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.
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