Godolphin | Page 2

and account for the
effect;--when, to cite reverently the words of the wisest, "He applies his
heart to know and to search, and to seek out wisdom and the reason of
things, and to know the wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and
madness."
In Eugene Aram, the natural career of genius is arrested by a single
crime; in Godolphin, a mind of inferior order, but more fanciful
colouring, is wasted away by the indulgence of those morbid
sentiments which are the nourishment of egotism, and the gradual
influence of the frivolities which make the business of the idle. Here
the Demon tempts or destroys the hermit in his solitary cell. There, he
glides amidst the pomps and vanities of the world, and whispers away

the soul in the voice of his soft familiars, Indolence and Pleasure.
Of all my numerous novels, Pelham and Godolphin are the only ones
which take their absolute groundwork in what is called "The
Fashionable World." I have sought in each to make the general
composition in some harmony with the principal figure in the
foreground. Pelham is represented as almost wholly unsusceptible to
the more poetical influences. He has the physical compound, which,
versatile and joyous, amalgamates easily with the world--he views life
with the lenient philosophy that Horace commends in Aristippus: he
laughs at the follies he shares; and is ever ready to turn into uses
ultimately (if indirectly) serious, the frivolities that only serve to
sharpen his wit, and augment that peculiar expression which we term
"knowledge of the world." In a word, dispel all his fopperies, real or
assumed, he is still the active man of crowds and cities, determined to
succeed, and gifted with the ordinary qualities of success. Godolphin,
on the contrary, is the man of poetical temperament, out of his place
alike among the trifling idlers and the bustling actors of the
world--wanting the stimulus of necessity--or the higher motive which
springs from benevolence, to give energy to his powers, or definite
purpose to his fluctuating desires; not strong enough to break the bonds
that confine his genius--not supple enough to accommodate its
movements to their purpose. He is the moral antipodes to Pelham. In
evading the struggles of the world, he grows indifferent to its duties--he
strives with no obstacles--he can triumph in no career. Represented as
possessing mental qualities of a higher and a richer nature than those to
which Pelham can pretend, he is also represented as very inferior to
him in constitution of character, and he is certainly a more ordinary
type of the intellectual trifler.
The characters grouped around Godolphin are those with which such a
man usually associates his life. They are designed to have a certain
grace--a certain harmony with one form or the other of his twofold
temperament:--viz., either its conventional elegance of taste, or its
constitutional poetry of idea. But all alike are brought under varying
operations of similar influences; or whether in Saville, Constance,
Fanny, or Lucilla--the picture presented is still the picture of gifts
misapplied--of life misunderstood. The Preacher who exclaimed,
"Vanity of vanities! all is vanity," perhaps solved his own mournful

saying, when he added elsewhere, "This only have I found, that God
made men upright--but they have sought out many inventions."
This work was first published anonymously, and for that reason
perhaps it has been slow in attaining to its rightful station amongst its
brethren--whose parentage at first was openly acknowledged. If
compared with Pelham, it might lose, at the first glance, but would
perhaps gain on any attentive reperusal.
For although it must follow from the inherent difference in the design
of the two works thus referred to, that in Godolphin there can be little
of the satire or vivacity which have given popularity to its predecessor,
yet, on the other hand, in Godolphin there ought to be a more faithful
illustration of the even polish that belongs to luxurious life,--of the
satiety that pleasure inflicts upon such of its votaries as are worthy of a
higher service. The subject selected cannot adroit the same facility for
observation of things that lie on the surface--but it may well lend itself
to subtler investigation of character--allow more attempt at pathos, and
more appeal to reflection.
Regarded as a story, the defects of Godolphin most apparent to myself,
are in the manner in which Lucilla is re-introduced in the later chapters,
and in the final catastrophe of the hero. There is an exaggerated
romance in the one, and the admission of accident as a crowning
agency in the other, which my maturer judgment would certainly
condemn, and which at all events appear to me out of keeping with the
natural events, and the more patient investigation of moral causes and
their consequences, from which the previous interest of