this youth has the right of consigning them to the grave. His own lips have made over to me his body and his soul; never will I give back his promise; never shall he know a night devoid of terror unless he engages to collect my mouldering bones, and deposit them in the family vault of his Andalusian castle. Then let thirty masses be said for the repose of my spirit, and I trouble this world no more. Now let me depart; those flames are scorching.'

He let the hand drop slowly which held the crucifix, and which till then he had pointed towards her. The apparition bowed her head, and her form melted into air.

boldness of his speculations and opinions, and his
apparent depth and ardour of feeling, were curiously
contrasted with his plodding habits, his imperturb
able temper, and the quiet obscure simplicity of his
life and manners. The most startling and astound-
ing theories were propounded by him with undoubt-
ing confidence; and sentiments that, if reduced to

MRS OPIE.

MRS AMELIA OPIE (Miss Alderson of Norwich), the widow of John Opie, the celebrated artist, commenced her literary career in 1801, when she published her domestic and pathetic tale of The Father and Daughter. Without venturing out of ordinary life, Mrs Opie invested her narrative with deep interest, by her genuine painting of nature and passion, her animated dialogue, and feminine delicacy of feeling. Her first novel has gone through eight editions, and is still popular. A long series of works of fiction has since proceeded from the pen of this lady. Her Simple Tales, in four volumes, 1806; New Tales, four volumes, 1818; Temper, or Domestic Scenes, a tale, in three volumes; Tales of Real Life, three volumes; Tales of the Heart, four volumes; are all marked by the same characteristics-the portraiture of domestic life, drawn with a view to regulate the heart and affections. In 1828 Mrs Opie published a moral treatise, entitled Detraction Displayed, in order to expose that most common of all vices,' which she says justly is found in every class or rank in society, from the peer to the peasant, from the master to the valet, from the mistress to the maid, from the most learned to the most ignorant, from the man of genius to the meanest capacity. The tales of this lady have been thrown into the shade by the brilliant fictions of Scott, the stronger moral delineations of Miss Edgeworth, and the generally masculine character of our more modern literature. She is, like Mackenzie, too uniformly pathetic and tender. She can do nothing well,' says Jeffrey, that requires to be done with formality, and therefore has not succeeded in copying either the concentrated force of weighty and deliberate reason, or the severe and solemn dignity of majestic virtue. To make amends, however, she represents admirably everything that is amiable, generous, and gentle.' Perhaps we should add to this the power of exciting and harrowing up the feelings in no ordinary degree. Some of her short tales are full of gloomy and terrific painting, alternately resembling those of Godwin and Mrs Radcliffe.

William Grain

action, would have overturned the whole framework of society, were complacently dealt out by their author as if they had merely formed an ordinary portion of a busy literary life. Godwin was born at Wisbeach, in Cambridgeshire, on the 3d of March 1756. His father was a dissenting minister-a pious nonconformist-and thus the future novelist may be said to have been nurtured in a love of religious and civil liberty, without perhaps much reverence for existing authority. He soon, however, far overAfter receiving the stepped the pale of dissent. necessary education at the dissenting college at Hoxton, Mr Godwin became minister of a congregation in the vicinity of London. He also officiated for some time at Stowmarket, in Suffolk. About the year 1782, having been five years a nonconformist preacher, he settled in London, and applied himself wholly to literature. His first work was entitled Sketches of History, in Six Sermons; and he shortly afterwards became principal writer in the New Anno-nual Register. He was a zealous political reformer; and his talents were so well known or recommended, that he obtained the large sum of £700 for his next publication. This was his famed Enquiry concerning Political Justice, and its Influences on General Virtue and Happiness, published in 1793. Mr Godwin's work was a sincere advocacy of an intellectual republic-a splendid argument for universal philanthropy and benevolence, and for the omnipotence of mind over matter. His views of the perfectibility of man and the regeneration of society (all private affections and interests being merged in the public good) were clouded by no misgivings, and he wrote with the force of conviction, and with no ordinary powers of persuasion and eloquence. The Enquiry was highly successful, and went through several

In Miss Sedgwick's Letters from Abroad (1841), we find the following notice of the venerable velist: I owed Mrs Opie a grudge for having made me in my youth cry my eyes out over her stories; but her fair cheerful face forced me to forget it. She long ago forswore the world and its vanities, and adopted the Quaker faith and costume; but I fancied that her elaborate simplicity, and the fashionable little train to her pretty satin gown, indicated how much easier it is to adopt a theory than to change one's habits.'

WILLIAM GODWIN.

WILLIAM GODWIN, author of Caleb Williams, was one of the most remarkable men of his times. The

after this mental pollution, to meet Godwin again as a novelist—

He bears no token of the sabler streams,

And mounts far off among the swans of Thames. In 1799 appeared his St Leon, a story of the 'miraculous class,' as he himself states, and designed to mix human feelings and passions with incredible situations. His hero attains the possession of the by the art of transmuting metals into gold, and at the same time he learns the secret of the elixir vitæ, by which he has the power of renewing his youth. These are, indeed, 'incredible situations;' but the romance has many attractions-splendid description and true pathos. Its chief defect is an excess of the terrible and marvellous. In 1800 Mr Godwin produced his unlucky tragedy of Antonio; in 1801 Thoughts on Dr Parr's Spital Sermon, being a reply to some attacks made upon him, or rather on his code of morality, by Parr, Mackintosh, and others. In 1803 he brought out a voluminous Life of Chaucer, in two quarto volumes. With Mr Godwin the great business of this world was to write books, and whatever subject he selected, he treated it with a due sense of its importance, and pursued it into all its ramifications with intense ardour and application. The Life of Chaucer' was ridiculed by Sir Walter Scott in the Edinburgh Review, in consequence of its enormous bulk and its extraneous dissertations, but it is creditable to the author's taste and research. The student of our early literature will find in it many interesting facts connected with a chivalrous and romantic period of our historymuch sound criticism, and a fine relish for true poetry. In 1804 Mr Godwin produced his novel of Fleetwood, or the New Man of Feeling. The title was unfortunate, as reminding the reader of the old Man of Feeling, by far the most interesting and amiable of the two. Mr Godwin's hero is self-willed and capricious, a morbid egotist, whose irritability and frantic outbursts of passion move contempt rather than sympathy. Byron has said

editions. In a twelvemonth afterwards appeared his novel of Things as they Are, or the Adventures of Caleb Williams. His object here was also to inculcate his peculiar doctrines, and to comprehend a general review of the modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism, by which man becomes the destroyer of man.' His hero, Williams, tells his own tale of suffering and of wrong-of innocence persecuted and reduced to the brink of death and infamy by aristocratic power, and by tyrannical or partially-admi-philosopher's stone, and secures exhaustless wealth nistered laws; but his story is so fraught with interest and energy, that we lose sight of the political object or satire, and think only of the characters and incidents that pass in review before us. The imagination of the author overpowered his philosophy; he was a greater inventor than logician. His character of Falkland is one of the finest in the whole range of English fictitious composition. The opinions of God win were soon brought still more prominently forward. His friends, Holcroft, Thelwall, Horne Tooke, and others, were thrown into the Tower on a charge of high treason. The novelist had joined none of their societies, and however obnoxious to those in power, had not rendered himself amenable to the laws of his country.* Godwin, however, was ready with his pen. Judge Eyre, in his charge to the grand jury, had laid down principles very different from those of our author, and the latter instantly published Cursory Strictures on the judge's charge, so ably written that the pamphlet is said to have mainly led to the acquittal of the accused parties. In 1796 Mr Godwin issued a series of essays on education, manners, and literature, entitled The Enquirer. In the following year he married Mary Wollstonecraft, author of The Vindication of the Rights of Woman, &c. a lady in many respects as remarkable as her husband, and who died after having given birth to a daughter (Mrs Shelley) still more justly distinguished. Godwin's contempt of the ordinary modes of thinking and acting in this country was displayed by this marriage. His wife brought with her a natural daughter, the fruit of a former connexion. She had lived with Godwin for some time before their marriage; and the principal motive,' he says, 'for complying with the ceremony, was the circumstance of Mary's being in a state of pregnancy.' Such an open disregard of the ties and principles that sweeten life and adorn society astonished even Godwin's philosophic and reforming friends. But whether acting in good or in bad taste, he seems always to have been fearless and sincere. He wrote Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (who died in about half a year after her marriage), and in this curious work all the details of her life and conduct are minutely related. We are glad, *If we may credit a curious entry in Sir Walter Scott's diary, Godwin must have been early mixed up with the English Jacobins. 'Canning's conversion from popular opinions,' says Scott, was strangely brought round. While he was study. ing in the Temple, and rather entertaining revolutionary opinions, Godwin sent to say that he was coming to breakfast with him, to speak on a subject of the highest importance. Canning knew little of him, but received his visit, and learned to his astonishment that, in expectation of a new order of things, the English Jacobins designed to place him, Canning, at the head of the revolution. He was much struck, and asked time to think what course he should take; and having thought the matter over, he went to Mr Pitt, and made the AntiJacobin confession of faith, in which he persevered until Canning himself mentioned this to Sir W. Knighton upon occasion of giving a place in the Charter-house, of some ten pounds

a-year, to Godwin's brother. He could scarce do less for one who had offered him the dictator's curule chair.'-Lockhart's Life of Scott. This occurrence must have taken place before 1793, as in that year Canning was introduced by Pitt into parliament.

Romances paint at full length people's wooings,
But only give a bust of marriages.

This cannot be said of Mr Godwin. Great part of
Fleetwood is occupied with the hero's matrimonial
troubles and afflictions; but they only exemplify
the noble poet's farther observation-'no one cares
for matrimonial cooings.' The better parts of the
novel consist of the episode of the Macneills, a tale
of family pathos, and some detached descriptions of
Welsh scenery. For some years Mr Godwin was
little heard of. He had married again, and, as a
bookseller's shop in London, under the assumed
more certain means of maintenance, had opened a
name of Edward Baldwin.' In this situation he

ushered forth a number of children's books, small histories and other compilations, some of them by himself. Charles Lamb mentions an English Grammar, in which Hazlitt assisted. He tried another tragedy, Faulkner, in 1807, but it was unsuccessful. Next year he published an Essay on Sepulchres, written in a fine meditative spirit, with great beauty of expression; and in 1815 Lives of Edward and John Phillips, the nephews of Milton. The latter is also creditable to the taste and research of the author, and illustrates our poetical history about the time of the Restoration. In 1817 Mr Godwin again entered the arena of fiction. He had paid a visit to Scotland, and concluded with Constable for another novel, Mandeville, a tale of the times of Cromwell. The style of this work is measured and stately, and it abounds in that moral anatomy in

78

The

which the author delighted, but often carried be the story will show the materials with which Godyond truth and nature. The vindictive feelings win framed his spell.' Caleb Williams, an inteldelineated in Mandeville' are pushed to a revolt-ligent young peasant, is taken into the house of ing extreme. Passages of energetic and beautiful | Mr Falkland, the lord of the manor, in the capacity composition-reflective and descriptive are to be of amanuensis, or private secretary. His master found in the novel; and we may remark, that as is kind and compassionate, but stately and solemn the author advanced in years, he seems to have cul- in manner. An air of mystery hangs about him; tivated more sedulously the graces of language and his address is cold, and his sentiments impenetrable; diction. The staple of his novels, however, was and he breaks out occasionally into fits of causeless taken from the depths of his own mind-not from jealousy and tyrannical violence. One day Williams extensive surveys of mankind or the universe; and surprises him in a closet, where he heard a deep it was obvious that the oft-drawn-upon fountain be- groan expressive of intolerable anguish, then the lid gan to dry up, notwithstanding the luxuriance of of a trunk hastily shut, and the noise of fastening the foliage that shaded it. We next find Mr God- a lock. Finding he was discovered, Falkland flies win combating the opinions of Malthus upon popu- into a transport of rage, and threatens the intruder lation (1820), and then setting about an elaborate with instant death if he does not withdraw. History of the Commonwealth. The great men of astonished youth retires, musing on this strange that era were exactly suited to his taste. Their rescene. His curiosity is awakened, and he learns solute energy of character, their overthrow of the part of Falkland's history from an old confidential monarchy, their republican enthusiasm and strange steward-how that his master was once the gayest notions of faith and the saints, were well adapted to of the gay, and had achieved honour and fame fire his imagination and stimulate his research. The abroad, till on his return he was persecuted with a history extended to four large volumes, which were malignant destiny. His nearest neighbour, Tyrrel, published at intervals between 1824 and 1828. It a man of estate equal to his own, but of coarse and is evident that Mr Godwin tasked himself to pro- violent mind and temper, became jealous of Falkduce authorities for all he advanced. He took up, land's superior talents and accomplishments, and as might be expected, strong opinions; but in striv- conceived a deadly enmity at him. The series of ing to be accurate and minute, he became too spe- events detailing the progress of this mutual hatred cific and chronological for the interest of his narra- (particularly the episode of Miss Melville) is devetive. It was truly said that the style of his history loped with great skill, but all is creditable to the 'creeps and hitches in dates and authorities.' In high-minded and chivalrous Falkland. The con1830 Mr Godwin published Cloudesley, a tale, in duct of Tyrrel becomes at length so atrocious, that three volumes. Reverting to his first brilliant per- the country gentlemen shun his society. He informance as a novelist, he made his new hero, like trudes himself, however, into a rural assembly, an Caleb Williams, a person of humble origin, and he altercation ensues, and Falkland indignantly uparrays him against his patron; but there the pa- braids him, and bids him begone. Amidst the hootrallel ends. The elastic vigour, the verisimilitude, ings and reproaches of the assembly, Tyrrel retires, the crowding incidents, the absorbing interest, and but soon returns inflamed with liquor, and with one the overwhelming catastrophe of the first novel, blow of his muscular arm levels Falkland to the are not to be found in Cloudesley.' There is even ground. His violence is repeated, till he is again little delineation of character. Instead of these we forced to retreat. This complication of ignominy, have fine English, 'clouds of reflections without any base, humiliating, and public, stung the proud and new occasion to call them forth; an expanded flow sensitive Falkland to the soul; he left the room; of words without a single pointed remark.' The but one other event closed the transactions of that next production of this veteran author was a meta- memorable evening-Tyrrel was found dead in the physical treatise, Thoughts on Man, &c.; and his street, having been murdered (stabbed with a knife) last work (1834) a compilation, entitled Lives of the at the distance of a few yards from the assembly Necromancers. In his later years Mr Godwin en- house. From this crisis in Falkland's history joyed a small government office, yeoman usher commenced his gloomy and unsociable melancholyof the Exchequer, which was conferred upon him life became a burden to him. A private investigaby Earl Grey's ministry. In the residence attached tion was made into the circumstances of the murder; to this appointment, in New Palace Yard, he ter- but Falkland, after a lofty and eloquent denial of minated his long and laborious scholastic life on the all knowledge of the crime, was discharged with 7th of April 1836. No man ever panted more every circumstance of honour, and amidst the plauardently, or toiled more heroically, for literary fame; dits of the people. A few weeks afterwards, a and we think that, before he closed his eyes, he must peasant, named Hawkins, and his son were taken have been conscious that he had left something so up on some slight suspicion, tried, condemned, and written to after-times, as they should not willingly executed for the murder. Justice was satisfied, but let it die.' a deepening gloom had settled on the solitary Falkland. Williams heard all this, and joined in pitying the noble sufferer; but the question occurred to him -was it possible, after all, that his master should be the murderer? The idea took entire possession of his mind. He determined to place himself as a watch upon Falkland-a perpetual stimulus urged him on. Circumstances, also, were constantly occurring to feed his morbid inquisitiveness. At length a fire broke out in the house during Falkland's absence, and Williams was led to the room containing the mysterious trunk. With the energy of uncontrollable passion he forced it open, and was in the act of lifting up the lid, when Falkland entered, wild, breathless, and distraction in his looks. The first act of the infuriate master was to present a pistol at the head of the youth, but he instantly

'Caleb Williams' is unquestionably the most interesting and original of Mr Godwin's novels, and is altogether a work of extraordinary art and power. It has the plainness of narrative and the apparent reality of the fictions of Defoe or Swift, but is far more pregnant with thought and feeling, and touches far higher sympathies and associations. The incidents and characters are finely developed and contrasted, an intense earnestness pervades the whole, and the story never flags for a moment. The lowness of some of the scenes never inspires such disgust as to repel the reader, and the awful crime of which Falkland is guilty is allied to so much worth and nobleness of nature, that we are involuntarily led to regard him with feelings of exalted pity and commiseration. A brief glance at

changed his resolution, and ordered him to with- that I had determined impartially and justly. I draw. Next day Falkland disclosed the secret. I believed that, if Mr Falkland were permitted to am the blackest of villains; I am the murderer of persist in his schemes, we must both of us be comTyrrel; I am the assassin of the Hawkinses! He pletely wretched. I believed that it was in my power, made Williams swear never to disclose the secret, by the resolution I had formed, to throw my share of on pain of death or worse. I am,' said Falkland, this wretchedness from me, and that his could scarcely as much the fool of fame as ever; I cling to it as be increased. It appeared, therefore, to my mind to my last breath: though I be the blackest of villains, be a mere piece of equity and justice, such as an I will leave behind me a spotless and illustrious impartial spectator would desire, that one person name: there is no crime so malignant, no scene of should be miserable in preference to two, that one blood so horrible, in which that object cannot engage person, rather than two, should be incapacitated from me.' Williams took the oath and submitted. His acting his part, and contributing his share to the spirit, however, revolted at the servile submission general welfare. I thought that in this business I that was required of him, and in time he escaped had risen superior to personal considerations, and from the house. He was speedily taken, and accused judged with a total neglect of the suggestions of selfat the instance of Falkland of abstracting valuable regard. It is true Mr Falkland was mortal: but notproperty from the trunk he had forced open on the withstanding his apparent decay, he might live long. day of the fire. He was cast into prison. The in- Ought I to submit to waste the best years of my life terior of the prison, and its wretched inmates, are in my present wretched situation? He had declared then described with great minuteness. Williams, to that his reputation should be for ever inviolate; this whom the confinement became intolerable, escaped. was his ruling passion, the thought that worked his He is first robbed and then sheltered by a band of soul to madness. He would probably, therefore, leave robbers-he is forced to flee for his life-assumes a legacy of persecution to be received by me, from the different disguises-is again in prison, and again hands of Gines, or some other villain equally atroNow or escapes; but misery and injustice meet him at every cious, when he should himself be no more. step. He had innocently fastened on himself a never was the time for me to redeem my future life from endless wo. second enemy, a villain named Gines, who from a highwayman had become a thief-taker; and the inBut all these fine-spun reasonings vanished before Shall I cessant exertions of this fellow, tracking him from the object that was now presented to me. place to place like a blood-hound, are related with trample upon a man thus dreadfully reduced? Shall uncommon spirit and effect. The whole of these ad- I point my animosity against one whom the system of ventures possess an enchaining interest, and cannot nature has brought down to the grave? Shall I be perused without breathless anxiety. The inno-poison, with sounds the most intolerable to his ears, cence of Williams, and the manifestations of his character-artless, buoyant, and fast maturing under this stern discipline-irresistibly attract and carry for

ward the reader. The connection of Falkland and
Williams is at last wound up in one scene of over-
powering interest, in which the latter comes forward
publicly as the accuser of his former master.
place is the hall of a magistrate of the metropolitan
town of Falkland's county.

[Concluding Scene of Caleb Williams.]

The

I can conceive of no shock greater than that I received from the sight of Mr Falkland. His appearance on the last occasion on which we met had been haggard, ghost-like, and wild, energy in his gestures, and phrensy in his aspect. It was now the appearance of a corpse. He was brought in in a chair, unable to stand, fatigued and almost destroyed by the journey he had just taken. His visage was colourless; his limbs destitute of motion, almost of life. His head reclined upon his bosom, except that now and then he lifted it up, and opened his eyes with a languid glance, immediately after which he sank back into his former apparent insensibility. He seemed not to have three hours to live. He had kept his chamber for several weeks, but the summons of the magistrate had been delivered to him at his bedside, his orders respecting letters and written papers being so peremptory that no one dared to disobey them. Upon reading the paper, he was seized with a very dangerous fit; but as soon as he recovered, he insisted upon being conveyed, with all practicable expedition, to the place of appointment. Falkland, in the most helpless state, was still Falkland, firm in command, and capable to extort obedience from every one that approached him. What a sight was this to me! Till the moment that Falkland was presented to my view, my breast was steeled to pity. I thought that I had coolly entered into the reason of the case (passion, in a state of solemn and omnipotent vehemence, always appears to be coolness to him in whom it domineers), and

the last moments of a man like Falkland? It is im-
possible. There must have been some dreadful mistake
in the train of argument that persuaded me to be the
author of this hateful scene. There must have been
a better and more magnanimous remedy to the evils
under which I groaned.

It was too late. The mistake I had committed was
solemnly brought before a magistrate to answer to a
now gone, past all power of recall. Here was Falkland,
charge of murder. Here I stood, having already de-
clared myself the author of the charge, gravely and
sacredly pledged to support it. This was my situation;
and thus situated I was called upon immediately to
act. My whole frame shook. I would eagerly have
consented that that moment should have been the
last of my existence. I, however, believed that the
conduct now most indispensably incumbent on me
was to lay the emotions of my soul naked before my
hearers. I looked first at Mr Falkland, and then at
the magistrate and attendants, and then at Mr Falk-
land again. My voice was suffocated with agony. I
began: Would to God it were possible for me to
retire from this scene without uttering another word!
I would brave the consequences-I would submit to
any imputation of cowardice, falsehood, and profli-
gacy, rather than add to the weight of misfortune
with which Mr Falkland is overwhelmed. But the
situation, and the demands of Mr Falkland himself,
forbid me. He, in compassion for whose fallen state
I would willingly forget every interest of my own,
would compel me to accuse, that he might enter upon
his justification. I will confess every sentiment of my
heart. Mr Falkland well knows-I affirm it in his
presence-how unwillingly I have proceeded to this
extremity. I have reverenced him; he was worthy
of reverence. From the first moment I saw him, I con-
ceived the most ardent admiration. He condescended
to encourage me; I attached myself to him with the
fulness of affection. He was unhappy; I exerted
myself with youthful curiosity to discover the secret
of his wo. This was the beginning of misfortune.
What shall I say? He was indeed the murderer of
Tyrrel! He suffered the Hawkinses to be executed,