Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/137

 author of all work. He became known in the circles which were prepared to welcome the French Revolution. He records in his diary the subjects of some of the talks which enlivened their tea-parties and other more convivial gatherings. Sandemanian tracts were out of place, but they talked of 'ancient virtue and respect for other men's judgments,' of self-love, sympathy, 'perfectibility,' and 'ideal unity.' Now and then they were honoured by the presence of the great Dr. Priestley, or of the shrewd, cynical Horne Tooke, the veteran survivor of the old Wilkite agitation; or of Thomas Hollis, who swore by the old-fashioned republicanism of Milton and Algernon Sidney; Helen Maria Williams and Mary Wollstonecraft represented the early stage of the crusade for the rights of women. His closest ally was Holcroft, ex-stable-boy at Newmarket, popular dramatist, and keen republican agitator. With Hollis and Holcroft, Godwin helped to revise Paine's Rights of Man. It had been suppressed by the fears of its first publishers, and its circulation was soon to become the most dangerous of ventures for the party booksellers. Meanwhile Godwin brought out his own Political Justice, and became the philosopher of the English