CHAPTER VI - GODWIN AND THE ROSICRUCIAN NOVEL.
When Miss Austen was asked to write a historical romance
"illustrative of the house of Coburg," she airily dismissed the
suggestion, pleading mirthfully:
"I could not sit down seriously to write a serious
romance under any other motive than to save my life,
and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and
never relax into laughing at myself or at other people
I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the
first chapter."[73]
If Godwin had been confronted with the same offer, he would have
settled himself promptly to plot out a scheme, and within a few
months a historical romance on the house of Coburg, accompanied
perchance by a preface setting forth the evils of monarchy, would
have been in the hands of the publisher. Unlike Miss Austen,
Godwin had neither a sense of humour nor a fastidious artistic
conscience to save him from undertaking incongruous tasks. He
seems never even to have suspected the humour of life, and would
have perceived nothing ludicrous in the spectacle of the author
of _Political Justice_ embarking on such a piece of work. Those
disquieting flashes of self-revelation that more imaginative men
catch in the mirror of their own minds and that awaken sometimes
laughter and sometimes tears, never disturbed Godwin's serenity.
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