Delphi Complete Works of William Godwin 1st ed. (2022), page 134
part #1 of Delphi Classics Series
In the mean time there was this peculiarity in my tuition: though I learned from my preceptor almost every thing valuable that he was able to teach, I never looked up to him. His foibles were obvious, and did not escape my observation. The understanding of my father was incomparably greater than that of this inmate of our family; nor did my father always refrain from ridiculing in his absence, and even sometimes alluding by a passing sarcasm in his presence, to my tutor’s weakness. I secretly despised the good gentleman’s sonnets and odes, and listened with an unattending ear to his mythological mysteries. I never dreamed for a moment that it could be less than sacrilege to measure his understanding with my own. This systematical persuasion of superiority occasionally broke out into little petulancies, which did not fail grievously to wound my kind friend’s self-esteem. I was positive, assuming, and conceited. But the difference of our ages prevented these disputes from having any serious consequences. If I entertained little deference for my tutor’s talents, I was not insensible to that degree of consideration which is due to superior age, particularly when united with virtue; and my father, in his general demeanour, set me too excellent an example in this respect, for it to be possible for me not to profit by it. I might, perhaps, in my own nature have been sufficiently inclined to the impetuous and turbulent; if I had been one only of a class of pupils, it is probable enough that I should have joined in the conduct of unlucky tricks to be put upon my instructor: but I was alone; and therefore, however quick-sighted I might be to his weaknesses, they did not so expressly present themselves to my apprehension in the shape of ridicule.
CHAPTER II
THE PROPER TOPIC of the narrative I am writing is the record of my errors. To write it, is the act of my penitence and humiliation. I can expect, however, few persons to interest themselves respecting my errors, unless they are first informed what manner of man I am, what were my spontaneous and native dispositions, and whether I am such a one as that my errors are worthy of commiseration and pity. This must be my apology for the topic I am here to introduce, – a topic on which all ingenuous minds are disposed to be silent, and which shall in this place be passed over as slightly as possible, – my beneficence and charities.
I was fond of penetrating into the cottages of the poor. I should be greatly unjust to myself, if I suffered the reader to suppose that the wild elevation and intellectual luxuries I indulged, had the effect to render me insensible to the miseries of man. Nothing was squalid, loathsome, and disgusting in my eyes, where it was possible for me to be useful. I shrunk from the society of man in general; and foresaw, in the intercourse of my species, something for ever prepared to thwart my sensibility, and to jar against the unreal world in which I lived. But I never shrank from the presence of calamity. From the liberal allowance with which my father supplied me, I relieved its wants; I sheltered it from the menaces of a prison; and I even prevailed on myself to resort willingly to such towns as our vicinity afforded, to plead its cause, and parley with its oppressor.
No doubt, my pride did not come away ungratified from these enterprises. Far be it from me to assert, with certain morose and cold-blooded moralists, that our best actions are only more subtle methods by which self-love seeks its gratification. My own heart, in every act of benevolence I ever performed, gave the lie to this execrable doctrine. I felt that it was the love of another, and not of myself, that prompted my deed; I experienced a disinterested joy in human relief and human happiness, independently of the question whether I had been concerned in producing it; and, when the season of retrospect arrived, I exulted in my own benevolence, from the divine consciousness that, while I had been most busily engaged in the task, my own gratification was forgotten.
There is, however, as I have intimated, a very subtle and complicated association in human feelings. The generous sympathy which animated my charitable deeds was pure; it flowed from a celestial source, and maintained its crystal current, as unmingled with the vulgar stream of personal passions as the oil extracted from the most aromatic fruits flows separate, and unconfounded with the mire of the kennel on which it may have fallen. There is no doubt, however, that the honourable character I exhibited on these occasions prompted me the more joyfully to seek their repetition. Humanity and self-complacency were distinct causes of my beneficence; but the latter was not less powerful than the former in nourishing it into a habit. In other scenes of human intercourse, I played an equal and a doubtful part: the superior eloquence or information of my competitor might overwhelm me; he might have more passion to pursue his purpose, or more want of feeling to harden him against the obstacles that opposed; but in the cottage to which my benevolence led me, I appeared like a superior nature; I had here no opposition to contend with, no insult to awaken my irritability, and no superciliousness to check the operations of my sentiment. It was also fortunate for me, that the cases of distress which came before me in this remote part of the island were not numerous enough to distract my choice, or to render me callous by the too great frequency of their impressions.
One adventure of this sort interested me so much by the liveliness of its incidents, that I cannot refuse briefly to describe it in this place. The season had for many days been uncommonly wet. The waters were swelled with continual rains, and the low lands were almost inundated. It was July. After a series of heavy showers, one afternoon the sky brightened, the sun burst forth with redoubled splendour, and all nature smiled. This is a moment particularly dear to the lover of rural scenery. Dry weather tarnishes the face of nature, fades the lovely colours of hill and valley, and profanes and destroys those sweet odours which, more than any thing else, give the last finish to the charms of nature. I hastened to enjoy the golden opportunity. By long practice, I knew how to find the paths where mire and swamps would not occur to interrupt my pleasure. My way led me by a steep acclivity of the mountain, which overhangs the basin that forms the source of the Desunny. I gained the eastern extremity of the ridge, that I might the more amply enjoy the beams of the setting sun as he sunk beneath the waves of the Irish Sea. It was the finest evening my eyes ever beheld. The resplendent colours of the clouds, the rich purple and burnished gold in various streaks fantastically formed and repeated, were beyond any imagination to conceive. The woods were vocal. The scents that surrounded me, the steaming earth, the fresh and invigorating air, the hay and the flowers, constituted, so to express myself, an olfactory concert, infinitely more ravishing than all the concords of harmonious sound that human art ever produced. This lovely moment combined in one impression the freshness of the finest morning, with all the rich and gorgeous effects peculiar to the close of a summer’s day.
I stood, as I have said, on the edge of the precipice. I gazed for a long time upon the various charms that what we ordinarily, but improperly, call inanimate nature unfolded. I saw the rustic, as he retired from endeavouring to repair the injury his hay had sustained; and the flocks, as they passed slowly along to their evening’s repose. Presently an individual object engrossed my attention. A young lamb had wandered by some accident to the middle of the precipice, and a peasant was pursuing it, and endeavouring to call it to his arms. I shuddered at the sight. The precipice was in some parts almost perpendicular. The rains had rendered the surface exceedingly slippery. The peasant caught at the shrubs and tufts of grass as he descended; and, with a skill peculiar to the inhabitants of the mountains, seemed to proceed securely in the most desperate places. The lamb, whether from heedlessness or wantonness, advanced further along the mountain-side, as the shepherd pursued.
While I was engaged in observing this little manoeuvre, I suddenly heard a scream. It came from a spot exceedingly near to me. Two boys sat in a nook where I had not perceived them, and cried out, ‘My brother! my brother!’ A venerable grey-headed man was with them. He exclaimed, ‘My son! my William!’ and prepared to plunge down the precipice. The scream I had heard was the effect of what at that moment happened before my eyes; yet such is the curious structure of the human senses, that what I heard seemed to be prior in time to what I saw. The peasant had almost overtaken his lamb. The lamb was on the point of escaping by a sudden leap; the peasant sprung upon him, and both were at the bottom of the precipice, and plunged in the basin, now swelled into a lake, with the rapidity of lightning. I flew to the group I have described; I laid hold of the old man at the moment of his purposed descent; I cried out, ‘Stay, poor man! what can you do? I will save your son!’ I knew a path, more secure, yet scarcely more circuitous than that which the peasant had followed. I had the advantage over him, that I was not diverted from my course by any object whose deviations I pursued. For some time I went on safely; I saw the peasant rise to the surface of the water, and sink again; my impatience was too great to combine any longer with wariness; I lost my footing, and in an instant I also was in the lake.
My fall had been from a less terrible height than his, and I recovered myself. I swam toward the place where he had last sunk; he rose; I threw my arm round his neck, and supported him. The difficulty, however, which remained appeared insuperable; the shores on almost every side were shelving, and impossible to be scaled with the peasant in my arms, who was in a state of insensibility. As I was endeavouring to find the means of escaping from this difficulty, I saw a boat advancing toward us; it was rowed by a young woman; it approached; she was William’s mistress, and the owner of the lamb for which he had ventured his life; we got him into the boat; he was more stunned with the fall, than injured by the water; he appeared to be gradually recovering; even the lamb was saved.
By the time we had reached the shore, the father and the two brothers were come round to our landing-place. All their attention was at first turned upon William; I was nothing to them: I retired to a little distance, and observed the group. The eldest boy supported William, as he sat; the blooming maid rubbed his temples; the father sat before him, and clasped his son’s hands between his. It was an interesting spectacle; a painter might have sketched them as they sat. The eye of the boy glistened with eagerness; the girl hung over her lover, while her colour alternately changed from its natural ruddiness to a languid paleness; the hairs of the old man were as white as snow. Presently William uttered a profound sigh; it was a welcome sound to the whole assembly. The least boy was at first wrapped in silent attention; but presently began to play with Molly, the pet lamb, that frisked about him. In a short time the old man exclaimed, Where is our deliverer?’ It was now my turn; I was at a short distance; they were all tumultuous in their expressions of gratitude. The peasant-girl and myself supported William to his cottage; I offered my other arm to the father; the biggest boy led their favourite lamb by a string which hung from his neck; the youngest bore in triumph his father’s stick, who, as he leaned on my arm, no longer needed its support.
Such was the commencement of my acquaintance with an honest family. The habitation of the girl was at a small distance from theirs; she was one of a numerous assemblage of sisters who lived with their mother. I found that the young persons had been lovers for more than a year, but had deferred their marriage for prudential reasons. The industry of William was the support of his own house; his father was past his labour; they had resolved not to marry till the next brother should be able to take the place now filled by the eldest. The accident that had just occurred, in which the cottage-maid preserved the life of her lover, increased their affection, and doubled their impatience; an impatience, however, which they were resolute to subject to the most honourable considerations. I saw them often; I loved them much. William was ingenuous and active; the maid added to a masculine intrepidity most of the more lovely graces of her own sex. The father often lamented, even with tears, that he was no longer capable of those exertions which might enable William freely to obey the dictates of his heart. The attachment which I felt to them was that of a patron and a preserver; when I observed the degree of content which prevailed among them, when I witnessed the effusions of their honest esteem and affection, my heart whispered me, This would not have existed but for me!’ I prevailed on my father to bestow a farm upon the lovers; I engaged, out of my own little stock, to hire a labourer for the old man; they married, and I had the satisfaction to convert one virtuous establishment into two.
Such were the principal occupations of my juvenile years. I loved the country, without feeling any partiality to what are called the sports of the country. My temper, as I have already said, was somewhat unsocial; and so far as related to the intercourse of my species, except when some strong stimulus of humanity called me into action, unenterprising. I was therefore no hunter. I was inaccessible to the pitiful ambition of showing, before a gang of rural squires, that I had a fine horse, and could manage him gracefully. I had not the motive, which ordinarily influences the inhabitants of the country to the cultivation of these sports, – the want of occupation. I was young: the world was new to me: I abounded with occupation. In the scenery of Merionethshire I found a source of inexhaustible amusement. Science, history, poetry, engaged me by turns, and into each of them my soul plunged itself with an ardour difficult to describe. In the train of these came my visions, my beloved and variegated inventions, the records, which to me appeared voluminous and momentous, of my past life, the plans of my future, the republics I formed, the seminaries of education for which I constructed laws, the figure I proposed hereafter to exhibit in the eyes of a wondering world. I had a still further and more direct reason for my rejection of the sports of the field. I could not with patience regard torture, anguish, and death, as sources of amusement. My natural temper, or my reflective and undebauched habits as a solitaire, prevented me from overlooking the brutality and cruelty of such pursuits. In very early youth I had been seduced, first by a footman of my father, and afterwards by my tutor, who was a great lover of the art, to join in an excursion of angling. But, after a short trial, I abjured the amusement for ever; and it was one among the causes of the small respect I entertained for my tutor, that he was devoted to so idle and unfeeling an avocation.
CHAPTER III
AT THE USUAL age I entered myself of the university of Oxford. I felt no strong propensity to this change; but I submitted to it, as to a thing in the regular order of proceeding, and to which it would be useless to object. I was so much accustomed to self-conversation as to have little inclination to mix in the world; and was to such a degree satisfied with my abilities, and progress, and capacity of directing my own studies and conduct, as not to look with any eager craving for the advice and assistance of professors and doctors.
In setting out for the university, I was to part with my father and my preceptor. The first of these was a bitter pang to me: I had scarcely, from the earliest of my remembrance, ever been a week removed from the sight of the author of my being. He was the wisest and the best man I knew. He had all those advantages from nature, and from the external endowments of fortune, which were calculated to maintain my reverence. We had gradually become more qualified for each other’s society and confidence. Our characters had many points of resemblance: we were both serious, both contemplative, both averse to the commerce of the world. My temper, as I have said, was to an uncommon degree impatient of contradiction; and a certain degree of heartburning had not failed occasionally to invade my breast on this score, even toward this excellent parent. But my resentment and indignation in these instances had been short-lived. As the only representative of his person in existence, my father was ardently attached to me, and the occasions he administered to my impatience and displeasure were exceedingly few. On the other hand, whatever faults of character might justly be imputed to me, I had yet betrayed no tokens of an unmanageable boisterousness; my propensities were innocent; and my pursuits, most of them, such as seemed to conduce to the improvement of my understanding and my heart. In a word, my father and I, allowing for those failings which in some form or other are inseparable from the human character, were excellent friends; and it was not without many tears shed on both sides that we parted, when I mounted the chaise in which I set out for Oxford.
The separation between me and my tutor, which took place at the same time, was productive of a mixed sensation. I had long nourished in my mind a supercilious disregard of his mental discernment, and felt as if it were a degradation to me to listen to his instructions. The lessons he gave me appeared as a sort of shackles, the symbols of infantine imbecility. I was confident of my virtue and my perseverance, and longed to shake off these tokens of my nonage. But, besides these intellectual sources of weariness and impatience, there was an animal sensation, which made me regard the day of my separation from my tutor as the epoch of my liberty. His voice was sickly and unpleasing to my ear. He had cultivated the art of being amiable; and his cadences were formed by habit to a kind of tune of candour, and gentleness, and humanity. His gentleness was, unfortunately, twin-brother to the softness of his understanding, and expressed nothing so plainly as his ignorance of all the avenues of persuasion, and all the secret springs of hope, and fear, and passion, and will. In addition to this, the good gentleman loved to hear himself talk; and his explanations and exhortations were as long as the homilies of Archbishop Cranmer. At my age, – the age of restlessness, and activity, and enterprise, – these discourses, unhappily, did not generate a propensity to sleep, and therefore produced in me an insupportable listlessness and ennui.
