to do justice to Godwin's novels; but on them his contemporary
fame chiefly rested, and publishers paid for them high though
diminishing prices. They all belong to the romantic movement; some have
a supernatural basis, and most of them discover a too obvious didactic
purpose. _St. Leon_ (1799), almost as popular in its day as _Caleb
Williams_, mingles a romance of the elixir of life and the philosopher's
stone with an ardent recommendation of those family affections which
_Political Justice_ had depreciated. _Fleetwood_ (1805) makes war on
debauchery with sincere and impressive dulness. _Mandeville_ (1817),
_Cloudesley_ (1830) and _Deloraine_ (1833) are dead beyond the reach of
curiosity, yet the Radical critics of his day, including Hazlitt, tried
hard to convince themselves that Godwin was a greater novelist than the
Tory, Scott. It remains to mention Godwin's two attempts to conquer the
theatre with _Antonio_ (1800) and _Faulkener_ (1807). Neither play
lived, and _Antonio_, written in a sort of journalese, cut up into blank
verse lines, was too frigid to survive the first night. Godwin's
disappointment would be comical if it were not painful. He regarded
these deplorable tragedies as the flower of his genius.

Through these years of misfortune and eclipse, the friendships which
Godwin could still retain were his chief consolation. The published
letters of Coleridge and Lamb make a charming record of their intimacy.
Whimsical and affectionate in their tone, they are an unconscious
tribute as much to the man who received them as to the men who wrote
them. Conservative critics have talked of Godwin's "coldness" because he
could reason. But the abiding and generous regard of such a nature as
Charles Lamb's is answer enough to these summary valuations. But
Godwin's most characteristic relationship was with the young men who
sought him out as an inspiration. He would write them long letters of
advice, encouragement, and criticism, and despite his own poverty, would
often relieve their distresses. The most interesting of them was an
adventurous young Scot named Arnot who travelled on foot through the
greater part of Europe during the Napoleonic wars. The tragedy which
seemed always to pursue Godwin's intimates drove another of them,
Patrickson, to suicide while an undergraduate at Cambridge. Bulwer
Lytton, the last of these admiring young men, left a note on Godwin's
conversational powers in his extreme old age, which assure