William Godwin: his Friends and Contemporaries
Ch. VII. 1806-1811
Charles Clairmont to Thomas Turner, [May 1811]
“I think I will not pass a whole week in the country,
doing nothing but sauntering about the fields. I am quite delighted with
Ramsgate. There are the most beautiful fields of barley, corn, and tares that
you can imagine—high cliffs, and the sea, to a person who never saw it before.
In short, it is a place calculated above all others to excite my attention to
that subject which my mind has of late been so intent upon. I have determined
(not that I ![]()
![]()
think myself the proper
person to judge, but because I think it quite necessary as the first step) to
put aside the Old and New Testaments, for I can do nothing with them unless I
make up my mind to believe in prophecies, hobgoblins, witches, and so forth. Do
not, however, think that I am going to do as Patrickson did, and trouble myself no more about it. I am, I
assure you, very much awed by it, and consider it a subject of the greatest
importance, an everlasting something to be employed about—both a recreation
from labour and occupation for the most industrious moments. . . . I am afraid
that the idea of a God and of a future state is so deeply rooted in me that it
holds me back, keeps me from thinking freely, and that I shall never be able to
get over it. I hope, after I have read some book on the subject, that my ideas
will be more clear, for I shall then have some foundation to work upon, and
from which I shall gradually raise for myself a magnificent palace. Mr Godwin told me why he did not choose me to
read Paine’s book, which I think
is all very reasonable, for it would certainly have been improper for a young
thinker to read a burlesque on the subject, and I believe would rather have
tended to shock me than otherwise. I shall read it, however, after the book
which is promised me.”
William Godwin (1756-1836)
English novelist and political philosopher; author of
An Inquiry
concerning the Principles of Political Justice (1793) and
Caleb
Williams (1794); in 1797 he married Mary Wollstonecraft.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
English-born political radical; author of
Common Sense (1776),
The Rights of Man (1791), and
The Age of
Reason (1794).
Procter Patrickson (1792-1814)
The son of Nicholas Patrickson; he was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and Emmanuel
College, Cambridge; he corresponded with William Godwin before his death by suicide.
