William Godwin: his Friends and Contemporaries
Ch. IX. 1812-1819
William Godwin to an anonymous correspondent, 21 November 1817
“The application I desired to make to you related to
my only son, who is now sixteen years of
age. He does not feel a vocation to literature as a profession, and I am glad
of it; for though I do not think so ill of the literary character as Mr D’Israeli would persuade his readers
to think, yet I know that it is a very arduous, and a very precarious
destination. I propose therefore to place him in commerce. Till his character
became decided in this respect, I kept him at Dr
Burney’s school at Greenwich, which I need ![]()
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not tell you has a high reputation for classical
learning. A year ago I removed him to Mr Jay’s
commercial establishment at Bedford. He has therefore had nearly every
advantage of education. His proficiency in the Latin, Greek, and French
languages is considerable. He has been initiated in algebra, geometry,
chemistry, etc. He has begun Spanish. My own opinion of his intellectual
abilities is, that he is not an original thinker; but he has a remarkably clear
head, and retentive memory. He is the only person with whom I have been any way
concerned in the course of education, who is distinguished from all others by
the circumstance of always returning a just answer to the questions I proposed
to him, so that I could always lead him to understand the thing before him, by
calling in the stock of his own mind. He is besides of a very affectionate
disposition. . . .
“I have sometimes been idle enough to think that the
only son of William Godwin could not
want friends if he deserved them. What I ask in the present case, is not money
out of any man’s pocket, but to accept a servant, who in all probability
would prove a most valuable acquisition to his employer. My vanity may
nevertheless have misled me on this point. There are many men who think of an
author and his works, just as a child thinks of a plaything, and who do not
conceive they owe any kindness to him who has occupied all his days for the
public benefit and instruction.” . . .
Charles Parr Burney (1785-1864)
The son of the younger Charles Burney; educated at Merton College, Oxford, he succeeded
his father at the Greenwich Academy (1814-35) and was rector of Sible Hedingham and
archdeacon of St. Albans (1840) and Colchester (1845).
Isaac D'Israeli (1766-1848)
English essayist and literary biographer; author of
Curiosities of
Literature (1791). Father of the prime minister.
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.
William Godwin jun. (1803-1832)
The son of William and Mary Jane Godwin; he was a reporter for the
Morning Chronicle who died of cholera.
