ABSTRACT
Mr. Godwin, who during the happiest period of Lamb’s weekly parties, was a constant assistant at his whist-table, resembled Dyer in simplicity of manner and devotion to letters; but the simplicity was more superficial, and the devotion more profound than the kindred qualities in the guileless scholar. To a stranger’s gaze the author of the “Political Justice” and “Caleb Williams,” as he appeared in the Temple, always an object of curiosity except to his familiars, presented none of those characteristics with which fancy had invested the daring speculator and relentless novelist; nor, when he broke silence, did his language tend to reconcile the reality with the expectation. Mr. Godwin was a man of two beings, which held little discourse with each other—the daring inventor of theories constructed of air-drawn diagrams—and the simple gentleman, who suffered nothing to disturb or excite him, beyond his study.
