10 May 1795

Mary Hays, 2 Paragon Place, Surrey Road, to William Godwin, 25 Chalton Street, Somers Town, 10 May 1795.1

   How much is a favour enhanced by a ready & obliging compliance! Oh yes! thursday will undoubtedly be agreeable, & I shall anticipate, with unfeigned satisfaction the greatest of all luxuries, a feast of reason.2       

   Encouraged by a frankness & candor so truly flattering, I shall in future, occasionally, avail myself of your friendly invitation, & my bewildered mind shall seek from you, as its tutelary2 genius, a solution to the difficulties which entangle & the doubts which oppress it.        

   I have heard, with concern, from Mr Frend of the accident which has lately befallen you, yet I rejoice, unpleasant as were its consequences, that they were no worse, the concussion of a brain so organized would have been a general & public loss.

                                                 Mary Hays

No 2 – Paragon Place

Surry Road

May 10 – 95.

Address: Mr Godwin | Somers Town | 25 Chalton Street. | 

Postmark: 11 May 1795, 12 o’clock Noon.

1 MS MH 0005, Pforzheimer Collection, NYPL; Brooks, Correspondence 393.

2 A part of the popular phrase from Pope's Imitations of Horace, Satire II, 1. 128, "The feast of reason, and the flow of soul."