A fiery soul that working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,

And o'er-inform'd its tenement of clay.'

That some of this author's latter works are (in our judgment) comparatively feeble, is, therefore, no matter of surprise to us, and still less is it matter of reproach or triumph. We look upon it as a consequence incident to that constitution of mind and operation of the faculties. To quarrel with the author on this account, is to reject all that class of excellence of which he is the representative, and perhaps stands at the head. A writer who gives us himself, cannot do this twenty times following. He gives us the best and most prominent part of himself first; and afterwards but the lees and dregs remain.' If a writer takes patterns and fac-similes of external objects, he may give us twenty different works, each better than the other, though this is not likely to happen. Such a one makes use of the universe as his common-place-book; and there is no end of the quantity or variety. The other sort of genius is his own microcosm, deriving almost all from within; and as this is different from every thing else, and is to be had at no other source, so it soon degenerates into a repetition of itself, and is confined within circumscribed limits. We do not rank ourselves in the number of 'those base plebeians,' as Don Quixote expresses it, who cry, 'Long life to the conqueror! And, so far, the author is better off than the warrior, that after a thousand victories once foiled,' he does not remain in the hands of his enemies,

And all the rest forgot, for which he toil'd.'

He is not judged of by his last performance, but his best,that which is seen farthest off, and stands out with time and distance; and in this respect, Mr Godwin may point to more than one monument of his powers of no mean height and durability. As we do not look upon books as fashions, and think that a great man's memory may last more than half a year,' we still look at our author's talents with the same respect as ever-on his industry and perseverance under some discouragements with more; and we shall try to explain as briefly and as impartially as we can, in what the peculiarity of his genius consists, and on what his claim to distinction is founded.

Mr Godwin, we suspect, regards his Political Justice as his great work-his passport to immortality; or perhaps he balances between this and Caleb Williams. Now, it is something for a man to have two works of so opposite a kind about which he and his admirers can be at a loss to say, in which he has done best.

We never heard his title to originality in either of these performances called in question: yet they are as distinct as to style and subject-matter, as if two different persons wrote them. No one in reading the philosophical treatise would suspect the embryo romance: those who personally know Mr Godwin would as little anticipate either. The man differs from the author, at least as much as the author in this case apparently did from himself. It is as if a magician had produced some mighty feat of his art without warning. He is not deeply learned; nor is he much beholden to a knowledge of the world. He has no passion but a love of fame; or we may add to this another, the love of truth; for he has never betrayed his cause, or swerved from his principles, to gratify a little temporary vanity. His senses are not acute but it cannot be denied that he is a man of great capacity, and of uncommon genius. How is this seeming contradiction to be reconciled? Mr Godwin is by way of distinction and emphasis an author; he is so not only by habit, but by nature, and by the whole turn of his mind. To make a book is with him the prime end and use of creation. His is the scholastic character handed down in its integrity to the present day. If he had cultivated a more extensive intercourse with the world, with nature, or even with books, he would not have been what he ishe could not have done what he has done. Mr Godwin in society is nothing; but shut him up by himself, set him down to write a book, it is then that the electric spark begins to unfold itself, to expand, to kindle, to illumine, to melt, or shatter all in its way. With little knowledge of the subject, with little interest in it at first, he turns it slowly in his mind,—one suggestion gives rise to another, he calls home, arranges, scrutinizes his thoughts; he bends his whole strength to his task; he seizes on some one view more striking than the rest, he holds it with a convulsive grasp,-he will not let it go; and this is the clew that conducts him triumphantly through the labyrinth of doubt and obscurity. Some leading truth, some master-passion, is the secret of his daring and his success, which he winds and turns at his pleasure, like Perseus his winged steed. An idea having once taken root in his mind, grows there like a germ: at first no 'bigger than a mustard-seed,-then a great tree overshadowing the whole earth.' The progress of his reflections resembles the circles that spread from a centre when a stone is thrown into the water. Everything is enlarged, heightened, refined. The blow is repeated, and each impression is made more intense than the last. Whatever strengthens the favourite conception is summoned to its aid: whatever weakens or interrupts it is scornfully discarded. All is the effect, not of feeling, not of fancy,

not of intuition, but of one sole purpose, and of a determined will operating on a clear and consecutive understanding. His Caleb Williams is the illustration of a single passion; his Political Justice is the insisting on a single proposition or view of a subject. In both, there is the same pertinacity and unity of design, the same agglomeration of objects round a centre, the same aggrandizement of some one thing at the expense of every other, the same sagacity in discovering what makes for its purpose, and blindness to every thing but that. His genius is not dramatic; but it has something of an heroic cast: he gains new trophies in intellect, as the conqueror overruns new provinces and kingdoms, by patience and boldness; and he is great because he wills to be

We have said that Mr Godwin has shown great versatility of talent in his different works. The works themselves have considerable monotony; and this must be the case, since they are all bottomed on nearly the same principle of an uniform keeping and strict totality of impression. We do not hold with the doctrines or philosophy of the Enquiry concerning Political Justice; but we should be dishonest to deny that it is an ingenious and splendid and we may also add, useful piece of sophistical declamation. If Mr Godwin is not right, he has shown what is wrong in the view of morality he advocates, by carrying it to the utmost extent with unflinching spirit and ability.

Mr Godwin was the first whole-length broacher of the doctrine of Utility. He took the whole duty of man-all other passions, affections, rules, weaknesses, oaths, gratitude, promises, friendship, natural piety, patriotism,-infused them in the glowing cauldron of universal benevolence, and ground them into powder under the unsparing weight of the convictions of the individual understanding. The entire and complicated mass and texture of human society and feeling was to pass through the furnace of this new philosophy, and to come out renovated and changed without a trace of its former Gothic ornaments, fantastic disproportions, embossing, or relief. It was as if an angel had descended from another sphere to promulgate a new code of morality; and who, clad in a panoply of light and truth, unconscious alike of the artificial strength and inherent weakness of man's nature, supposing him to have nothing to do with the flesh, the world, or the Devil,-should lay down a set of laws and principles of action for him, as if he were a pure spirit. But such a mere abstracted intelligence would not require any rules or forms to guide his conduct or prompt his volitions. And this is the effect of Mr Godwin's book-to absolve a rational and voluntary

agent from all ties, but a conformity to the independent dictates and strict obligations of the understanding :

Within his bosom reigns another lord,
Reason, sole judge and umpire of itself.'

We own that if man were this pure, abstracted essence,—if he had not senses, passions, prejudices,-if custom, will, imagination, example, opinion, were nothing, and reason were all in all ;—if the author, in a word, could establish as the foundation, what he assumes as the result of his system, namely, the omnipotence of mind over matter, and the triumph of truth over every warped and partial bias of the heart-then we see no objection to his scheme taking place, and no possibility of any other having ever been substituted for it. But this would imply that the mind's eye can see an object equally well whether it is near or a thousand miles off,-that we can take an interest in the people in the moon, or in ages yet unborn, as if they were our own flesh and blood,-that we can sympathize with a perfect stranger, as with our dearest friend, at a moment's notice,-that habit is not an ingredient in the growth of affection,-that no check need be provided against the strong bias of self-love, that we can achieve any art or accomplishment by a volition, master all knowledge with a thought; and that in this well-disciplined intuition and faultless transparency of soul, we can take cognizance (without presumption and without mistake) of all causes and consequences,-establish an equal and impartial interest in the chain of created beings,-discard all petty feelings and minor claims,-throw down the obstructions and stumbling-blocks in the way of these grand cosmopolite views of disinterested philanthropy, and hold the balance even between ourselves and the universe. It were a consummation devoutly to be wished;' and Mr Godwin is not to be taxed with blame for having boldly and ardently aspired to it. We meet him on the ground, not of the desirable, but the practicable. It were better that a mau were an angel or a god than what he is; but he can neither be one nor the other. Enclosed in the shell of self, he sees a little way beyond himself, and feels what concerns others still more slowly. To require him to attain the highest point of perfection, is to fling him back to grovel in the mire of sensuality and selfishness. He must get on by the use and management of the faculties which God has given him, and not by striking more than one half of these with the dead palsy. To refuse to avail ourselves of mixed motives and imperfect obligations, in a creature like man, whose very name is frailty,' and who is a compound of contradictions, is to lose the substance in

catching at the shadow. It is as if a man would be enabled to fly by cutting off his legs. If we are not allowed to love our neighbour better than a stranger, that is, if habit and sympathy are to make no part of our affections, the consequence will be, not that we shall love a stranger more, but that we shall love our neighbour less, and care about nobody but ourselves. These partial and personal attachments are the scale by which we ascend' to sentiments of general philanthropy. Are we to act upon pure speculation, without knowing the circumstances of the case, or even the parties?-for it would come to that. If we act from a knowledge of these, and bend all our thoughts and efforts to alleviate some immediate distress, are we to take no more interest in it than in a case of merely possible and contingent suffering? This is to put the known upon a level with the unknown, the real with the imaginary. It is to say that habit, sense, sympathy, are non-entities. It is a contradiction in terms. But if man were such a being as Mr Godwin supposes, that is, a perfect intelligence, there I would be no contradiction in it; for then he would have the same knowledge of whatever was possible, as of his gross and actual experience, and would feel the same interest in it, and act with the same energy and certainty upon a sheer hypothesis, as now upon a matter-of-fact. We can look at the clouds, but we cannot stand upon them. Mr Godwin takes one element of the human mind, the understanding, and makes it the whole; and hence he falls into solecisms and extravagancies, the more striking and fatal in proportion to his own acuteness of reasoning, and honesty of intention. He has, however, the merit of having been the first to show up the abstract, or Utilitarian, system of morality in its fullest extent, whatever may have been pretended to the contrary; and those who wish to study the question, and not to take it for granted, cannot do better than refer to the first edition of the Enquiry concerning Political Justice; for afterwards Mr Godwin, out of complaisance to the public, qualified, and in some degree neutralized, his own doctrines.

Our author, not contented with his ethical honours, (for no work of the kind could produce a stronger sensation, or gain more converts than this did at the time,) determined to enter upon a new career, and fling him into the arena once more; thus challenging public opinion with singular magnanimity and confidence in himself. He did not stand shivering on the brink' of his just-acquired reputation, and fear to tempt the perilous stream of popular favour again. The success of Caleb Williams justified the experiment. There was the same hardihood and