re amid which the alchemist's dream
seems possible of realisation are entirely lacking in Godwin's
story. He displays everything in a high light. The transference
of the gifts takes place not in the darkness of a subterranean
vault, but in the calm light of a summer evening. No unearthly
groans, no phosphorescent lights enhance the horror and mystery
of the scene. Godwin is coolly indifferent to historical
accuracy, and fails to transport us back far beyond the end of
the eighteenth century. Rousseau's theories were apparently
disseminated widely in 1525. _St. Leon_ is remembered now rather
for its position in the history of the novel than for any
intrinsic charm. Godwin was the first to embody in a romance the
ideas of the Rosicrucians which inspired Bulwer Lytton's _Zicci_,
_Zanoni_ and _A Strange Story_.

_St. Leon_ was travestied, the year after it appeared, in a work
called _St. Godwin: A Tale of the 16th, 17th and 18th Century_,
by "Count Reginald de St. Leon," which gives a scathing survey of
the plot, with all its improbabilities exposed. The bombastic
style of _St. Leon_ is imitated and only slightly exaggerated,
and the author finally satirises Godwin bitterly:

"Thinking from my political writings that I was a good
hand at fiction, I turned my thoughts to novel-writing.
These I wrote in the same pompous, inflated style as I
had used in my other publications, hoping that my fine
high-sounding periods would assist to make the
unsuspecting reader swallow all the insidious
reasoning, absurdity and nonsense I could invent."[89]

The parodist takes Godwin almost as seriously as he took himself,
and his attack is needlessly savage. Godwin's political opinions
may account for the brutality of his assailant who doubtless
belonged to the other camp. When Godwin attempts the supernatural
in his other novels, he always fails to create an atmosphere of
mystery. The apparition in _Cloudesley_ appears, fades, and
reappears in a manner so undignified as to remind us of the
Cheshire Cat in _Alice in Wonderland_:

"I suddenly saw my brother's face looking out from
among the trees as I passed. I saw the features as
distinctly as if the meridian sun had beamed upon
them... It was by degrees that the features showed
themselves thus out of what had been a formless shadow.
I gazed upon it intently. Presently it faded away by as
insensible degrees as those