“Dear Arnot,—I derived exquisite pleasure from the receipt of your letter. I have thought of you a thousand times with inexpressible anxiety. I have been accused, as you know, of countenancing a young man, in whom I felt a powerful interest, in entering unprovided, and unsupported, upon an attempt the most perilous and insane, from which it was next to impossible he should not reap intolerable calamities, and hardly probable that he should come off alive. Without an accuser I should have sufficiently felt the high responsibility that devolved on me. Yet what could I do? The first sensation your project excited in me was envy. I wished I could have been a lad like you to undertake what you proposed. I saw in you many qualifications, fitting you for the design, courage, though not an uniform courage, and an easy and assured manner, calculated to smooth a thousand difficulties, and prepossess strangers in your favour. Feeling approbation, could I belie my sentiment?
“Under these impressions it seemed to me very long
before I heard from you. I saw you for the last time on the 13th of June, and
your first letter did not reach me till the 10th of November. You promised me
to write from Petersburgh. My active imagination passed in review all the
dangers of your route, immense deserts, rude forests, fierce Cossacks, hunger,
assassination and death. These evils would have impressed me more strongly, had
| 318 | WILLIAM GODWIN |
“And now, will you forgive me, if I acknowledge, in spite of the heart-felt pleasure with which I received your letters, my satisfaction was not unmixed with disappointment. The first consisted of five poor lines, with a morsel of postscript. The kindest construction I could put upon this was that you were so sunk in spirit that if you had written more, you felt your melancholy and dejection would break out, and therefore out of pure generosity you stopped while you could. But if this were the kindest construction, it was not the most consolatory. Your second letter has in some degree removed this uneasy apprehension. It reached me last night, November 22nd, in fifteen days from its date. But in neither do you tell me where you have been, what you have seen, not even whether you took the route of Livonia, Poland, and Silesia, or of Sweden, Denmark, Holstein, &c.; whether you took shore at Petersburgh and continued your route by land, or whether though first at Vienna, and now at Dresden, you have seen no other country than Germany. Another fault I find is, that I trace in your letters no feature of the mind I loved, no sterling observations of man, no agreeable naiveté of adventure. I hope while your body has been in restless motion, your mind has not slept. But I suppose you reserve all your good things to surprise the world with.
“I think your famous Dr
John Brown affirms that the natural genuine state of man is
death. I know not what physical truth there may be in this, but morally I
greatly fear that the man who would truly be alive must obstinately spur his
mind into a much better state than that into which, if neglected, it will sink.
I hope you keep a copious journal. I hate travels into the four quarters
| THE EXPEDITION TO EGYPT. | 319 |
“You ask for news. . . . The grand topic is Egypt. Buonaparte sailed for that country in May. Our Admiral Nelson pursued him, arrived before him, and returned to Europe. Buonaparte landed his forces July 1st. Nelson having refitted, sailed again to Alexandria, where he found the French Fleet still at anchor. Nelson with 14 ships attacked the French with 13 on August 1st, took 9 and burned 2, so that only 2 escaped. Buonaparte, on the other hand, seems impregnably established in possession of Egypt. The Turk has in consequence declared war against France.
“Coleridge and Wordsworth, two names that I believe you will find in the list I wrote out for you, landed some time ago at Hamburgh. They are at no great distance from that place, but I cannot learn where. You may perhaps meet with them in your rambles. They are both extraordinary men, and both reputed men of genius. Coleridge I think fully justifies the reputation . . .
“I wish you all manner of prosperity, improvement, and happiness.”
