William Godwin to Mary Hays, 2 Paragon Place, Surrey Road, Southwark, 2 September 1795.1 A few lines! For once then take them as follows. First, for your judgment of authors. Rousseau,
Voltaire, Smollet, Fielding!2 what an insatiable & merciless deity is yours,
who requires that I should sacrifice at his shrine all those persons whom I
have been accustomed to preserve nearest to my heart! If I were to undertake to
calculate the benefits which they, or any one of them, have conferred on
mankind, my powers of calculation would soon sink under the attempt. Honoured
& adorable champions of human nature, human virtue & human happiness!
who have extended the land marks of But you object, & say, “They have not done all this in the exact form & manner that you would have prescribed:” you assure me that “you can spy some spots in the ermine of their honour.”3 Why, so can I. But I will never forget that their merits towards mankind swallow up their errors a thousand times told. Generous & exalted spirits! though your “sins were as scarlet,”4 never, never would I cease to laud & adore you. Thus far I can almost forget my scepticism
& turn dogmatist; I proceed with some assurance. But I recollect my
scepticism, when I add: First, that perhaps some of their supposed vices are
virtues, & that they did well to free us from the chains of a monastic
celibacy: & Secondly, that there is probably some error in the vulgar notion
respecting these authors, that they greatly excite our looser passions.
Something of that sort perhaps for a moment; but it is The second point of your letter turns, I
believe, upon Epicureanism.5 If by Epicureanism is meant the grand principle
that pleasure is the supreme & only good, the only thing worthy to be
pursued, I have W G Sep. 2. 1795 I believe I ought to have mentioned distinctly that I consider the Yahoo story, alias the Voyage to the Hoynhnms,6 as one of the most virtuous, liberal & enlightened examples of human genius that has yet been produced.
Address: Miss Hayes | No 2 | Paragon Place | Surrey Road Postmark: 4 September 1795.
1 MS G 0314, Pforzheimer Collection, NYPL; Brooks, Correspondence 396-97; Clemit, Letters 1.121-23; Wedd, Love Letters 229-31. 2 The Frenchmen Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) and François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778) (best known by his nom de plume Voltaire), and two British novelists, Tobias Smollett (1721-71) and Henry Fielding (1707-54). 3 Quotations appear to be from a Hays letter to Godwin, now untraced. 4 Isaiah 1:18. 5 Epicureanism was derived from the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 B.C.) who posited the belief (as did John Locke centuries later) that knowledge was derived from the senses, with the corollary thesis that pleasure is the ultimate good of human activity. 6 Reference is to Jonathan Swift's "A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms," Book IV of Gulliver's Travels (1726).
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