Caleb Williams | Page 7

unabated speed to the end.
Thus I have endeavoured to give a true history of the concoction and
mode of writing of this mighty trifle. When I had done, I soon became
sensible that I had done in a manner nothing. How many flat and
insipid parts does the book contain! How terribly unequal does it
appear to me! From time to time the author plainly reels to and fro like
a drunken man. And, when I had done all, what had I done? Written a
book to amuse boys and girls in their vacant hours, a story to be hastily
gobbled up by them, swallowed in a pusillanimous and unanimated
mood, without chewing and digestion. I was in this respect greatly
impressed with the confession of one of the most accomplished readers
and excellent critics that any author could have fallen in with (the
unfortunate Joseph Gerald). He told me that he had received my book
late one evening, and had read through the three volumes before he
closed his eyes. Thus, what had cost me twelve months' labour,
ceaseless heartaches and industry, now sinking in despair, and now
roused and sustained in unusual energy, he went over in a few hours,
shut the book, laid himself on his pillow, slept, and was refreshed, and
cried,
"To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new."
I had thought to have said something here respecting the concoction of
"St. Leon" and "Fleetwood." But all that occurs to me on the subject
seems to be anticipated in the following

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
_February 14, 1805._
Yet another novel from the same pen, which has twice before claimed
the patience of the public in this form. The unequivocal indulgence
which has been extended to my two former attempts, renders me
doubly solicitous not to forfeit the kindness I have experienced.
One caution I have particularly sought to exercise: "not to repeat
myself." Caleb Williams was a story of very surprising and uncommon

events, but which were supposed to be entirely within the laws and
established course of nature, as she operates in the planet we inhabit.
The story of St. Leon is of the miraculous class; and its design, to "mix
human feelings and passions with incredible situations, and thus render
them impressive and interesting."
Some of those fastidious readers--they may be classed among the best
friends an author has, if their admonitions are judiciously
considered--who are willing to discover those faults which do not offer
themselves to every eye, have remarked that both these tales are in a
vicious style of writing; that Horace has long ago decided that the story
we cannot believe we are by all the laws of criticism called upon to
hate; and that even the adventures of the honest secretary, who was first
heard of ten years ago, are so much out of the usual road that not one
reader in a million can ever fear they will happen to himself.
Gentlemen critics, I thank you. In the present volumes I have served
you with a dish agreeable to your own receipt, though I cannot say with
any sanguine hope of obtaining your approbation.
The following story consists of such adventures as for the most part
have occurred to at least one half of the Englishmen now existing who
are of the same rank of life as my hero. Most of them have been at
college, and shared in college excesses; most of them have afterward
run a certain gauntlet of dissipation; most have married, and, I am
afraid, there are few of the married tribe who have not at some time or
other had certain small misunderstandings with their wives.[A] To be
sure, they have not all of them felt and acted under these trite
adventures as my hero does. In this little work the reader will scarcely
find anything to "elevate and surprise;" and, if it has any merit, it must
consist in the liveliness with which it brings things home to the
imagination, and the reality it gives to the scenes it pourtrays.
[Footnote A: I confess, however, the inability I found to weave a
catastrophe, such as I desired, out of these ordinary incidents. What I
have here said, therefore, must not be interpreted as applicable to the
concluding sheets of my work.]
Yes, even in the present narrative, I have aimed at a certain kind of
novelty--a novelty which may be aptly expressed by a parody on a
well-known line of Pope; it relates:
"Things often done, but never yet described."

In selecting among common and ordinary adventures, I have
endeavoured to avoid such as a thousand novels before mine have
undertaken to develop. Multitudes of readers have themselves passed
through the very incidents I relate; but, for the most part, no