Caleb Williams | Page 4

me in a certain degree in the
maturity of my intellectual powers, and bearing my name, early in
January, 1793; and about the middle of the following month the book
was published. It was my fortune at that time to be obliged to consider
my pen as the sole instrument for supplying my current expenses. By
the liberality of my bookseller, Mr. George Robinson, of Paternoster
Row, I was enabled then, and for nearly ten years before, to meet these
expenses, while writing different things of obscure note, the names of
which, though innocent and in some degree useful, I am rather inclined
to suppress. In May, 1791, I projected this, my favourite work, and
from that time gave up every other occupation that might interfere with
it. My agreement with Robinson was that he was to supply my wants at
a specified rate while the book was in the train of composition. Finally,
I was very little beforehand with the world on the day of its publication,
and was therefore obliged to look round and consider to what species of
industry I should next devote myself.
I had always felt in myself some vocation towards the composition of a
narrative of fictitious adventure; and among the things of obscure note
which I have above referred to were two or three pieces of this nature.
It is not therefore extraordinary that some project of the sort should
have suggested itself on the present occasion.
But I stood now in a very different situation from that in which I had
been placed at a former period. In past years, and even almost from
boyhood, I was perpetually prone to exclaim with Cowley:
"What shall I do to be for ever known, And make the age to come my
own?"
But I had endeavoured for ten years, and was as far from approaching
my object as ever. Everything I wrote fell dead-born from the press.
Very often I was disposed to quit the enterprise in despair. But still I

felt ever and anon impelled to repeat my effort.
At length I conceived the plan of Political Justice. I was convinced that
my object of building to myself a name would never be attained by
merely repeating and refining a little upon what other men had said,
even though I should imagine that I delivered things of this sort with a
more than usual point and elegance. The world, I believed, would
accept nothing from me with distinguishing favour that did not bear
upon the face of it the undoubted stamp of originality. Having long
ruminated upon the principles of Political Justice, I persuaded myself
that I could offer to the public, in a treatise on this subject, things at
once new, true, and important. In the progress of the work I became
more sanguine and confident. I talked over my ideas with a few
familiar friends during its progress, and they gave me every generous
encouragement. It happened that the fame of my book, in some
inconsiderable degree, got before its publication, and a certain number
of persons were prepared to receive it with favour. It would be false
modesty in me to say that its acceptance, when published, did not
nearly come up to everything that could soberly have been expected by
me. In consequence of this, the tone of my mind, both during the period
in which I was engaged in the work and afterwards, acquired a certain
elevation, and made me now unwilling to stoop to what was
insignificant.
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. I was next
called upon to conceive a dramatic and impressive situation adequate to
account for the impulse that the pursuer should feel, incessantly to
alarm and harass his victim, with an inextinguishable resolution never
to allow him the least interval of peace and security. This I
apprehended could best be effected by a secret murder, to the

investigation of which the innocent victim should be impelled by an
unconquerable spirit of curiosity. The murderer would thus have a
sufficient motive to persecute the unhappy discoverer, that he might
deprive him of peace, character, and credit, and have him for ever in his
power. This constituted the outline of my second volume.
The subject of