The History of Mr. Godfrey.

In expostulations like these our lovers spent their time without coming to any conclusion, till the evening and Miss Fletcher warned them that it was time to depart. Damon was to proceed for London early the next morning. He therefore intreated of Delia to permit his friend Mr. Godfrey, who was obliged to continue in the place some days longer, to wait upon her with his last commands. He informed himself of the time when she was to return to Southampton, and he trusted to be there not long after her. In the mean time, as his situation was at present very precarious, he prevailed upon her to permit him to write to her from time to time, and to promise to communicate to him in return any thing of consequence that might happen to herself.

During the remainder of the evening Miss Fletcher made several ingenious observations upon what had passed. Delia gently blamed her for having so strangely occasioned the interview, though in reality she was by no means displeased by the event it had produced. "Bless us, child, you are as captious as any thing. Why I would not but have seen it for ever so much. Well, he is a sweet dear man, and so kind, and so polite, for all the world I think him just such another as Mr. Prattle. But then he is grave, and makes such fine speeches, it does one's heart good to hear him. I vow I wish I had such a lover. Sir William never says any thing half so pretty. Bless us, my dear, he talks about love, just as if he were talking about any thing else."

The next morning after breakfast, Mr. Godfrey appeared. He brought from Damon a thousand vows full of passion and constancy. He had parted, he said, more determined not to leave England, more resolute to prosecute his love than ever.

Having discharged his commission, he offered his service to escort the ladies in any party they might propose for the present day. He said, that being perfectly acquainted with Windsor and its environs, he flattered himself he might be able to contribute to their entertainment. The very gallant manner in which this offer was made, determined Miss Fletcher, as something singular and interesting in the appearance of Mr. Godfrey did our heroine, cheerfully to close with the proposal.

The person of Mr. Godfrey as we have already said was tall and genteel. There was a diffidence in his manner, that seemed to prove that he had not possessed the most extensive acquaintance with high life; but he had a natural politeness that amply compensated for the polish and forms of society. His air was serious and somewhat melancholy; but there was a fire and animation in his eye that was in the highest degree striking.

Delia engaged him to talk of the character and qualities of Damon. Upon this subject, Mr. Godfrey spoke with the warmth of an honest friendship. He represented Damon as of a disposition perfectly singular and unaccommodated to what he stiled "the debauched and unfeeling manners of the age." He acknowledged with readiness and gratitude, that he owed to him the most important obligations. By degrees Delia collected from him several circumstances of a story, which she before apprehended to be interesting. She observed, that, as he shook off the embarrassment of a first introduction, his language became fluent, elegant, pointed, and even sometimes poetical. Since however he related his own story imperfectly and by piece meal, we shall beg leave to state it in our own manner. And we the rather do it, as we apprehend it to be interesting in itself, and as we foresee that he will make a second appearance in the course of this narrative. We will not however deprive our readers of the reflections he threw out upon the several situations in which he had been placed. We will give them without pretending to decide how far they may be considered as just and well-founded.

Mr. Godfrey was not born to affluent circumstances. At a proper age he had been placed at the university of Oxford, and here it was that he commenced his acquaintance with Damon. At Oxford his abilities had been universally admired. His public exercises, though public exercises by their very nature ought to be dull, had in them many of those sallies, by which his disposition was characterised, and much of that superiority, which he indisputably possessed above his contemporaries. But though admired, he was not courted. In our public places of education, a wide distance is studiously preserved between young men of fortune, and young men that have none. But Mr. Godfrey had a stiffness and unpliableness of temper, that did not easily bend to the submission that was expected of him. He could neither flatter a blockhead, nor pimp for a peer. He loved his friend indeed with unbounded warmth, and it was impossible to surpass him in generousness and liberality. But he had a proud integrity, that whispered him, with, a language not to be controled, that he was the inferior of no man.

He was destined for the profession of a divine, and, having finished his studies, retired upon a curacy of forty pounds a year. His ambition was grievously mortified at the obscurity in which he was plunged; and his great talents, in spite of real modesty, forcibly convinced him, that this was not the station for which nature had formed him. But he had an enthusiasm of virtue, that led him for a time to overlook these disadvantages. "I am going," said he, "to dwell among scenes of unvitiated nature. I will form the peasant to generosity and sentiment. I will teach laborious industry to look without envy and without asperity upon those above them. I will be the friend and the father of the meanest of my flock. I will give sweetness and beauty to the most rugged scenes. The man, that banishes envy and introduces contentment; the man, that converts the little circle in which he dwells into a terrestrial paradise, that renders men innocent here, and happy for ever, may be obscure, may be despised by the superciliousness of luxury; but it shall never be said that he has been a blank in creation. The Supreme Being will regard him with a complacency, which he will deny to kings, that oppress, and conquerors, that destroy the work of his hands."

Such were the suggestions of youthful imagination. But Mr. Godfrey presently found the truth of that maxim, as paradoxical as it is indisputable, that the heart of man is naturally hard and unamiable. He conducted himself in his new situation with the most unexceptionable propriety, and the most generous benevolence. But there were men in his audience, men who loved better to criticise, than to be amended; and women, who felt more complacency in scandal, than eulogium. He displeased the one by disappointing them; it was impossible to disappoint the other. He laboured unremittedly, but his labours returned to him void. "And is it for this," said he, "that I have sacrificed ambition, and buried talents? Is humility to be rewarded only with mortification? Is obscurity and retirement the favourite scene of uneasiness, ingratitude, and impertinence? They shall be no longer my torment. In no scene can I meet with a more scanty success."

He now obtained a recommendation to be private tutor to the children of a nobleman. This nobleman was celebrated for the politeness of his manners and the elegance of his taste. It was his boast and his ambition to be considered as the patron of men of letters. With his prospect therefore in this connection, Mr. Godfrey was perfectly satisfied. "I shall no longer," said he, "be the slave of ignorance, and the victim of insensibility. My talents perhaps point me a step higher than to the business of forming the minds of youth. But, at least, the youth under my care are destined to fill the most conspicuous stations in future life. If propitious fortune might have raised me to the character of a statesman; depressed by adversity, I may yet have the honour of moulding the mind, and infusing generosity into the heart, of a future statesman. I have heard the second son of my patron celebrated for the early promises of capacity. To unfold the springing germs of genius, to direct them in the path of general happiness, is an employment by no means unworthy of a philosopher."

In this situation Mr. Godfrey however once more looked for pleasure, and found disappointment. The nobleman had more the affectation of a patron, than any real enthusiasm in the cause of literature. The abilities of Mr. Godfrey were universally acknowledged. And so long as the novelty remained, he was caressed, honoured, and distinguished. In a short time however, he was completely forgotten by the patron, in the hurry of dissipation, and the pursuits of an unbounded ambition. His eldest care was universally confessed stupid and impracticable. And in the younger he found nothing but the prating forwardness of a boy who had been flattered, without sentiment, and without meaning. Her ladyship treated Mr. Godfrey with superciliousness, as an intruder at her lord's table. The servants caught the example, and showed him a distinction of neglect, which the exquisiteness of his sensibility would not permit him to despise.

Mortified, irritated, depressed, he now quitted his task half finished and threw himself upon the world. "The present age," said he, "is not an age in which talents are overlooked, and genius depressed." He had heard much of the affluence of writers, a Churchil, a Smollet, and a Goldsmith, who had depended upon that only for their support. He saw the celebrated Dr. Johnson caressed by all parties, and acknowledged to be second to no man, whatever were his rank, however conspicuous his station. Full of these ideas, he soon completed a production, fraught with the fire and originality of genius, pointed in its remarks, and elegant in its style. He had now to experience vexations, of which he had before entertained no idea. He carried his work from bookseller to bookseller, and was every where refused. His performance was not seasoned to the times, he was a person that nobody knew, and he had no man of rank, by his importunities and eloquence, to force him into the ranks of fashion. At length he found a bookseller foolish enough to undertake it. But he presently perceived that the gentlemen at the head of that profession were wiser than he. All the motives they had mentioned, and one more, operated against him. The monarchs of the critic realm scouted him with one voice, because his work, was not written in the same cold, phlegmatic insupportable manner as their own.

He had now advanced however too far to retreat. He had too much spirit to resume either of those professions, which for reasons so cogent in his opinion, he had already quitted. He wrote essays, squibs, and pamphlets for an extemporary support. But though these were finished with infinite rapidity, he found that they constituted a very precarious means of subsistence. The time of dinner often came, before the production that was to purchase it was completed; and when completed, it was frequently several days before it could find a purchaser. And his copy money and his taylor's bill were too little proportioned to one another.

He now recollected, what in the gaiety of hope he had forgotten, that many a flower only blows, with its sweetness to refresh the air of a desert. He recollected many instances of works, raised by the breath of fashion to the very pinnacle of reputation, that sunk as soon again. He recollected instances scarcely fewer, of works, exquisite in their composition, pregnant with beauties almost divine, that had passed from the press without notice. Many had been revived by the cooler and more deliberate judgment of a future age; and more had been lost for ever. The instance of Chatterton, as a proof that the universal patronage of genius was by no means the virtue of his contemporaries, flashed in his face. And he looked forward to the same fate at no great distance, as his own.

To Mr. Godfrey however, fortune was in one degree more propitious. Damon was among the few whose judgment was not guided by the dictate of fashion. Having met accidentally with the performance we have mentioned, he was struck with its beauties. As he had heard nothing of it in the politest circles, he concluded, with his usual penetration, that the author of it was in obscure and narrow circumstances. Open as day to sweet humanity, interested warmly in the fortune of the writer of so amiable a performance, he flew to his bookseller's with the usual enquiries. The bookseller stared, and had it not been for the splendour of his dress, and his gilded chariot, would have been tempted to smile at so unfashionable and absurd a question. He soon however obtained the information he desired. And his eagerness was increased, when the name of Godfrey, and the recollection of the talents by which he had been so eminently distinguished, led him to apprehend that he was one, to whose abilities and character he had been greatly attached.

He found some difficulty to obtain admission. But this was quickly removed, as, from the dignity of his appearance, it was not probable that he was a person, from whom Mr. Godfrey had any thing to apprehend. He found him in a wretched apartment, his hair dishevelled and his dress threadbare and neglected. Mr. Godfrey was unspeakably surprised at his appearance. And it was with much difficulty that Damon prevailed upon him to accept of an assistance, that he assured him should be but temporary, if it were in the power of him, or any of his connections, to render him respectable and independent, in such a situation as himself should chuse.

Disappointment and misfortune are calculated to inspire asperity into the gentlest heart. Mr. Godfrey inveighed with warmth, and sometimes with partiality, against the coldness and narrowness of the age. He said, "that men of genius, in conspicuous stations, had no feeling for those whom nature had made their brothers; and that those who had risen from obscurity themselves, forgot the mortifications of their earlier life, and did not imitate the generous justice which had enabled them to fulfil the destination of nature." But though misfortune had taught him asperity upon certain subjects, it had not corrupted his manners, debauched his integrity, or narrowed his heart. He had still the same warmth in the cause of virtue, as in days of the most unexperienced simplicity. He still dreaded an oath, and reverenced the divinity of innocence. He still believed in a God, and was sincerely attached to his honour, though he had often been told, that this was a prejudice, unworthy of his comprehension of thinking upon all other subjects.