Godwin himself acknowledged the obligation; indeed it is well known that--in pecuniary matters more particularly--Godwin had no hesitation either in incurring or in acknowledging obligations, always provided that he was not expected to discharge them.

It is possible that Holcroft's rough and ready acceptance and exaggeration of the doctrines which Rousseau had (as seems most probable) developed from a paradox of Diderot's, gave an impetus to the rather sluggish but more systematic mind of Godwin.

But it is certain that _Political Justice_, though it is not a novel at all, is a much more amusing book than _Anna St.Ives_, which is one.

And though Holcroft (especially if the presence of this quality in his _Autobiography_ is not wholly due to Hazlitt--there is some chance that it is) possessed a liveliness in narrative to which Godwin could never attain, there is no doubt that this enigmatical and many-sided spunger, philanderer, and corruptor of youth had a much higher general qualification for novel-writing than any one mentioned hitherto in this chapter, or perhaps than any to be mentioned, except the curiously contrasted pair, of Irish birth, who are to come last in it.
I have sometimes thought that the greatest testimony to Godwin's power in this respect is the idea (which even Hazlitt, though he did not share it, does not seem to have thought preposterous, and which seems to have been held by others who were not fools) that Godwin might be the author of _Waverley_.

To us, looking back, the notion seems as absurd as that Bacon could be the author of Shakespeare or Steele of the _Tale of a Tub_: but if, instead of looking back, we throw ourselves back, the absurdity does not quite persist as it does in the other two instances.
There are some who, of course, would say, "Why take this fanciful test of Godwin's ability when you have a real one in _Caleb Williams_ ?" The reasons are double: for, historically, such an estimate by contemporaries is of the very first value, and to the present writer _Caleb Williams_ (1794) has never seemed a very interesting book.