The reputation of WILLIAM GODWIN as a social philosopher, and the merits
of his famous novel, "Caleb Williams," have been for more than a century the
subject of extreme divergencies of judgment among critics. "The first
systematic anarchist," as he is called by Professor Saintsbury, aroused
bitter contention with his writings during his own lifetime, and his
opponents have remained so prejudiced that even the staid bibliographer
Allibone, in his "Dictionary of English Literature," a place where one would
think the most flagitious author safe from animosity, speaks of Godwin's
private life in terms that are little less than scurrilous. Over against
this persistent acrimony may be put the fine eulogy of Mr. C. Kegan Paul,
his biographer, to represent the favourable judgment of our own time, whilst
I will venture to quote one remarkable passage that voices the opinions of
many among Godwin's most eminent contemporaries.
In "The Letters of Charles Lamb," Sir T.N. Talfourd says:
WILLIAM GODWIN (1756-1836) was son and grandson of Dissenting ministers,
and was destined for the same profession. In theology he began as a
Calvinist, and for a while was tinctured with the austere doctrines of the
Sandemanians. But his religious views soon took an unorthodox turn, and in
1782, falling out with his congregation at Stowmarket, he came up to London
to earn his bread henceforward as a man of letters. In 1793 Godwin became
one of the most famous men in England by the publication of his "Political
Justice," a work that his biographer would place side by side with the
"Speech for Unlicensed Printing," the "Essay on Education," and "Emile," as
one of "the unseen levers which have moved the changes of the times."
Although the book came out at what we should call a "prohibitive price," it
had an enormous circulation, and brought its author in something like 1,000
guineas. In his first novel, "Caleb Williams," which was published the next
year, he illustrated in scenes from real life many of the principles
enunciated in his philosophical work. "Caleb Williams" went through a number
of editions, and was dramatized by Colman the younger under the title of
"The Iron Chest." It has now been out of print for many years. Godwin wrote
several other novels, but one alone is readable now, "St. Leon," which is
philosophical in idea and purpose, and contains some passages of singular
eloquence and beauty.
Godwin married the authoress of the "Rights of Woman," Mary
Wollstonecraft, in 1797, losing her the same year. Their daughter was the
gifted wife of the poet Shelley. He was a social man, particularly fond of
whist, and was on terms of intimacy and affection with many celebrated men
and women. Tom Paine, Josiah Wedgwood, and Curran were among his closest
male friends, while the story of his friendships with Mrs. Inchbald, Amelia
Opie, with the lady immortalized by Shelley as Maria Gisborne, and with
those literary sisters, Sophia and Harriet Lee, authors of the "Canterbury
Tales," has a certain sentimental interest. Afterwards he became known to
Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Lamb. He married Mrs. Clairmont in 1801. His
later years were clouded by great embarrassments, and not till 1833 was he
put out of reach of the worst privations by the gift of a small sinecure,
that of yeoman usher of the Exchequer. He died in 1836.
Among the contradictory judgments passed on "Caleb Williams" by Godwin's
contemporaries those of Hazlitt, Sir James Mackintosh, and Sir T. N.
Talfourd were perhaps the most eulogistic, whilst De Quincey and Allan
Cunningham criticized the book with considerable severity. Hazlitt's opinion
is quoted from the "Spirit of the Age":
Sir Leslie Stephen said of it the other day:
To understand how the work came to be written, and its aim, it is
advisable to read carefully all three of Godwin's prefaces, more
particularly the last and the most candid, written in 1832. This will, I
think, dispose of the objection that the story was expressly constructed to
illustrate a moral, a moral that, as Sir Leslie Stephen says, "eludes him."
He says:
He goes on to describe in more detail the "dramatic and impressive"
situations and the "fearful events" that were to be evolved, making it
pretty clear that the purpose somewhat vaguely and cautiously outlined in
the earliest preface was rather of the nature of an afterthought. Falkland
is not intended to be a personification of the evils caused by the social
system, nor is he put forward as the inevitable product of that system. The
reader's attention is chiefly absorbed by the extraordinary contest between
Caleb Williams and Falkland, and in the tragic situations that it involves.
Compared with these the denunciation of the social system is a matter of
secondary interest; but it was natural that the author of the "Political
Justice," with his mind preoccupied by the defects of the English social
system, should make those defects the, evil agencies of his plot. As the
essential conditions of the series of events, as the machinery by which
everything is brought about, these defects are of the utmost importance to
the story. It is the accused system that awards to Tyrrel and Falkland their
immense preponderance in society, and enables them to use the power of the
law for the most nefarious ends. Tyrrel does his cousin to death and ruins
his tenant, a man of integrity, by means of the law. This is the occasion of
Falkland's original crime. His more heinous offence, the abandonment of the
innocent Hawkinses to the gallows, is the consequence of what Godwin
expressly denounces, punishment for murder. "I conceived it to be in the
highest degree absurd and iniquitous, to cut off a man qualified for the
most essential and extensive utility, merely out of retrospect to an act
which, whatever were its merits, could not be retrieved." Then a new element
is imported into the train of causation, Caleb's insatiable curiosity, and
the strife begins between these well-matched antagonists, the man of wealth
and station utilizing all the advantages granted him by the state of society
to crush his enemy. Godwin, then, was justified in declaring that his book
comprehended "a general view of the modes of domestic and unrecorded
despotism by which man becomes the destroyer of man." Such were the words of
the original preface, which was suppressed for a short time owing to the
fears caused by the trial of Horne Tooke, Thomas Holcroft and other
revolutionists, with whom Godwin was in profound sympathy. Had he intended
"Caleb Williams," however, from its first inception, to be an imaginative
version of the "Political Justice," he would have had to invent a different
plan and different characters. The arguments of a sociological novel lack
cogency unless the characters are fairly representative of average mankind.
Godwin's principal actors are both, to say the least, exceptional. They are
lofty idealizations of certain virtues and powers of mind. Falkland is like
Jean Valjean, a superhuman creature; and, indeed, "Caleb Williams" may well
be compared on one side with "Les Misérables," for Victor Hugo's avowed
purpose, likewise, was the denunciation of social tyranny. But the
characteristics that would have weakened the implied theorem, had such been
the main object, are the very things that make the novel more powerful as
drama of a grandiose, spiritual kind. The high and concentrated imagination
that created such a being as Falkland, and the intensity of passion with
which Caleb's fatal energy of mind is sustained through that long,
despairing struggle, are of greater artistic value than the mechanical
symmetry by which morals are illustrated.
E. A. B.
