“Dear Godwin,—I received your letter, and with it the enclosed note, which shall be punctually re-delivered to you on the 1st October.
“Your tragedy to be exhibited at Christmas! I have indeed merely read your letter, so it is not strange that my heart still continues beating out of time. Indeed, indeed, Godwin, such a stream of hope and fear rushed in on me, when I read the sentence, as you would not permit yourself to feel. If there be anything yet undreamed of in our philosophy; if it be, or if it be possible, that thought can impel thought out of the visual limit of a man’s own skull and heart; if the clusters of ideas, which constitute our identity, do ever connect and unite with a greater whole; if feelings could ever propagate themselves without the servile ministrations of undulating air or reflected light—I seem to feel within myself a strength and a power of desire that might dart a modifying, commanding impulse on a whole theatre. What does all this mean? Alas! that sober sense should know no other to construe all this, except by the tame phrase, I wish you success. . . .”
[In a previous letter not here given he had begged Godwin to stand godfather to his child. The compliment was of course declined.]
“Your feelings respecting Baptism are, I suppose, much
like mine! At times I dwell on Man with such reverence, resolve all his follies
and superstitions into such grand primary laws of intellect, and in such wise
so contemplate them as ever-varying incarnations of the Eternal Life—that the
Llama’s dung-pellet, or the cow-tail which the dying Brahmin clutches
convulsively, become sanctified and sublime by the feelings which cluster round
them. In that mood I exclaim, my boys shall be christened! But then another fit
of moody philosophy attacks me. I look at my doted-on Hartley—he moves, he lives, he finds impulses
from within
| 10 | WILLIAM GODWIN |
“My wife is now quite comfortable. Surely you might
come and spend the very next four weeks, not without advantage to both of us.
The very glory of the place is coming on. The local Genius is just arranging
himself in his highest attributes. But above all, I press it, because my mind
has been busied with speculations that are closely connected with those
pursuits which have hitherto constituted your utility and importance; and
ardently as I wish you success on the stage, I yet cannot frame myself to the
thought that you should cease to appear as a bold moral
thinker. I wish you to write a book on the power of the words, and the
processes by which the human feelings form affinities with them. In short, I
wish you to philosophize Horne
Tooke’s system, and to solve the great questions, whether
there be reason to hold that an action bearing all the semblance of
pre-designing consciousness may yet be simply organic, and whether a series of
such actions are possible? And close on the heels of this question would
follow, Is Logic the Essence of Thinking? In other
words, Is Thinking impossible without arbitrary signs?
And how far is the word ‘arbitrary’ a misnomer? Are not words,
&c., parts and germinations of the plant? And what is the law of their
growth? In something of this sort I would endeavour to destroy the old
antithesis of Words and Things; elevating, as it were, Words into
| LYRICAL BALLADS. | 11 |
“I was in the country when Wallenstein was published. Longman sent me down half-a-dozen. The carriage back, the book was not worth.”
