ABSTRACT
Godwin is as far removed from everything feverish and exciting as if his head had never been filled with anything but geometry. He lives on Snowhill, just about where Evelina’s vulgar relations lived. His family is supported partly by the labors of his own pen and partly by those of his wife’s, but chiefly by the profits of a shop for children’s books, which she keeps and manages to considerable advantage. She is a spirited, active woman, who controls the house pretty well. When Ticknor looked at Godwin, and saw with what cool obstinacy he adhered to everything he had once assumed, and what a cold selfishness lay at the bottom of his character, Ticknor felt a satisfaction in the thought that he had a wife who must sometimes give a start to his blood and a stir to his nervous system.
