“Dear Godwin,—Your letter
has given me no small degree of pleasure, but I confess it has also given me
anxiety. It seems the letter of a man who once thought well of me, but who now
finds with regret that he has reason in a great measure to retract his good
opinion. It is worse. It seems to me to be written in a tone of melancholy
despondency. I don’t know what to think of
| 320 | WILLIAM GODWIN |
“Curse the news—what care I for Egypt? But that was my own thoughtlessness and impertinence. . . .
“I took the route of Livonia, Poland, and Silesia. I passed through Riga, Warsaw, Cracow, Teschen, Olmütz, Brünn, to Vienne. So far from having kept a copious journal; between Petersburg and Warsaw I marked only the days of the month, and the place where I slept each night, when that place had a name and I knew it. Before I reached Warsaw I lost my inkholder—a loss which in the capital of Poland could not be supplied, so that I did not afterwards write another word, but trusted solely to my memory. I regret this. . . .
“I am quite of your opinion that it would be better to visit countries which are not traversed every day. Hungary, however, I scarcely expect to see, or any part of the Emperor’s dominions, so difficult is it to procure admittance, and so closely are you watched when admitted. . . . Fortune, indeed, has not smiled upon my early youth, and my infant years have been years of misery; but among the few happy periods of my life I shall ever rank the time I spent in walking through Poland. And yet I met with nothing there to make me happy; the generality of young men in my situation would have considered their condition as most desperate and deplorable. My happiness was founded in hope, and in thinking of the Polygon. . . .”
