of marriage. Twice his wooing was
unsuccessful, and the philosopher who believed that reason was
omnipotent, tried in vain in long, elaborate letters to argue two ladies
into love. His second wife came unsought. As he sat one day at his
window in the Polygon, a handsome widow spoke to him from the
neighbouring balcony, with these arresting words, "Is it possible that I
behold the immortal Godwin?" They were married before the close of the
year (1801).

Mrs. Clairmont was a strange successor to Mary Wollstonecraft. She was a
vulgar and worldly woman, thoroughly feminine, and rather inclined to
boast of her total ignorance of philosophy. A kindly and loyal wife she
may have been, but she was jealous of Godwin's friends, and would tell
petty lies to keep them apart from him. She brought with her two
children of a former marriage--Charles (who was unhappy in this strange
home and went early abroad) and Jane. On this clever, pretty and
mercurial daughter all her partiality was lavished; and the unhappy
girl, pampered by a philistine mother in a revolutionary atmosphere, was
at the age of seventeen seduced by Byron, and became the mother of the
fairy child, Allegra. The second Mrs. Godwin was the stepmother of
convention, and treated both Fanny Imlay and Mary Godwin with consistent
unkindness. It was the fate of the gentle, melancholy and lovable Fanny
to take her own life at the age of twenty-two (1816). The destiny of
these children, all gifted with what the age called sensibility, has
served as the text of many a sermon against "the new philosophy." No
one, however, can read the documents which this strange household left
behind, without feeling that the parent of the disaster in their lives
was not their philosophic father, but this commonplace "womanly woman,"
who flattered, intrigued, and lied. In 1803, there was born of this
second marriage, a son, William, who inherited something of his father's
ability. He became a journalist, and died at the early age of
twenty-nine, after publishing a novel of some promise, _Transfusion_,
steeped in the same romantic fancies which colour Mary Shelley's more
famous _Frankenstein_.

With the cares of this family on his shoulders Godwin began to form the
habit of applying to his wealthy friends for aid. In judging this part
of his conduct, one must bear in mind both his own doctrine about
property, and the practice of the age. Godwin was a communist, and so,
in some degree, were mo