ue for which in later life he gave many an opportunity to his richer
friends, but if he stimulated it in others he never refused to practise
it himself. While he was still a struggling and underpaid journeyman
author, wandering from one cheap lodging to another, he burdened himself
with the care and maintenance of a distant relative, an orphaned
second-cousin, named Thomas Cooper. Cooper came to him at the age of
twelve and remained with him till he became an actor at seventeen.
Godwin had read Rousseau's _Emile_, not seldom with dissent, and all
through his life was deeply interested in the problems of education.
They furnished him with the themes of some of the best essays in his
_Enquirer_ and his _Thoughts on Man_, and young Cooper was evidently the
subject on whom he experimented. He was a difficult, proud,
high-spirited lad, and the process of tuition was clearly not as smooth
as it was conscientious. Godwin's leading thought was that the utmost
reverence is due to boys. He cared little how much he imparted of
scholastic knowledge. He aimed at arousing the intellectual curiosity of
his charge and fostering independence and self-respect. Sincerity and
plain-speaking were to govern the relation of tutor and pupil. Corporal
punishment was of course a prohibited barbarity, but it must be admitted
that in Godwin's case a violent tongue and an impatient temper more than
supplied its place. The diary shows how pathetically the tutor exhorted
himself to avoid sternness, "which can only embitter the temper," and
not to impute dulness, stupidity or intentional error. Some letters show
how he failed. Cooper complains that Godwin had called him "a foolish
wretch," "a viper" and a "tiger." Godwin replies by complimenting him on
his "sensibility," and his "independence," asks for his "confidence" in
return, and assures him that he does not expect "gratitude" (a virtue
banned in the Godwinian ethics). This essay in education can have been
only relatively successful, for Cooper seems to have felt a quite
commonplace gratitude to Godwin, and for many a year afterwards sent him
vivacious letters, which testify to the real friendship which united
them.

Imperious and hot-tempered though he was, Godwin made friends and kept
them. Thomas Holcroft came into Godwin's life in 1786. Thanks to
Hazlitt's spirited memoir, based as it was on ample autobiographical
notes, no personality of this group stands before us so clearly limned,
and the