tenets. But the coincidence does not consist in any minute points of external resemblance. Godwin's poetical writings seem to have been pretty well forgotten, though some interest in him is maintained by 'Caleb Williams' and by his relationship to Shelley. Hogg is evidently anxious to sink as much as possible the intellectual obligations of the disciple to so second-rate a teacher; and later writers upon Shelley are content to speak vaguely of Godwin as a man who had some philosophic reputation in his day, and some influence upon the poet. A full exposition of Godwin's theories would display the closeness of the mental affinity. That may be found elsewhere; but a brief indication of his main tendencies will be sufficient for the present purpose. Godwin appeared to many youthful contemporaries—as may be seen from the brilliant sketch in Hazlitt's 'Spirit of the Age'—as a very incarnation of philosophy. 'No work in our time,' says Hazlitt, 'gave such a blow to the philosophical mind of the country as the celebrated "Enquiry concerning Political Justice." Tom Paine was considered for the time a Tom fool to him, Paley an old woman, Edmund Burke a flashy sophist. Truth, moral truth, it was supposed, had here taken up its abode, and these were the oracles of thought.' Hazlitt is not given to measuring his words, and he was probably wishing to please the decaying old gentleman. But doubtless there is some truth in the statement. Godwin was admirably fitted to be an apostle of reason, so far as a man can be fitted for that high post, by the negative qualifications of a placid temper and singular frigidity of disposition. He works out the most startling and subversive conclusions with all the calmness of a mathematician manipulating a set of algebraical symbols. He lays down doctrines which shock not only the religious reverence, but the ordinary conscience of mankind, as quietly as if he were stating a proposition of Euclid. An entire absence of even a rudimentary sense of humour is of course implied in this placid enunciation of paradoxes without the slightest perception of their apparent enormity. But then a sense of humour is just the quality which we do not desiderate in a revered philosopher.