My own belief is that he took more simply and openly the path which most of us take, and that impartial inquiry with him, as with nearly every one, meant simply discovering what he had really thought all along.
Another influence must be noticed here. M. Legouis dwells upon Wordsworth's relations to Godwin. There is not much direct evidence upon this matter; and I have some doubt whether M. Legouis does not rather overstate the case. But, in the main, I think that he is substantially right. That is to say, when Wordsworth set about what he called thinking, I suppose that Godwin's philosophy would represent political theory for him. Godwin's philosophy was transmuted by Shelley into something very exquisite if rather nonsensical, and probably is now remembered, when remembered at all, chiefly for that reason. Hazlitt, however, in his slashing way tells us that Godwin was at this period the 'very god of our idolatry'; Tom Paine was considered for a time a fool to him; Paley an old woman; Edmund Burke 'a flashy sophist' (Spirit of the Age, p. 33). Wordsworth, in particular, he adds, told a student to 'throw aside his books of chemistry and read Godwin on Necessity'! Both Wordsworth and
