Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/174

 1 62 RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. Spenser's sonnets nearly as high as Shakespeare's, and considers that if Spenser's sonnets were not eclipsed by Shakespeare's, they would be regarded as the finest of the Elizabethan age. A very interesting study of William Godwin will be found in Henri Roussin's 'William Godwin, 1756-1836.' It makes the French Revolution the central point of Godwin's life, and divides it into three periods before, during, and after the Revo- lution. Roussin declares that without the Revo- lution Godwin would have been a journalist of little talent ; but thanks to it, he was for some years one of the literary glories of England, and his c Political Justice ' will always hold a dis- tinguished place in the history of ideas. Godwin developed the democratic idea in logical fashion, for he asserted that man, being endowed with a reason infinitely wise and sovereign, ought never to take counsel with anyone except himself. Obedience to an external authority abuts on anarchism, and in an illuminating passage Roussin points out how Godwin's anarchist doflrine is c en marge de ' orthodox anarchism : Idche la bride a tous ses instincts. L'anarchisme godwinien n'exalte de 1'individu qu'un fragment, son intelligence, sa raison. L'anarchisme moderne dresse i'individu centre la societ^. L'anarchisme godwinien dresse I'individu centre la societ et centre soi-mme. Pour Godwin, Fhomme doit, sans trve, lutter, pour qu'au sein de sa personnalit la raison ait constamment le pas sur les senti- ments, les d6sirs dgolfstes et les instincts. A pousser 1'analyse, il apparalt que sa dodrine, loin d'etre une
 * L'anarchisme moderne exalte 1'individu tout entier et