e and set off each other has
never been surpassed by any work of fiction, with the exception
of the immortal satire of Cervantes."

Sir Leslie Stephen said of it the other day:

"It has lived--though in comparative obscurity--for over a
century, and high authorities tell us that vitality prolonged
for that period raises a presumption that a book deserves the
title of classic."--_National Review, February_, 1902.

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:

"I formed a conception of a book of fictitious adventure that
should in some way be distinguished by a very powerful interest.
Pursuing this idea, I invented first the third volume of my
tale, then the second, and, last of all, the first. I bent
myself to the conception of a series of adventures of flight and
pursuit; the fugitive in perpetual apprehension of being
overwhelmed with the worst calamities, and the pursuer, by his
ingenuity and resources, keeping his victim in a state of the
most fearful alarm. This was the project of my third volume."

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