Indeed, if that awful regard we cherish towards the dead did not restrain us from uttering words ready to run from our lips, we should cite Godwin as instance of how bad a celebrated English novelist can be. “Caleb Williams " was his best work of fiction, for it had what none of his other novels had-the foundation of a wild and improbable, but still a fascinating story. With such subject matter it is singular how the tale is so bad a one. Its descriptions of scenery are awkward and stilted, the delineations of character are clumsy and unreal, and the social pictures-the conversations, the tea-party politenesses, the ball-room squabbles-are ridiculous to the last degree of absurdity. One of the heroines is a close copy of Pamela, and one of the country gentlemen is a servile reproduction of what is worst in Squire Western. Plagiarism dominates every line; and the plagiarism is of the very worst kind, for in repeating the early novelists Godwin made no allowance for the difference of their times and his own, in respect of refinement and intelligence. Still, with all its painful faults, "Caleb Williams" interests and remains popular, affecting the polished reader with alternate fits of disgust and pathos, even as "Black-eyed Susan " does upon the stage. But every novel that Godwin published after his first was utterly bad, and every one was

worse than its predecessor. "Fleetwood" is full of highstrained theatrical bombast, without one touch of nature, and it is also prosy and immoral. "St. Leon" is prolix and wearisome, without a gleam of genius. "Mandeville" is yet worse; and "Cloudesley" is beneath contempt.

There was good reason why Godwin did not succeed in that branch of literature, in which he was ambitious of winning applause. In the first place his mental powers were only respectable and merely good intelligence is not enough for a master of fiction. Talfourd, prone in the warmth of his affectionate nature and the generosity of his polished mind, to over-rate the capacities of his companions, has said of Godwin, "he had no imagination, no fancy, no wit, no humour, or, if he possessed any of those faculties, they were obscured by that of pure reason." In the second place Godwin's early social position, (as the son of a dissenting minister, educated at a dissenters' school, and as such debarred from educated circles, during those years when men are most observant of trifles and most pliant) caused him to be as ignorant as a child, to his dying day, of the manners and tone of decent society. When he raised himself from the obscure rank in which he was born, and became the companion of statesmen and men of letters, he was too old to learn the subtle tricks and turns of drawing-room etiquette, and the demeanour and follies of the fashionable world, Had he been a great poet, of course the memory of the old slough would not have precluded his altering with circumstances, adapting himself to new positions, and learning the new lessons set before him; but, as has been often remarked already, he was not an extraordinary man, in the just sense of that term, and in nothing did he exhibit the respectable mediocrity of his mind more than in being self-absorbed and unpliant.

CHAPTER XXI.

WILLIAM BECKFORD.

The history of the Beckford family-its humble origin, the means by which it emerged from obscurity, its mushroom growth, its meretricious splendour, the avidity with which its members were seized upon by the proudest families of our aristocracy, anxious, as the French peeress observed, to manure their impoverished soil, and its almost total absorbtion in a great ducal house which has, in the slow course of ages, devoured many wealthy upstarts, and shall devour many more-may be regarded by the philosophic student of our manners, with amusement and instruction.

Once upon a time there lived at Maidenhead, a tailor, who had two sons, named Thomas and Peter. These sons came up to London, worked hard, and throve. Peter's vocations can only be guessed at by us, but still guessed at, we think, with tolerable certainty; of Thomas's deeds there can be no doubt, for they are matter of history;-he was a clothworker and slopseller, was advanced to the then respectable office of Sheriff of London, and knighted on the 29th December, 1677. He, moreover, married a lady who was the sister of Sir William Thomas, Bart., of Folkingham, in Sussex, and the widow of John Eversfield, Esq., son and heir of Sir Thomas Eversfield, Knt., of Hollington. This was the first step made by the family in the direction of the aristocracy; and it is with this Sir Thomas that polite chroniclers commence, as a rule, their mention of the Beckford pedigree, the Maidenhead tailor being regarded as a vulgar character, not to be introduced into good society.

Peter Beckford, Sir Thomas's brother, did one great thing

in life-he begat a child, who bore the paternal name, and devoted himself to military and other pursuits. Pepys, who was on intimate terms (perhaps even had dealings in cloth) with the Beckfords, has an interesting statement in his diary concerning this young Peter, which we shall transcribe in full.-" A.D. 1667—8, February 21st. Comes to me, young Captain Beckford, the slop-seller, and there presents to me a little purse with gold in it, it being, as he told me, for his present to me, at the end of the last year. I told him I had not done him any service I knew of. He persisted, and I refused; and telling him that it was not an age to make presents in, he told me he had reason to present me with something, and desired me to accept of it, which, at his so urging me, I did." Without a doubt, Pepys here attributes to Captain Beckford a personal connection with the family tailoring establishment, and his doing so suggests the probability of the Captain's original military position, being only in the train-bands. It may, however, be only a careless way of mentioning the son (?) and nephew of a tailor. Anyhow, this prudent young gen. tleman, who persisted in liberality to such a powerful stateofficial as Pepys, made his way in the world. He rose to the rank of Colonel in the army, was made President of the Council in Jamaica in the latter part of Charles the Second's reign, and was appointed Licut.-Governor (not Governor, as Lord Braybrooke asserts) and commander-in-chief of the island, by William III. This lucky fellow served in a humble capacity in the armament of Penn and Venables, which captured that important island. He died in the year 1710, leaving immense wealth behind him, and two sons, Peter and Thomas, who both lived to be fathers of large families. Peter, the elder of the two, the Speaker of the House of Assembly of Jamaica, died in 1785, and was suc ceeded first by his eldest son, Peter, who died (s. p.), and then by his second son, William.

This William Beckford quitted Jamaica, and became a