This search for truth has a great fascination for a certain type of mind. It does not appear dangerous: all one has to do is thrust one's feet in slippers and muse; but it has probably caused as much misery as the search for the pole. The pole has now been discovered and can be dismissed, but the search for truth continues. It will always continue, for the reason that its location is always changing. Every generation looks for it in a new place.
[Illustration: LETTER FROM WILLIAM GODWIN
I bought this letter one hundred years to a day after it had been written, for a sum which would have amazed its writer, and temporarily, at least, have relieved him of his financial difficulties.]
One night Lamb, dropping in on Godwin, found him discussing with Coleridge his favorite problem, "Man as he is and man as he ought to be." The discussion seemed interminable. "Hot water and its better adjuncts" had been entirely overlooked. Finally Lamb stammered out, "Give me man as he ought _not_ to be, and something to drink." It must have been on one of these evenings that Godwin remarked that he wondered why more people did not write like Shakespeare; to which Lamb replied that he could--if he had the mind to.
The older generation was passing away. Long before he died Godwin was referred to as though he were a forgotten classic; but there was to be a revival of interest in him, due entirely to the poet Shelley. The mere mention of Shelley's name produced an explosion. He had been expelled from Oxford for atheism. Reading revolutionary books, as well as writing them, he had come across "Political Justice" and was anxious to meet the author.
He sought him out, eventually made the acquaintance of his daughter Mary, by this time a beautiful and interesting girl of seventeen years, and in due course eloped with her, deserting his wife Harriet. Where was Godwin's philosophy now? we may well ask. At no time in his long life was Godwin so ridiculous as in his relations with Shelley.
In their flight, Shelley and Mary had taken with them Mrs. Godwin's daughter Claire. The mother made after the runaways post-haste and overtook them in Calais, her arrival creating consternation in the camp of the fugitives; but they all declined to return. In such scorn was Shelley generally held, that the rumor that he had bought both Godwin's daughter and his step-daughter for a sum in hand created no amazement, the pity rather than the possibility of it being most discussed.