[197] Robert Bage has left four works containing opinions of
a revolutionary character--"Barham Downs," "James Wallace," "The Fair
Syrian," and "Mount Henneth." These novels are written in the form of a
series of letters and have little narrative interest. The author has
striven, sometimes successfully, at a powerful delineation of
character, but his works are too evidently a vehicle for his political
and philosophical opinions. He represents with unnatural consistency
the upper classes as invariably corrupt and tyrannical, and the lower
as invariably honest and deserving. His theories are not only
inartistically prominent, but are worthless and immoral. He looks upon
a tax-gatherer as a thief, and condones feminine unchastity as a
trivial and unimportant offence.
The novelist most deeply embued with the doctrines of the French
Revolution was William Godwin--a man of great literary ambition, and
less literary capacity. His "Life of Chaucer" has the merits of a
compilation, but not those of an original literary work. His political
and social writings were merely reproductions of French revolutionary
views, and were entirely discredited by Malthus' attacks upon them. The
same lack of originality and of independent power characterized
Godwin's novels. They all have a patch-work effect, and in all may be
found the traces of imitation.
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