Mr. Godfrey spoke with the warmth of an honest friendship.
He represented Damon as of a disposition perfectly singular and
unaccommodated to what he stiled "the debauched and unfeeling manners of
the age." He acknowledged with readiness and gratitude, that he owed to
him the most important obligations. By degrees Delia collected from him
several circumstances of a story, which she before apprehended to be
interesting. She observed, that, as he shook off the embarrassment of a
first introduction, his language became fluent, elegant, pointed, and even
sometimes poetical. Since however he related his own story imperfectly and
by piece meal, we shall beg leave to state it in our own manner. And we
the rather do it, as we apprehend it to be interesting in itself, and as
we foresee that he will make a second appearance in the course of this
narrative. 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. His ambition was
grievously mortified at the obscurity in which he was plunged; and his
great talents, in spite of real modesty, forcibly convinced hi