It is not surprising that William Godwin could not recognize a possible Saviour of the World in his daughter’s captor. It is not surprising that for some time he refused to speak with Shelley, or to correspond with him, except through a solicitor. The worm turns when it is trodden upon. Even a philosopher may be excused for showing he participates in the infirmities of ‘the slavish multitude,’ when the young man he has cherished affectionately repays his kindness by bringing his only daughter to shame. It is not surprising that, to the hour of the poet’s death, Godwin thought of him bitterly and resentfully as an evil man. Even to his daughter, after he had taken her back to his heart, the poor author and struggling bookseller never disguised from her his low opinion of the man who in undue course became his son-in-law. Writing to her on 9th September, 1819, he said, ‘What is it you want that you have not? You have the husband of your choice, to whom you are unalterably attached, a man of high intellectual attainments, _whatever I, and some other persons_, may think of his morality, and the defects under this last head, if they be not (as you seem to think) imaginary, at least do not operate as towards you.’ From these words, written to his child about her husband, it may be inferred what Godwin thought of his son-in-law’s morals, and said of them to people less sensitive than Mary for the poet’s honour, and less entitled to the old man’s consideration. So much has been written gushingly about the sweetness of Shelley’s temper, it is well to observe that Godwin (who may be supposed to have known it better than any of the poet’s eulogists) wrote to his wife on 14th May, 1817, ‘I knew that Shelley’s temper was occasionally fiery, resentful and indignant!’