William Godwin: his Friends and Contemporaries
Ch. IX. 1797
Robert Southey to Joseph Cottle, 13 March 1797
“. . . Of all the lions or literati I have seen here, Mary
Imlay’s countenance is the best, infinitely the best: the
only fault in it is an expression somewhat similar to what the prints of
Horne Tooke display—an expression
indicating superiority; not haughtiness, not sarcasm, in Mary
Imlay, but still it is unpleasant. Her eyes are light brown, and
although the lid of one of them is affected by a little paralysis, they are the
most meaning I ever saw. . . . As for Godwin himself, he has large noble eyes, and a nose—oh most abominable nose! Language is not
vituperatious enough to describe the effect of its downward
elongation.”—Southey’s Life, Vol. i., pp. 305, 306.
Mary Godwin [née Wollstonecraft] (1759-1797)
English feminist, author of
Vindication of the Rights of Woman
(1792); she married William Godwin in 1797 and died giving birth to their daughter
Mary.
William Godwin (1756-1836)
English novelist and political philosopher; author of
An Inquiry
concerning the Principles of Political Justice (1793) and
Caleb
Williams (1794); in 1797 he married Mary Wollstonecraft.
John Horne Tooke (1736-1812)
Philologist and political radical; member of the Society for Constitutional Information
(1780); tried for high treason and acquitted (1794).
