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cause, ill health. I hope I am above subterfuge, and that you will do me this justice to think so.

"You will give me great satisfaction by sealing my pardon and oblivion in a line or two, before I come to see you, or I shall be ashamed to come.—Yours, with great truth,

The Same to the Same.

C. LAMB."

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“Dear Godwin,-You never made a more unlucky and perverse mistake than to suppose that the reason of my not writing that cursed thing was to be found in your book. I assure you most sincerely that I have been greatly delighted with Chaucer. I may be wrong, but I think there is one considerable error runs through it, which is a conjecturing spirit, a fondness for filling out the picture by supposing what Chaucer did and how he felt, where the materials are scanty. So far from meaning to withhold from you (out of mistaken tenderness) this opinion of mine, I plainly told Mrs Godwin that I did find a fault, which I should reserve naming until I should see you and talk it over. This she may very well remember, and also that I declined naming this fault until she drew it from me by asking me if there was not too much fancy in the work. I then confessed generally what I felt, but refused to go into particulars until I had seen you. I am never very fond of saying things before third persons, because in the relation (such is human nature) something is sure to be dropped. If Mrs Godwin has been the cause of your misconstruction, I am very angry, tell her; yet it is not an anger unto death. I remember also telling Mrs G. (which she may have dropt) that I was by turns considerably more delighted than I expected. But I wished to reserve all this until I saw you. I even had conceived an expression to meet you with, which was thanking you for some of the most exquisite pieces of criticism I had ever read in my life. In particular, I should have brought forward that on 'Troilus and Cressida' and Shakespear, which, it is little to say, delighted me, and instructed me (if not absolutely instructed me, yet put into

full-grown sense many conceptions which had arisen in me before in my most discriminating moods.) All these things I was preparing to say, and bottling them up till I came, thinking to please my friend and host, the author! when lo! this deadly blight intervened.

"I certainly ought to make great allowances for your misundering me. You, by long habits of composition and a greater command gained over your own powers, cannot conceive of the desultory and uncertain way in which I (an author by fits) sometimes cannot put the thoughts of a common letter into sane prose. Any work which I take upon myself as an engagement will act upon me to torment, e.g., when I have undertaken, as three or four times I have, a school-boy copy of verses for Merchant Taylor's boys, at a guinea a copy, I have fretted over them, in perfect inability to do them, and have made my sister wretched with my wretchedness for a week together. The same, till by habit I have acquired a mechanical command, I have felt in making paragraphs. As to reviewing, in particular, my head is so whimsical a head, that I cannot, after reading another man's book, let it have been never so pleasing, give any account of it in any methodical way. I cannot follow his train. Something like this you must have perceived of me in conversation. Ten thousand times I have confessed to you, talking of my talents, my utter inability to remember in any comprehensive way what I read. I can vehemently applaud, or perversely stickle, at parts; but I cannot grasp at a whole. This infirmity (which is nothing to brag of) may be seen in my two little compositions, the tale and my play, in both which no reader, however partial, can find any I wrote such stuff about Chaucer, and got into such digressions, quite irreducible into 1 column of a paper, that I was perfectly ashamed to shew it you. However, it is become a serious matter that I should convince you I neither slunk from the task through a wilful deserting neglect, or through any (most imaginary on your part) distaste of Chaucer; and I will try my hand again, I hope with better luck. My health is bad and my time taken up, but all I can spare between this and Sunday shall be employed

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for you, since you desire it: and if I bring you a crude, wretched paper on Sunday, you must burn it, and forgive me; if it proves anything better than I predict, may it be a peace-offering of sweet incense between us. C. LAMB."

66

7. Horne Tooke to William Godwin.

“WIMBLEDON, Dec. 6, 1803.

MY DEAR SIR,—I this moment received your letter, and return an immediate answer, that you may not have an uneasy feeling one moment by my fault. What happened on Sunday to you may happen, and does happen to every one of my friends and acquaintance every day of my life. Bosville, his three friends, and Mr Wood, came first, spoke to me in my study a very few minutes, and went away, leaving me to shift myself. W. Scott should have walked with them, but I called him back, having particular and important business to converse upon. Whilst we were importantly engaged, you arrived and sent up your name: to avoid interruption, I answered that I would come down speedily. I intended to finish my conversation, to dress myself, and then to ask you upstairs, or myself to go down. I had not finished my business with W. Scott when the others returned; and they had not been in my room many minutes when they mentioned your being in the garden. I immediately begged them to call to you out of the window, at the same time telling them (what was very true) that I had quite forgot that you were there. You have the whole history, and ought to be ashamed of such womanish jealousy. You will consult your own happiness by driving such stuff from your thoughts. I know you do sometimes ask explanations from other persons, supposing that they fail in etiquette towards you all compliments and explanations of the kind appear to me feeble and ridiculous. Every man can soon find out who is glad to see him or not, without compelling his friends to account for accidents of this kind, which must happen to every mortal.

"Your jealousy, like all other jealousy, is its own punishment. I wish you punished a little for compelling me to write this letter,

which is a great punishment to me; but I do not wish you to be tormented so much as this fractious habit will torment you if you indulge in And besides. I should be very sorry that you missed any friends or valuable acquaintance by the apprehensions persons might entertain of your taking offence at trifles. You say Mr Wird was a stranger He is no stranger. He is Bosville's nephew, and a frequent visitor of mine. He did not act like a stranger: he went away in the middle of dinner; but I was not displeased at the liberty, but wish all my friends to accommodate themselves; and if I shall ever suspect (which I am not They to do that any of them slight me, I shall never seek an explanation, but leave it to time, and a repetition of slights, to discover it to me.

Hing you and your weakness, or rather Hang your weakness for making me write this stuff to you, upon such a foolish business. -I am with great compassion for your nerves, very truly yours, J. HORNE TOOKE."

Some curious letters remain for this year which testify to the great attraction Godwin's society still possessed for those much younger than himself. To him, as to their confessor, young men brought their difficulties, intellectual and social, and confided to him their sorrows and their sins, with their aspirations after a higher life. Some of these, which Godwin must have forgotten to destroy, it is only now no violation of confidence in an Editor to read, because the names are so impossible to identify. Nor would it be well to print them, but it is desirable to notice the fact that such outpourings of spirit were made to Godwin, if we would understand what he really was who seemed to some only the unimpassioned philosopher, but who yet was to those who could get beyond his shell the eager, sympathetic man, who had not forgotten the days of his own youth.

CHAPTER V.

FRIENDS AND CORRESPONDENTS.

1802-3.

WE have now entered on a period of which the interest mainly depends on the correspondence which has been preserved. The life which Godwin led was singularly barren of events; his opinions and his habits were stereotyped. It is true that he made new friends, and there are constant indications that many persons, especially young and enthusiastic men, sat at his feet and gained from him kindliest counsel in difficulties mental and other. But he had ceased to throw himself eagerly into the questions of the day, and the stern need of winning his bread forced him more and more to such literary work as would pay. That his views were unchanged, however, is clear from an interesting letter to him from his friend Fell, whom he had reproached for apparent untruth to the principles of the French Revolution. Fell says that he had denounced the excesses of Robespierre and Marat, while admitting the excellence of that for which they had originally contended. Godwin's position seems to have been that the work was so good, and the principles so true, that to remark the crimes, however gross, of individuals, is to seek for specks on the sun. Whatever may be thought of the argument, it is evidence that Godwin in no degree shrunk from the views of his youth, or from carrying them out to what he considered their legitimate conclusion.

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