tionists. No book, says Hazlitt, 'ever gave such a blow to the philosophical mind of the country. Tom Paine was considered for the time a Tom Fool to him; Paley an old woman; Edmund Burke a flashy sophist. "Throw away your books of chemistry," said Wordsworth to a young man, "and read Godwin on Necessity."' Hazlitt probably exaggerates, but it is true that Wordsworth and Coleridge, then in their revolutionary fever, were strongly impressed. Coleridge addressed an enthusiastic sonnet to the author of the book (which, however, he had not read), and became a personal friend. Rival prophets, indeed, have their little jars, and Coleridge, after one interview, denounces, in his peculiar phrase, the 'grossness and vulgar insanocecity of this dim-headed prig of a philosophocide.' Humbler youths not only accepted Godwin as a teacher, but always declared that a study of his book had made an epoch in their lives, and permanently elevated their moral tone. The philosophy, it is true, was startling, but it was delivered in the most edifying tones. No 'milder-mannered' literary Lambro ever proposed to scuttle the ship of state. He discoursed as calmly as one of his old colleagues in the ministry, who would be condemned by the godly
