Produced by Sigal Alon, Stephanie Eason, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. THE HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE LXXVII SHELLEY, GODWIN AND THEIR CIRCLE _EDITORS OF_ THE HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE PROFESSOR GILBERT MURRAY, O.M., LL.D., F.B.A. JULIAN S. HUXLEY, D.Sc., F.R.S. PROFESSOR G. N. CLARK, LL.D., F.B.A. SHELLEY, GODWIN AND THEIR CIRCLE _By_ H. N. BRAILSFORD M.A. OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO _First published in 1913, and reprinted in 1919, 1925, 1927, 1930, 1936 and 1942_ PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I THE FRENCH REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND 7 II THOMAS PAINE 56 III WILLIAM GODWIN AND THE REVOLUTION 78 IV "POLITICAL JUSTICE" 94 V GODWIN AND THE REACTION 142 VI GODWIN AND SHELLEY 168 VII MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT 186 VIII SHELLEY 212 BIBLIOGRAPHY 252 INDEX 255 SHELLEY, GODWIN, AND THEIR CIRCLE CHAPTER I THE FRENCH REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND The history of the French Revolution in England begins with a sermon and ends with a poem. Between that famous discourse by Dr. Richard Price on the love of our country, delivered in the first excitement that followed the fall of the Bastille, and the publication of Shelley's _Hellas_ there stretched a period of thirty-two years. It covered the dawn, the clouding and the unearthly sunset of a hope. It begins with the grave but enthusiastic prose of a divine justly respected by earnest men, who with a limited horizon fulfilled their daily duties in the city. It ends in the rapt vision, the magical music of a singer, who seemed as he sang to soar beyond the range of human ears. The hope passes from the confident expectation of instant change, through the sobrieties of disillusionment and the recantations of despair, to the iridescent dreams of a future which has taken wing and made its home in a fairy world. In 1789 when Dr. Price preached to his ardent congregation of Nonconformist Radicals in the meeting-house at the Old Jewry, the prospect was definite and the place of the millennium was merely the England over which George III. ruled. The hope was a robust but pedestrian "mental traveller," and its limbs wore the precise garments of political formulæ. It looked for honest Parliaments and manhood suffrage, for the triumph of democracy and the abolition of war. Its scene as Wordsworth put it, was