critical period) he became unorthodox in theology, and took to
literature, addicting himself to Whig politics. He also did a certain
amount of tutoring. It was not, however, till nearly ten years after he
had first taken to writing that he made his mark, and attained the
influence above referred to by a series of works rather remarkably
different in character. 1793 saw the famous _Inquiry concerning
Political Justice_, which for a time carried away many of the best and
brightest of the youth of England. Next year came the equally famous and
more long-lived novel of _Caleb Williams_, and an extensive criticism
(now much forgotten, but at the time of almost equal importance with
these), published in the _Morning Chronicle_, of the charge of Lord
Chief-Justice Eyre in the trial of Horne Tooke, Holcroft, and others for
high treason. Godwin himself ran some risk of prosecution; and that he
was left unmolested shows that the Pitt government did not strain its
powers, as is sometimes alleged. In 1797 he published _The Enquirer_, a
collection of essays on many different subjects; and in 1799 his second
remarkable novel (it should be said that in his early years of struggle
he had written others which are quite forgotten) _St. Leon_. The
closing years of the period also saw first his connection and then his
marriage with Mary Wollstonecraft, who will be noticed immediately after
him.

It is rather curious that Godwin, who was but forty-four at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, and continued to be a diligent
writer as well as a publisher and bookseller till his death in 1836, his
last years being made comfortable by a place under the Reform Ministry,
never did anything really good after the eighteenth century had closed.
His tragedy _Antonio_ only deserves remembrance because of Lamb's
exquisite account of its damnation. His _Life of Chaucer_ (1801) was one
of the earliest examples of that style of padding and guesswork in
literary biography with which literature has been flooded since. His
later novels--_Fleetwood_, _Mandeville_, _Cloudesley_, etc.--are far
inferior to _Caleb Williams_ (1794) and _St. Leon_ (1799). His _Treatise
of Population_ (1820), in answer to Malthus, was belated and
ineffective; and his _History of the Commonwealth_, in four volumes,
though a very respectable compilation, is nothing more. Godwin's
character was peculiar, and cannot be said to be pleasing. Though
regarded (or at least described) by