Education will proceed with a firm step and with genuine lustre when those who conduct it shall know what a vast field it embraces; when they shall be aware that the effect, the question whether the pupil shall be a man of perseverance and enterprise or a stupid and inanimate dolt, depends upon the powers of those under whose direction he is placed, and the skill with which those powers shall be applied. Industry will be exerted with tenfold alacrity when it shall be generally confessed that there are no obstacles to our improvement which do not yield to the powers of industry. Multitudes will never exert the energy necessary to extraordinary success till they shall dismiss the prejudices that fetter them, get rid of the chilling system of occult and inexplicable causes, and consider the human mind as an intelligent agent, guided by motives and prospects presented to the

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. From the Portrait by John Opie, R.A.

understanding, and not by causes of which we have no proper cognisance and can form no calculation.

Apply these considerations to the subject of politics, and they will authorise us to infer that the excellencies and defects of the human character are not derived from causes beyond the reach of ingenuity to modify and correct. If we entertain false views and be involved in pernicious mistakes, this disadvantage is not the offspring of an irresistible destiny. We have been ignorant, we have been hasty, or we have been misled. Remove the causes of this ignorance or this miscalculation, and the effects will cease. Show me in the clearest and most unambiguous manner that a certain mode of proceeding is most reasonable in itself or most conducive to my interest, and I shall infallibly pursue that mode, as long as the views you suggested to me continue present to my mind. The conduct of human beings in every situation is governed by the judgments they make and the sensations that are communicated to them.

See, besides the Life by Mr Kegan Paul above cited (1876), Hazlitt's Spirit of the Age (1825), Mr Leslie Stephen's English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876), and the Shelley literature generally, as well as the works named in the article below on Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (1759-97), the protomartyr of the Rights of Women, was born at Hoxton of Irish extraction, the second of six children. Her father was a drunken ne'erdo-weel who squandered £10,000, and was always shifting about. At nineteen Mary went out to earn her own livelihood, and for ten years was a companion at Bath, a schoolmistress at Newington Green, and governess in Lord Kingsborough's family at Mitchelstown, Dublin, and Bristol. Of those ten years the chief events were her mother's death (1780); the flight of a sister, with Mary's help, from a brutal husband (1784); and a visit to Lisbon to nurse a dying friend (1785). Then in 1788, about which time she gave up churchgoing, she turned translator and literary adviser to Johnson, the London publisher, who the year before had paid her ten guineas for her Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. In this capacity she became acquainted, not only with the literati of the day, but with reformers-Paine, Priestley, and the painter Fuseli. That acquaintance bore twofold fruit. On the one hand, in 1791, she produced her Answer to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution, and in 1792 her l'indication of the Rights of Woman, a book, dedicated to Talleyrand, which made her both famous and infamous. On the other hand, her friendship for Fuseli ripened into love, and 'to snap the chain of this association' (for Fuseli was a married man) she started alone for Paris in the winter of 1792. There, as a witness of the 'Terror,' she collected materials for her valuable but never-finished Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution (vol. i. 1794); and there, in April 1793, she met Captain Gilbert Imlay, an American timber-merchant and author of a book on the western territory of the American Union. In April 1794 at Havre she bore him a daughter, Fanny; in November 1795, after a four months' visit to Scandinavia as his 'wife' and accredited agent, she tried to drown herself from Putney Bridge. Imlay, whom she adored, had cruelly deserted her. But soon she resumed her old tasks; soon (in nine months' time) she was living, or rather not living, with Godwin, for both kept their separate lodgings in Somerstown. They had first met in 1791. In August 1797, five months after their marriage, she gave birth to a daughter, Mary, who became Shelley's second wife; in September she died (see the articles on Godwin and on Shelley).

The Vindication, whose text is the equality of the sexes, is a curious medley of genius and turgidity, religion and over-outspokenness; it was years in advance of its age, if only in its advocacy of government day-schools. Among her other writings were Original Stories for Chil dren (1791; illustrated by Blake); Letters written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796), and Posthumous Works (4 vols. 1798), these last comprising The Wrongs

of Woman: or Maria, a Fragment, and the passionate Letters to Imlay.

Mr Kegan Paul's edition of these Letters (1879) has a Memoir of her; see also the Memoirs by Godwin (1798) and by Mrs Pennell (Eminent Women' series, 1885). The Vindication was reprinted with an introduction by Mrs Pennell in the Scott Library (1892).

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834), author of the Essay on the Principle of Population, was born of good family at his father's estate near Dorking, became a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and in 1797 curate at Albury in Surrey. In 1798 he published anonymously his famous Essay, of which in 1803 he brought out a greatly enlarged and altered edition. In it he maintained that the optimistic hopes of Rousseau and Godwin are rendered baseless by the natural tendency of population to increase faster than the means of subsistence. The only limit to its increase is the want of room and food. With man, the instinct of propagation is controlled by reason; but even in his case the ultimate check to population is the want of food, though there are both preventive and positive checks-the preventive being moral restraint or prophylactic methods. The positive checks include unwholesome occupations, severe labour, extreme poverty, bad nursing, large towns, excesses of all kinds, diseases and epidemics, wars, plague, and famine. Malthus gives no sanction to the theories and practices currently known as Malthusianism. An amiable and benevolent man, he suffered much misrepresentation and abuse at the hands of both revolutionaries and conservatives. The problem had been handled by Franklin, Hume, and many other writers, but Malthus crystallised the views of those writers, and presented them in systematic form with elaborate proofs derived from history. Darwin saw, 'on reading Malthus On Population, that natural selection was the inevitable result of the rapid increase of all organic beings,' for such rapid increase necessarily leads to the struggle for existence; and Mr H. G. Wells, most audacious of those who have a prophetic glimpse of the future reconstruction of social conditions, describes the Essay as the most 'shattering' book that ever has been or will be written. In 1804 Malthus married happily, and next year was appointed Professor of Political Economy and Modern History in the East India college at Haileybury, a post which he occupied till his death. He wrote other two important works, An Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent (1815), largely anticipating Ricardo, and Principles of Political Economy (1820). Thus Malthus states part of his thesis in the first chapter of the Essay:

It may safely be pronounced, therefore, that population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ratio.

The rate according to which the productions of the earth may be supposed to increase, it will not be so easy to determine. Of this, however, we may be perfectly

certain, that the ratio of their increase must be totally of a different nature from the ratio of the increase of population. . .

That we may be the better able to compare the increase of population and food, let us make a supposition which, without pretending to accuracy, is clearly more favourable to the power of production in the earth than any experience we have had of its qualities will warrant.

Let us suppose that the yearly additions which might be made to the former average produce, instead of decreasing, which they certainly would do, were to remain the same; and that the produce of this island might be increased every twenty-five years, by a quantity equal to what it at present produces. The most enthu siastic speculator cannot suppose a greater increase than this. In a few centuries it would make every acre of land in the island like a garden.

If this supposition be applied to the whole earth, and if it be allowed that the subsistence for man which the earth affords might be increased every twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what it at present produces, this will be supposing a rate of increase much greater than we can imagine that any possible exertions of mankind could make it.

It may be fairly pronounced, therefore, that, considering the present average state of the earth, the means of subsistence, under circumstances the most favourable to human industry, could not possibly be made to increase faster than in an arithmetical ratio.

The necessary effects of these two different rates of increase, when brought together, will be very striking. Let us call the population of this island eleven millions; and suppose the present produce equal to the easy support of such a number. In the first twenty-five years the population would be twenty-two millions, and the food being also doubled, the means of subsistence would be equal to this increase. In the next twenty-five years the population would be forty-four millions, and the means of subsistence only equal to the support of thirtythree millions. In the next period the population would be eighty-eight millions, and the means of subsistence just equal to the support of half of that number. And at the conclusion of the first century the population would be a hundred and seventy-six millions, and the means of subsistence only equal to the support of fifty-five millions, leaving a population of a hundred and twenty-one ' millions totally unprovided for.

Taking the whole earth, instead of this island, emigration would of course be excluded; and, supposing the present population equal to a thousand millions, the human species would increase as the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and subsistence as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. In two centuries the population would be to the means of subsistence as 256 to 9; in three centuries as 4096 to 13, and in two thousand years the difference would be almost incalculable.

In this supposition no limits whatever are placed to the produce of the earth. It may increase for ever, and be greater than any assignable quantity; yet still the power of population being in every period so much superior, the increase of the human species can only be kept down to the level of the means of subsistence by the constant operation of the strong law of necessity, acting as a check upon the greater power.

See Bonar's Malthus and his Work (1885).

George Alexander Stevens (1710-84), author of A Lecture upon Heads, dramatic sketches of contemporary follies, and of the famous song, Cease, rude Boreas, blustering railer,' was bred a London tradesman, became an unsuccessful actor, and secured a precarious livelihood by writing poems, poor dramas, burlesques, skits, and humorous miscellanies,' and by giving singlehanded entertainments,' a department of song, speech, and extravaganza in which he was pioneer. In a collection of songs by various hands published by him, 'Hearts of Oak' was first definitely ascribed to Garrick.

a

Charles Dibdin (1745-1814), writer and composer of many famous songs, was born at Southampton, early attracted notice by his singing, and, still a boy, composed an operetta, The Shepherd's Artifice, which was produced at Covent Garden in 1762. He subsequently lived an unsettled life as an actor and composer of stage-music, and on occasion sang and accompanied himself on his own instrument. He quarrelled frequently and violently with patrons like Garrick, made himself impossible under Sheridan's management at Drury Lane, neglected his first wife, and cherished irregular relations with various other women. In 1788 he commenced a series of musical entertainments (sometimes diversified with equestrian feats), which acquired great celebrity; the first was entitled The Whim of the Moment. He retired in 1805 with a pension of £200 granted him two years before; it was withdrawn in 1807, when he returned to public life with unfortunate financial results. Dibdin wrote nearly a hundred sea-songs, 'the solace of sailors in long voyages, in storms, and in battles'—among the best 'Poor Jack' and 'Tom Bowling ;' one of the first, 'Blow high, blow low,' in Dibdin's piece called Seraglio in 1776, sung was brought to birth during a gale on the return voyage from Calais, whither he had fled to escape a debtor's prison. Seamen are wont to say it is only too obvious that his sea-songs are songs written about the sea and about seamen, not by one of themselves, but by a typical landsman. Another famous song of the inexhaustible versewriter is The Anchorsmiths.' He also wrote nearly seventy dramatic pieces.

Tom Bowling.

Here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling,
The darling of our crew;

No more he 'll hear the tempest howling,
For Death has broached him to.
His form was of the manliest beauty,
His heart was kind and soft;
Faithful below he did his duty,
But now he's gone aloft.

Tom never from his word departed,

His virtues were so rare;

His friends were many and true-hearted,
His Poll was kind and fair:

And then he'd sing so blithe and jolly;
Ah, many 's the time and oft!
But mirth is turned to melancholy,
For Tom is gone aloft.

Yet shall poor Tom find pleasant weather,
When He, who all commands,

Shall give, to call life's crew together,

The word to pipe all hands.

Thus Death, who kings and tars despatches,
In vain Tom's life has doffed;

For though his body's under hatches,
His soul is gone aloft.

Poor Jack.

Go, patter to lubbers and swabs, do you see,
'Bout danger, and fear, and the like;

A tight-water boat and good sea-room give me,
And it a'nt to a little I'll strike.

Though the tempest top-gallant mast smack smooth should smite,

And shiver each splinter of wood,

Clear the deck, stow the yards, and bouse everything tight, And under reefed foresail we'll scud:

Avast! nor don't think me a milksop so soft,

To be taken for trifles aback;

For they say there's a Providence sits up aloft,
To keep watch for the life of poor Jack !

I heard our good chaplain palaver one day
About souls, heaven, mercy, and such ;
And, my timbers! what lingo he 'd coil and belay;
Why, 'twas just all as one as High Dutch;
For he said how a sparrow can't founder, d'ye see,
Without orders that come down below;
And a many fine things that proved clearly to me
That providence takes us in tow:

For, says he, do you mind me, let storms e'er so oft
Take the top-sails of sailors aback,

There's a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft,
To keep watch for the life of poor Jack !

Two of his sons, Charles (1768-1833) and Thomas John (17711841), wrote songs and dramas. See Dibdin's Autobiography (4 vols. 1803) and The Dibdins, by E. R. Dibdin (1888).

John Collins, actor, entertainer, and songwriter, was humbly born at Bath; was bred a staymaker but became a fairly successful actor: and from 1775 till the end of the century gave in London and elsewhere popular entertainments which were a medley of anecdotes, theatrical reminiscences, jokes, mock-heroic speeches, sentiments, and caricature of Scotsmen, Irishmen, and Welshmen. He died in 1808, having for some years been part-proprietor of a Birmingham newspaper, in which his songs (some of them represented in anthologies like Palgrave's and Locker-Lampson's) were originally published. One 'truly noble poem,' To-morrow, was obviously suggested by Walter Pope's Old Man's Wish (see page 98).

To-morrow.

In the downhill of life, when I find I'm declining,
May my lot no less fortunate be
Than a snug elbow-chair can afford for reclining,
And a cot that o'erlooks the wide sea;

With an ambling pad-pony to pace o'er the lawn,

While I carol away idle sorrow,

And blithe as the lark that each day hails the dawn,
Look forward with hope for to-morrow.

With a porch at my door, both for shelter and shade too,
As the sunshine or rain may prevail ;

And a small spot of ground for the use of the spade too, With a barn for the use of the flail :

A cow for my dairy, a dog for my game,

And a purse when a friend wants to borrow;

I'll envy no nabob his riches or fame,

Nor what honours await him to-morrow.

From the bleak northern blast may my cot be completely
Secured by a neighbouring hill;

And at night may repose steal upon me more sweetly
By the sound of a murmuring rill:

And while peace and plenty I find at my board,
With a heart free from sickness and sorrow,
With my friends may I share what to-day may afford,
And let them spread the table to-morrow.

And when I at last must throw off this frail covering
Which I've worn for three-score years and ten,

On the brink of the grave I'll not seek to keep hovering,
Nor my thread wish to spin o'er again :

But my face in the glass I'll serenely survey,

And with smiles count each wrinkle and furrow; As this old worn-out stuff which is threadbare to-day, May become everlasting to-morrow.

Scripserapologia, or Collins's Doggerel Dish of all Sorts (1804), is a volume of his poems.

Thomas Morton (1764-1838), dramatist, was born in Durham, and quitted Lincoln's Inn for play-writing. For thirty-five years he lived at Pangbourn near Reading, and finally settled in London, where he died. Between his first drama, Columbus (1792), and his musical farce, The Invincibles (1828), he produced some five-andtwenty pieces, besides others written in collaboration with his son. Many of them were very successful, and had parts in them which became famous. Speed the Plough, acted at Covent Garden forty-one times in 1798 and repeatedly revived, is a five-act comedy with some of the worst faults of transpontine melodrama; it is illconstructed, and the incidents are not led up to; the personages behave in an incredibly irrational manner, and often snivel, drivel, and talk fustian. But it contains some happy strokes, and had the luck of introducing Mrs Grundy to the world. In the play she does not specifically appear in the character the world has insisted in associating with her name. She is by no means the incarnation of suspicion and censoriousness, of narrowmindedness and philistine prejudice. On the contrary, she is simply the neighbour farmer's worthy wife, of whom Dame Ashfield is just a little jealous.

Dame Ashfield is annoyed when

Mrs Grundy's butter is praised as the best in the market; she is pleased, if she receives a compliment, that Mrs Grundy should be there to hear it ; and feels that her happiness at the splendour of her own pretty daughter's marriage to a gentleman of

rank will not be complete unless Mrs Grundy is there to witness it, and be a little humbled in consequence. Mrs Grundy, so far from being a universal or spiteful censor morum, is from her various and undisputed excellences an inevitable standard of reference in Dame Ashfield's mind and conversation, to the great annoyance of Farmer Ashfield. The farmer has nothing to say against Mrs Grundy herself; it is in his wife he sees signs of an unamiable temper. Mrs Grundy never actually appears in the play, but is referred to in the following passages, and in them only.

Mrs Grundy.

FARMER ASHFIELD on a stool, with his pipe and jug on the table. Enter DAME ASHFIELD, basket on arm. Ashfield. Well, dame, welcome whoam. What news does thee bring vrom market?

Dame. What news, husband? What I have always told thee; that Farmer Grundy's wheat brought five shillings a quarter more than ours did.

Ash. All the better vor he.

Dame. Ah! the sun seems to shine on purpose for him. Ash. Come, come, Missus, as thee has not the grace to thank God for prosperous times, dan't thee grumble when they be unkindly a bit.

Dame. And I assure thee, Dame Grundy's butter was quite the crack of the market.

Ash. Be quiet, woolye? always ding dinging Dame Grundy into my ears-what will Mrs Grundy zay? What will Mrs Grundy think? Canst thee be quiet, let her alone, and behave thyself pratty? Dame. Certainly I can-I'll tell thee, Tummus, what she said at church last Sunday.

Ash. Canst thee tell what parson zaid? Noa! Then I'll tell thee. A' zaid that envy were as foul a weed as grows, and cankers all wholesome plants that be near it -that's what a zaid.

Dame. And do you think I envy Mrs Grundy, indeed? Ash. Why dan't thee letten her alone then? I do verily think when thee goest to t'other world, the vurst question thee'll ax 'ill be, if Mrs Grundy's there? Zoa be quiet, and behave pratty, doo 'e. Has thee brought whoam the Salisbury News?

Dame. No, Tummus; but I have brought a rare budget of news with me. First and foremost, I saw such a mort of coaches, servants, and wagons, all belonging to Sir Abel Handy, and all coming to the castle; and a handsome young man, dressed all in lace, pull'd off his hat to me, and said, 'Mrs Ashfield, do me the honour of presenting that letter to your husband.' So there he stood without his hat. Oh, Tummus, had you seen how Mrs Grundy looked.

read,

Ash. Dom Mrs Grundy; be quiet, and let woolye? [Reads.] My dear Farmer' [taking off his hat]. Thankye, zur; zame to you wi' all my heart and soul. My dear Farmer'

Dame. Farmer-why, thee're blind, Tummus-it is 'My dear Feyther '- 'Tis from our own dear Susan.

Ash. Odds! dickens and daizies! zoo it be, zure enow! 'My dear Feyther, you will be surprised '-Zoo I be, he, he! what pretty writing, beant it? all as straight as thof it were ploughed-'surprised to hear that in a few hours I shall embrace you. Nelly, who was formerly our servant, has fortunately married Sir Abel Handy Bart.'

Dame. Handy Bart-pugh! Bart. stands for Baronight, mun.

Ash. Likely, likely. Drabbit it, only to think of the zwaps and changes of this world!

Dame. Our Nelly married to a great baronet! I wonder, Tummus, what Mrs Grundy will say?

Ash. Now, woolye be quiet and let I read-' And she has proposed bringing me to see you; an offer, I hope, as acceptable to my dear feyther'

Dame. And mother'

Ash. Bless her, how prettily she do write 'feyther,' dan't she?

Dame. And 'mother.'

Ash. Ees, but feyther first, though-'as acceptable to my dear feyther and mother as to their affectionate daughter, Susan Ashfield.'

A facetious personage in the play, seeing Dame Ashfield making lace on a pillow, opens the conversation thus:

Bob. How do you do? How do you do? Making lace, I perceive. Is it a common employment here?

Dame. Oh, no, sir; nobody can make it in these parts but myself. Mrs Grundy, indeed, pretends; but, poor woman, she knows no more of it than you do.

Bob. Than I do? that's vastly well. My dear madam, I passed two months at Mechlin for the express purpose. Dame. Indeed!

Bob. You don't do it right; now I can do it much better than that. Give me leave, and I'll show you the true Mechlin method. [Turns the cushion round, kneels down, and begins working.] First you see, so-then so

Even at the next mention of her name, Mrs Grundy is simply a respected neighbour, not a prude or hypocrite :

Ash. I tell ye, I zee'd un gi' Susan a letter, an' I dan't like it a bit.

Dame. Nor I;-if shame should come to the poor child —I say, Tummus, what would Mrs Grundy say then? Ash. Dom Mrs Grundy; what would my poor wold heart say? but I be bound it be all innocence.

When the brave farmer and his wife refuse to turn out of their house, at the wicked baronet's command, the (unrevealed) son of the baronet's brother and victim, the wicked baronet proceeds to sell up the farmer, who is in his debt. The farmer and his wife talk over the unpleasant prospect.

Ash. Drabbit it! what can he do? he can't send us to gaol. Why, I have corn will sell for half the money I do owe 'un-and han't I cattle and sheep?-deadly lean, to be sure and han't I a thumping zilver watch, almost as big as thy head? and Dame here ha' got silk gowns have thee got, Dame?

How many

Dame. Three, Tummus-and sell them all, and I'll go to church in a stuff one, and let Mrs Grundy turn up her nose as much as she pleases.

By a well-nigh miraculous intervention the tide turns, and a wealthy suitor asks the farmer's daughter in marriage.

Ash. Drabbit, I shall walk in the road all day to zee Sue ride by in her own coach.

Susan. You must ride with me, father.

Dame. I say, Tummus, what will Mrs Grundy say then?

And a little farther on :

Ash. Bless her, how nicely she do trip it away with the gentry!

Dame. And then, Tummus, think of the wedding.

Ash. [Reflecting.] I declare I shall be just the zame ever-maybe, may buy a smartish bridle, or a zilver backy-stopper, or the like o' that.

Dame. [Apart.] And then, when we come out of church, Mrs Grundy will be standing about there. Ash. I shall shake hands agreeably wi' all my friends. [Apart.]

Dame. [Apart]. Then I just look at her in this

manner.

Ash. [Apart, and bowing towards centre.] How dost do, Peter? Ah, Dick! glad to zee thee, wi' all my zoul! Dame. [Apart.] Then, with a kind of half curtsey, I shall[They bump against each other. Ash. What an wold fool thee beest, dame! Come along, and behave pratty, do'e. [Exeunt. Frederic Reynolds (1764-1841), produced about a hundred plays, tragic or comic, of which some twenty were popular for a time at least. He was the son of a London merchant, and was educated at Westminster School; but he left law for dramatic work, Werter (1785), based on Goethe, being his first piece. But the bulk of his work was in comedy, and his most successful play was The Dramatist (1789). In The Caravan, produced by Sheridan at Drury Lane, a live dog was made to save a child from drowning in real water, and, as Sheridan said, saved the theatre too, when at a crisis, by its success. Reynolds published an Autobiography in 1826.

John Tobin (1770-1804) was an unlucky dramatist, who spent weary years in trying to get his plays accepted, and seeing them successively rejected till the very year of his death, when his Honey Moon, his fourteenth piece, was not merely accepted at Drury Lane, but secured a success it maintained for twenty years. Tobin, born in Salisbury, was articled to a solicitor in Lincoln's Inn, and practised law there while producing his plays. The Honey Moon, a comedy mostly in verse, was translated into French by Charles Nodier; other comedies, in prose or verse, were The Curfew, The Connoisseur, and The Faro Table. A volume of his plays was published in 1820, with a Life by Miss Benger.

William Barnes Rhodes (1772-1826), born in Leeds, became a chief teller in the Bank of England, and is barely remembered in literature as the author of a once popular burlesque, Bombastes Furioso; for of the many who know the title of the piece and have some notion of the character of the mouthing braggart who is its hero, comparatively few know anything about the author. The title is obviously a play on Orlando Furioso, and the design is similar to that of Carey's Chrononhotonthologos, though the plot is, if possible, sillier