‘I am a little astonished, however, with the expression in your letter, that “the insufficiency of house-room is a vital objection.” This would sound well to Mr. Eton from the eldest son of a gentleman of Sussex, with an ample fortune. But to me, I own, it a little alarms me.... But you, my dear Shelley, have special motives for wariness in this matter, you are at variance with your father, and I think you say in one of your letters that he allows you only 200_l._ a-year. If by unnecessary and unconscientious expense you heap up embarrassments at present, how much do you think that will embitter your days and shackle your powers hereafter?... Prudence, too, a just and virtuous prudence, in this most essential point, the dispensation of property, will do much to make you and your father friends: and why should you not be friends?’ The letter, from which these passages have been transcribed, is given in Hogg’s book without date or address; but whilst the contents show it to have been written before Godwin had heard either of Shelley’s arrival at Lynton, or of his intention to journey thither, the evidence is conclusive that it was addressed to Shelley at Chepstow;--a fact to be held in remembrance by the critical reader of the absurd passage of Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy’s very absurd book, in which it is suggested that the sharpness of Godwin’s reflections (in the undated letter), on Shelley’s manifest inclination to live beyond his means, was due to the philosopher’s petty pique at the terms in which Shelley wrote to him, from Lynmouth, on 5th July, 1812, about Miss Hitchener’s virtues and services to humanity. Though he seldom says anything, that is comparable for absurdity with Mr. MacCarthy’s wilder notes on Shelleyan questions, Hogg provokes ridicule by his animadversions on Godwin’s undated letter. Insisting that it was for Shelley to decide whether the cottage was large enough for his purpose, he smiles disdainfully at the impertinent busy-bodyism of Godwin’s admonitory epistle, and insinuates that it would not have been written, had not the philosopher’s temper been curiously ruffled by his young friend’s audacity, in presuming to decline the modest mansion, which Mrs. Godwin had advised him to hire of one of her friends. On perusing the letter and reviewing all the circumstances that resulted in its composition, the discreet and impartial reader fails to discover the writer’s ill-temper, or the grounds for charging him with exceeding the limits of the position, into which he had been drawn by his correspondent’s repeated solicitations for parental counsel and guidance.