William Godwin: his Friends and Contemporaries
Ch. II. 1800
Thomas Holcroft to William Godwin, 15 August 1800
“Altona, August 15th, 1800.
“. . . At last we have received a letter from
Mr William Nicholson, so
circumstantially meagre and hide-bound. Damnation! His frost inflames my gall.
He does not mean it thus; but experimental philosophy has rendered him most
wise, and full of incoherency. I suppose he might be induced to walk as far as
the end of the street to serve a friend, provided it was quite certain his wife
would not want him to weigh ten grains of rhubarb in the interim. Good God! how
nearly are greatness and littleness allied. And so it is with us all. I have
not told you, nor can I at present tell, how nobly Clementi behaved to me; but you, and more than you, shall some
day hear.”
Muzio Clementi (1752-1832)
Italian composer, pianist, and pedagogue who issued the long re-published
Gradus ad Parnassum.
William John Godolphin Nicholls (1789 c.-1815)
Of Trereife in Cornwall, the son of William Nicholls; he was tutored by Charles Valentine
Le Grice, who in 1799 married his mother (née Mary Ustick) who would inherit the estate
upon the death of her son.
William Nicholson (1753-1815)
Originally an agent for Josiah Wedgwood, he pursued a career as a chemist, writer on
science, and projector; he was a friend of Thomas Holcroft and William Godwin.
