Caleb Williams | Page 2

in something like 1,000
guineas. In his first novel, "Caleb Williams," which was published the
next year, he illustrated in scenes from real life many of the principles
enunciated in his philosophical work. "Caleb Williams" went through a
number of editions, and was dramatized by Colman the younger under
the title of "The Iron Chest." It has now been out of print for many

years. Godwin wrote several other novels, but one alone is readable
now, "St. Leon," which is philosophical in idea and purpose, and
contains some passages of singular eloquence and beauty.
Godwin married the authoress of the "Rights of Woman," Mary
Wollstonecraft, in 1797, losing her the same year. Their daughter was
the gifted wife of the poet Shelley. He was a social man, particularly
fond of whist, and was on terms of intimacy and affection with many
celebrated men and women. Tom Paine, Josiah Wedgwood, and Curran
were among his closest male friends, while the story of his friendships
with Mrs. Inchbald, Amelia Opie, with the lady immortalized by
Shelley as Maria Gisborne, and with those literary sisters, Sophia and
Harriet Lee, authors of the "Canterbury Tales," has a certain
sentimental interest. Afterwards he became known to Wordsworth,
Coleridge, and Lamb. He married Mrs. Clairmont in 1801. His later
years were clouded by great embarrassments, and not till 1833 was he
put out of reach of the worst privations by the gift of a small sinecure,
that of yeoman usher of the Exchequer. He died in 1836.
Among the contradictory judgments passed on "Caleb Williams" by
Godwin's contemporaries those of Hazlitt, Sir James Mackintosh, and
Sir T. N. Talfourd were perhaps the most eulogistic, whilst De Quincey
and Allan Cunningham criticized the book with considerable severity.
Hazlitt's opinion is quoted from the "Spirit of the Age":
"A masterpiece, both as to invention and execution. The romantic and
chivalrous principle of the love of personal fame is embodied in the
finest possible manner in the character of Falkland; as in Caleb
Williams (who is not the first, but the second character in the piece), we
see the very demon of curiosity personified. Perhaps the art with which
these two characters are contrived to relieve and set off each other has
never been surpassed by any work of fiction, with the exception of the
immortal satire of Cervantes."
Sir Leslie Stephen said of it the other day:
"It has lived--though in comparative obscurity--for over a century, and
high authorities tell us that vitality prolonged for that period raises a
presumption that a book deserves the title of classic."--_National
Review, February_, 1902.
To understand how the work came to be written, and its aim, it is
advisable to read carefully all three of Godwin's prefaces, more

particularly the last and the most candid, written in 1832. This will, I
think, dispose of the objection that the story was expressly constructed
to illustrate a moral, a moral that, as Sir Leslie Stephen says, "eludes
him." He says:
"I formed a conception of a book of fictitious adventure that should in
some way be distinguished by a very powerful interest. Pursuing this
idea, I invented first the third volume of my tale, then the second, and,
last of all, the first. I bent myself to the conception of a series of
adventures of flight and pursuit; the fugitive in perpetual apprehension
of being overwhelmed with the worst calamities, and the pursuer, by
his ingenuity and resources, keeping his victim in a state of the most
fearful alarm. This was the project of my third volume."
He goes on to describe in more detail the "dramatic and impressive"
situations and the "fearful events" that were to be evolved, making it
pretty clear that the purpose somewhat vaguely and cautiously outlined
in the earliest preface was rather of the nature of an afterthought.
Falkland is not intended to be a personification of the evils caused by
the social system, nor is he put forward as the inevitable product of that
system. The reader's attention is chiefly absorbed by the extraordinary
contest between Caleb Williams and Falkland, and in the tragic
situations that it involves. Compared with these the denunciation of the
social system is a matter of secondary interest; but it was natural that
the author of the "Political Justice," with his mind preoccupied by the
defects of the English social system, should make those defects the,
evil agencies of his plot. As the essential conditions of the series of
events, as the machinery by which everything is brought about, these
defects are of the utmost importance to the story. It is the accused
system that awards to Tyrrel and Falkland their immense
preponderance in society, and enables them to use the power of the law
for the most nefarious ends. Tyrrel does his cousin