“I take up my pen to address this to you, sir, at the earnest, dying request of a dearly beloved, whose respect and admiration of you was as deep as it was lasting. I believe one of the last requests he made to Mrs Godwin before he left London was, should you be attacked with any dangerous illness, that she should be so kind as to inform him of it; for that wheresoever he was, or whatsoever might be his employ, he would most assuredly hasten to your bed-side, to render all the assistance in his power, and if it should be fatal, to observe how you would conduct yourself in such an extremity, and how you would die. These also are the very things he has requested me to inform you concerning himself, and to this I hasten.
“Rather more than three months ago, soon after his return from the Isle of Wight, he was attacked with an alarming illness. . . . Debility and emaciation still proceeded, and on the 23d ultimo he expired. He retained all his powers of mind unimpaired to the last.
“About two months before he died, he said he felt a
great want of something to console him under his sufferings, and requested me
to ask a particular friend of his (a Unitarian minister) to lend him some
books. Amongst these was ‘Channing’s Sermons.’ . . . He soon after requested
me to read him one of the Gospels. . . . After this, one morning early, he sent
his wife for me, saying he had somewhat to communicate; when he said,
‘Father, I am fully convinced that Jesus Christ is very God: I can
adore and worship him with all the powers and faculties of my
soul.’ He said much more to the same purport, and at different times.
. . . Perhaps a more surprising change from infidelity to
| 324 | WILLIAM GODWIN |
“The widow desires to be kindly remembered to Mrs Godwin.”
