ir council, whether the duke should return to Scotland before the parliament met, he joined in the advice for his going away; and though the rest of the council were of the contrary opinion, yet the king acquiesced in his and lord Sunderland's reasons. In April 1664 he was appointed one of the secretaries of state, which he soon resigned for the office of first commissioner of the treasury, and was created baron Godolphin of Rialton in Cornwall. He had hitherto sat in the house of commons as representative for Helston and for St. Mawe's.

On the accession of James II. he was appointed lord chamberlain to the queen, and on the removal of the earl of Rochester, was again made one of the commissioners of the treasury. On the landing of the prince of Orange, he was one of the commissioners sent by king James to treat with that prince, which employment he discharged with great address and prudence. In the debate concerning the vacancy of the throne, after the abdication of king James, his lordship, out of a regard to the succession, voted for a regency; yet when king William was advanced to the throne, his majesty appointed him one of the lords commissioners of the treasury, and a privy-councillor, and in 1690 he was appointed first lord of the treasury. In 1695, he was one of the seven lords justices for the administration of the government, during the king's absence, as he was likewise the year following, and again in 1701, when he was restored to the place of first commissioner of the treasury, from which he had been removed in 1697. On the accession of queen Anne, he was constituted lord high treasurer, which post he had long refused to accept, till the earl of Marlborough pressed him in so positive a manner, that he declared, he could not go to the continent to command the armies, unless the treasury was put into his hands; for then he was sure that remittances would be punctually made to him. Under his lordship's administration of this high office, the public credit was raised, the war carried on with success, and the nation satisfied with his prudent management. He omitted nothing that could engage the subject to bear the burthen of the war with chearfulness; and it was owing to his advice, that the queen contributed one hundred thousand pounds out of her civil list towards it. He was also one of those faithful and able counsellors, who advised her majesty to declare in council against the selling of offices and places in her VOL. XVI.

E

household and family, as highly dishonourable to herself, prejudicial to her service, and a discouragement to virtue and true merit, which alone ought and should recommend persons to her royal approbation. And so true a friend was his lordship to the established church, that considering how meanly great numbers of the clergy were provided for, he prevailed upon her majesty to settle her revenue of the first-fruits and tenths for the augmentation of the

small vicarages. In July 1704 he was made knight of the

garter; and in December 1706, advanced to the dignity of earl of Godolphin and viscount Rialton. But notwithstanding all his great services to the public, on the 8th of August 1710, he was removed from his post of lord high

treasurer.

He died at St. Alban's of the stone, on the 15th of September 1712, and was interred in Westminster-abbey. By his lady, Margaret, daughter of Thomas Blague, esq. he had issue Francis, second earl of Godolphin, on whose death the title became extinct.

Bishop Burnet says,. "that he was the silentest and modestest man, who was perhaps ever bred in a court. He had a clear apprehension, and dispatched business with great method, and with so much temper, that he had no personal enemies. But his silence begot a jealousy, which hung long upon him. His notions were for the court; but his incorrupt and sincere way of managing the concerns of the treasury created in all people a very high esteem for him. He had true principles of religion and virtue, and never heaped up wealth. So that, all things being laid together, he was one of the worthiest and wisest men, who was employed in that age." In another place the same historian observes, "that he was a man of the clearest head, the calmest temper, and the most incorrupt of all the ministers he had ever known; and that after having been thirty years in the treasury, and during nine of those lord treasurer, as he was never once suspected of corruption, or of suffering his servants to grow rich under him, so in all that time his estate was not increased by him to the value of four thousand pounds." It is also said, that he had a penetrating contemplative genius, a slow, but unerring apprehension, and an exquisite judgment, with few words, though always to the purpose. He was temperate in his diet. His superior wisdom and spirit made him despise the low arts of vain-glorious courtiers; for he

He

never kept suitors unprofitably in suspense, nor promised any thing, that he was not resolved to perform; but as he accounted dissimulation the worst of lying, so on the other hand his denials were softened by frankness and condescension to those whom he could not gratify. His great abilities and consummate experience qualified him for a prime minister; and his exact knowledge of all the branches of the revenue particularly fitted him for the management of the treasury. He was thrifty without the least tincture of avarice, being as good an economist of the public wealth, as he was of his private fortune. had a clear conception of the whole government, both in church and state; and perfectly knew the temper, genius, and disposition of the English nation. And though his stern gravity appeared a little ungracious, yet his steady and impartial justice recommended him to the esteem of almost every person; so that no man, in so many different public stations, and so great a variety of business, ever had more friends, or fewer enemies. Dean Swift's character of him is not so favourable, and in our references may be found many other opposite opinions of his merit and abilities. He had a brother of some poetical talent, noticed

by Mr. Ellis.'

GODWIN (MARY), better known by the name of WOOLLSTONECRAFT, a lady of very extraordinary genius, but whose history and opinions are unhappily calculated to excite a mixture of admiration, pity, and scorn, was born in or near London, April 27, 1759, of poor parents, who then resided at Epping, but afterwards removed to a farm near Beverley in Yorkshire, where this daughter frequented a day-school in the neighbourhood. From this place her father again removed to Hoxton near London, and afterwards to Walworth. During all this time, and until Miss Woollstonecraft arrived at her twenty-fourth year, there appears little that is interesting, or extraordinary in her history, unless it may be considered as such that she early affected an original way of thinking, accompanied with correspondent actions, and entertained a high and romantic sense of friendship, which seems greatly to have prevailed over filial affection. In her twenty-fourth year, she formed the plan of conducting a school at Islington, in conjunc

Birch's Lives.-Rapin's England, Continuation.-Swift's Works; see Index.-Coxe's Life of Walpole.-Ellis's Specimens,

tion with her sisters, which in the course of a few months she removed to Newington-green, where she was honoured by the friendship of Dr. Price. Of her opinions on religious subjects at this time, we have the following singular account from her biographer: "Her religion was, in reality, little allied to any system of forms, and was rather founded in taste, than in the niceties of polemical discussion. Her mind constitutionally attached itself to the sublime and amiable. She found an inexpressible delight in the beauties of nature, and in the splendid reveries of the imagination. But nature itself, she thought, would be no better than a vast blank, if the mind of the observer did not supply it with an animating soul. When she walked amidst the wonders of nature, she was accustomed to converse with her God. To her mind he was pictured as not less amiable, generous, and kind, than great, wise, and exalted. In fact she had received few lessons of religion in her youth, and her religion was almost entirely of her own creation. But she was not on that account the less attached to it, or the less scrupulous in discharging what she considered as its duties. She could not recollect the time when she had believed the doctrine of future punishments," &c.

In 1785, a Mrs. Skeggs, with whom she had contracted an ardent friendship, and who resided at Lisbon, being pregnant, Miss Woollstonecraft, shocked with the idea that she might die in childbed at a distance from her friends, passed over to Lisbon to attend her, leaving the school under the management of her sisters; an exertion of friendship the more entitled to praise that it proved hurtful to her school, which soon after her return she was compelled to abandon. Perhaps, however, this was not wholly a matter of compulsion, for we are told that "she had rooted aversion to that sort of cohabitation with her sisters, which the project of the school imposed." She now appears to have meditated literary employment as a source of profit, and exhibited a specimen of her talents in a 12mo pamphlet, entitled "Thoughts on the Education of Daughters," for the copy-right of which she obtained the sum of ten guineas from the late Mr. Johnson, bookseller, of St. Paul's church-yard, who afterwards proved one of her most liberal patrons. After this she was employed for some months, as a governess, in the family of an Irish nobleman, at the gud of which she returned again to literary

pursuits, and from 1787, when she came to reside in Lon don, produced "Mary, a Fiction," "Original Stories from real life," made some translations from the French, and compiled "The Female Reader," on the model of Dr. Enfield's "Speaker." She wrote also some articles in the "Analytical Review," which was established by her publisher, in 1788.

In the French revolution which took place in the following year, and which let loose all kinds of principles and opinions except what had stood the test of experience, Miss Woollstonecraft found much that was congenial with her own ways of thinking, and much which it will appear soon she determined to introduce in her conduct. She was therefore among the first who attempted to answer Mr. Burke's celebrated "Reflections on the French Revolution," and displayed a share of ability which made her reputation more general than it had yet been. This was followed by her "Vindication of the Rights of Woman," in which she unfolded many a wild theory on the duties and character of her sex. How well she was qualified to guide them appeared now in the practical use of her own precepts, of which the first specimen was the formation of a violent attachment for a very eminent artist, which is thus embellished by her biographer: "She saw Mr. Fuseli frequently; he amused, delighted, and instructed her. As a painter, it was impossible she should not wish to see his works, and consequently to frequent his house. She visited him; her visits were returned. Notwithstanding the inequality of their years, Mary was not of a temper to live upon terms of so much intimacy with a man of merit and genius, without loving him. The delight she enjoyed in his society, she transferred by association to his person. What she experienced in this respect, was no doubt heightened, by the state of celibacy and restraint in which she had hitherto lived, and to which the rules of polished society condemn an unmarried woman. She conceived a personal and ardent affection for him. Mr. Fuseli was a married man, and his wife the acquaintance of Mary. She readily perceived the restrictions which this circumstance seemed to impose upon her, but she made light of any difficulty that might arise out of them." Notwithstanding this contempt for difficulties, Mr. Fuseli was not to be won, and in order to get rid of a passion which he would not indulge, she went over to France in 1792. Here within a few months she