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 the common level of intellectual men; but he
understood that college learning could not be an end in itself, that