Delphi Complete Works of William Godwin 1st ed. (2022), page 191
part #1 of Delphi Classics Series
Such were the amusements of young Lisle from almost his earliest infancy. It was part of his mother’s idea of widowhood, that she never, from the catastrophe of Sir George, allowed herself to behold the light of the sun. Her apartment was always hung with black, and lighted with tapers. She permitted her son to resort every day to a neighbouring school; but he returned to his mother constantly in the evening. It is common enough, that a lad at a certain age should regard his school as a drudgery, and his home as a sort of luxury that succeeds and repays it. And yet one would hardly have expected that, in the particular case of young Lisle. But habit is the sovereign empress of the human mind. He looked with scorn and aversion upon the sport and merriment of his fellow-pupils, and returned with eagerness and impatience to the sable apartment of his parent. The talk that she loved, was his choicest delight; of the talk in which she indulged herself for ever, he felt that he could never have enough. There was a sort of grandeur in it, that was dear to his pride. There was a solemnity and a tragedy, that pampered his imagination. That to which he had been for ever accustomed, seemed to become as necessary to him as his daily bread. King Charles the First was his God, and his deceased parent the most splendid of heroes. They filled much the same place in his conceptions, as Charlemagne and Orlando are found to occupy in the tale of Roncesvalles; with this advantage, that the Grand Rebellion and the siege of Colchester were, to the apprehension of young Lisle, the main realities of life. If at any time his mother seemed to ebb in the stream of her narratives, the boy would cry, Oh, now tell me something of my father! If she had no new stories, he would call for some favourite incident over again; and his questions, and the thirst to know still more and more of the circumstances, could never be satiated.
Such was my present favourite and companion in the university of Oxford. Sometimes we would sit silent together for hours, like what I have heard of a Quakers’ meeting; and then, suddenly seized with that passion for change which is never utterly extinguished in the human mind, would cry out as by mutual impulse, Come, now let us curse a little! In the art of cursing we were certainly no ordinary proficients; and if an indifferent person could have heard us, he would probably have been considerably struck, with the solemnity, the fervour, the eloquence, the richness of style and imagination, with which we discharged the function. The fulminations of Lisle were directed against Cromwel, his assistants and abettors, against Bradshaw and the regicides, and against the whole body of the republican and king-killing party. The favourite object of my comminations were the Pope, and the cardinals, and the Jesuits, and all those, who, from the twelfth century downwards, had devoted the reformers, and the preachers of the pure religion of Christ, to massacre and the flames. My companion recited, with all the sacred emotions of revenge, the massacre of Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle; while I, with equal agitation of feature and limb, commemorated the last fatal day of my father and my mother, and swore to avenge their catastrophe, upon every the humblest adherent of the Catholic religion that should ever fall within the sphere of my power. While we were thus engaged, we seemed to ourselves to be discharging an indispensible duty; and our eyes sparkled, and our hearts attained a higher degree of complacency, in proportion as we thus proceeded, to ‘unpack our hearts with curses Lisle however, I must with contrition confess, was much my superior on these occasions. Not in feeling; but he was blessed in a surprising degree with copiousness of speech, in which faculty I was deficient. So that we were something like Queen Margaret, and the mother of the two young princes, in the play of Richard the Third: when the first had poured forth her astonishing and heart-withering execrations, the other could only say,
Though far more cause, yet much less speech to curse,
Abides in me: I say Amen to her.
In this respect however the comparison failed. If the torrent of his curses was louder and more foaming, mine certainly did not come behind them in bitterness.
But the conformity of disposition I have remarked between myself and my companion, by no means superseded the contrast of character, that grew out of the different methods of our education. Lisle had been nurtured and cherished with all the tenderness of a delicate mother. His misanthropy therefore had a strange mixture in it of the gallant and the chevaleresque. He loved and hated like a gentleman. Love was in his bosom the main spring and vital principle of his hatred. It was the intensity of his affection for King Charles, and for Sir George, and his mother, and the cause to which they had devoted themselves, that gave direction and strength to his dislikes. He hated therefore with generosity and defiance; and whatever sentiment revelled in his bosom, it alike swelled with warmth, and panted with the frankness of enterprise. His misanthropy, so to express myself, had an alloy of tenderness in it: and he felt like a lady; or like one of the preux chevaliers of old, who learned their principles and the rule of their actions from the bright eyes of the fair.
My education had been extremely different from his. I may be said never to have known father or mother. There were certain muscles of my intellectual frame that had never been brought into play; there were arteries of my heart through which the blood never rushed. My character was withered: not chilled; but dried, and stiffened, and changed to a yellow, death-like hue, like the confected carcases of ancient Egypt. It was scorched with too much heat; a heat that operated, not like the life-giving beams of the sun, but like the suffocating, pestilential sirocco of the desert. I had never seen a female, with whom I had held frank and familiar intercourse, till the visit of Henrietta. My education I had derived from a formal, rigid, pedantic, pharisaical priest. Other inmates of the roof under which I dwelt I had had none, except my unfortunate uncle, and his servants, who were more like automata, than human beings. I had conversed only with the hills and the clouds. I had lived in my reveries only; and those reveries were modelled by the very circumscribed course of my experience, and by the tragical events which filled the earliest section of the records of my memory. The consequence of all this was, that, of Lisle and myself, perhaps equally inspired with death-dealing sentiments, Lisle was under the guidance of an impulse, similar to that which urged on the ancient crusaders in their expeditions against the Saracens, while my disposition resembled rather that of the Old Man of the Mountain, the redoubted adversary of those Christian adventurers, whose weapons were known by their deadly effects, while the hand that guided them was never seen.
As both Lisle and myself were copious and abundant in execration, so by indulgence we grew wanton in our imaginations and projects respecting it. One of these projects was of a misanthropical club, where the knot that bound the members together, and the feature that they held in common, should be a disappointed and embittered spirit. But this plan was never carried in execution. A mere vulgar misanthropy was not sufficient to satisfy either of us. We demanded also a refinement of taste, and elegance of sentiment, in whoever should be made our comrade; we never could entirely convince ourselves of the eligibility of any stranger; and we never added a third member to our society.
Now, that I look back on this through a vista of years, and see it with all the lights that my own tragical history has thrown upon it, I could alternately weep over the folly, and rave against the presumption implied in the conduct in which we thus indulged ourselves. What were we, that we should turn an eye of supercilious abhorrence and implacable animosity upon mankind, or any large body and diversified multitude of mankind? What constituted the fancied eminence from which we looked down upon our own species? Were our virtues so resplendent, or our merits so superior, as to give us these rights? What but the accident of birth or education had made us to differ from those we loathed and despised? And had not that accident given us rather a motiveless contempt and abhorrence for others, than any real advantage over them? Oh, that man should be so constituted, as to harbour these malignant passions against his brethren, instead of compassionating, and patiently suffering, and endeavouring to rectify them, as the laws of all true ethics would require him to do! But, alas, this moralizing, in my case, comes too late!
It would seem, from what I have here stated, that I opened my heart, and unloaded the secret sorrows of my bosom, to my youthful companion. Alas, I did no such thing! This was a relief, from which the very vital principles of my character for ever debarred me. I frowned, my nostrils would dilate, and my eyes would seem to start from their sockets; you might discover in me all the indications of a genuine rage. I clenched my fists, and strode up and down the room in which we sat, with the frenzy of impatience. But I never mentioned Clifford. His name was to me like the incommunicable name of Jehovah to the Jews, which they never pronounced, but substituted in its room that of Adonai, the Lord. The expressions of my hatred confined themselves to generals; it seemed as if there was an impassable gulph, that prevented me from descending to particulars. 1 could speak of my father and mother: but that not without the greatest difficulty, and with a feeling as if I was somehow violating a secret, which it was the most flagitious of crimes to violate. I spoke of them with a voice, low, tremulous, hollow, and death-like. I cast my eyes round as if to guard against surprise, and approached close to the ear of my hearer. Every word seemed to shake my frame; and I spoke, hardly resolved to go on, and hardly conscious of what I did. But the sorrow that related to my father and mother was somewhat softened by time; it seemed like the narrative of a former age; the transactions were so long passed as to have become the legitimate topics of history: – they could find their way to the tongue. Oh, if I could have pronounced the name of Clifford, if I could have told the griefs that had flowed to me from him, if I could have given vent to the various emotions he had excited within me, I should have become a different man; I should have been lightened of
A weight of woes, more than ten worlds could bear;
I should have leaped, and bounded, and given loose to my limbs, ‘like man new made’; I should have felt like Prometheus, upon the supposition that the adamantine chains that Vulcan forged for him, could have been dashed to the earth, and the vulture that fed for ever on his liver, could have been chased away, and banished from his sight.
CHAPTER V
SUCH WAS THE character of my acquaintance with young Lisle: but, during the period I have been attempting to describe, my mind did not fail to be greatly disturbed with the recollection of the scenes through which I had lately passed. To a careless observer they may appear to have contained nothing very extraordinary; but it was not so to me. The events that had occurred to me in Wiltshire, constituted what I may call my first entrance into the scene of the real world. When they were over, they were not to me as things that were passed. Waking and sleeping, by day and by night, I actually saw them – the courtesy and noble nature of Penruddock; the extent of my disappointment; the conduct and language of Clifford, whether intended to soothe or exasperate I could not determine. In my ordinary frame of mind, I decidedly imputed to him the latter intention; though I could not always prevent the intrusion of a fairer and more candid interpretation.
For some time the course of succeeding events operated to give renovated strength to the agony of my spirit. Rumours and intelligence of things that occurred, did not fail to reach Oxford; nor did I fail to be for ever anxious to be more fully informed. When I first heard of the promising and impressive commencement of the enterprise, my emotion was great: I said to myself, This is the most splendid and magnificent adventure the island of Great Britain ever saw; and, but for Clifford, I should have had my share of its glories, and the first stage of my inscription in the roll of man, would have been illustrious.’ When on the other hand I heard of the reverses that followed, my compunction was unbounded. ‘Was this a time I said, ‘when I should have withdrawn myself, or have suffered any personal consideration to have prevented me from taking my share, of the disasters and dangers naturally attendant on such an undertaking?’ It may therefore easily be supposed with what feelings I listened to the conclusion of the story, and the undaunted and heroic behaviour of Penruddock and his associates, in the public, final scene of their human existence. I procured copies of their trials and their dying speeches. They furnished me with a theme of endless rumination. Had these men been guilty of a crime? I laid my hand upon my heart, and from my soul pronounced, They had not. Had their conduct that characteristic, the malus animus, the malignant intention, which the law pretends to require, before it pronounces any man a criminal? Their intentions had been of that purity and virtue, that is rather the indication of an angelic nature, than of so mixed and imperfect a creature as man. A man must be some time a member of human society, and accustomed to the regulations of administrative justice, before he can be thoroughly reconciled to the idea, of bringing his fellow mortal to a violent death on a public scaffold, in the midst of full peace, for his virtues only.
But I was speedily roused from the train of my solitary reflections on this subject, by an incident which I have next to relate. One day, as I passed, after my usual manner, careless and unobserving, along the High Street, my eye accidentally caught the figure of Mallison. This somewhat disturbed me. Though he had been deeply concerned in all that had been most distressing to me, previously to my arrival at Oxford, I did not do him the honour to hate him, as I hated Clifford. He appeared to me a being ‘out of my sphere’; and however we might revolve in the varied orbit and circle of our lives, we could never, in my estimation, clash and jostle with each other in our progress. But, though the sight of Mallison did not violently disturb me, every thing would have given me for the moment an uneasy sensation, had it been a chair or a table merely, that should have served to remind of the scenes in which he had been concerned. Stung by the circumstance, I could not refrain from directing some enquiry to be made, as to the phenomenon of his appearance. I found that he had come on a visit to a relation of his in the town, and after a stay of three days only, had again quitted the city.
Insignificant as this incident may appear, such was the perverseness of my fate, it was pregnant with the most memorable effects to me. My intercourse, as may well be supposed, with my fellow Oxonians was very little. From nature I had hardly the disposition to court them, to display affability or courtesy in relation to them. And such is the constitution of man, that when this has been sufficiently ascertained, our fellows are sufficiently inclined to repay us in our own coin, and to apply to us the same airs of superciliousness and neglect, which they have experienced at our hands. This had grown up into a sort of implied compact between my contemporaries and myself. Yet little as our intercourse was, I could not now help observing a striking alteration in their demeanour towards me. Agreeably to the variety of their turns of mind, they would either cross to the other side of the way, or almost elbow and jostle me as they passed, with manifest tokens of incivility. One would scowl at me with a significant sneer; and others would seem to whisper words of contempt, with a haughty carelessness whether or not they reached my ear, or awakened my resentment. I was upon the point of resolving to bring this insufferable mystery to an end, by singling out one of the most offensive of these impertinents, and demanding of him an explanation; when the evil was brought home to me in a more direct form.
I had not seen Lisle for three days, when I chanced, in an obscure and remote street (such streets were often my favourite resort), to perceive him advancing towards me in the opposite direction. At the same moment that I saw him, he appeared to catch my figure, and suddenly turned back, retraced his steps for a short distance, and then struck down a narrow alley, and was immediately out of my sight. This, at another time, would have made no impression upon me. He, as well as myself, was of a wayward disposition, gloomy and fantastical, often inclined to solitude, and averse to the society of his nearest associate. Neither of us, on such occasions, were very punctilious in our mode of avoiding the thing that thwarted us. But I could not help combining this incident in my mind, with what had already occurred to me from other quarters: and I instantly determined, if the action of Lisle sprung from the same source, to obtain the explanation from him, which I had been on the point of seeking elsewhere. My nature was too gloomy and concentrated, to allow me to delight, as some unhappy beings have done, in noisy altercation and defiance. I infinitely preferred seeking the information I needed, from the lips of my friend.
A young man is new to every thing; and every thing out of the ordinary routine makes a deep impression upon him. As I walked towards the apartments of Lisle, I said, ‘I am going to learn something from him. It can be no small thing, that seems to prompt every man to shun me, and, if I conjecture rightly, is about to sever me from my nearest ally. I care but little for society; the ordinary intercourse of the world, has slender charms for me; but I have ambition, and ambition is a passion, that cannot have its proper scope in a world of my own imagination. I care but little for the world; but I shall be ill satisfied with the reverse of this proposition, that the world should not care for me. I will not endure its censure; I will not endure its contempt; I am formed to feel any slur that is cast upon me, not like a wound, but like fifty mortal swords, each of them striking at something infinitely beyond my life
I mounted the stairs that led to my friend’s apartment, with a solemnity of feeling I had scarcely ever experienced. Every muscle of my frame seemed to move, and to be prepared to start into a new and several existence. I know not whether I make myself understood. I was one man, all my powers collected and centred in one thought: and yet I seemed to feel within me a quantity of life, enough for a thousand men.
I knocked at his door: no one answered. I paused for a minute, and knocked again. I listened: I heard him pacing up and down in his chamber. I knocked a third time. The door flew open before me with a passionate violence. My friend stood a few steps within the door.
‘What do you come here for?’ he said. ‘You saw I was desirous to avoid you
