"St. Leon" and "Mandeville"[198] are
dull attempts in the direction of the historical novel. "Fleetwood, or
the New Man of Feeling" embodies some of the author's social views, and
contains evidence of an imitation of Fielding and Smollett, in which
only their coarseness is successfully copied.
But Godwin gave one book to the world which has acquired a notoriety
which entitles it to a more extended notice than its intrinsic merits
would otherwise justify. "Caleb Williams" was first published in 1794,
and was widely read. Lord Byron is said to have threatened his wife
that he would treat her as Falkland had treated Caleb Williams, and
this fact brought the novel into prominence with the Byron controversy,
and occasioned its republication in the present century. The author
tells us that his object was "to comprehend a general review of the
modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism by which man becomes the
destroyer of man." And this was to be done "without subtracting from
the interest and passion by which a performance of this sort (a novel)
ought to be characterized." In both his didactic and his artistic
purpose the author must be said to have failed. The story is briefly as
follows: Falkland, who is represented as a man whose chief thought and
consideration consist in guarding his honor from stain, stabs Tyrrel,
his enemy, in the back, at night.
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