benevolent dispositions
The Creature has been repeating this adjective (and the noun "benevolence")
in seeming insistence on the unquestionable virtues of the cottagers (see
2.3.7, 2.3.8, 2.4.1, and 2.7.1). Now, the intrusion of the
ensuing phrase ("I persuaded myself") and a next sentence in the
form of a question artfully raises the doubts his
narrative has suspended. The entire paragraph, indeed, evokes a litany of
the high ideals of Enlightenment virtue gleaned by the Creature from his
reading and quietly interrogates their efficacy for "a wretched outcast."
