GODWIN, MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, an English authoress, and first to publicly assert the Rights of Women, born at Hoxton, of humble Irish parentage; at 19 she began to support herself by teaching, and continued to do so till 1788, when she established herself in London to push her way as a writer, having already published “Thoughts on the Education of Daughters”; in 1791 she replied to Burke’s “Reflections,” and in the following year appeared her famous “Vindication of the Rights of Women”; while in Paris in 1793 she formed a liaison with an American, Captain Imlay, whose cruel desertion of her two years later induced her to attempt suicide by drowning; in 1796 she became attached to William Godwin, a friend of five years’ standing, and with him lived for some months, although, in accord with their own pronounced opinions, no marriage ceremony had been performed; in deference to the opinions of others, however, they departed from this position, and a marriage was duly celebrated five months before the birth of their daughter Mary (Shelley’s second wife); contemporary opinion shows her to have been generous and gentle of nature, and animated throughout by a noble zeal for the welfare of humanity (1759-1797).

GODWIN, WILLIAM, a political writer and novelist, the son of a Presbyterian minister, born at Wisbeach, Somersetshire; was educated for the Church, and was for five years in the ministry; during this period his opinions on politics and religion underwent a radical change, and when in 1787 he threw up his holy office to engage in literature, he had become a republican in the one and a free-thinker in the other; various works had come from his pen, including three novels, before his celebrated “Political Justice” appeared in 1793, “Caleb Williams,” a novel, and his best-known work, being published in the following year; in 1797 he married Mary Wollstonecraft (See preceding), who died the same year, and four years later he married a widow, Mrs. Clement; to the close of his long life he was a prolific writer on literary, historical, and political subjects, but his carelessness and lack of business habits left him little profit from all his literary activity; his writings are clear and vigorous in the expression, if visionary and impracticable in theory (1756-1836).

GOETHE, JOHANN WOLFGANG VON, a great poet and wise man, the greatest, it is alleged, the world has seen since Shakespeare left it, and who, being born in Frankfort-on-the-Main 10 years before Robert Burns, died in the small duchy of Weimar the same year as Sir Walter Scott; was the son of an imperial chancellor, a formal man and his pedagogue in boyhood, and of Elizabeth Textor, daughter of the chief magistrate of the city, a woman of bright intelligence, who was only eighteen at the time of his birth.  Spiritually and bodily he was the most perfectly formed, symetrically proportioned, justly balanced, and completely cultivated man perhaps that ever lived, whose priceless value