Chapter 11

A life of Godolphin was published in 1888 in London by the Hon. H. Elliot.

GODOY, ALVAREZ DE FARIA, RIOS SANCHEZ Y ZARZOSA, MANUEL DE(1767-1851), duke of El Alcudia and prince of the Peace, Spanish royal favourite and minister, was born at Badajoz on the 12th of May 1767. His father, Don José de Godoy, was the head of a very ancient but impoverished family of nobles in Estremadura. His mother, whose maiden name was Maria Antonia Alvarez de Faria, belonged to a Portuguese noble family. Manuel boasts in his memoirs that he had the best masters, but it is certain that he received only the very slight education usually given at that time to the sons of provincial nobles. In 1784 he entered the Guardia de Corps, a body of gentlemen who acted as the immediate body-guard of the king. His well-built and stalwart person, his handsome foolish face, together with a certain geniality of character which he must have possessed, earned him the favour of Maria Luisa of Parma, the princess of Asturias, a coarse, passionate woman who was much neglected by her husband, who on his part cared for nothing but hunting.

When King Charles III. died in 1788, Godoy’s fortune was soon made. The princess of Asturias, now queen, understood how to manage her husband Charles IV. Godoy says in his memoirs that the king, who had been carefully kept apart from affairs during his father’s life, and who disliked his father’s favourite minister Floridablanca, wished to have a creature of his own. This statement is no doubt true as far as it goes. But it requires to be completed by the further detail that the queen put her lover in her husband’s way, and that the king was guided by them, when he thought he was ruling for himself through a subservient minister. In some respects King Charles was obstinate, and Godoy is probably right in saying that he never was an absolute “viceroy,” and that he could not always secure the removal of colleagues whom he knew to be his enemies. He could only rule by obeying. Godoy adopted without scruple this method of pushing his fortunes. When the king was set on a particular course, he followed it; the execution was left to him and the queen. His pliability endeared him to his master, whose lasting affection he earned. In practice he commonly succeeded in inspiring the wishes which he then proceeded to gratify. From the very beginning of the new reign he was promoted in the army with scandalous rapidity, made duke of El Alcudia, and in 1792 minister under the premiership of Aranda, whom he succeeded in displacing by the close of the year.

His official life is fairly divided by himself into three periods. From 1792 to 1798 he was premier. In the latter year his unpopularity and the intrigues of the French government, which had taken a dislike to him, led to his temporary retirement, without, however, any diminution of the king’s personal favour. He asserts that he had no wish to return to office, but letters sent by him to the queen show that he begged for employment. They are written in a very unpleasant mixture of gush and vulgar familiarity. In 1801 he returned to office, and until 1807 he was the executant of the disastrous policy of the court. The third period of his public life is the last year, 1807-1808, when he was desperately striving for his place between the aggressive intervention of Napoleon on the one hand, and the growing hatred of the nation, organized behind, and about, the prince of Asturias, Ferdinand. On the 17th of March 1808 a popular outbreak at Aranjuez drove him into hiding. When driven out by hunger and thirst he was recognized and arrested. By Ferdinand’s order he was kept in prison, till Napoleon demanded that he should be sent to Bayonne. Here he rejoined his master and mistress. He remained with them till Charles IV. died at Rome in 1819, having survived his queen. The rest of Godoy’s life was spent in poverty and obscurity. After the death of Ferdinand VII., in 1833, he returned to Madrid, and endeavoured to secure the restoration of his property confiscated in 1808. Part of it was the estate of the Soto de Roma, granted by the cortes to the duke of Wellington. He failed, and during his last years lived on a small pension granted him by Louis Philippe. He died in Paris on the 4th of October 1851.

As a favourite Godoy is remarkable for the length of his hold on the affection of his sovereigns, and for its completeness. Latterly he was supported rather by the husband than by the wife. He got rid of Aranda by adopting, in order to please the king, a policy which tended to bring on war with France. When the war proved disastrous, he made the peace of Basel, and was created prince of the Peace for his services. Then he helped to make war with England, and the disasters which followed only made him dearer to the king. Indeed it became a main object with Charles IV. to protect “Manuelito” from popular hatred, and if possible secure him a principality. The queen endured his infidelities to her, which were flagrant. The king arranged a marriage for him with Doña Teresa de Bourbon, daughter of the infante Don Luis by a morganatic marriage, though he was probably already married to Doña Josefa Tudó, and certainly continued to live with her. Godoy, in his memoirs, lays claim to have done much for Spanish agriculture and industry, but he did little more than issue proclamations and appoint officers. His intentions may have been good, but the policy of his government was financially ruinous. In his private life he was not only profligate and profuse, but childishly ostentatious. The best that can be said for him is that he was good-natured, anddid his best to restrain the Inquisition and the purely reactionary parties.

Authorities.—Godoy’sMemoirswere published in Spanish, English and French in 1836. A general account of his career will be found in theMémoires sur la Révolution d’Espagne, by the Abbé de Pradt (1816).

GODROON,orGadroon(Fr.godron, of unknown etymology), in architecture, a convex decoration (said to be derived from raised work on linen) applied in France to varieties of the bead and reel, in which the bead is often carved with ornament. In England the term is constantly used by auctioneers to describe the raised convex decorations under the bowl of stone or terra-cotta vases. The godroons radiate from the vertical support of the vase and rise half-way up the bowl.

GODWIN, FRANCIS(1562-1633), English divine, son of Thomas Godwin, bishop of Bath and Wells, was born at Hannington, Northamptonshire, in 1562. He was elected student of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1578, took his bachelor’s degree in 1580, and that of master in 1583. After holding two Somersetshire livings he was in 1587 appointed subdean of Exeter. In 1590 he accompanied William Camden on an antiquarian tour through Wales. He was created bachelor of divinity in 1593, and doctor in 1595. In 1601 he published hisCatalogue of the Bishops of England since the first planting of the Christian Religion in this Island, a work which procured him in the same year the bishopric of Llandaff. A second edition appeared in 1615, and in 1616 he published an edition in Latin with a dedication to King James, who in the following year conferred upon him the bishopric of Hereford. The work was republished, with a continuation by William Richardson, in 1743. In 1616 Godwin publishedRerum Anglicarum, Henrico VIII., Edwardo VI. et Maria regnantibus, Annales, which was afterwards translated and published by his son Morgan under the titleAnnales of England(1630). He is also the author of a somewhat remarkable story, published posthumously in 1638, and entitledThe Man in the Moone, or a Discourse of a Voyage thither, by Domingo Gonsales, written apparently some time between the years 1599 and 1603. In this production Godwin not only declares himself a believer in the Copernican system, but adopts so far the principles of the law of gravitation as to suppose that the earth’s attraction diminishes with the distance. The work, which displays considerable fancy and wit, was translated into French, and was imitated in several important particulars by Cyrano de Bergerac, from whom (if not from Godwin direct) Swift obtained valuable hints in writing of Gulliver’s voyage to Laputa. Another work of Godwin’s,Nuncius inanimatus Utopiae, originally published in 1629 and again in 1657, seems to have been the prototype of John Wilkins’sMercury, or the Secret and Swift Messenger, which appeared in 1641. He died, after a lingering illness, in April 1633.

GODWIN, MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT(1759-1797), English miscellaneous writer, was born at Hoxton, on the 27th of April 1759. Her family was of Irish extraction, and Mary’s grandfather, who was a respectable manufacturer in Spitalfields, realized the property which his son squandered. Her mother, Elizabeth Dixon, was Irish, and of good family. Her father, Edward John Wollstonecraft, after dissipating the greater part of his patrimony, tried to earn a living by farming, which only plunged him into deeper difficulties, and he led a wandering, shifty life. The family roamed from Hoxton to Edmonton, to Essex, to Beverley in Yorkshire, to Laugharne, Pembrokeshire, and back to London again.

After Mrs Wollstonecraft’s death in 1780, soon followed by her husband’s second marriage, the three daughters, Mary, Everina and Eliza, sought to earn their own livelihood. The sisters were all clever women—Mary and Eliza far above the average—but their opportunities of culture had been few. Mary, the eldest, went in the first instance to live with her friend Fanny Blood, a girl of her own age, whose father, like Wollstonecraft, was addicted to drink and dissipation. As long as she lived with the Bloods, Mary helped Mrs Blood to earn money by taking in needlework, while Fanny painted in watercolours. Everina went to live with her brother Edward, and Eliza made a hasty and, as it proved, unhappy marriage with a Mr Bishop. A legal separation was afterwards obtained, and the sisters, together with Fanny Blood, took a house, first at Islington, afterwards at Newington Green, and opened a school, which was carried on with indifferent success for nearly two years. During their residence at Newington Green, Mary was introduced to Dr Johnson, who, as Godwin tells us, “treated her with particular kindness and attention.”

In 1785 Fanny Blood married Hugh Skeys, a merchant, and went with him to Lisbon, where she died in childbed after sending for Mary to nurse her. “The loss of Fanny,” as she said in a letter to Mrs Skeys’s brother, George Blood, “was sufficient of itself to have cast a cloud over my brightest days.... I have lost all relish for pleasure, and life seems a burden almost too heavy to be endured.” Her first novel,Mary, a Fiction(1788), was intended to commemorate her friendship with Fanny. After closing the school at Newington Green, Mary became governess in the family of Lord Kingsborough, in Ireland. Her pupils were much attached to her, especially Margaret King, afterwards Lady Mountcashel; and indeed, Lady Kingsborough gave the reason for dismissing her after one year’s service that the children loved their governess better than their mother. Mary now resolved to devote herself to literary work, and she was encouraged by Johnson, the publisher in St Paul’s churchyard, for whom she acted as literary adviser. She also undertook translations, chiefly from the French.The Elements of Morality(1790) from the German of Salzmann, illustrated by Blake, an old-fashioned book for children, and Lavater’sPhysiognomywere among her translations. HerOriginal Stories from Real Lifewere published in 1791, and, with illustrations by Blake, in 1796. In 1792 appearedA Vindication of the Rights of Woman, the work with which her name is always associated.

It is not among the least oddities of this book that it is dedicated to M. Talleyrand Périgord, late bishop of Autun. Mary Wollstonecraft still believed him to be sincere, and working in the same direction as herself. In the dedication she states the “main argument” of the work, “built on this simple principle that, if woman be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge, for truth must be common to all, or it will be inefficacious with respect to its influence or general practice.” In carrying out this argument she used great plainness of speech, and it was this that caused all, or nearly all, the outcry. For she did not attack the institution of marriage, nor assail orthodox religion; her book was really a plea for equality of education, passing into one for state education and for the joint education of the sexes. It was a protest against the assumption that woman was only the plaything of man, and she asserted that intellectual companionship was the chief, as it is the lasting, happiness of marriage. She thus directly opposed the teaching of Rousseau, of whom she was in other respects an ardent disciple.

Mrs Wollstonecraft, as she now styled herself, desired to watch the progress of the Revolution in France, and went to Paris in 1792. Godwin, in his memoir of his wife, considers that the change of residence may have been prompted by the discovery that she was becoming attached to Henry Fuseli, but there is little to confirm this surmise; indeed, it was first proposed that she should go to Paris in company with him and his wife, nor was there any subsequent breach in their friendship. She remained in Paris during the Reign of Terror, when communication with England was difficult or almost impossible. Some time in the spring or summer of 1793 Captain Gilbert Imlay, an American, became acquainted with Mary—an acquaintance which ended in a more intimate connexion. There was no legal ceremony of marriage, and it is doubtful whether such a marriage would have been valid at the time; but she passed as Imlay’s wife, and Imlay himself terms her in a legal document, “Mary Imlay, my best friend and wife.” In August 1793 Imlay was called to Havre on business, and was absent for some months, during which time most of the letters published after her death by Godwin were written. Towards the end of the year she joined Imlay at Havre, and there in the spring of 1794 she gave birth to a girl,who received the name of Fanny, in memory of the dear friend of her youth. In this year she published the first volume of a never completedHistorical and Moral View of the French Revolution. Imlay became involved in a multitude of speculations, and his affection for Mary and their child was already waning. He left Mary for some months at Havre. In June 1795, after joining him in England, Mary left for Norway on business for Imlay. Her letters from Norway, divested of all personal details, were afterwards published. She returned to England late in 1795, and found letters awaiting her from Imlay, intimating his intention to separate from her, and offering to settle an annuity on her and her child. For herself she rejected this offer with scorn: “From you,” she wrote, “I will not receive anything more. I am not sufficiently humbled to depend on your beneficence.” They met again, and for a short time lived together, until the discovery that he was carrying on an intrigue under her own roof drove her to despair, and she attempted to drown herself by leaping from Putney bridge, but was rescued by watermen. Imlay now completely deserted her, although she continued to bear his name.

In 1796, when Mary Wollstonecraft was living in London, supporting herself and her child by working, as before, for Mr Johnson, she met William Godwin. A friendship sprang up between them,—a friendship, as he himself says, which “melted into love.” Godwin states that “ideas which he is now willing to denominate prejudices made him by no means willing to conform to the ceremony of marriage”; but these prejudices were overcome, and they were married at St Pancras church on the 29th of March 1797. And now Mary had a season of real calm in her stormy existence. Godwin, for once only in his life, was stirred by passion, and his admiration for his wife equalled his affection. But their happiness was of short duration. The birth of her daughter Mary, afterwards the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, on the 30th of August 1797, proved fatal, and Mrs Godwin died on the 10th of September following. She was buried in the churchyard of Old St Pancras, but her remains were afterwards removed by Sir Percy Shelley to the churchyard of St Peter’s, Bournemouth.

Her principal published works are as follows:—Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, ...(1787);The Female Reader(selections) (1789);Original Stories from Real Life(1791);An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution, and the effects it has produced in Europe, vol. i. (no more published) (1790);Vindication of the Rights of Woman(1792);Vindication of the Rights of Man(1793);Mary, a Fiction(1788);Letters written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark(1796);Posthumous Works(4 vols., 1798). It is impossible to trace the many articles contributed by her to periodical literature.A memoir of her life was published by Godwin in 1798. A large portion of C. Kegan Paul’s work,William Godwin, his Friends and Contemporaries, was devoted to her, and an edition of theLetters to Imlay(1879), of which the first edition was published by Godwin, is prefaced by a somewhat fuller memoir. See also E. Dowden,The French Revolution and English Literature(1897) pp. 82 et seq.; E. R. Pennell,Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin(1885), in the Eminent Women Series; E. R. Clough,A Study of Mary Wollstonecraft and the Rights of Woman(1898); an edition of herOriginal Stories(1906), with William Blake’s illustrations and an introduction by E. V. Lucas; and theLove Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay(1908), with an introduction by Roger Ingpen.

A memoir of her life was published by Godwin in 1798. A large portion of C. Kegan Paul’s work,William Godwin, his Friends and Contemporaries, was devoted to her, and an edition of theLetters to Imlay(1879), of which the first edition was published by Godwin, is prefaced by a somewhat fuller memoir. See also E. Dowden,The French Revolution and English Literature(1897) pp. 82 et seq.; E. R. Pennell,Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin(1885), in the Eminent Women Series; E. R. Clough,A Study of Mary Wollstonecraft and the Rights of Woman(1898); an edition of herOriginal Stories(1906), with William Blake’s illustrations and an introduction by E. V. Lucas; and theLove Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay(1908), with an introduction by Roger Ingpen.

GODWIN, WILLIAM,(1756-1836), English political and miscellaneous writer, son of a Nonconformist minister, was born on the 3rd of March 1756, at Wisbeach in Cambridgeshire. His family came on both sides of middle-class people, and it was probably only as a joke that Godwin, a stern political reformer and philosophical radical, attempted to trace his pedigree to a time before the Norman conquest and the great earl Godwine. Both parents were strict Calvinists. The father died young, and never inspired love or much regret in his son; but in spite of wide differences of opinion, tender affection always subsisted between William Godwin and his mother, until her death at an advanced age.

William Godwin was educated for his father’s profession at Hoxton Academy, where he was under Andrew Kippis the biographer and Dr Abraham Rees of theCyclopaedia, and was at first more Calvinistic than his teachers, becoming a Sandemanian, or follower of John Glas (q.v.), whom he describes as “a celebrated north-country apostle who, after Calvin had damned ninety-nine in a hundred of mankind, has contrived a scheme for damning ninety-nine in a hundred of the followers of Calvin.” He then acted as a minister at Ware, Stowmarket and Beaconsfield. At Stowmarket the teachings of the French philosophers were brought before him by a friend, Joseph Fawcet, who held strong republican opinions. He came to London in 1782, still nominally a minister, to regenerate society with his pen—a real enthusiast, who shrank theoretically from no conclusions from the premises which he laid down. He adopted the principles of the Encyclopaedists, and his own aim was the complete overthrow of all existing institutions, political, social and religious. He believed, however, that calm discussion was the only thing needful to carry every change, and from the beginning to the end of his career he deprecated every approach to violence. He was a philosophic radical in the strictest sense of the term.

His first published work was an anonymousLife of Lord Chatham(1783). Under the inappropriate titleSketches of History(1784) he published under his own name six sermons on the characters of Aaron, Hazael and Jesus, in which, though writing in the character of an orthodox Calvinist, he enunciates the proposition “God Himself has no right to be a tyrant.” Introduced by Andrew Kippis, he began to write in 1785 for theAnnual Registerand other periodicals, producing also three novels now forgotten. The “Sketches of English History” written for theAnnual Registerfrom 1785 onward still deserve study. He joined a club called the “Revolutionists,” and associated much with Lord Stanhope, Horne Tooke and Holcroft. His clerical character was now completely dropped.

In 1793 Godwin published his great work on political science,The Inquiry concerning Political Justice, and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness. Although this work is little known and less read now, it marks a phase in English thought. Godwin could never have been himself a worker on the active stage of life. But he was none the less a power behind the workers, and for its political effect,Political Justicetakes its place with Milton’sAreopagitica, with Locke’sEssay on Educationand with Rousseau’sÉmile. By the words “political justice” the author meant “the adoption of any principle of morality and truth into the practice of a community,” and the work was therefore an inquiry into the principles of society, of government and of morals. For many years Godwin had been “satisfied that monarchy was a species of government unavoidably corrupt,” and from desiring a government of the simplest construction, he gradually came to consider that “government by its very nature counteracts the improvement of original mind.” Believing in the perfectibility of the race, that there are no innate principles, and therefore no original propensity to evil, he considered that “our virtues and our vices may be traced to the incidents which make the history of our lives, and if these incidents could be divested of every improper tendency, vice would be extirpated from the world.” All control of man by man was more or less intolerable, and the day would come when each man, doing what seems right in his own eyes, would also be doing what is in fact best for the community, because all will be guided by principles of pure reason. But all was to be done by discussion, and matured change resulting from discussion. Hence, while Godwin thoroughly approved of the philosophic schemes of the precursors of the Revolution, he was as far removed as Burke himself from agreeing with the way in which they were carried out. So logical and uncompromising a thinker as Godwin could not go far in the discussion of abstract questions without exciting the most lively opposition in matters of detailed opinion. An affectionate son, and ever ready to give of his hard-earned income to more than one ne’er-do-well brother, he maintained that natural relationship had no claim on man, nor was gratitude to parents or benefactors any part of justice or virtue. In a day when the penal code was still extremely severe, he argued gravely against all punishments, not only that of death. Property was to belong to him who most wanted it;accumulated property was a monstrous injustice. Hence marriage, which is law, is the worst of all laws, and as property the worst of all properties. A man so passionless as Godwin could venture thus to argue without suspicion that he did so only to gratify his wayward desires. Portions of this treatise, and only portions, found ready acceptance in those minds which were prepared to receive them. Perhaps no one received the whole teaching of the book. But it gave cohesion and voice to philosophic radicalism; it was the manifesto of a school without which liberalism of the present day had not been. Godwin himself in after days modified his communistic views, but his strong feeling for individualism, his hatred of all restrictions on liberty, his trust in man, his faith in the power of reason remained; it was a manifesto which enunciated principles modifying action, even when not wholly ruling it.

In May 1794 Godwin published the novel ofCaleb Williams, or Things as they are, a book of which the political object is overlooked by many readers in the strong interest of the story. The book was dramatized by the younger Colman asThe Iron Chest. It is one of the few novels of that time which may be said still to live.1A theorist who lived mainly in his study, Godwin yet came forward boldly to stand by prisoners arraigned of high treason in that same year—1794. The danger to persons so charged was then great, and he deliberately put himself into this same danger for his friends. But when his own trial was discussed in the privy council, Pitt sensibly held thatPolitical Justice, the work on which the charge could best have been founded, was priced at three guineas, and could never do much harm among those who had not three shillings to spare.

From this time Godwin became a notable figure in London society, and there was scarcely an important person in politics, on the Liberal side, in literature, art or science, who does not appear familiarly in the pages of Godwin’s singular diary. For forty-eight years, beginning in 1788, and continuing to the very end of his life, Godwin kept a record of every day, of the work he did, the books he read, the friends he saw. Condensed in the highest degree, the diary is yet easy to read when the style is once mastered, and it is a great help to the understanding of his cold, methodical, unimpassioned character. He carried his method into every detail of life, and lived on his earnings with extreme frugality. Until he made a large sum by the publication ofPolitical Justice, he lived on an average of £120 a year.

In 1797, the intervening years having been spent in strenuous literary labour, Godwin married Mary Wollstonecraft (seeGodwin, Mary Wollstonecraft). Since both held the same views regarding the slavery of marriage, and since they only married at all for the sake of possible offspring, the marriage was concealed for some time, and the happiness of the avowed married life was very brief; his wife’s death on the 10th of September left Godwin prostrated by affliction, and with a charge for which he was wholly unfit—his infant daughter Mary, and her stepsister, Fanny Imlay, who from that time bore the name of Godwin. His unfitness for the cares of a family, far more than love, led him to contract a second marriage with Mary Jane Clairmont in 1801. She was a widow with two children, one of whom, Clara Mary Jane Clairmont, became the mistress of Lord Byron. The second Mrs Godwin was energetic and painstaking, but a harsh stepmother; and it may be doubted whether the children were not worse off under her care than they would have been under Godwin’s neglect.

The second novel which proceeded from Godwin’s pen was calledSt Leon, and published in 1799. It is chiefly remarkable for the beautiful portrait of Marguerite, the heroine, drawn from the character of his own wife. His opinions underwent a change in the direction of theism, influenced, he says, by his acquaintance with Coleridge. He also became known to Wordsworth and Lamb. Study of the Elizabethan dramatists led to the production in 1800 of theTragedy of Antonio. Kemble brought it out at Drury Lane, but the failure of this attempt made him refuseAbbas, King of Persia, which Godwin offered him in the next year. He was more successful with hisLife of Chaucer, for which he received £600.

The events of Godwin’s life were few. Under the advice of the second Mrs Godwin, and with her active co-operation, he carried on business as a bookseller under the pseudonym of Edward Baldwin, publishing several useful school books and books for children, among them Charles and Mary Lamb’sTales from Shakespeare. But the speculation was unsuccessful, and for many years Godwin struggled with constant pecuniary difficulties, for which more than one subscription was raised by the leaders of the Liberal party and by literary men. He became bankrupt in 1822, but during the following years he accomplished one of his best pieces of work,The History of the Commonwealth, founded on pamphlets and original documents, which still retains considerable value. In 1833 the government of Earl Grey conferred upon him the office known as yeoman usher of the exchequer, to which were attached apartments in Palace Yard, where he died on the 7th of April 1836.

In his own time, by his writings and by his conversation, Godwin had a great power of influencing men, and especially young men. Though his character would seem, from much which is found in his writings, and from anecdotes told by those who still remember him, to have been unsympathetic, it was not so understood by enthusiastic young people, who hung on his words as those of a prophet. The most remarkable of these was Percy Bysshe Shelley, who in the glowing dawn of his genius turned to Godwin as his teacher and guide. The last of the long series of young men who sat at Godwin’s feet was Edward Lytton Bulwer, afterwards Lord Lytton, whose early romances were formed after those of Godwin, and who, inEugene Aram, succeeded to the story as arranged, and the plan to a considerable extent sketched out, by Godwin, whose age and failing health prevented him from completing it. Godwin’s character appears in the worst light in connexion with Shelley. His early correspondence with Shelley, which began in 1811, is remarkable for its genuine good sense and kindness; but when Shelley carried out the principles of the author ofPolitical Justicein eloping with Mary Godwin, Godwin assumed a hostile attitude that would have been unjustifiable in a man of ordinary views, and was ridiculous in the light of his professions. He was not, moreover, too proud to accept £1000 from his son-in-law, and after the reconciliation following on Shelley’s marriage in 1816, he continued to demand money until Shelley’s death. His character had no doubt suffered under his long embarrassments and his unhappy marriage.

Godwin’s more important works are—The Inquiry concerning Political Justice, and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness(1793);Things as they are, or the Adventures of Caleb Williams(1794);The Inquirer, a series of Essays(1797);Memoirs of the Author of the Rights of Woman(1798);St Leon, a Tale of the Sixteenth Century(1799);Antonio, a Tragedy(1800);The Life of Chaucer(1803);Fleetwood, a Novel(1805);Faulkner, a Tragedy(1807);Essay on Sepulchres(1809);Lives of Edward and John Philips, the Nephews of Milton(1815);Mandeville, a Tale of the Times of Cromwell(1817);Of Population, an answer to Malthus(1820);History of the Commonwealth(1824-1828);Cloudesley, a Novel(1830);Thoughts on Man, a series of Essays(1831);Lives of the Necromancers(1834). A volume of essays was also collected from his papers and published in 1873, as left for publication by his daughter Mrs Shelley. Many other short and anonymous works proceeded from his ever busy pen, but many are irrecoverable, and all are forgotten. Godwin’s life was published in 1876 in two volumes, under the titleWilliam Godwin, his Friends and Contemporaries, by C. Kegan Paul. The best estimate of his literary position is that given by Sir Leslie Stephen in hisEnglish Thought in the 18th Century(ii. 264-281; ed., 1902). See also the article on William Godwin in W. Hazlitt’sThe Spirit of the Age(1825), and “Godwin and Shelley” in Sir L. Stephen’sHours in a Library(vol. iii., ed. 1892).

1For an analysis ofCaleb Williamssee the chapter on “Theorists of Revolution” in Professor E. Dowden’sThe French Revolution and English Literature(1897).

GODWIN-AUSTEN, ROBERT ALFRED CLOYNE(1808-1884), English geologist, the eldest son of Sir Henry E. Austen, was born on the 17th of March 1808. He was educated at Oriel College, Oxford, of which he became a fellow in 1830. He afterwards entered Lincoln’s Inn. In 1833 he married the only daughter and heiress of General Sir Henry T. Godwin, K.C.B., and he took the additional name of Godwin by Royal licencein 1854. At Oxford as a pupil of William Buckland he became deeply interested in geology, and soon afterwards becoming acquainted with De la Beche, he was inspired by that great master, and assisted him by making a geological map of the neighbourhood of Newton Abbot, which was embodied in the Geological Survey map. He also published an elaborate memoir “On the Geology of the South-East of Devonshire” (Trans. Geol. Soc.ser. 2, vol. viii.). His attention was next directed to the Cretaceous rocks of Surrey, his home-county, his estates being situated at Chilworth and Shalford near Guildford. Later he dealt with the superficial accumulations bordering the English Channel, and with the erratic boulders of Selsea. In 1855 he brought before the Geological Society of London his celebrated paper “On the possible Extension of the Coal-Measures beneath the South-Eastern part of England,” in which he pointed out on well-considered theoretical grounds the likelihood of coal-measures being some day reached in that area. In this article he also advocated the freshwater origin of the Old Red Sandstone, and discussed the relations of that formation, and of the Devonian, to the Silurian and Carboniferous. He was elected F.R.S. in 1849, and in 1862 he was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of London, on which occasion he was styled by Sir R. I. Murchison “pre-eminently the physical geographer of bygone periods.” He died at Shalford House near Guildford on the 25th of November 1884.

His son, Lieut-ColonelHenry Haversham Godwin-Austen(b. 1834), entered the army in 1851, and served for many years on the Trigonometrical Survey of India, retiring in 1877. He gave much attention to geology, but is more especially distinguished for his researches on the natural history of India and as the author ofThe Land and Freshwater Mollusca of India(1882-1887).

GODWINE(d. 1053), son of Wulfnoth, earl of the West-Saxons, the leading Englishman in the first half of the 11th century. His birth and origin are utterly uncertain; but he rose to power early in Canute’s reign and was an earl in 1018. He received in marriage Gytha, a connexion of the king’s, and in 1020 became earl of the West-Saxons. On the death of Canute in 1035 he joined with Queen Emma in supporting the claim of Hardicanute, the son of Canute and Emma, to the crown of his father, in opposition to Leofric and the northern party who supported Harold Harefoot (seeHardicanute). While together they held Wessex for Hardicanute, the ætheling Ælfred, son of Emma by her former husband Æthelred II., landed in England in the hope of winning back his father’s crown; but falling into the hands of Godwine, he and his followers were cruelly done to death. On the death of Hardicanute in 1042 Godwine was foremost in promoting the election of Edward (the Confessor) to the vacant throne. He was now the first man in the kingdom, though his power was still balanced by that of the other great earls, Leofric of Mercia and Siward of Northumberland. His sons Sweyn and Harold were promoted to earldoms; and his daughter Eadgyth was married to the king (1045). His policy was strongly national in opposition to the marked Normanizing tendencies of the king. Between him and Edward’s foreign favourites, particularly Robert of Jumièges, there was deadly feud. The appointment of Robert to the archbishopric of Canterbury in 1051 marks the decline of Godwine’s power; and in the same year a series of outrages committed by one of the king’s foreign favourites led to a breach between the king and the earl, which culminated in the exile of the latter with all his family (seeEdward the Confessor). But next year Godwine returned in triumph; and at a great meeting held outside London he and his family were restored to all their offices and possessions, and the archbishop and many other Normans were banished. In the following year Godwine was smitten with a fit at the king’s table, and died three days later on the 15th of April 1053.

Godwine appears to have had seven sons, three of whom—King Harold, Gyrth and Leofwine—were killed at Hastings; two others, Wulfnoth and Ælfgar, are of little importance; another was Earl Tostig (q.v.). The eldest son was Sweyn, or Swegen (d. 1052), who was outlawed for seducing Eadgifu abbess of Leominster. After fighting for the king of Denmark he returned to England in 1049, when his murder of his cousin Beorn compelled him to leave England for the second time. In 1050, however, he regained his earldom, and in 1051 he shared his father’s exile. To atone for the murder of Beorn, Sweyn went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and on the return journey he died on the 29th of September 1052, meeting his death, according to one account, at the hands of the Saracens.

GODWIT,a word of unknown origin, the name commonly applied to a marsh-bird in great repute, when fattened, for the table, and formerly abundant in the fens of Norfolk, the Isle of Ely and Lincolnshire. In Turner’s days (1544) it was worth three times as much as a snipe, and at the sameperiodBelon said of it—“C’est vn Oyseau es delices des Françoys.” Casaubon, who Latinized its name “Dei ingenium” (Ephemerides, 19th September 1611), was told by the “ornithotrophaeus” he visited at Wisbech that in London it fetched twenty pence. Its fame as a delicacy is perpetuated by many later writers, Ben Jonson among them, and Pennant says that in his time (1766) it sold for half-a-crown or five shillings. Under the name godwit two perfectly distinct species of British birds were included, but that which seems to have been especially prized is known to modern ornithologists as the black-tailed godwit,Limosa aegocephala, formerly called, from its loud cry, a yarwhelp,1shrieker or barker, in the districts it inhabited. The practice of netting this bird in large numbers during the spring and summer, coupled with the gradual reclamation of the fens, to which it resorted, has now rendered it but a visitor in England; and it probably ceased from breeding regularly in England in 1824 or thereabouts, though under favourable conditions it may have occasionally laid its eggs for some thirty years later or more (Stevenson,Birds of Norfolk, ii. 250). This godwit is a species of wide range, reaching Iceland, where it is calledJardraeka(= earth-raker), in summer, and occurring numerously in India in winter. Its chief breeding-quarters seem to extend from Holland eastwards to the south of Russia. The second British species is that which is known as the bar-tailed godwit,L. lapponica, and this seems to have never been more than a bird of double passage in the United Kingdom, arriving in large flocks on the south coast about the 12th of May, and, after staying a few days, proceeding to the north-eastward. It is known to breed in Lapland, but its eggs are of great rarity. Towards autumn the young visit the English coasts, and a few of them remain, together with some of the other species, in favourable situations throughout the winter. One of the local names by which the bar-tailed godwit is known to the Norfolk gunners is scamell, a word which, in the mouth of Caliban (Tempest, II. ii.), has been the cause of much perplexity to Shakespearian critics.

The godwits belong to the groupLimicolae, and are about as big as a tame pigeon, but possess long legs, and a long bill with a slight upward turn. It is believed that in the genusLimosathe female is larger than the male. While the winter plumage is of a sober greyish-brown, the breeding-dress is marked by a predominance of bright bay or chestnut, rendering the wearer a very beautiful object. The black-tailed godwit, though varying a good deal in size, is constantly larger than the bar-tailed, and especially longer in the legs. The species may be further distinguished by the former having the proximal third of the tail-quills pure white, and the distal two-thirds black, with a narrow white margin, while the latter has the same feathers barred with black and white alternately for nearly their whole length.

America possesses two species of the genus, the very large marbled godwit or marlin,L. fedoa, easily recognized by its size and the buff colour of its axillaries, and the smaller Hudsonian godwit,L. hudsonica, which has its axillaries of a deep black. This last, though less numerous than its congener, seems to range over the whole of the continent, breeding in the extreme north, while it has been obtained also in the Strait of Magellan and the Falkland Islands. The first seems not to go farther southward than the Antilles and the Isthmus of Panama.

From Asia, or at least its eastern part, two species have been described. One of them,L. melanuroides, differs only fromL. aegocephalain its smaller size, and is believed to breed in Amurland, wintering in the islands of the Pacific, New Zealand and Australia. The other,L. uropygialis, is closely allied to and often mistaken forL. lapponica, from which it chiefly differs by having the rump barred like the tail. This was found breeding in the extreme north of Siberia by Dr von Middendorff, and ranges to Australia, whence it was, like the last, first described by Gould.

(A. N.)

1This name seems to have survived in Whelp Moor, near Brandon, in Suffolk.

GOEBEN, AUGUST KARL VON(1816-1880), Prussian general of infantry, came of old Hanoverian stock. Born at Stade on the 10th of December 1816, he aspired from his earliest years to the Prussian service rather than that of his own country, and at the age of seventeen obtained a commission in the 24th regiment of Prussian infantry. But there was little scope there for the activities of a young and energetic subaltern, and, leaving the service in 1836, he entered the Carlist army campaigning in Spain. In the five campaigns which he made in the service of Don Carlos he had many and various vicissitudes of fortune. He had not fought for two months when he fell, severely wounded, into the hands of the Spanish Royal troops. After eight months’ detention he escaped, but it was not long before he was captured again. This time his imprisonment was long and painful, and on two occasions he was compelled to draw lots for his life with his fellow-captives. When released, he served till 1840 with distinction. In that year he made his way back, a beggar without means or clothing, to Prussia. The Carlist lieutenant-colonel was glad to be re-admitted into the Prussian service as a second lieutenant, but he was still young, and few subalterns could at the age of twenty-four claim five years’ meritorious war service. In a few years we find him serving as captain on the Great General Staff, and in 1848 he had the good fortune to be transferred to the staff of the IV. army corps, his immediate superior being Major von Moltke. The two “coming men” became fast friends, and their mutual esteem was never disturbed. In the Baden insurrection Goeben served with distinction on the staff of Prince William, the future emperor. Staff and regimental duty (as usual in the Prussian service) alternated for some years after this, till in 1863 he became major-general commanding the 26th infantry brigade. In 1860, it should be mentioned, he was present with the Spanish troops in Morocco, and took part in the battle of Tetuan.

In the first of Prussia’s great wars (1864) he distinguished himself at the head of his brigade at Rackebüll and Sonderburg. In the war of 1866 Lieutenant-General von Goeben commanded the 13th division, of which his old brigade formed part, and, in this higher sphere, once more displayed the qualities of a born leader and skilful tactician. He held almost independent command with conspicuous success in the actions of Dermbach, Laufach, Kissingen, Aschaffenburg, Gerchsheim, Tauber-Bischofsheim and Würzburg. The mobilization of 1870 placed him at the head of the VIII. (Rhineland) army corps, forming part of the First Army under Steinmetz. It was his resolute and energetic leading that contributed mainly to the victory of Spicheren (6th August), and won the only laurels gained on the Prussian right wing at Gravelotte (18th August). Under Manteuffel the VIII. corps took part in the operations about Amiens and Bapaume, and on the 8th of January 1871 Goeben succeeded that general in the command of the First Army, with which he had served throughout the campaign as a corps commander. A fortnight later he had brought the war in northern France to a brilliant conclusion, by the decisive victory of St Quentin (18th and 19th January 1871). The close of the Franco-German War left Goeben one of the most distinguished men in the victorious army. He was colonel of the 28th infantry, and had the grand cross of the Iron Cross. He commanded the VIII. corps at Coblenz until his death in 1880.

General von Goeben left many writings. His memoirs are to be found in his worksVier Jahre in Spanien(Hanover, 1841),Reise- und Lagerbriefe aus Spanien und vom spanischen Heere in Marokko(Hanover, 1863) and in the DarmstadtAllgemeine Militärzeitung. The former French port (Queuleu) at Metz was renamed Goeben after him, and the 28th infantry bears his name. A statue of Goeben by Schaper was erected at Coblenz in 1884.

See G. Zernin,Das Leben des Generals August von Goeben(2 vols., Berlin, 1895-1897); H. Barth,A. von Goeben(Berlin, 1906); and, for his share in the war of 1870-71; H. Kunz,Der Feldzug im N. und N.W. Frankreichs 1870-1871(Berlin, 1889), and the 14th Monograph of the Great General Staff (1891).

GOEJE, MICHAEL JAN DE(1836-1909), Dutch orientalist, was born in Friesland in 1836. He devoted himself at an early age to the study of oriental languages and became especially proficient in Arabic, under the guidance of Dozy and Juynboll, to whom he was afterwards an intimate friend and colleague. He took his degree of doctor at Leiden in 1860, and then studied for a year in Oxford, where he examined and collated the Bodleian MSS. of Idrīsī (part being published in 1866, in collaboration with R. P. Dozy, asDescription de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne). About the same time he wroteMémoires de l’histoire et de la géographie orientales, and editedExpugnatio regionum. In 1883, on the death of Dozy, he became Arabic professor at Leiden, retiring in 1906. He died on the 17th of May 1909. Though perhaps not a teacher of the first order, he wielded a great influence during his long professoriate not only over his pupils, but over theologians and eastern administrators who attended his lectures, and his many editions of Arabic texts have been of the highest value to scholars, the most important being his great edition of Ṭabarī. Though entirely averse from politics, he took a keen interest in the municipal affairs of Leiden and made a special study of elementary education. He took the leading part in the International Congress of Orientalists at Algiers in 1905. He was a member of the Institut de France, was awarded the German Order of Merit, and received an honorary doctorate of Cambridge University. At his death he was president of the newly formed International Association of Academies of Science. Among his chief works areFragmenta historicorum Arabicorum(1869-1871);Diwan of Moslim ibn al-Wālid(1875);Bibliotheca geographorum Arabicorum(1870-1894);Annals of Ṭabari(1879-1901); edition of Ibn Qutaiba’s biographies (1904); of the travels of Ibn Jubaye (1907, 5th vol. of Gibb Memorial). He was also the chief editor of theEncyclopaedia of Islam(vols. i.-iii.), and contributed many articles to periodicals. He wrote for the 9th and the present edition of theEncyclopaedia Britannica.

GOES, DAMIÃO DE(1502-1574), Portuguese humanist, was born of a patrician family at Alemquer, in February 1502. Under King John III. he was employed abroad for many years from 1523 on diplomatic and commercial missions, and he travelled over the greater part of Europe. He was intimate with the leading scholars of the time, was acquainted with Luther and other Protestant divines, and in 1532 became the pupil and friend of Erasmus. Goes took his degree at Padua in 1538 after a four years’ course. In 1537, at the instance of his friend Cardinal Sadoleto, he undertook to mediate between the Church and the Lutherans, but failed through the attitude of the Protestants. He married in Flanders a rich and noble Dutch lady, D. Joanna de Hargen, and settled at Louvain, then the literary centre of the Low Countries, where he was living in 1542 when the French besieged the town. He was given the command of the defending forces, and saved Louvain, but was taken prisoner and confined for nine months in France, till he obtained his freedom by a heavy ransom. He was rewarded, however, by a grant of arms from Charles V. He finally returned to Portugal in 1545, with a view of becoming tutor to the king’s son, but he failed to obtain this post, owing to the denunciations of Father Simon Rodriguez, provincial of the Jesuits, who accused Goes of favouring the Lutheran doctrines and of being a disciple of Erasmus. Nevertheless in 1548 he was appointed chief keeper of the archives and royal chronicler, and at once introduced some much-needed reforms into the administration of his office.

In 1558 he was given a commission to write a history of the reign of King Manoel, a task previously confided to João de Barros, but relinquished by him. It was an onerous undertaking for a conscientious historian, since it was necessary to exposethe miseries as well as relate the glories of the period, and so to offend some of the most powerful families. Goes had already written aChronicleof Prince John (afterwards John II.), and when, after more than eight years’ labour, he produced the First Part of hisChronicleof King Manoel (1566), a chorus of attacks greeted it, the edition was destroyed, and he was compelled to issue a revised version. He brought out the three other parts in 1566-1567, though chapters 23 to 27 of the Third Part were so mutilated by the censorship that the printed text differs largely from the MS. Hitherto Goes, notwithstanding his Liberalism, had escaped the Inquisition, though in 1540 hisFides, religio, moresque Aethiopumhad been prohibited by the chief inquisitor, Cardinal D. Henrique; but the denunciation of Father Rodriguez in 1545, which had been vainly renewed in 1550, was now brought into action, and in 1571 he was arrested to stand his trial. There seems to be no doubt that the Inquisition made itself on this occasion, as on others, the instrument of private enmity; for eighteen months Goes lay ill in prison, and then he was condemned, though he had lived for thirty years as a faithful Catholic, and the worst that could be proved against him was that in his youth he had spoken against Indulgences, disbelieved in auricular confession, and consorted with heretics. He was sentenced to a term of reclusion, and his property was confiscated to the crown. After he had abjured his errors in private, he was sent at the end of 1572 to do penance at the monastery of Batalha. Later he was allowed to return home to Alemquer, where he died on the 30th of January 1574. He was buried in the church of Nossa Senhora da Varzea.

Damião de Goes was a man of wide culture and genial and courtly manners, a skilled musician and a good linguist. He wrote both Portuguese and Latin with classic strength and simplicity, and his style is free from affectation and rhetorical ornaments. His portrait by Albrecht Dürer shows an open, intelligent face, and the record of his life proves him to have been upright and fearless. His prosperity doubtless excited ill-will, but above all, his ideas, advanced for Portugal, his foreign ways, outspokenness and honesty contributed to the tragedy of his end, at a time when the forces of ignorant reaction held the ascendant. He had, it may be presumed, given some umbrage to the court by condemning, in theChronicle of King Manoel, the royal ingratitude to distinguished public servants, though he received a pension and other rewards for that work, and he had certainly offended the nobility by his administration of the archive office and by exposing false genealogical claims in hisNobiliario. He paid the penalty for telling the truth, as he knew it, in an age when an historian had to choose between flattery of the great and silence. TheChronicle of King Manoelwas the first official history of a Portuguese reign to be written in a critical spirit, and Damião de Goes has the honour of having been the first Portuguese royal chronicler to deserve the name of an historian.

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