 | Studies in bibliography |  |
TWO NEW PAMPHLETS BY WILLIAM GODWIN:
A CASE OF COMPUTER-ASSISTED AUTHORSHIP ATTRIBUTION
by
Pamela Clemit and David Woolls[1]
Introduction
This article describes and illustrates the use of computer-assisted methods
of textual analysis to facilitate author identification. The task was to
examine two anonymous pamphlets on the Regency Crisis, prompted by the
temporary mental derangement of George III from November 1788 to February
1789, and to give an opinion on the probability that both works were
written by the future philosophical anarchist William Godwin. If they could
be attributed to Godwin, this would not only add two significant items to the
canon of his works, but also shed light on the development of his thought
during a period of his career about which little is otherwise known. Since
there was some external evidence for Godwin's authorship of one pamphlet
and a possible external indicator for the other, the thrust of the examination
was to assess whether or not supporting internal evidence could be found.
The research dealt with five collections of material: the two Regency pamphlets
in question; known political pamphlets by Godwin; other writings drawn
from various points in Godwin's career; other known-author pamphlets on
the Regency Crisis; and, finally, a selection of writings by Godwin's contemporaries,
Thomas Paine, Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, Joseph Towers,
and Mary Wollstonecraft, together with one example of work by his daughter,
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
Both the quantity of texts examined and the length of the titles have
required us to adopt a coding system to assist the reader in identifying the
material under discussion. For example, "TP 15=Reason2.9" identifies the
author as Thomas Paine, shows that this is the fifteenth example of his work,
numbered in chronological sequence, abbreviates the title, The Age of Reason:
Part the Second (1795), and shows that we are using the ninth chapter of
that work. Codes which do not end with numbers indicate that we have used
the whole text, while codes with a single number at the end indicate whole
chapters from a book. In the charts, only the initial chronological sequence
code is used for clarity of presentation, while Godwin's texts are marked by
squares, the two pamphlets in question by circles, and all other texts by triangles.
In the text, the first reference to each main work is given in full and
subsequent references are by shortened titles. The two pamphlets under discussion,
once identified in full, are referred to simply as Law and Reflexions,
respectively, to distinguish them from the texts of known authorship.
adopted in the charts, are provided in the list of references, and a table listing
the number of words in each text is given in an appendix.
Context
The first pamphlet under consideration, The Law of Parliament in the
Present Situation of Great Britain Considered, was published by J. Debrett
at the start of December 1788, prior to the parliamentary debates on the
Regency question, and went into a second edition early the following year.
Though the English Short Title Catalogue does not make an authorship
attribution, nor record any other copies attributed to Godwin, his authorship
is suggested by an anonymous contemporary manuscript ascription, "By Mr.
Godwin," on the copy held in the University of Durham Routh Collection.[2]
This attribution is strongly supported by evidence in Godwin's unpublished
diary, where, according to his customary practice of recording the publication
of his own works, he noted, "Law of Parliament published," on 1 December
1788.[3]
The second pamphlet, Reflexions on the Consequences of His Majesty's
Recovery from His Late Indisposition. In a Letter to the People of England,
published by G. G. J. and J. Robinson, Godwin's then employers, was internally
dated 16 February 1789, the day of the debate on the Regency Bill in
the House of Lords (Derry 187), but did not appear until around a month
later.[4]
Again, no authorship attribution is made in ESTC, but a copy of Reflexions
in the Routh Collection bears a manuscript ascription to Godwin in
evidence to support a definite attribution to Godwin. In a diary entry
for 25 February 1789, he noted, "Write to the P. of E."—an abbreviation consonant
with other contractions used elsewhere—but there is no entry for 16
February, nor for most other days in that month, and he did not mention
publication of Reflexions.[6] The apparent discrepancy in the date of composition
may be explained by the fact that Reflexions was overtaken by the
events it sought to influence. Written in response to news of the king's partial
recovery from 10 to 14 February, it warned of the dangers of an immediate
restoration of royal authority; but the announcement on 26 February of the
"entire cessation" of the king's illness, followed by his speedy resumption of
full powers, made such an argument redundant (Macalpine and Hunter 81,
86). In addition, the month-long delay in publication of Reflexions may account
for Godwin's omission to record the date in his diary. Yet these explanations
for the lack of firm external evidence for Godwin's authorship of
Reflexions remain conjectural.
Nevertheless, a reading of Law and Reflexions supports the view that
Godwin wrote both of them. The style of both pamphlets is adapted according
to the different occasions and audiences for which they were intended.
Law, written in the interval between the meeting of Parliament on 20 November
at which the king's indisposition was announced, and its reconvening
on 4 December to discuss the establishment of a Regency, appears to have
been designed to influence the debate among the Whigs concerning the best
means of achieving government office (Derry 50, Mitchell 122-126). Accordingly,
it is written in a measured, logical style, for the most part, and includes
detailed discussion of historical precedents. Reflexions, as indicated by its
subtitle, "In a Letter to the People of England," was addressed to a much
wider audience, the politically aware, middle section of society which had a
voice in public affairs, and its style is more informal and personal, though it
too includes much historical analysis. Despite these stylistic differences, there
are obvious parallels of theme and technique between the two pamphlets in
question and Godwin's known works from 1783 to 1791, which include political
journalism, historical writing, and occasional pamphlets in support of the
Foxite Whig cause.[7]
For example, the authorial stance of philosophical impartiality
found in both pamphlets is characteristic of Godwin's early political
writings, in which, in keeping with his Dissenting upbringing and education,
he sought to forge an identity as an independent social and political
commentator who had "nothing to do with administrations" (Law 53).
Again, the method of both pamphlets is to provide a mixture of historical
analysis and discussion of abstract principles, closely resembling the pattern
of Godwin's writings in the second half of the decade. Typical of Godwin, too,
is the claim to give equal attention to both sides of the question, while employing
of the spectre of civil disturbance—and win their assent to his arguments.
Finally, the pamphlets share with Godwin's writings an emphasis on
"awaken[ing] the true principles of understanding in others" (Reflexions 60)
rather than specifying firm conclusions. Such resemblances to Godwin's known
works, while not providing conclusive evidence, reinforce the likelihood that
he was the author of both pamphlets.
In order to confirm Godwin as the author of the first pamphlet and establish
him as the author of the second, it was decided to employ additional
computer-assisted methods of textual analysis. In reviewing the options, some
consideration was initially given to the cusum technique, which has been
widely used in cases of literary attribution and in British courts of law; but
this method was not adopted because its reliability has been questioned from
a variety of angles.[8]
Instead it was decided that the breadth of techniques
used by forensic linguists would allow the most thorough investigation of the
texts in question, and that those of a computational forensic linguist in particular
would allow the processing of an appropriately large range of textual
material. A forensic linguist is normally engaged where a trial, appeal, or
disciplinary procedure requires an opinion on the authenticity or authorship
of short texts, or on whether there is supportable evidence of plagiarism in a
text. David Woolls is a computational forensic linguist who builds and uses
computer programs as additional means to this end. These programs allow
large numbers of texts of any length to be analyzed very rapidly once they are
in electronic form. The data provided by such an investigation can then be
used in forming an opinion. These programs are designed to work with whole
texts or discrete chapters, as in this study. The branch of forensic linguistics
represented here always treats the individual and collective measurements as
indicative, rather than attributive, the emphasis being on the textual evidence
which causes the plotting of the data points in graphical form to show
a particular pattern, if any such pattern emerges. This textual emphasis enables
us to discuss our findings in terms of literary style as well as usage.
University of Durham, Special Collections, Routh 67. F. 2/5. Both pamphlets under
discussion are contained in a volume of ten tracts, entitled "Pamphlets concerning King's
Illness 1788-89." The volume includes a manuscript contents list in an unidentified late
eighteenth-century or early nineteenth-century hand, headed "S. S. S. 7." Before rebacking
in 1998, the spine had a fragment of a label bearing the same number, which suggests that
the volume was originally part of a large pamphlet collection or that this is the pressmark
of a private library. The volume also has a nineteenth-century ownership inscription,
"James Weale." The pressmark on the spine, "LVII | F | 2," indicates that it forms part of
the library of Martin Joseph Routh (1755-1854), the great patristics scholar, whose collection
of printed books passed on his death to the University of Durham. The hand in which
the authorship ascriptions of the two pamphlets in question are written does not occur
elsewhere in the volume and is not that of Routh himself. A review of copies of each pamphlet
in other libraries found no other evidence of authorship attributions.
Monthly Review, 80 (March 1789), 275. For Godwin's known work for Robinson, see
Bentley, 77-83, 89.
A fuller discussion of Godwin's early writings is in preparation for publication in
Pamela Clemit, The Literary Lives of William Godwin (Oxford University Press).
For the cusum technique, see Farringdon; for detailed criticisms of its assumptions
and results, see Sanford et al., and Ruecker.
Computer Assistance
The analysis employed a number of computer programs to quantify membership
of word lists, to provide vocabulary listings, and to identify a number
of different phrasal patterns. Two word lists were used, the "closed set" and
the "core vocabulary." The closed set comprises words which are functional,
irrespective of their relative frequency in texts. This list includes some 400
words headed by the very frequently occurring words "the," "of," "to, "a,"
and "that." It also includes numbers, which can cover several different functions
but are normally reliant on context for their meaning. Occurrences of
words on this list account for 60% of all the texts examined in this study.
If words are not on this list they are treated as "lexical," carrying the content
occur most frequently in twentieth-century children's literature, and which
form a quantifiable subset of the 40% lexical component of the texts under
examination. (Its usage is explained below.) Two other specialist terms
are used throughout the text. Words which occur only once in a given
text are referred to as hapax legomena, and those occurring twice as hapax
dislegomena.
The assessment employed computer programs developed from authorship
attribution studies, but designed specifically for forensic linguistic purposes
(Woolls and Coulthard 49-56). Three measurements of the vocabulary are
used:
1. "Lexical richness" is a calculation based on the number of lexical hapax
legomena used by the author of a given text. The score is arrived at by dividing
the logarithm of the full text length by the proportion of the vocabulary
which is used more than once. This gives a higher score when the divisor is
low (i.e. fewer words used more than once), hence the concept of "richness."
Transforming the text length to its logarithmic value gives comparable scores
for texts of very different lengths, reflecting the fact that hapax legomena are
usually spread fairly evenly throughout a text of any length, but obviously
represent a smaller proportion of longer texts. The term "lexical richness"
refers to a writer's use of the vocabulary in a given text rather than the size
of his/her vocabulary. (As a rough guide, a richness level of 700 to 800 is
found in the news items of the press and a level of 1200 or more is found in
poetry.)2. The "lexical hapax dislegomena percentage" is simply the number of lexical
words which occur twice divided by the total vocabulary.3. The "core vocabulary percentage" is the total occurrence of words which are
on the core vocabulary list divided by the total lexical usage.
All three measurements reflect how writers have used their vocabulary, consciously
or unconsciously, with no regard to structure or meaning but simply
by levels of occurrence. These features are common to all texts and observations
of the quantities of each may provide an objective indicator of similarity
or difference, which should then also be observable in structure and meaning.
All three measurements have been shown to discriminate between texts at the
5% significance level, which is the statistical limit usually taken to indicate
that the results are not obtained by chance but reflect distinct differences.
The first two measurements relate to research reported in Holmes (259268).
The theory underlying them is that comparison of the scores produced
by the writings of two authors will allow them to be seen in different places
on a scattergraph, when the lexical richness scores are plotted against the
hapax dislegomena percentage in two-dimensional space. One author will appear
on the left and another on the right, or one at the top and one at the
bottom, depending on which discriminator is the stronger. When more than
two authors are being examined, they should each appear in different segments.
This is not always a clear-cut division, because there is no suggestion
that authors always write in exactly the same way, but the theory maintains
that the measurements used are likely to reflect general habits, of which an
results over a range of texts will reveal a tendency in one direction or another.
The third measurement used, the core vocabulary, arose from an earlier use
of the programs by Woolls in relation to the development of writing skills in
children. This set has also been found to be present in substantial quantities,
between 25% and 38% of all lexical occurrences in texts, in eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century writing, and measuring the occurrence of the set has
proved equally valid as a discriminator in writing for adults from the eighteenth
century to the present day.[9]
The closed set, though used initially only to identify the lexical words by
their absence from the set, is not discounted in the analysis, since it can provide
indications of authorship habits, and indeed is used by authorship attribution
analysts where large amounts of data are available for precisely that
reason. In forensic linguistics, the text lengths are normally very much
shorter than any of the texts examined here, so separation allows closer
analysis of the interactions to be undertaken. In addition, this separation
reveals that in texts of greatly varying lengths the actual number of closed
set hapax legomena and hapax dislegomena is remarkably stable. The texts
examined range from 776 words to 13,074 words in length, but most have
around 50 hapax legomena and around 24 hapax dislegomena from the closed
set. This is why, in this study, all scores are calculated on lexical quantities,
to eliminate potential distortions caused by the higher proportionate representation
of the closed set in the shorter texts.
The other feature of the lexical hapax legomena in particular is that they
are usually spread throughout the text, not always evenly but in substantial
quantity wherever an examination is made. The degree of regularity may be
examined for any given text, to ensure that the discrimination between authors
indicated by the lexical richness scores is in fact based on texts which
broadly conform to the expected distribution. Where texts manifest different
patterns, further investigation may be required. Such an investigation forms
the core of this essay, following the initial stage of analysis.
For a description of the construction and discriminatory function of the core vocabulary,
see Woolls (2003).
Analysis
It was first necessary to ascertain three things: whether the known Godwin
material and the pamphlets in question fell within similar boundaries; where
both the known pamphlets by Godwin and the ones in question fitted in with
Godwin's other writings; and whether any other pamphlet writers of the time
offered alternative authorship possibilities. To begin with, a selection of
known-author pamphlets on the Regency Crisis, by William Cuninghame of
Enterkine, Capel Lofft, Jean Louis de Lolme, and Sir James Mackintosh, were
found, scanned, and analyzed.[10]
In addition, a sermon by Towers, a Dissenting
of Godwin's in the late 1780s,[11] was included in the study. Then, during
an Internet search for materials suitable for comparison, full electronic versions
of Godwin's A Defence of the Rockingham Party (1783) and Instructions
to a Statesman (1784) were discovered, together with an extensive quantity of
his other writings. The processing of all this material allowed the data comparison
shown in figure 1.
FIGURE 1. Godwin's books, essays, and pamphlets with Law, Reflexions, and a selection
of known-author pamphlets on the Regency Crisis, plotting hapax dislegomena usage
against lexical richness scores.
This graph shows a division point of around 900 in lexical richness scores
between Godwin's known writings and the works of other pamphlet writers
in the lower left quadrant. That is, Godwin consistently uses more words only
once in a text than any of the other writers. It also reveals a division between
Godwin's earlier material at the top and his later material at the bottom.
In addition, the longer works tend to form groups, with a separation between
from An Enquiry concerning Political Justice (3rd ed., 1798) in the middle.
The six books of Imogen: A Pastoral Romance (1784) occupy the upper right,
though with a similar spread to the chapters from Enquiry. The known Godwin
pamphlets are to the right and left of Imogen, with the two directly
addressing constitutional or legal matters, Defence and Cursory Strictures
(1794), sharing lexical richness values similar to the chapters from Enquiry.
Although the other Regency pamphlet authors cluster together, this
graph tells us nothing about how they normally write, since we have only one
or at most three samples of each. What we can see is that Godwin's texts,
which cover a wide span of his writing career, do not overlap or cluster with
the other candidates for authorship. We can also see that none of the other
writers immediately appear as plausible candidates for the authorship of
either Law or Reflexions. Only Letters 1 and 2 of Lofft's pamphlet exceed
Law in lexical richness, and both Law and, especially, Reflexions stand at
some distance from what is otherwise a distinctive group. (Both Cuninghame
and Mackintosh argue against the case for Parliament's right to appoint a
Regent proposed in Law, so are unlikely alternative authors on those grounds
as well.) Towers and De Lolme stand furthest from any known Godwin
material. Lofft's pamphlet is later than Law, comprising three letters dated
8, 13, and 14 December 1788, each reacting to the latest developments in the
parliamentary debates and all supporting the underlying position set out in
Law and Reflexions. But, as already noted, the Lofft scores have more in common
with the other Regency pamphlet writers than with known Godwin
material of the time. Lofft's pamphlet also displays a distinctive feature in
the way that he refers to kings and dukes: he adopts abbreviations, such as
"H.III," "R.II," and "D. of York;" but these are entirely absent from Law.
Perhaps most significantly, Lofft adds in a footnote to a passage cited from the
parliamentary debates, "I substitute only the word KING instead of MONARCH:
as an English constitutional word, more parliamentary, and more
consonant to the occasion" (Letters2 32); whereas the word "monarch" appears
without comment ten times in Reflexions and twice in Law.
As for the relationship between Law and Reflexions and Godwin's known
writings, Reflexions sits firmly within the Imogen books and just to the right
of Defence and Strictures. Law is within the hapax dislegomena boundaries
of the Godwin material closest in chronology, but has the lowest lexical richness
score. From this analysis, it appeared that there was a higher probability
that Reflexions could be attributed to Godwin than Law. This finding
prompted a further stage of comparison between Law and Reflexions, Godwin's
known writings, and texts by other authors writing on political and
philosophical subjects in the same period.
Comparison of Godwin's texts with a selection of writings by Paine, Price,
Priestley, and Wollstonecraft, together with one text by Mary Shelley, not
only allowed a confirmation of the distinction between Godwin and the
others at the lexical richness/hapax dislegomena levels, but also revealed a
of the core vocabulary, as shown in figure 2.
FIGURE 2. Godwin versus other writers, plotting core vocabulary usage against lexical
richness scores.
The great majority of Godwin's texts fall into the lower half of the graph,
showing that, in all but one of his texts, less than 23% of the lexical content
is formed by the core vocabulary and most contain less than 20%, and that
this is very much a feature of his writing throughout his career. The majority
of the other authors collect at the top, inhabiting the 22% to 33% range. The
only author with a higher lexical richness score than Godwin is his daughter,
Mary Shelley. Paine's texts group in the upper left quadrant. Among the
known authors on the Regency Crisis, Lofft shares with Godwin a tendency
for low use of the core vocabulary. De Lolme, who was a native of Geneva,
shows a much higher usage of the core vocabulary than any text except
Paine's Common Sense (1776). De Lolme's method of argument is also different
from that of the other Regency pamphlet authors, being much more
narrative than polemical. It may be that there is common ground in the upbringing
and education of the other writers, which influenced their use of
language, but that is beyond the scope of this paper.[12]
The fact that Godwin
force of the observation that this characteristic is a strong feature of his writing.
The scores of Thoughts, for example, are similar to those of Defence,
Instructions, and Strictures.
The only other work examined here which scores less than 22% for core
vocabulary is Price's Additional Observations on . . . Civil Liberty (1777).
Though the other Price text used, A Discourse on the Love of our Country
(1789), appears in higher areas of the graph, the proximity of Add.Observ. to
Law on both scores measured here suggests that Price might offer an alternative
authorship for Law—a possibility explored further below. At present
the important factor is that both Law and Reflexions sit firmly within the
area occupied by all the known Godwin material in the core vocabulary
scores. This finding provides additional support for the case that Godwin is
the author of Reflexions and suggests that he remains a possible author of
Law.
To confirm the difference between Godwin and other writers of the same
period, more data was required. The only relevant contemporary author
for whom a substantial amount of electronic data could be found for comparative
purposes was Paine. Figure 3 shows the results of comparing all the
FIGURE 3. Godwin, Paine, and Price, with Law and Reflexions, plotting core vocabulary
usage against lexical richness scores.
This chart shows a division between Paine and Godwin from left to right
at the 900 mark similar to the division noted in figure 1. Paine's works, with
the exception of Rights of Man: Part the Second (1792), are grouped in the
same way that Godwin's writings are grouped in figure 1. Chapters 1 and 2 of
Rights are each much shorter than all the other samples, which may account
for their separation from chapters 3 and 4, but they were included for the sake
of completeness and to show that, while the hapax dislegomena percentage is
being affected by the difference in length, the lexical richness scores are
grouped within similar boundaries to other related sets of texts. Since the
works selected cover a period of many years in the case of both authors, we
can have some confidence that the measurements are indicating distinctive
differences in the use of vocabulary between the two writers. Given that the
more limited material from other authors can also be recognized as different
from Godwin's, we can be reasonably sure that we have identified a further
stylistic feature of his writing in a high lexical richness score. Price is included
here because he has already been identified as a potential alternative author
of Law. His two works straddle the 900 boundary on the lower limit of Godwin's
identified levels. These works were written 12 years apart and on different
subjects, so there is no reason why they should cluster any more closely
than they do.
It can further be seen from figure 3 that Reflexions is firmly on the Godwin
side and Law equally firmly on the Paine side, and that Price's Add.
Observ. is even closer to Law than any of Paine's work. We also have an
indication that Paine was writing differently from his norm in chapters 3
and 4 of Rights, since the other texts sit in the lower/middle part of the
graph. If either Paine or Godwin were the author of Law, it is evident that
this work shows divergence from what might be called their normal style,
as identified by the statistics. If Price were the author, we would expect a
similarity in style, since both works are found in the upper right region, closer
to Godwin's material. So the task was to see which of these possibilities was
most likely.
At this point, the statistical analytical tools were replaced with vocabulary
and phrase analysis tools. The total length of the Paine and Godwin texts
used (approximately 50,000 words for Paine, and approximately 100,000
words for Godwin) was sufficient to allow a limited investigation into the
function words used by each, with a view to observing potential marked differences,
so that such apparently distinctive words could be looked for in each
of the pamphlets in question. This investigation, though insufficient to be
conclusive on its own, held the possibility of providing supporting evidence
for our other findings. It revealed that three function words showed marked
differences in usage: both "or" and "on" were used relatively infrequently by
Godwin, while he showed a marked preference for "upon" in comparison to
both Paine and Price. These patterns were also found in both Law and Reflexions,
as shown in table 1.
| Godwin | Law | Reflexions | Price | Paine | |
| Or | 28 | 33 | 16 | 85 | 64 |
| On | 15 | 19 | 12 | 51 | 48 |
| Upon | 41 | 44 | 44 | 5 | 15 |
This finding was then checked against the other data examined and the low
use of "on" and the high use of "upon" was found to be particular to Godwin.
The incidence of "or" was generally similar as well. It would appear that
in a wider test of functional vocabulary markers, these two items would be
clear candidates as Godwin discriminators.
Next, file comparison at vocabulary and phrase level was undertaken
between all three known Godwin pamphlets and the two pamphlets in question.
The greatest vocabulary overlap was between Law and Reflexions,
which was not unexpected because of similarity in material, but which produced
a sufficiently high score to have caused an investigation into potential
sharing of material if that level had been reached by two different students
in the present-day university setting for which the program, CopyCatch, is
intended.[13]
CopyCatch is the diagnostic element of the tools used above,
which is specifically designed to look for shared vocabulary in work on the
same topic which is supposed to have been produced independently. The
greater the proportion of shared vocabulary which appears in two apparently
related texts, the greater the possibility that the texts were produced by
plagiarism, collusion, or undesirable co-operation. But CopyCatch can also
indicate a tendency of one or both authors to repeat themselves, since such
repetition, particularly on the topic or sub-topics, will cause the proportion
of the shared vocabulary to increase. It was this practice which was highlighted
by the initial examination of Law and Reflexions using this program.
In addition, CopyCatch allows comparison of phrase use between any
two files it has examined, enabling us to ascertain whether repetition is occurring
at the phrase level. In the cases of Law, Defence, and Strictures, this
analysis showed a great deal of direct or related phrasal repetition within
each of those texts, with relatively little phrasal similarity observable within
any of the other texts used for purposes of comparison. Table 2 presents only
some of the extraordinary amount of direct phrasal repetition in Law. It is
not the phrases themselves but the number of times they appear which makes
this text so different from all the others examined.
In addition, there are in Law 20 instances of the phrase, "the duke of [Bedford/Gloucester/York]."
We find similar repetition over distance in Strictures, though not on such
a wide scale, as shown in table 3. (The numbers following the examples indicate
which sentences are being identified to show the distances between
occurrences.)
| "a parliament was summoned" | 7 |
| "the two houses of parliament" | 6 |
| "was virtually in the hands of the king's uncles" | 2 |
| "a council of regency" | 7 |
| "the regency of a single person" | 5 |
| "the king alone" | 5 |
| "in the reign of king [X] the [Y]" | 14 |
| "king [X] the [Y]" | 43 |
| "guilty of High Treason" | (Strictures 97 and 116) |
| "Justice implicitly confesses himself" | (Strictures 73) |
| "Justice implicitly confesses, that" | (Strictures 67) |
| "overawe the legislative body" | (Strictures 79 and 189) |
This phrasal repetition demonstrates a similarity of technique between the
author of Strictures and the author of Law, though such repetition is much
more markedly evident in Law than in Strictures or Defence, being especially
concentrated around the historical sections. The author's method in Law
was to name each king in full, discuss the nature of the incapacity, the circumstances
in which parliaments were summoned and the outcome, so the
vocabulary repetition was occasioned by the chosen structure of argument.
One effect of this technique was to reduce the lexical vocabulary substantially
in comparison to the other texts of similar length. The other effect was to
reduce the normal occurrence of hapax legomena within this text, resulting
in a lower percentage of once-only occurrence and hence a lower lexical
richness score, which, as noted above, uses this percentage as one of its
components.
As mentioned in the discussion of vocabulary measurements, the formula
used for calculating lexical richness expects a degree of regularity of occurrence
of lexical items throughout a given text. Thus the presence of this
feature needs to be confirmed to establish that this is in fact the case. An
examination of all the pamphlets, together with examples of works by Paine
and Price, demonstrates that there is a clear difference in pattern between
the known pamphlets by Godwin and Reflexions on the one hand, and the
examples by Paine and Price on the other, with Law revealing its idiosyncratic
construction, as shown in table 4.
Here it can be seen that the three known Godwin pamphlets start with,
and generally maintain, a high quantity of hapax legomena, while the two
works by Price and chapter 4 of Paine's Rights start with a much smaller
quantity, which chapter 4 of Rights maintains but the works by Price increase.
Both Law and Reflexions share the high opening and closing quantity
found in Godwin's other works, but Law has a substantial drop in the middle
segment, which is in fact much wider than simply this segment. This is |
| Instructions | Defence | Strictures | Law | Reflexions | Rights 2.4 |
Discourse | Add. Observ. |
|
| First 1000 words |
131 | 134 | 178 | 134 | 129 | 70 | 106 | 59 |
| Mid 1000 words |
124 | 146 | 128 | 96 | 130 | 93 | 124 | 114 |
| Last 1000 words |
166 | 132 | 114 | 140 | 123 | 71 | 133 | 132 |
where the lengthy laying-out of historical precedents is placed. So the opening
and closing sections in both cases are not only close to Godwin's known
pamphlets, but also distinct from Paine and distinct from Price. The drop
can be explained only by heavier repetition of vocabulary, and the question
then is whether this repetitious style is similar to that used by the other two
authors, or of a distinctive nature.
The presence of a distinctive repetitious effect in Godwin's writing was
confirmed by a detailed vocabulary analysis, summarized in table 5.
| Words | Law | Instructions | Defence | Strictures | Reflexions | Add. Observ. |
Rights2.4 |
| 21+ | 17 | 3 | 6 | 8 | 2 | 11 | 5 |
| 6+ % of Lex Items |
138 | 121 | 87 | 80 | 73 | 123 | 101 |
| 21+ | 14% | 5% | 5% | 11% | 1% | 12% | 8% |
| 6+ | 41% | 26% | 28% | 32% | 20% | 39% | 38% |
This investigation found that Law contained an unusually large number of
words repeated 21 times or more, and an even more unusually large number
of words occurring 6 times or more. In comparison, Instructions, which is
30% longer than Law, had only 3 words occurring 21 times or more and 121
words occurring 6 times or more. Chapter 4 of Rights shows a higher 6+
rating but also a much lower 21+ rating, indicating a different vocabulary
spread through the text. This lowering of overall lexical vocabulary usage in
Law, together with the tendency to repeat entire phrases, also affects the
hapax dislegomena percentage, since, even though the proportionate number
of hapax dislegomena in the full text remains much the same, the percentage
they form of the lexical vocabulary increases. These two factors imply a twoway
if the repetition were not so marked. It would appear that the heavy
repetition is a major contributory factor in placing Law where it is in figure 2.
This being the case, the expected position for a less repetitious text would
be much closer to the Imogen books.
As already noted, chapters 3 and 4 of Rights mark a move away from the
rest of Paine's material, but in this case the movement is largely the result of
the dominance of a single vocabulary item, "government," which occurs over
100 times in one chapter and over 80 in the other. Such phrasal repetition as
can be observed in Paine is very rarely exact, compared with the numerous
examples of exact repetition in Law noted in table 2. The move in Paine is
simply a gentle rise above the normal pattern. From this combination of
factors, it would seem very unlikely that Paine offers an alternative authorship
for Law.
Next the disproportionate number of words used frequently in Law in
comparison to the other texts was further explored. It was found that in the
other texts, once the main human subjects, Lord Rockingham and Lord
Chief Justice Eyre, and the terms "Lord" or "Lordship" are set aside, the next
significant items are low in all but Strictures, where the non-human subject
is the law of treason, which accounts for the higher frequency of this term in
the pamphlet. These items are all strongly topic-related and reflect the expected
frequency of the main topic vocabulary. In contrast, though there are
numerous human subjects in the list of kings and dukes referred to in Law,
their use is supportive to the main topic of the role of Parliament in the appointment
of a Regent. Only three of the four most frequent words can be
strongly identified with this topic: "parliament," "regency," and "authority,"
together with "government." The most frequent, "king," though relevant to
the topic, owes its high frequency to the number of times a specific king is
cited in the discussion of historical precedents, as indicated by the examples
above.
It can be seen that Price's Add.Observ. also has a substantial amount of
vocabulary occurring more than 20 times in a similar number of words, but
examination shows that all of this vocabulary is subject-matter related, so
this marks a difference from rather than a similarity to the style of Law. The
lower figure in chapter 4 of Rights is also strongly subject-matter related and
dominated by the term "government," as noted above. There is no element
of repetition of lists in either text, as found in Law. The 6+ percentages are
also revealing. Godwin's known pamphlets and Reflexions are all noticeably
lower than either the Paine or Price examples, and it is now apparent that
the statistics for Law are heavily affected by the presence of non-topic related
repetition, the absence of which would drop the 6+ level of 41% substantially.
All this leads to the conclusion that the lexical richness positions of
Paine and Price reflect their normal usage of vocabulary. The proximity of
Law to their positions is a result of disruption caused by repetition. This
implies that the author of Law has a normal lexical richness score substantially
author of Law was neither Paine nor Price, leaving Godwin as the only likely
candidate from those examined.
This being the case, it might be expected that some positive vocabulary
or syntactic evidence would be found linking both Law and Reflexions with
the known Godwin material, in addition to the function words identified
above. Comparison of vocabularies across the files showed that such evidence
certainly exists. First, the words "measure" and "measures," used almost always
in relation to parliamentary procedures, appear in all three attested
Godwin pamphlets and in both pamphlets under consideration, and in very
similar frequencies: 13 times in Law, 8 times in Strictures, and 11 times in
the other three. These words are not found in anything like such quantities
in any of the other material examined (with the exception of Mackintosh's
pamphlet, which puts forward an opposing argument). For example, Paine's
Rights includes only 4 examples in 16,204 words, and there are only 2 instances
in the full 10,756 words of Price's Add.Observ. This distinctive usage
indicates at least a common interest in the pamphlets in question and Godwin's
known pamphlets, and is most noticeable in reading the material as
well as from the vocabulary analysis, so may be taken as additional evidence
in favour of a common authorship. Second, there is a strongly related phrase
in Law and Reflexions, which suggests that the author of the latter at least
had seen the former, and which, added to the accumulating similarities, may
also point to a common author. Though the reference to the imbecility of
Henry VI is much more compact in Reflexions than in Law, both pamphlets
contain a strikingly similar phrase in relation to the monarchy when describing
the same case:
"as to render him incapable of maintaining even the appearance of royal
authority" (Law)
"when Henry was no longer capable of maintaining the appearance of royalty"
(Reflexions).
Third, the introductory phrase "Let it be," as in "Let it be remembered"/
"supposed"/"considered," is found only in Godwin's writings and the two
pamphlets in question, apart from Mackintosh's Arguments (which addresses
the same concerns as Law from a different viewpoint). While the phrase "Let
it be" might be assumed to be a common rhetorical device of the time, its
presence across the Godwin material and its absence from most of the other
works examined offers further evidence in support of Godwin's authorship of
both Law and Reflexions. Finally, phrasal analysis revealed the following
construction, which again is found only in the three pamphlets indicated:
"thought proper to summon" (Law)
"thought proper to prepare" (Reflexions)
"thought proper to bring" (Strictures).
Taken together, these examples offer considerable support for an identification
of Godwin as the author of both Law and Reflexions.
An exception was the sample of De Lolme's writing, which was typed because the
printed copy of the pamphlet proved impossible to scan. The first 2,650 words were entered
to create a sample of approximately the same length as the other Regency pamphlets,
which proved to be so distinct from the others that it was considered unnecessary to enter
the rest of the text. This represents the only instance where part of a text was used.
Godwin noted dining with Towers for the first time on 7 October 1788; Lofft's
name appears on a list of acquaintances made in 1788 at the back of the seventh volume of
his diary (Abinger Manuscripts, Dep. e. 196, fol. 16r; Dep. e. 202, fol. 47r).
For an examination of the shared vocabulary characteristics of eighteenth-century
Dissenting sermons, including works by Towers, see Deconinck-Brossard.
CopyCatch is a collusion and plagiarism detection program developed by David
Woolls and is commercially available from CFL Software Development, UK.
Conclusions
Godwin has been identified as having a distinctive style in the materials
examined, which cover much of his writing life. The two main features of
his style are that he generally has a much higher lexical richness score than
any of the other writers analyzed, and that he makes much less use of the core
vocabulary than many of his contemporaries. Of the two pamphlets in question,
Reflexions sits within the boundaries of Godwin's other writings in all
the charts and in all examinations provides positive indications that he is the
likely author. Investigation of the pamphlets of other writers at the time
certainly offers no other candidate. This is significant, since the external evidence
for the authorship of Reflexions is the weaker of the two pamphlets
under consideration. The focus of this examination has been Law because
it is the better attested of the two pamphlets, yet it appeared to be outside
the boundary of Godwin material in one crucial respect, that of lexical richness.
However, further analysis revealed that Law sits well within the norms
for Godwin's use of the core vocabulary and shares with Reflexions very
similar use or non-use of marker functional vocabulary, and that lexical
vocabulary is present at the phrasal level linking Godwin's known work with
both Law and Reflexions. The low lexical richness score has been identified
as having its source in the unusually high level of repetition contained in the
central portion of the pamphlet, which is a function of the way the author
has chosen to lay out the argument. This authorial decision has greatly reduced
the amount of vocabulary items relative to the length of text, not only
in respect of Godwin's work, but also in relation to what would be expected
in any text of a similar length. This means that the statistical scores, without
the large historical segments and the regular references to parliamentary
procedures, could be expected to be more like Defence and Strictures. In the
light of all these factors, it is our opinion that there is sufficient internal
evidence from this investigation to support the contemporary manuscript
ascriptions and the related evidence in Godwin's diary, and to attribute authorship
of both anonymous pamphlets to Godwin.
These two pamphlets on the Regency Crisis are important additions to
the canon of Godwin's works.[14]
They are significant for what they reveal
about both his developing political views and his consistent resourcefulness
as a pamphlet writer. They demonstrate that his practical engagement with
contemporary British politics did not lessen towards the end of the 1780s,
as is often thought, but that he continued to support the Foxite Whigs right
up to the spring of 1789. At the same time, they indicate just how much Godwin
was preoccupied with constitutional questions on the eve of the French
Revolution, two years before he began writing Enquiry. Finally, Godwin's
Regency pamphlets, in their mixture of abstract speculation and engagement
as it developed through the 1790s, and beyond. As experiments in combining
speculative and practical politics, Law and Reflexions help to explain how
Godwin became the author of not only Enquiry but also Strictures, his most
successful intervention in contemporary politics, in which he demolished the
government's case of high treason brought against twelve leading radicals in
1794.
| Works by William Godwin |
Words | Works by Thomas Paine |
Words | Law, Reflexions, Regency pamphlets, and other texts |
Words |
| WG1=Defence | 8576 | TP1=CommonSense1 | 2161 | Law | 10317 |
| WG2=Instructions | 13074 | TP2=CommonSense2 | 3484 | Reflexions | 8377 |
| WG3=Imogen1 | 7389 | TP3=CommonSense3 | 2646 | [WG]=ShortView | 2656 |
| WG4=Imogen2 | 9553 | TP4=CommonSense4 | 3865 | JLDL=Observations | 2650 |
| WG5=Imogen3 | 5963 | TP5=Crisis7 | 7942 | [JM]=Arguments | 2228 |
| WG6=Imogen4 | 5700 | TP6=Crisis11 | 7964 | CL1=Letters1 | 4598 |
| WG7=Imogen5 | 7635 | TP7=Crisis15 | 2457 | CL2=Letters2 | 3550 |
| WG8=Imogen6 | 9325 | TP8=Rights2.1 | 1737 | CL3=Letters3 | 2047 |
| WG9=Strictures | 7315 | TP9=Rights2.2 | 776 | ||
| WG10=Hist. Rom. | 5174 | TP10=Rights2.3 | 5257 | RP1=Add. Observ. | 10756 |
| WG11=Enquiry5.1 | 3306 | TP11=Rights2.4 | 8435 | RP2=Discourse | 8693 |
| WG12=Enquiry5.7 | 1651 | TP12=Reason1.1 | 1140 | JT=Sermon | 2956 |
| WG13=Enquiry5.8 | 3079 | TP13=Reason1.8 | 1728 | MW=Vindic.9 | 4539 |
| WG14=Enquiry5.14 | 2217 | TP14=Reason2.1 | 1832 | JP=Phlogiston | 5598 |
| WG15=Enquiry5.15 | 4538 | TP15=Reason2.9 | 1940 | MWS=LastMan1.1 | 5941 |
| WG16=Thoughts1 | 3550 | ||||
| WG17=Thoughts4 | 4721 | ||||
| WG18=Thoughts9 | 4078 | ||||
| WG19=Thoughts23 | 3810 |
For an edition of the two pamphlets, together with a fuller discussion of the material
summarized in this paragraph, see Pamela Clemit, "Two Pamphlets on the Regency
Crisis by William Godwin," Enlightenment and Dissent 20 (2001) (forthcoming).
REFERENCES
Manuscript Sources
Godwin, William. Diary. Abinger Manuscripts, Bodleian Library. Dep. e. 196-227.
Primary Sources
[Anon.] The Law of Parliament in the Present Situation of Great Britain Considered.
London: J. Debrett, 1788. Full text examined. (Law)
—. Reflexions on the Consequences of His Majesty's Recovery from His Late
Indisposition. In A Letter to the People of England. London: G. G. J. and J.
Robinson, 1789. Full text examined. (Reflexions)
[Cuninghame, William, of Enterkine]. A Short View of the Present Great Question.
London: J. Debrett, 1788. Full text examined. ([WC]=Short View)
De Lolme, John Louis, Observations upon the late National Embarrassment, and
the Proceedings in Parliament Relative to the Same. London: J. Debrett, 1789.
First 2,650 words examined. (JLDL=Observations)
Godwin, William. A Defence of the Rockingham Party, in their Late Coalition with
the Right Honourable Frederic Lord North. Anonymous. London: J. Stockdale,
1783. Anarchy Archives. Ed. Dana Ward. Sept. 1999. Pitzer College. 3 April 2001.
html> Full text examined. (WG1=Defence)
—. Instructions to a Statesman. Humbly Inscribed to the Right Honourable
George Earl Temple. Anonymous. London: J. Murray, 1784. Anarchy Archives.
3 April 2001. <http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/godwin/instruct.
html> Full text examined. (WG2=Instructions)
—. Imogen: A Pastoral Romance. From the Ancient British. Ed. Jack W. Marken.
New York: The New York Public Library, 1963. Anarchy Archives. 3 April 2001.
<http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/godwin/imogen/imogentoc.
html> Full text (6 books) examined. (WG3=Imogen1, WG4=Imogen2, WG5=
Imogen3, WG6=Imogen4, WG7=Imogen5, WG8=Imogen6)
—. Cursory Strictures on the Charge Delivered by Lord Chief Justice Eyre to
the Grand Jury, October 2, 1794. Anonymous. London: D. I. Eaton, 1794. Full
text examined, with quotations from other works removed. (WG9=Strictures)
—. "Of History and Romance." [1797.] Romantic Links, Electronic Texts and
Home Pages. Ed. Michael Gamer. n.d. U of Pennsylvania. 3 April 2001. <http://
www.english.upenn.edu/~traister/godwin.html> Full text examined. (WG10=
Hist.Rom.)
—. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its Influence on Morals and
Happiness. 3rd ed., corrected. 1798; London: J. Watson, 1842. Anarchy Archives.
3 April 2001. <http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/godwin/PJ
frontpiece.html> Chs. 1, 7, 8, 14, and 15 examined from Bk. 5, "Of Legislative
and Executive Power." (WG11=Enquiry5.1, WG12=Enquiry5.7, WG13=Enquiry5.8,
WG14=Enquiry5.14, WG15=Enquiry5.15)
—. Thoughts on Man, his Nature, Productions, and Discoveries. Interspersed
with some Particulars respecting the Author. London: Effingham Wilson, 1831.
Anarchy Archives. 3 April 2001. <http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_
Archives/godwin/thoughts/TMNPDfrontpiece.htmlgt; Essays 1, 4, 9, and 23 examined.
(WG16=Thoughts1, WG17=Thoughts4, WG18=Thoughts9, WG19=
Thoughts23)
Lofft, Capel. Three Letters on the Question of Regency. Addressed to the People of
England. Bury: J. Rackham, 1788. Full text (3 letters) examined. (CL1=Letters1,
CL2=Letters2, CL3=Letters3)
[Mackintosh, James.] Arguments concerning the Constitutional Right of Parliament to
Appoint a Regency. London: J. Debrett, 1788. Full text examined. ([JM]=Arguments)
Paine, Thomas. Common Sense: Addressed to the Inhabitants of America. Philadelphia:
R. Bell, 1776. ushistory.org. July 1995. Independence Hall Association. 5
April 2001. <http://www.ushistory.org/paine/commonsense/index.htm> Full
text (4 sections) examined. (TP1=CommonSense1, TP2=CommonSense2, TP3=
CommonSense3, TP4=CommonSense4)
—. The American Crisis. Number 7. Philadelphia: John Dunlap, 1778; Number
11. Philadelphia: John Dunlap, 1782; Number 15. Philadelphia: John Dunlap,
1783. ushistory.org. 5 April 2001. <http://www.ushistory.org/paine/crisis/
index.htm> Full texts of all 3 numbers examined. (TP5=Crisis7, TP6=Crisis1,
TP7=Crisis15)
—. Rights of Man: Part the Second. London: J. S. Jordan, 1792. ushistory.org.
5 April 2001. <http://www.ushistory.org/paine/rights/index.htm> 4 chapters
examined. (TP8=Rights2.1, TP9=Rights2.2, TP10=Rights2.3, TP11=Rights2.4)
—. The Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of True and of Fabulous Theology.
London: D. Eaton, 1794. ushistory.org. 5 April 2001. <http://www.us
history.org/paine/reason/index.htm> Sections 1 and 8 examined. (TP12=
Reason1.1, TP13=Reason1.8)
—. The Age of Reason: Part the Second. Being an Investigation of True and of
Fabulous Theology. London: H. D. Symonds, 1795. ushistory.org. 5 April 2001.
(TP14=Reason2.1, TP15=Reason2.9)
Price, Richard. Additional Observations on the Nature and Value of Civil Liberty
and the War with America. London: T. Cadell, 1777. Liberty Library of Constitutional
Classics. n.d. The Constitutional Society. 18 May 2001. <http://www.
constitution.org/price/price_4.txt> Full text examined. (RP1=Add.Observ.)
—. A Discourse on the Love of our Country. London: T. Cadell, 1789. Liberty
Library of Constitutional Classics. 6 April 2001. <http://www.constitution.org/
price/price_8.txt> Full text examined. (RP2=Discourse)
Priestley, Joseph. Considerations on the Doctrine of Phlogiston and the Decomposition
of Air. Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1796. Classic Chemistry. Ed. Carmen
Giunta. n.d. Le Moyne College. 4 April 2001. <http://web.lemoyne.edu/
faculty/giunta/phlogiston.html> Full text examined. (JP=Phlogiston)
Shelley, Mary. The Last Man. London: H. Colburn, 1826. Romantic Circles. Gen.
Ed. Neil Fraistat, Steven E. Jones, Carl Stahmer. n.d. U of Maryland. 10 April 2001.
<http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/mws/lastman/ascii.htm> Ch. 1 of vol. 1 examined.
(MWS=LastMan1.1)
Towers, Joseph. The Professors of the Gospel under the Strongest Obligations to distinguish
themselves by an eminent Degree of Piety and Virtue. A Sermon Preached
at St. Thomas's, January 1, 1777, for the Benefit of the Charity-School in GravelLane,
Southwark. London: J. Johnson and J. Buckland, 1777. Full text examined.
(JT=Sermon)
Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on
Political and Moral Subjects. London: J. Johnson, 1792. Oregon State University
<http://www.osu.orst.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/wollstonecraft/woman-con
tents.html> Ch. 9 examined. (MW=Vindic.9)
Secondary Sources
Bentley, G. E., Jr. "Copyright Documents in the George Robinson Archive: William
Godwin and Others, 1713-1820." Studies in Bibliography 34 (1982): 67-110.
Deconinck-Brossard, Françoise. "The Case for Computer-Aided Textual Analysis."
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Derry, John W. The Regency Crisis and the Whigs, 1788-9. Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 1963.
Farringdon, Jill M. Analysing for Authorship: A Guide to the Cusum Technique.
With contributions by A. Q. Morton, M. G. Farringdon, and M. D. Baker. Cardiff:
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Holmes, David I. "Vocabulary Richness and the Prophetic Voice." Literary and
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Macalpine, Ida, and Richard Hunter. George III and the Mad-Business. 1969. London:
Pimlico P, 1991.
Mitchell, L. G. Charles James Fox and the Disintegration of the Whig Party, 17821794.
Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971.
Ruecker, Stan. "Kurt Vonnegut wrote my E-mail: An Experimental Evaluation of
the QSUM Technique." English 694. Ed. Stan Ruecker. 28 October 1999. U of
Alberta. 22 March 2001. <http://www.humanities.ualberta.ca/sruecker/QSUM.
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Sanford, Anthony J., Joy P. Aked, Linda M. Moxey and James Mullin, "A Critical
Examination of Assumptions underlying the Cusum Technique of Forensic
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Woolls, David, and Malcolm Coulthard. "Tools for the Trade." Forensic Linguistics
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Woolls, David. "Better Tools for the Trade and How to Use Them." Forensic Linguistics
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We are grateful to Lord Abinger for permission, granted through the Bodleian
Library, to quote from Godwin's diary in the Abinger Collection, held on deposit in the
Bodleian Library; to Beth Rainey, former Sub-Librarian, Special Collections, Durham
University Library, for her expert advice; and to Françoise Deconinck-Brossard for supplying
a text by Joseph Towers in electronic form. Thanks are due to the following individuals
for help of various kinds: Bruce Barker-Benfield, Malcolm Coulthard, Martin Fitzpatrick,
Oliver Hudson, Gary Kelly, Michael Popham, Lisa Vargo, and, above all, Robin Dix. Pamela
Clemit's part in this study was completed with the support, mainly for other purposes, of
an Arts and Humanities Research Board Research Leave award.
| Studies in bibliography | |