, and supper--each repast of the very simplest kind; for
dinner it was understood that he repaired to some public table, where
meat and vegetables, with perchance a supplementary sweet when nature
demanded it, might be had for about a shilling. That shilling was not
often at his disposal. Dinner as it is understood by the comfortably
clad, the 'regular meal' which is a part of English respectability,
came to be represented by a small pork-pie, or even a couple of buns,
eaten at the little shop over against the College. After a long morning
of mental application this was poor refreshment; the long afternoon
which followed, again spent in rigorous study, could not but reduce a
growing frame to ravenous hunger. Tea and buttered bread were the means
of appeasing it, until another four hours' work called for reward in
the shape of bread and cheese. Even yet the day's toil was not ended.
Godwin sometimes read long after midnight, with the result that, when
at length he tried to sleep, exhaustion of mind and body kept him for a
long time feverishly wakeful.

These hardships he concealed from the people at Twybridge. Complaint,
it seemed to him, would be ungrateful, for sacrifices were already made
on his behalf. His father, as he well remembered, was wont to relate,
with a kind of angry satisfaction, the miseries through which he had
fought his way to education and the income-tax. Old enough now to
reflect with compassionate understanding upon that life of conflict,
Godwin resolved that he too would bear the burdens inseparable from
poverty, and in some moods was even glad to suffer as his father had
done. Fortunately he had a sound basis of health, and hunger and vigils
would not easily affect his constitution. If, thus hampered, he could
outstrip competitors who had every advantage of circumstance, the more
glorious his triumph.

Sunday was an interval of leisure. Rejoicing in deliverance from
Sabbatarianism, he generally spent the morning in a long walk, and the
rest of the day was devoted to non-collegiate reading. He had
subscribed to a circulating library, and thus obtained new publications
recommended to him in the literary paper which again taxed his stomach.
Mere class-work did not satisfy him. He was possessed with throes of
spiritual desire, impelling him towards that world of unfettered
speculation which he had long indistinctly imagined. It was a great
thing to learn what the past could teach, to set himself on t