s a stable boy. He was, however, a man of considerable
intellectual power and of some literary gift, which chiefly showed
itself in his dramas (the best known, _The Road to Ruin_), but is not
quite absent from his novels _Alwyn_ (1780), _Anna St. Ives_ (1792), and
_Hugh Trevor_ (1794-1797). The series runs in curious parallel to that
of Bage's work: for _Alwyn_, the liveliest and the earliest by far of
the three, is little more than a study partly after Fielding, but more
after Smollett, with his own experiences brought in. The other two are
purpose-novels of anarchist perfectibilism, and Holcroft enjoys the
traditional credit of having directly inspired Godwin. Godwin himself
acknowledged the obligation; indeed it is well known that--in pecuniary
matters more particularly--Godwin had no hesitation either in incurring
or in acknowledging obligations, always provided that he was not
expected to discharge them. It is possible that Holcroft's rough and
ready acceptance and exaggeration of the doctrines which Rousseau had
(as seems most probable) developed from a paradox of Diderot's, gave an
impetus to the rather sluggish but more systematic mind of Godwin. But
it is certain that _Political Justice_, though it is not a novel at all,
is a much more amusing book than _Anna St. Ives_, which is one. And
though Holcroft (especially if the presence of this quality in his
_Autobiography_ is not wholly due to Hazlitt--there is some chance that
it is) possessed a liveliness in narrative to which Godwin could never
attain, there is no doubt that this enigmatical and many-sided spunger,
philanderer, and corruptor of youth had a much higher general
qualification for novel-writing than any one mentioned hitherto in this
chapter, or perhaps than any to be mentioned, except the curiously
contrasted pair, of Irish birth, who are to come last in it.

I have sometimes thought that the greatest testimony to Godwin's power
in this respect is the idea (which even Hazlitt, though he did not share
it, does not seem to have thought preposterous, and which seems to have
been held by others who were not fools) that Godwin might be the author
of _Waverley_. To us, looking back, the notion seems as absurd as that
Bacon could be the author of Shakespeare or Steele of the _Tale of a
Tub_: but if, instead of looking back, we throw ourselves back, the
absurdity does not quite persist as it does in the other two instances.
There are some who, of course, wo