certainly be grateful; though we may regret that so much of the mentor's philosophy penetrated into the poetry. Unluckily Godwin held another doctrine, which has its charms for philosophers. A rich man is surely bound by reason to subsidise great thinkers. Godwin had already, it seems, been demoralised by the excellent Thomas Wedgwood, who had liberally applied that dangerous principle to Coleridge and other men of high promise. So-called 'loans' became gifts, and by Shelley's time, it would seem, the gifts scarcely deserved gratitude, for they were the bare discharge of a plain obligation. The culminating point was reached when Godwin—the denouncer of marriage—refused to see the Shelleys for acting upon his principles, and declined to accept money from the seducer of his daughter—unless the cheque were made payable in a different name. We can only exclaim with Mrs. Shelley, 'Oh, philosophy!' Shelley behaved to the old gentleman with admirable courtesy and firmness, but seems never to have lost his illusions. The thumb-screw was being applied when Godwin published his novel Mandeville in 1817. Shelley declares that its
interest is of that irresistible and overwhelming kind that the
