“Dear Godwin,—You never
made a more unlucky and perverse mistake than to suppose that the reason of my
not writing that cursed thing was to be found in your book. I assure you most
sincerely that I have been greatly delighted with Chaucer. I may be wrong, but I think
there is one considerable error runs through it, which is a conjecturing
spirit, a fondness for filling out the picture by supposing what Chaucer did and how he felt, where the
materials are scanty. So far from meaning to withhold from you (out of mistaken
tenderness) this opinion of mine, I plainly told Mrs Godwin that I did find a fault,
which I should reserve naming until I should see you and talk it over. This she
may very well remember, and also that I declined naming this fault until she
drew it from me by asking me if there was not too much fancy in the work. I
then confessed generally what I felt, but refused to go into particulars until
I had seen you. I am never very fond of saying things before third persons,
because in the relation (such is human nature) something is sure to be dropped.
If Mrs Godwin has been the cause of your misconstruction,
I am very angry, tell her; yet it is not an anger unto death. I remember also
telling Mrs G. (which she may have dropt) that I was by turns considerably more delighted than I
expected. But I wished to reserve all this until I saw you. I even had
conceived an expression to meet you with, which was thanking you for some of
the most exquisite pieces of criticism I had ever read in my life. In
particular, I should have brought forward that on ‘Troilus and Cressida’ and Shakespear, which, it is little to say,
delighted me, and instructed me (if not absolutely instructed
me, yet put into
| 104 | WILLIAM GODWIN |
“I certainly ought to make great allowances for your
misundering me. You, by long habits of composition and a greater command gained
over your own powers, cannot conceive of the desultory and uncertain way in
which I (an author by fits) sometimes cannot put the thoughts of a common
letter into sane prose. Any work which I take upon myself as an engagement will
act upon me to torment, e.g., when I have undertaken, as
three or four times I have, a school-boy copy of verses for Merchant
Taylor’s boys, at a guinea a copy, I have fretted over them, in perfect
inability to do them, and have made my sister wretched with my wretchedness for
a week together. The same, till by habit I have acquired a mechanical command,
I have felt in making paragraphs. As to reviewing, in particular, my head is so
whimsical a head, that I cannot, after reading another man’s book, let it
have been never so pleasing, give any account of it in any methodical way. I
cannot follow his train. Something like this you must have perceived of me in
conversation. Ten thousand times I have confessed to you, talking of my
talents, my utter inability to remember in any comprehensive way what I read. I
can vehemently applaud, or perversely stickle, at parts;
but I cannot grasp at a whole. This infirmity (which is nothing to brag of) may
be seen in my two little compositions, the tale and my play, in both which no
reader, however partial, can find any story. I wrote such stuff about Chaucer, and got into such digressions, quite
irreducible into column of a paper, that I was perfectly ashamed to shew it
you. However, it is become a serious matter that I should convince you I
neither slunk from the task through a wilful deserting neglect, or through any
(most imaginary on your part) distaste of Chaucer; and I
will try my hand again, I hope with better luck. My health is bad and my time
taken up, but all I can spare between this and Sunday shall be employed
| EXPLANATIONS. | 105 |
