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WILLIAM GODWIN THE YOUNGER.

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to go out at nine o'clock to a new farce, in which Liston is the principal figure, and twice I have suffered disappointment from this cause. If you come by the packet you will in all probability be driven below, and how you will be able to bear that, if there are many passengers, I cannot guess. For God's sake, cheer your heart with some of Mrs Snow's excellent boiled beef. . . .

“I am getting a little intimate with Tom Holcroft, and I like him. I have lent him the first volume of Plutarch's Lives,' at his own choice; for, poor fellow, he is sadly at a loss for useful occupation. He says he wishes Mrs Godwin were come home. . . . "Most affectionately yours, WILLIAM GODWIN.

“The wood frame which supported two of the three arches of Southwark Bridge has been removed, and you cannot imagine how light and enchanting it looks."

The remaining letter for the year, which seems worth preservation, relates to William Godwin, junior. The father's matured and completed estimate of his son will appear in a later year; but though here the trouble that William had given at home is not unnaturally concealed, the close analysis of character, which was always a favourite pursuit of Godwin, is not abandoned, even when his interests and feelings might alike incline him to be less minute.

William Godwin to

"Nov. 21, 1818.

"The application I desired to make to you related to my only son, who is now sixteen years of age. He does not feel a vocation to literature as a profession, and I am glad of it; for though I do not think so ill of the literary character as Mr D'Israeli would persuade his readers to think, yet I know that it is a very arduous, and a very precarious destination. I propose therefore to place him in commerce. Till his character became decided in this respect, I kept him at Dr Burney's school at Greenwich, which I need

not tell you has a high reputation for classical learning. A year ago I removed him to Mr Jay's commercial establishment at Bedford. He has therefore had nearly every advantage of education. His proficiency in the Latin, Greek, and French languages is considerable. He has been initiated in algebra, geometry, chemistry, etc. He has begun Spanish. My own opinion of his intellectual abilities is, that he is not an original thinker; but he has a remarkably clear head, and retentive memory. He is the only person with whom I have been any way concerned in the course of education, who is distinguished from all others by the circumstance of always returning a just answer to the questions I proposed to him, so that I could always lead him to understand the thing before him, by calling in the stock of his own mind. He is besides of a very affectionate disposition.

"I have sometimes been idle enough to think that the only son of William Godwin could not want friends if he deserved them. What I ask in the present case, is not money out of any man's pocket, but to accept a servant, who in all probability would prove a most valuable acquisition to his employer. My vanity may nevertheless have misled me on this point. There are many men who think of an author and his works, just as a child thinks of a plaything, and who do not conceive they owe any kindness to him who has occupied all his days for the public benefit and instruction."

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Apart from the family history, and the usual details of daily life, study, and relaxation, there is but little in the diaries which calls for notice, nothing which demands quotation. More political events are recorded than for some time previously, though in the briefest way, indicating that the writer's mind was freer from cares which concentrated the attention on self. And in the year 1818 Godwin again flung himself into politico-social controversy, by devoting a very large share of his time and study to the refutation of Malthus's Essay on Population. It would appear that to

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no other of his works, except perhaps 'Political Justice,' did he give himself up so thoroughly. Not a day passes without a record of pages written and rewritten, with minute and scrupulous care.

It was by no means the last of his works, but those which followed were written with diminished power. For while writing it, came the first warning of seriously failing health. On 25th Nov. 1818 he had a slight stroke of paralysis, so slight that it in no degree interfered with his usual course of life, and he dined out the very next day, But there are records afterwards of numbness, now in this, now in that limb, and from time to time the significant entry, that he felt quite well for so many days, showing clearly that the prevailing sensation was one of somewhat failing bodily

powers.

The following letter to Mrs Godwin reflects his state. of mind with great vividness, and shows the store he set by this work :

William Godwin to Mrs Godwin [at Southend].

“Aug. 31, 1819.

"I never was so deep in anything as I am now in Malthus, and it is curious to see how my spirits fluctuate accordingly. When I engage in a calculation, I cannot pursue it for an hour without being sick to the lowest ebb. I told you in my last that I have employed William and Rosser. I wrote to Booth for a calculation early on Tuesday last, entreating him to let me have it by the first post on Wednesday, that I might not be prevented from getting on. As usual, I heard nothing of him on Wednesday, nor till Thursday dinner, when he dropped in to my mutton. I was, therefore, miserable. On Friday I made an important discovery and I was happy. The weather has since changed, and you know how that affects me. I was nervous and peevish on Saturday to a degree that almost alarmed me. On Sunday I was in heaven. I think I

shall make a chapter expressly on the geometrical ratio that will delight my friends and astonish the foe. To-day I woke as usual between five and six, and my mind necessarily turned on my work. It was so fruitful that I felt compelled to come down stairs for pen and ink, which I made use of in bed. I invented what I believe are two fine passages, and minuted them down. But the consequence is, there my day's work ends. I rose in a little fever.

But if it does exactly the

"I did not intend to tell you all this, and I am afraid of your not reading it in the spirit of sympathy. But this way of life is my destination, and I must pursue it. I think it will preserve my faculties and lengthen my existence. contrary, I care not. What matters what becomes of this miserable carcase, if I can live for ever in true usefulness? And this must be the case in the present instance: for whatever becomes of my individual book, if I am right the system of Malthus can never rise again, and the world is delivered for ever from this accursed apology in favour of vice and misery, of hard-heartedness and oppression.

Why, to borrow your own words, do I talk so much of myself? Because I have nothing else to think about?"

The answer to Malthus was published by Longmans, on Nov. 25th, 1820. But it was published for the author, and as will be seen by a subsequent letter to Mrs Shelley, failed to realize in any degree the sum on which the writer had counted.

CHAPTER X.

NEW FRIENDS AND NEW TROUBLES. 1819-1824.

ONCE more the pages of the Diary are thickly studded with the records of death. One whose acquaintance had been so varied and so numerous, presented a large band of friends to the attacks of the great divider. But the stoical calm after which Godwin had ever striven, deprives these records of anything like lament, or the pathos lies in obscure touches. One such is to be found in the entry under August 1, 1820—“ E. Inchbald dies, Suffield dies." His most intimate friends are described as Miss, Mrs, and the men simply by their names. Mrs Inchbald alone in these pages is mentioned as though he thought of her under the intimacy of a Christian name. Speculation is out of place in a biography, but it is almost impossible not to think that this death brought to Godwin a very keen pang. She was the woman whom once he had desired to make his wife, with whom he quarrelled for the sake of one he loved yet more, in whose grave the romance of his life was buried.

Two new acquaintances, who ripened into friends were, made by Godwin in 1819; the first being a young man, attracted, as so many others had been, to one whose writings had taught them so much. Mr Rosser's name occurs as a most frequent guest in Godwin's house, and a com-) panion in his walks, whenever the Cambridge vacations

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