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 him, that this was not the station for which nature had formed him.  But he had an enthusiasm of virtue, that led him for a time to overlook these disadvantages.  “I am going,” said he, “to dwell among scenes of unvitiated nature.  I will form the peasant to generosity and sentiment.  I will teach laborious industry to look without envy and without asperity upon those above them.  I will be the friend and the father of the meanest of my flock.  I will give sweetness and beauty to the most rugged scenes.  The man, that banishes envy and introduces contentment; the man, that converts the little circle in which he dwells into a terrestrial paradise, that renders men innocent here, and happy for ever, may be obscure, may be despised by the superciliousness of luxury; but it shall never be said that he has been a blank in creation.  The Supreme Being will regard him with a complacency, which he will deny to kings, that oppress, and conquerors, that destroy the work of his hands.”

Such were the suggestions of youthful imagination.  But Mr. Godfrey presently found the truth of that maxim, as paradoxical as it is indisputable, that the heart of man is naturally hard and unamiable.  He conducted himself in his new situation with the most unexceptionable propriety, and the most generous benevolence.  But there were men in his audience, men who loved better to criticise, than to be amended; and women, who felt more complacency in scandal, than eulogium.  He displeased the one by disappointing them; it was impossible to disappoint the other.  He laboured unremittedly, but his labours returned to him void.  “And is it for this,” said he, “that I have sacrificed ambition, and buried talents?  Is humility to be rewarded only with mortification?  Is obscurity and retirement the favourite scene of uneasiness, ingratitude, and impertinence?  They shall be no longer my torment.  In no scene can I meet with a more scanty success.”