These languages are considerable accomplishments for an adolescent, though both Percy
Bysshe Shelley and William Godwin could assert similar claims. More important, with
the exception of German, by this time in her life so could Mary Shelley. Within the
fictional ambience itself, the reader can imagine how rekindled, in listening to this
account, would have been Walton's retrospective guilt over his undereducated, undirected
adolescence (I:L2:2).