In his able preface to this work, Mr Godwin sets the writer of fiction in a
very high place. He compares him with the historian and the dramatist, and gives him
the preference. He says—and his late occupation of the History of the Commonwealth
has informed him of the truth of the assertion—that "individual history and biography
are mere guesses in the dark." "The writer collects his information of what the great
men on the theatre of the world are reported to have said and done, and then
endeavours with his best sagacity to find out the explanation; to hit on that thread,
woven through the whole contexture of the piece, which, being discovered, we are told
No prodigies remain,Comets are regular, and Wharton plain.² space between stanzas But man is a more complex machine than is dreamed of in our philosophy, and
it is probable that the skill of no moral anatomist has yet been consummate enough
fully to solve the obscurities of any one of the great worthies of ancient or modern
times." While the writer of fiction, Mr
Godwin goes on to say, "when he introduces his ideal personage to the
public, enters upon the task with a preconception of the qualities that belong to
this being, the principle of his actions and its concomitants. He has thus two
advantages: in the first place, his express office is to draw just conclusions from
assigned premises, a task of no extraordinary difficulty; and, secondly, while he
endeavours to aid those conclusions by consulting the oracle in his bosom, the
suggestions of his own heart, instructed as he is besides by a converse with the
world, and a careful survey of the encounters that present themselves to his
observation, he is much less liable to be cribbed and cabined in by those
unlooked-for phenomena, which in the history of an individual seem to have a
malicious pleasure in thrusting themselves forward to subvert the best digested
theories. In this sense, then, it is infallibly true that fictitious history, when
it
is the work of a competent hand, is more to be depended upon, and comprises more of
the science of man, than whatever can be exhibited by the historian." The writer of
fiction, Mr Godwin asserts, has besides
many advantages over the dramatist; "he has leisure to ripen his materials; to draw
out his results one by one, even as they grow up and unfold themselves in the 'seven
ages' of man. He is not confined, like the dramatist, to put down the words that his
characters shall utter. He accompanies the language made use of by them with his
comments, and explains the inmost thoughts that pass in the bosom of the upright man
and the perverse."

Such, indeed, have been the characteristics of Mr Godwin's novels. While other writers
represent manners rather than passions, or passions at once vague and incomplete,
he
conceives, in its entireness, the living picture of an event with all its adjuncts;
he sets it down in its vivid reality: no part is dim, no part is tame. We have the
clear and distinct representation of his conception, and are made to feel that his
portraiture is endowed with the very essence and spirit of our nature. Mr Bulwer had, in his delightful
novel of "Pelham," described his idea of a work of fiction. Story, he
renders the subordinate. The almost common events of life are his groundwork; or
where he mingles the romantic, it is made rather an episode than an intrinsic part
of
his machinery. Mr Bulwer does not
take the materials of the world around, first separating, and then, by aid of the
inventive faculty, moulding them into a new form, whose exact appearance depends on
a
preconceived notion of what must be, to fulfil his idea; but he gives us rather
himself, his experience, his opinions, his emotions. The high-wrought and
vol. xxvii. no. clxv.3 a[Page 712]noble tone of his mind spreads a sacred and even mysterious grandeur
over his pages. His wit enlivens them, his acute observations and peculiar and
beautiful power of poetically linking the apparently dissimilar by their real
similitudes, are the value and charm of his works.

But though Mr Bulwer’s exceeding
talent exalts this species of composition, it is not in itself of so high a grade
as
the other, which in fact almost infringes on the ideality of the drama by a sort of
unity, wanting, in what we may call in comparison with this the "narrative," the
"didactic novel." The temple which presents to our eyes the proportions and
harmonious accords of architecture, is a finer production than a rambling palace,
though the apartments of the latter may be more glittering, lustrous, and delightful.
There seems in our human nature a necessity of self-restraint, before we can reach
the highest kind of excellence. If simplicity is the best,—if those, Who, in love and truth,Where no misgiving is, relyUpon the genial sense of youth,Glad hearts without reproach or blot,Who do thy work and know it not,— ³ space between stanzas and if the works which are the type of this artless celestial nature hold
the first rank, yet both characters and productions of this kind are too rare and
too
individual to form a class:⁴ an example they cannot be, for their
characteristic is, that they are genuine and untaught. Putting, therefore, these out
of the question, I repeat, that a certain degree of obedience to rule and law is
necessary for the completion and elevation of our nature and its productions. Of all
writers, Shakspeare, whom the
ignorant have deemed irregular, is the closest follower of these laws, for he has
always a scope and an aim, which, beyond every other writer, he fulfils. The merely
copying from our own hearts will no more form a first-rate work of art, than will
the
most exquisite representation of mountains, water, wood, and glorious clouds, form
a
good painting, if none of the rules of grouping or colouring are followed. Sir Walter Scott has not attained this
master art; his wonderful genius developes itself in individual characters and
scenes, unsurpassed, except by Shakspeare, for energy and truth; but his wholes want keeping—often even
due connexion.

Of all modern writers, Mr Godwin has
arrived most sedulously, and most successfully, at the highest species of perfection
his department of art affords. He sketches in his own mind, with a comprehensive and
bold imagination, the plan of his work; he digs at the foundations, and learns all
the due bearings of his position; he examines his materials, and sees exactly to what
purpose each is best fitted; he makes an incident; he unerringly divines the results,
both of the event and passion, which this incident will bring forth. By dint of the
mastery of thought, he transfuses himself into the very souls of his personages; he
dives into their secret hearts, and lays bare, even to their anatomy, their workings;
not a pulsation escapes him,—while yet all is blended into one whole, which forms
the
pervading impulse of the individual he brings before us. Who, remembering Falkland,
but feels as if he had stood by that noble ruin, and watching its downfall! Who but
writhes under the self-dejection of Mandeville, and feels the while his own heart
whisper fearful oracles of the tameless and sad incongruities of our souls! Who but
exulted madly with St Leon, when he obtained his specious gifts! We pass with their
creator into the very form and frame of his creatures: our hearts swell responsive
to
every emotion he delineates. When we heard of another tale by the same author, we
wondered what new magic circle was traced, within which we were to stand side by side
with the enchanter, seeing the spirits that rise to his call, enthralled by the spell
he casts over us.

Cloudesley is before us, a fresh example of what we have been saying.
This tale contains a train of events, each naturally flowing one[Page 713] from
the other, and each growing in importance and dignity as they proceed. We have no
extraneous ornaments; no discursive flights. Comparing this book with others, we felt
as if we had quitted gardens and parks, and tamer landscapes, for a scene on nature's
grandest scale; that we wandered among giants' rocks, "the naked bones of the world
waiting to be clothed."⁵ We use this quotation, because it suggested itself
to our minds as we read these volumes, but we must guard our meaning from the idea
of
there being any turgidness in Cloudesley. Grace and dignity, joined to
power, are its characteristics. The first volume is the least interesting. The author
digs at the foundation, and then places the first stones; then we begin to feel the
just proportions and promising beauty of the plan, till the tantalizing work of
preparation finally yields to the full manifestation of the conception of the artist.
If we may be permitted another metaphor, and this last is the most just, we will say
that this work reminds us of the solemn strain of some cathedral organ. First, a few
appropriate chords are fitfully and variously struck; a prelude succeeds to awaken
our attention, and then rises the full peal, which swells upon the ear, till the air
appears overcharged and overflowing with majestic harmonies. As far as an image can
go, this exactly pourtrays our sensations on reading Cloudesley. The
composer rapts us from ourselves, filling our bosoms with new and extraordinary
emotions, while we sit soul-enchained by the wonders of his art.

The story of Cloudesley is of the younger brother of a nobleman, placed under
peculiarly tempting circumstances, on the death of his elder, of his concealing that
elder's new-born heir, and so stepping into the place and honours of the orphan. We
have here three prominent characters;—the guilty uncle, his agent, who conceals and
brings up the child, and the child himself. The contrast of these situations and
characters produces a group matchless for interest, while the circumstances that grow
out of the first committed fraud, are the influences that mould these characters at
will. The conflicting emotions of the uncle are first brought forward, and then the
remorse that quickly follows his crime. Remorse it may emphatically be called, and
not repentance, since he does not desire to repair the injuries he has committed:
a
carking, self-consuming bitterness of spirit. He hates himself—but no love for
another engenders a generous return to right. He finds himself the very dupe of
ambition;—he wished to be the peer he would naturally have become, had his brother
died childless,—so he puts aside the child, and assumes his station in the world,
and
then finds that he is not what he expected to be. Not the noble, the gentleman of
vast possessions, inheritor of a spotless name; not the lineal successor to honours
and power, such as thousands would envy. This, indeed, he appears in the eyes of the
world, but in his own heart, he knows himself to be the opposite of this. He is a
robber, a swindler, a villain; he would exchange back all for his former innocence,
but his terror of infamy is greater than his love for virtue, and he clings
tenaciously to the fruits of his crime, as the sole compensation for the
consciousness of guilt. Remorse is at first a trifling punishment. God's justice
follows in the premature deaths of his own children, and the loss of his beloved
wife: he feels the finger of the Eternal marking with torturous traces in his soul
the judgement due to crime.

More slowly—for he has no instinct of nature to quicken his emotions—the agent of
the
false uncle, Cloudesley, awakes to penitence. Remorse in the brother was inspired
by
the injury he had done the dead, in Cloudesley, by that inflicted on the living. In
the former it was a barren feeling, wasting the soul; in the latter, quickened into
life by the spirit of love, it grows into an earnest desire to repair the wrongs in
which he took part. Thus he devotes himself to the preservation and education of the
orphan boy. And here we have the third personage. The description of the bringing
up
of the injured outcast child, is replete with grace, and with many a lesson to be
conned by parents, and followed by preceptors. Time rolls on, bringing to maturity
these seeds[Page 714] of events, these various elements of passion and of action,
until there grows up before one’s eyes their natural results, recorded by the hand
of
truth, graced by the charms of imagination.

At first Cloudesley's penitence manifests itself by the exemplary attention and
affection which he bestows on his charge. He is a father to him in appearance; in
reality, almost more, being tutor and servant at the same time, as he is the
protector. He considers the injured offspring of his early and kind patron as a being
superior to himself, whom he reverences as well as loves. As the boy grows up, he
becomes more keenly alive to the injustice done him. He remonstrates with the usurper
by letter, vainly. The only effect of his epistle is to increase the wretchedness
of
the successful criminal, not to change his intents. At last he visits him in person,
and their interview is a highly-wrought scene of passionate eloquence. Still the
uncle is obdurate. Cloudesley educated his ward in Italy. He had to travel far
northward to seek his false relative. He leaves the boy, the nursling of love, on
whose ear no unkind or harsh work had ever grated, under the guardianship of a man
whose integrity, strangely blended with rudeness, renders him a very unfitting
supplier of his place. This event brings on the catastrophe. We will not mar its
interest by a lame abridgement. It is the peculiar excellence of Mr Godwin's writing, that there is not a
word too much, and curtailment of the narrative would be like displaying the
unfilled-up outline of beauty; we might feel that it was there, and yet remain in
ignorance of its peculiar features. The interest is imperative, but unconstrained;
nature dwells paramount in every part. As it proceeds, it becomes high-wrought,
without being harrowing. To the end, the tragedy is tempered by the softest spirit
of
humanity; it touches the verge of terror, only to bring us the more soothingly back
to milder feelings. We close the book, not tantalized by a sense of the injustice
of
fate, nor tormented by a painful depicting of unrebuked guilt, but with a compassion
for the criminal, and a love or admiration for the innocent, at once elevating and
delightful. The few last pages are indeed a record of truths and sentiments, which,
as coming from one who has lived so long, and, synonymous with this expression,
suffered so much, inculcates a philosophy very opposite from the misanthropical one
so prevalent a little while ago.

Mr Godwin's style is at once simple and
energetic; it is full, without being inflated. We turn over the pages to seek an
impressive passage, but it is difficult to find one sufficiently disconnected with
the story, to quote. The description of the feelings of the unhappy deceived man of
ambition, when he first finds himself fully entered on the path of guilt, is full
of
eloquence. Thus he speaks: It was my determination to return with all practicable speed to the British
dominions. I loathed the country which had been the scene of these recent
events. They had succeeded each other with such rapidity, as to confound my
apprehension. I felt as if I had a load of guilt on my soul, almost too vast
and overpowering for human ability to endure. My feelings were those of a
murderer! And yet I had committed no murder. Could I not with a safe conscience
assure myself that I had in no way been a party to the destruction of Arthur,
or of Irene? Their child was not dead. But he was by my means civilly dead to
his property, his rank, and his country. I had determined that he should be an
outcast, belonging to no one, an uncertain and solitary wanderer on the face of
nature!Oh! how I detested myself in the recollection of the base and hypocritical
scene that I had caused to be played in the presence of the corpse of Irene! I
had laid by her chaste and spotless side, the corpse of a child, the offspring
of disgrace and infamy! I have often read that the blood of a murdered man
would flow anew from his veins the instant his body was touched by the finger
of his murderer. Well might I have expected that the hapless Irene should start
again into life with indignation at the lie I imposed upon her, the
contamination with which I approached her. She was certainly dead! If the
smallest particle of perception had remained in any portion of her frame, it
would have shrunk and shuddered on this dreadful occasion. I had tried the
question to its utmost. I had never seen death till now. Never was such a
penetrating [Page 715] trial, such a demonstrative ordeal of its reality,
devised by man. Her features were calm; there was a sweet and complacent
serenity on her countenance. She was turned to earth. (Vol. ii p. 38.)I was alone in my carriage as I traversed Germany from Vienna to Ostend, or
worse than alone, with my valet in the same vehicle to speak when he was spoken
to, and do as he was directed. I traversed in my route many extensive forests
and many sandy and dismal plains. My journey was made in the blackest and most
naked season of the year. Dark clouds were perpetually hurried along the
horizon, and the air was nipping and severe. I seldom slept in my carriage, but
was left to the uncomfortable communion of my own thoughts. I slept not, but
was lost in long and vague reveries, unconscious how the time passed, but
feeling that it was insupportably monotonous and tedious. My mind was in that
state in which a man has an undefined feeling that he exists, but in which his
sensations rarely shape themselves into any thing that deserves the name of
thought.In this situation, particularly when the shades of evening began to prevail,
and in the twilight, my senses were bewitched, and I seemed to see a multitude
of half-formed visions. Once, especially, as I passed through a wood by
moonlight, I suddenly saw my brother's face looking out from among the trees as
I passed. I saw the features as distinctly as if the meridian sun had beamed
upon them. The countenance was as white as death, and the expression was past
speaking pitiful. It was by degrees that the features shewed themselves thus
out of what had been a formless shadow. I gazed upon it intently. Presently, it
faded away by as insensible degrees as those by which it had become thus
agonizingly clear. After a short time it returned. I saw also Irene and the
child, living and dead, and then living again. No tongue can tell what I
endured on these occasions. It was a delirium and confusion and agitation that
continued for hours. The fits were not periodical. If I had a visitation of
this kind at night, that afforded no security that it would not return in the
morning, and again at noon. My appetite deserted me, my eyes became fiery and
bloodshot. (Vol ii. p. 45.)

We lingered to select another extract from many beautiful passages, containing
descriptions first of the domestic happiness, and then of the misfortunes, of the
usurper: we feel inclined to take instead, the description of the injured boy
himself, as containing one of the sweetest pictures of educated, civilized youth we
ever remember to have read: In the various pursuits, therefore, of classical studies and the English
language, in a word, of every thing adapted to his years, the progress of
Julian was at this time astonishingly rapid. In the course of the next six or
seven years, he shook off every thing that was childish and puerile, without
substituting in its stead the slightest tincture of pedantry. The frankness and
nobility of his spirit defended him from all danger on that side. The
constitution of his nature was incapable of combining itself with any alloy of
the fop or the coxcomb. All his motions were free, animated, and elastic. They
sprung into being instant, and as by inspiration, without waiting to demand the
sanction of the deliberative faculty. They were born perfect, as Minerva is feigned to have sprung in
complete panoply from the head of Jove.
The sentiments of his mind unfolded themselves, without trench or wrinkle, in
his honest countenance and impassioned features. Into that starry region no
disguise could ever intrude; and the clear and melodious tones of his voice
were a transparent medium to the thoughts of his heart. Persuasion hung on all
he said, and it was next to impossible that the most rugged nature and the most
inexorable spirit should dispute his bidding. And this was the case, because
all he did was in love, in warm affection, in a single desire for the happiness
of those about him. Every one hastened to perform his behests, because the idea
of empire and command never entered into his thoughts. He seemed as if he lived
in a world made expressly for him, so precisely did all with whom he came into
contact appear to form their tone on his.And, in the midst of all his studies and literary improvement, he in no wise
neglected any of that bodily dexterity by which he had been early
distinguished. His mastery in swimming, in handling the dart and the bow, in
swiftness of foot, and in wrestling, kept pace with his other accomplishments.
Nor was his corporal strength any way behind his other endowments. He could
throw the discus higher and farther than any of his competitors. But his
greatest excellence in this kind was in horsemanship. He sprang from the ground
like a bird, as if his natural quality had been to mount into the air. He
vaulted into his seat like an angel that had descended into it from the
conveyance of a sunbeam. He had a favourite horse, familiar, as it were,[Page 716] with all the thoughts of his rider, and that shewed himself
pleased and proud of the notice of the noble youth. He snorted, and bent his
neck in the most graceful attitudes, and beat the ground with his hoofs, and
shewed himself impatient for the signal to leave the goal, and start into his
utmost speed. Julian was master of his motions. He would stop, and wind, and
exhibit all his perfection of paces, with a whisper, or the lifting of a
finger, from him whose approbation excited in the animal the supremest delight.
In a word, Julian won the favour of his elders by the clearness of his
apprehension, and his progress in every thing that was taught him; and of his
equals, by his excellence in all kinds of sport and feats of dexterity, which
could be equalled only by the modesty, the good humour, and accommodating
spirit, with which he bore his honours, rendering others almost as well
satisfied with his superiority as if the triumph had been their own. (Vol. ii
p. 184.)

Mr Godwin quotes three lines from the
Iliad, applicable to himself, as Homer made them applicable to Nestor. "Two generations of speech-gifted men had passed away, with whom he
had dwelt in green Pylos: he now lived among the third."⁶ Well may Mr Godwin be
proud of emulating Experienced Nestor, in persuasion
skill'd,⁷ space between stanzas
who Words sweet as honey from his lips distill'd.space between stanzas
It is a proud distinction thus to retain the power of creative
thought, at a time when the grave is all too near, and our material frames are
burdened with tokens of affinity to the clod beneath. To see mind triumph over
mortality, the flame burning brighter, and yet more gently, in the decay of our
animal powers, is in itself a tale to ponder over with a glad and thankful spirit.
This last emanation of the master-mind of Godwin bears in it a soothing mildness, that reminds us of Wordsworth's exquisite description of An old age serene and bright,And lovely as a Lapland night.⁸ space between stanzas

Here is nothing harsh and crabbed, nothing morbid and disheartening: every page
displays freshness and vigour, each one containing some lesson to teach us
confidence, love, and hope. This philosophy, as emanting from experience, is a
precious boon, such as, since the days of the philosophers of old, has seldom been
bequeathed to us. Let the reader turn to the last page of the third volume, and learn
thence, that a glory still remains to the earth, an attribute to our mortal natures,
that must elevate and bless us while man remains; and let our hearts exult, when one
of the wisest men of this or any age tells us, that "the true key of the universe
is
love."⁹