Page:Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Pennell, 1885).djvu/184

168 CHAPTER XII.

was one of those with whom Mary renewed her acquaintance. The impression they now made on each other was very different from that which they had received in the days when she was still known as Mrs. Wollstonecraft. Since he was no less famous than she, and since it was his good fortune to make the last year of her life happy, and by his love to compensate her for her first wretched experience, a brief sketch of his life, his character, and his work is here necessary. It is only by knowing what manner of man he was, and what standard of conduct he deduced from his philosophy, that his relations to her can be fairly understood.

William Godwin, the seventh child of thirteen, was the son of a Dissenting minister, and was born March 3, 1756, at Wisbeach, Cambridgeshire. He came on both sides of respectable middle-class families. His father's father and brother had both been clergymen, the one a Methodist preacher, the other a Dissenter. His father was a man of but little learning, whose strongest feeling was disapprobation of the Church of