“Dear Godwin,—I am more grieved than you
perhaps would have expected by what you consider, I hope too precipitately, as
the final result of our projects. If you should be driven from the respectable
industry which, with your talents, reputation, and habits, you have undertaken
for your family, it will, in my cool opinion, be a scandal to the age. The
mortification of my own disability is aggravated by my natural, though not very
reasonable repugnance to an avowal of its full extent, and of all its vexatious
causes. But you must not give up. Be of good heart. New publications, I grant
to you, are not likely to increase your fame. But they will refresh your
reputation, and give you all the advantages of present popularity. When
liberality and friendship are quickened by public applause, they are more
trustworthy aids than in their solitary state. The great are to be pushed on by
the
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“I shall receive the two books with much thankfulness, for, after much research, I have not yet traced the accounts of Kirke and Jefferies to the original witnesses.
“Can you tell me whether L’Estrange continued the ‘Observator’ during James II.’s reign?
“I am sorry to hear of Mrs Godwin’s illness. Lady Mackintosh begs her kindest remembrances, and I am most truly yours,
