Godwin

“ A happy smile spread upon the face of Wulf, for now he knew that Godwin was himself again.
“Me sure enough,” he answered. “Dream-folk don’t have lame legs; they are the gifts of swords and men.”
“And Rosamund? What of Rosamund? Did the grey horse swim the creek, and how came we here? Tell me quick—I faint for news!”
“She shall tell you herself.” And hobbling to the curtained door, he called, “Rosamund, my—nay, our—cousin Rosamund, Godwin is himself again. Hear you, Godwin is himself again, and would speak with you!” ”

“ While the whispered words left his lips, it seemed to Godwin that once more, as when he rode with Wulf from Ascalon, the strange wind blew about his brow, bringing with it the presence of Masouda, and that once more the unearthly peace sank into his soul.
Then all was past and over, and he turned to see the old imaum standing at his side.
“Did I not tell you that you would find her sleeping?” he said, with his bitter, chuckling laugh. “Call on her, Sir Knight; call on her! Love, they say, can bridge great gulfs—even that between severed neck and bosom.” ”

“ While Mary seconded Godwin in his domestic theories, there were times when less independence would have pleased her better. She had been obliged to fight the battle of life alone, and, when the occasion required it, she was equal to meeting single-handed whatever difficulties might arise. But instinctively she preferred to lean upon others for protection and help. Godwin would never wittingly have been selfish or cruel in withholding his assistance. ”

“ Godwin had absolute faith in his power of dominating the woman whom he should inspire with tenderness. This was a feature of his egoism, the explanation of those manifold inconsistencies inseparable from his tortuous design. He regarded his love as something so rare, so vehement, so exalting, that its bestowal must seem an abundant recompense for any pain of which he was the cause.
Thus, with perfect sincerity of argument, did Godwin Peak face the undertaking to which he was committed. ”

“ Godwin, in order to appease the king, made him a magnificent present of a galley with a gilt stern, rowed by fourscore men, who wore each of them a gold bracelet on his arm, weighing sixteen ounces, and were armed and clothed in the most sumptuous manner. Hardicanute, pleased with the splendour of this spectacle, quickly forgot his brother's murder; and on Godwin's swearing that he was innocent of the crime, he allowed him to be acquitted. ”

“ She revolutionized not only his life, but his social doctrines. Through her he discovered the flaw in his arguments, and then honestly confessed his mistake to the world.
When Godwin met Mary, after her desertion by Imlay, he was forty years of age, in the full prime and vigour of his intellect, and in the height of his fame. She was thirty-seven, only three years his junior, and deemed the cleverest woman in England. Her talents had matured, and grief had made her strong. ”

“ There was now a decided improvement in the lives of both Mary and Godwin. The latter, under the new influence, was humanized. Domestic ties, which he had never known before, softened him. He hereafter appears not only as the passionless philosopher, but as the loving husband and the affectionate father, little Fanny Imlay being treated by him as if she had been his own child. His love transformed him from a mere student of men to a man like all others. ”

“ Only an occasional fellah or more substantial citizen would appear now and again, stare for a moment at the intent horsemen, and disappear from sight like a startled wild thing. Godwin tugged at his beard. They were not, as he had predicted, wholly unexpected. Word had somehow flown through the streets and bazaars of their coming, and of the imminent brawl. Perhaps magic was at work, too, though he felt and saw nothing to indicate it. ”

“ Godwin would have gone away, unknown rather than profit by his claim as Sir Richard Godwin's kinsman, even though Moll should be no better than old Simon would have him believe, upon which he cries, "Lord love him for it, say I again! Let us drink to their health. Drink deep, Kit, for I've a fancy that no man shall put his lips to this mug after us." ”

“ Indeed, it is not to be wondered at that so thinking a person as Godwin, remembering the rules laid down by those he loved and respected in his childhood, should have wandered far into the abstract labyrinths of right and wrong, and, wishing to simplify what was right, should have travelled in his imagination into the dim future, and have laid down a code beyond the scope of present mortals. ”

“ Only perhaps among the ceorls, at the end of the hall, might be seen some compassion on anxious faces; for before those deeds of crime had been bruited abroad, none among the sons of Godwin more blithe of mien and bold of hand, more honoured and beloved, than Sweyn the outlaw. But the hush that succeeded the charges was appalling in its depth. Godwin himself shaded his face with his mantle, and only those close by could see that his breast heaved and his limbs trembled. ”

“ For Godwin the whole life of mankind is a race through innovation to perfection, and his main concern is to exhort the athlete to fling aside the garments of prejudice, tradition, and constraint, until one asks at the end how much of flesh and blood has been torn away with the garments. ”

“ We doubt not the Serjeant himself has assembled round his own table a society that we should greatly more have coveted the pleasure of joining. We have the name of Godwin, it is true, but Godwin never opened his mouth;—played whist all the evening. Had he not written his book? why should he talk? We have Hazlitt,—but by all accounts he was rarely in a tolerable humour, perpetually raving, with admirable consistency, in praise of republics and Bonaparte. ”

“ Godwin and Mary did not at once marry. The former, in his Political Justice, had frankly confessed to the world that he thought the existing institution of marriage an evil. Mary had by her conduct avowed her agreement with him. But their views in this connection having already been fully stated need not be repeated. In omitting to seek legal sanction to their union both were acting in perfect accord with their standard of morality. Judged according to their motives, neither can be accused of wrong-doing. Pure in their own eyes, they deserve to be so in the world's esteem. ”

“ One may doubt whether in the sense required by Godwin's argument any human action ever is or can be absolutely "voluntary," rational or self-conscious. To attain it, we should have to reason naked in a desert with algebraic symbols. To use words is to think in step, and to beg our question. But Godwin is well aware that most men rarely reason. He is here framing an ideal, without realising its remoteness. The mischief of his faith in logic as a force, was that it led him to ignore the æsthetic and emotional influences, by which the mass of men can best be led to a virtuous ideal. ”

“ The face was pale as marble: the features almost feminine in their delicacy: thin lips, straight nose, good teeth, abundant, curling hair, and eyes so dreamy and sorrowful that women on the street would often turn and follow the "angel soul garbed in human form."
This man Shelley was sick at heart, bereft, perplexed, in sore straits, and to whom should he turn for advice in this time of undoing but to Godwin, the philosopher! Besides, Godwin had been the husband of Mary Wollstonecraft, and the splendid precepts of these two had nourished into being all the latent excellence of the youth. ”

“ Godwin, like so many other philosophers of his times, based his arguments upon abstract principles, and failed to seek concrete proofs. He built up a structure beautiful in theory, but impossible in real life until man develops into a very much higher order of being. An enthusiast, despite his calmness, he looked forward to the time when death would be an evil of the past, and when no new men would be born into the world. ”

“ Godwin, as became the philosopher of the movement, set his hopes on the slower working of education: to make men wise was to make them free. Paine was the pamphleteer of the human camp. He saw mankind as an embattled legion and believed, true man of action that he was, that freedom could be won like victory by the impetus of a resolute charge. He quotes the epigram of his fellow-soldier, Lafayette, "For a nation to love liberty, it is sufficient that she knows it; and to be free it is sufficient that she wills it." Godwin would have sent men to school to liberty ”

“ Godwin, on the contrary, is somewhat exclusive and unsocial in his habits of mind, entertains no company but what he gives his whole time and attention to, and wisely writes over the doors of his understanding, his fancy, and his senses—"No admittance except on business." He has none of that fastidious refinement and false delicacy, which might lead him to balance between the endless variety of modern attainments. ”

“ Tostig (as we have seen) had married the daughter of Baldwin, Count of Flanders, sister to Matilda, wife to the Norman Duke: and thus the House of Godwin was triply allied to princely lineage—the Danish, the Saxon, the Flemish. And Tostig might have said, as in his heart William the Norman said, “My children shall descend from Charlemagne and Alfred.”
Godwin’s life, though thus outwardly brilliant, was too incessantly passed in public affairs and politic schemes to allow the worldly man much leisure to watch over the nurture and rearing of the bold spirits of his sons. ”

“ Godwin was admirably fitted to be an apostle of reason, so far as a man can be fitted for that high post, by the negative qualifications of a placid temper and singular frigidity of disposition. He works out the most startling and subversive conclusions with all the calmness of a mathematician manipulating a set of algebraical symbols. He lays down doctrines which shock not only the religious reverence, but the ordinary conscience of mankind, as quietly as if he were stating a proposition of Euclid. ”

“ Then with a lightened heart Godwin returned to the altar rails, while his brother Wulf was summoned to take his place in the confessional. Of the sins that he had to tell we need not speak. They were such as are common to young men, and none of them very grievous. Still, before he gave him absolution, the good Prior admonished him to think less of his body and more of his spirit; less of the glory of feats of arms and more of the true ends to which he should enter on them. ”

“ It conveys in the form of an eventful personal history the essence of the criticism against society, which had inspired Political Justice. Godwin's imagination was haunted by a persistent nightmare, in which a lonely individual finds arrayed against him all the prejudices of society, all the forms of convention, all the forces of law. They hurl themselves upon him in a pitiless pursuit, and wherever he flees, the pervading corruptions, the ingrained cowardices of over-governed mankind beset his feet like gins and pitfalls. ”

“ But, in addition to this, Godwin had certain theories upon the subject. Because his love was the outcome of strong feeling, and not of calm discussion, his reliance upon reason, as the regulator of his actions, did not cease. The habits of a life-time could not be so easily broken. If he had not governed love in its growth, he at least ruled its expression. It was necessary to decide upon a course of conduct for the two lives now made one. Since he and Mary were to be really, if not legally, man and wife, the time had come to test the truth of these ideas. ”

“ To read them is like listening to some one talking. They show how ready Mary was to enlist Godwin's sympathy on all occasions, small as well as great, and how equally ready he was to be interested. It is strange to hear these two apostles of reform talking much in the same strain as ordinary mortals, making engagements to dine on beef, groaning over petty ailments and miseries, and greeting each other in true bon compagnon style. Mary's notes, like her letters to Imlay, are essentially feminine. Short as they are, they are full of womanly tenderness and weakness. ”

“ Such, crudely stated, is Godwin's famous doctrine of "universal benevolence." The virtuous man is like Swift's Houyhnhnms, noble quadrupeds, wholly governed by reason, who cared for strangers as well as for the nearest neighbour, and showed the same affection for their neighbour's offspring as for their own. The centre of Godwin's moral teaching was yet another Socratic thought. Politics are "the proper vehicle of a liberal morality," and morals concern our relation to the whole body of mankind. ”

“ Godwin died on Sunday, September 10, about eight in the morning. I was with her at the time of her delivery, and with very little intermission until the moment of her death. Every skilful effort that medical knowledge of the highest class could make was exerted to save her. It is not possible to describe the unremitting and devoted attentions of her husband. Nor is it easy to give you an adequate idea of the affectionate zeal of many of her friends, who were on the watch night and day to seize on an opportunity of contributing towards her recovery, and to lessen her sufferings. ”

“ Godwin had, before this, gained too much favor to be likely to fall with his brother-in-law. He was with the king on an expedition against the Wends, and on the night before an intended battle, made a sudden attack without Knut’s knowledge, and completely routed them. His talents were so much appreciated, that he received the great Earldom of Wessex, the portion of England least under the power of the Danes, and where the old line of Alfred was most loved and regretted, since it was their hereditary kingdom. ”