in the presence of Mary, had the delicacy to suppress the name. The charge thus alleged against Godwin is not, I conceive, accurate, although it approximated towards accuracy. I am not clear that Shelley, up to the time when he thus spoke in June 1816, had given Godwin money amounting to quite so large a total as £2000; but at any rate he cannot have done so up to the time when he was himself "starving"—or, in milder terms, when he was in very great and harassing straits for money and daily subsistence. That time was late in 1814, and in the first days of 1815. It is true that, even before this date, he had done something to relieve Godwin; but it was only, I think, in April 18 16 that he gave the philosopher a really very considerable sum—£1000 in a lump. I say all this for the sake of biographical truth, and not with a view to vindicating Godwin—whose policy of bleeding Shelley in purse while he cut him in person has in some recent years been denounced with increasing vehemence, and it was indeed wholly indefensible. But human nature—and especially the human nature of an abstract speculator like Godwin—is capable of very odd self-deceptions; and I dare say Godwin thought he was equally and strictly right in both his proceedings—right in getting large sums of money out of Shelley, for a reforming sage ought to be subsidized by his neophytes—and right in repudiating
