rely inconsistent with the
strength of mind which the author imputes to his hero. Finally, the
confession of crime, after so many years of secrecy, and when
conscience must have been blunted by time and habit, is without
adequate cause. The characters are very slightly sketched, and excite
neither interest nor sympathy. Emily Melville resembles Pamela too
closely, and Tyrrel is a poor reproduction of Squire Western.

Godwin tells us that, when thinking over "Caleb Williams," he said to
himself a thousand times: "I will write a tale, that shall constitute
an epoch in the mind of the reader, that no one, after he has read it,
shall ever be exactly the same man that he was before." The effort, and
straining after effect which this confession implies, are evident
throughout the work. The reader's curiosity is continually excited by
the promise of new interest and new developments, but he is as
continually disappointed. The main idea of the story is certainly a
striking one, but it is feebly carried out. The constitution of society
cannot be effectively attacked by so improbable and exceptional an
illustration of tyranny as the persecution of Caleb Williams.

[Footnote 189: It would be difficult to find a more bare-faced and
impudent literary theft than the case in which Sterne appropriated to
himself the remonstrance of Burton ("Anatomy of Melancholy"), against
that very plagiarism which he (Sterne) was then committing. Burton
said: "As apothecaries, we make new mixtures, every day pour out of one
vessel into another * * * We weave the same web, still twist the same
rope again and again." Sterne says, with an effrontery all his own:
"Shall we forever make new books, as apothecaries make new medicines,
by pouring only out of one vessel into another? Are we forever to be
twisting and untwisting the same rope--forever in the same track?
forever at the same pace?" For Sterne's plagiarism, see Dr. Ferriar's
"Essay and Illustrations," also Scott's "Life of Sterne."]

[Footnote 190: "Tristram Shandy," orig. ed., vol. viii, chap. 8.]

[Footnote 191: "Rasselas," chap. xliv. Contrast with Porter on "The
Human Intellect," pp. 371-2.]

[Footnote 192: See Scott's "Memoir of Johnson."]

[Footnote 193: "The Reverie," "The History of Arbaces," "The Pilgrim,"
"The History of John Juniper."]

[Footnote 194: The facts of Brooke's life are taken from the
introduction to the "Fool of Quality," by Rev. Charles Kingsley, New
York, 1860.