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een strongly influenced by his reading of David Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature. It is, therefore,likely that he shared some of those revisions with Wordsworth. 26 But the true nature of their actualrelationship has been overshadowed by the one that Wordsworth represented in The Prelude.Because Wordsworth chose to express his ‘despair’ over Godwin’s form of rational enquiry inoverly dramatic terms, and to represent Godwin’s methodology as the epitome of abstract reasoning,some critics have assumed he was hostile to Godwin and that the two men fell out. But there is noevidence that this ever happened and Godwin remained a friend whom Wordsworth would call onwhenever he visited London. Much later, in 1826, Godwin recalled that during the period he was firstgetting to know Wordsworth he ‘had the honour in the talk of one evening, to convert Wordsworthfrom the doctrine of self-love to that of benevolence – ask him’. 27 Godwin’s assertion, and hissuggestion that Wordsworth be asked to confirm that ‘conversion’, squares with the argument Ipresent here, that Godwin did play a significant part in influencing Wordsworth in 1795. While therecord of events in The Prelude suggest an antipathy to Godwin, and paints him in a negative light, hein fact acted as something of a catalyst for the change of heart experienced by Wordsworth in 1795. InThe Prelude, Godwin is described as playing a very particular role in, supposedly, causingWordsworth great despair. But the passages relating to Godwin in Book X are carefully staged and areexaggerated for maximum dramatic impact to mark a ‘critical’ turning point in the narrative –something that is made clearer in the 1850 text.IV. Yielding up moral questions in despairThe dramatic climax to Book X comes with Wordsworth’s description of his attempt to make adetailed analysis of the human condition according to Godwinian principles, in which he later felt hehad:sacrificedThe exactness of a comprehensive mindTo scrupulous and microscopic viewsThat furnished out materials for a workOf false imagination, placed beyondThe limits of experience and truth. (Prelude X 844-9)In The Prelude, Godwin’s reasoning is represented as the epitome of all, limited, human reasoning,and Wordsworth expresses his dismay at the fact that he had, for a period, been seduced by the beliefthat such reasoning could lead to an understanding of higher truth. In a passage that has been widelymisinterpreted by psychoanalytical interpretations of the text, Wordsworth describes himself ‘Havingtwo natures in me’ (X 869), as he makes the point that he had believed he had the necessary capacity26 Wordsworth would also appear to have studied some of Hume’s ‘Essays’ judging by comments he makes thatecho Hume’s thinking. Possibly Godwin’s respect for Hume was mentioned in discussion at the time.27 Godwin was responding to Hazlitt’s charge that he was a dull conversationalist. See Ben Ross Schneider,Wordsworth’s Cambridge Education pp. 222-3.175