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the legitimacy of the author's general conclufions, on account of the defects attending the latter part of his procefs.

ART. XV. Fleetwood: or the New Man of Feeling. By William Godwin. In three volumes, 12mo. Richard Philips, London,

1805.

WHOEVER has read Caleb Williams, and there are probably

few, even amongst thofe addicted to graver ftudies, who have not perufed that celebrated work, muft neceffarily be eager to see another romance from the hand of the fame author. Of this anxiety we acknowledge we partook to a confiderable degree; not, indeed, that we had any great pleafure in recollecting the conduct and nature of the ftory; for murders, and chains, and dungeons, and indictments, trial and execution, have no particular charms for us, either in fiction or in reality. Neither is it on account of the moral propofed by the author, which, in direct oppofition to that of the worthy chaplain of Newgate, feems to be, not that a man guilty of theft or murder is in fome danger of being hanged; but that, by a ftrange concurrence of circumitances, he may be regularly conducted to the gallows for theft or murder which he has never committed. There is nothing inftructive or confolatory in this propofition, when taken by itself; and if intended as a reproach upon the laws of this country, it is equally applicable to all human judicatures, whofe judges can only decide according to evidence, fince the Supreme Being has referved to himself the prerogative of fearching the heart and of trying the reins. But, although the story of Caleb Williams be unpleafing, and the moral fufficiently mischievous, we acknowledge we have met with few novels which excited a more powerful intereft. Several fcenes are painted with the favage force of Salvator Rofa; and, while the author paufes to reafon upon the feelings and motives of the actors, our fenfe of the fallacy of his arguments, of the improbability of his facts, and of the frequent inconfiftency of his characters, is loft in the folemnity and fufpenfe with which we expect the evolution of the tale of mystery. After Caleb Williams, it would be injuftice to Mr Godwin to mention St Leon, where the marvellous is employed too frequently to excite wonder, and the terrible is introduced till we have become familiar with terror. The defcription of Bethlem Gabor, however, recalled to our mind the author of Caleb Williams; nor, upon the whole, was the romance fuch as could have been written by quite an ordinary pen. Thefe preliminary remarks are not entirely mifplaced, as will appear from the following quotation from the preface to Fleetwood.

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One caution I have particularly fought to exercife: "not to repeat myself." Caleb Williams was a ftory of very furprifing and uncommon events, but which were fuppofed to be entirely within the laws and established courfe of nature, as fhe operates in the planet we inhabit. The ftory of St Leon is of the miraculous clafs; and its defign, to "mix human feelings and paffions with incredible fituations, and thus render them impreffive and interefting."

Some of thofe faftidious readers-they may be claffed among the best friends an author has, if their admonitions are judiciously confidered-who are willing to discover thofe faults which do not offer themfelves to every eye, have remarked, that both thefe tales are in a vicious ftyle of writing; that Horace has long ago decided, that the ftory we cannot believe, we are, by all the laws of criticiim, called upon to hate; and that even the adventures of the honeft fecretary, who was firft heard of ten years ago, are fo much out of the ufual road, that not one reader in a million can ever fear they will happen to himfelf.' Vol. 1. Pref.

Moved by thefe confiderations, Mr Godwin has chofen a tale of domeftic life, confifting of fuch incidents as ufually occur in the prefent ftate of fociety, diverfified only by ingenuity of felection, and novelty of detail. How far he has been fuccefsful, will best appear from a fketch of the story.

Fleetwood, the only fon of a gentleman who has retired from mercantile concerns to the enjoyment of a liberal fortune, is born and educated among the mountains of Wales. He has no companions faving his father, an infirm though very refpectable old gentleman, and his tutor, who was not a clergyman; notwithtanding which, he ftudied Plato without underftanding him, and indemnified himself by writing fonnets which could be understood by nobody. Fleetwood being of course a paffionate admirer of the beauties of nature, preferred fcrambling over the heights of Cader Idris, adoring the rifing, and admiring the fetting fun, to perufing the pages of Plato, and the poetry of his tutor. In one of thefe rambles, fomewhat to the reader's relief, whofe patience is rather tired by an unfruitful defcription of precipices, cafcades, and the immeafureable ocean in the back ground, he at length meets with an adventure. A lamb, a favourite lamb, falls into a lake; the fhepherd plunges in after the lamb: an aged peafant, his father, is about to plunge in after the fhepherd, when Fleetwood, as might have been expected, anticipates his affectionate intentions. Af ter remaining a reasonable time in the water, the fhepherd holding the lamb, and Fleetwood fupporting the fhepherd, they are all three fifhed up by an interefting young damfel who approaches in a boat, and proves to be (according to good old ufage) the miftrefs of William the fhepherd, and the proprietor of the half-drowned favourite. This adventure leads to nothing, except

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except that, in the conclufion of the work, the interefting young woman unexpectedly pops back upon us in the very useful, though not very romantic character of an old fick-nurse; deferving, no lefs in her advanced age, the praises of the Inftitution for Relief of the Deftitute Sick, than in her youth fhe had merited a premium from the Humane Society. The worthy tutor, in like manner, vanishes entirely from our view, retiring to an obfcure lodging in a narrow street, to finish his book of fonnets, and his commentary on Plato. His pupil is now introduced to the knowledge of mankind at the Univerfity. Here he difcovers no averfion to diftinguifh himself among the diffipated fons of fortune, and foon becomes fomething very different from the climber of mountains and diver into lakes. But he acquits himfelf of all fare in a quizzing fcene, played off upon a frefb-man called Withers, who had written a tragedy on a very interefting fubject-the cleaning of the Augean ftable. This piece he is prevailed upon to recite to certain arch wags, who receive it with rapture, fill the author drunk, and bear him home, crowned with parley, and dropping with wine, in claffical triumph. They have afterwards the addrefs to pafs a wooden figure upon him for the mafter of his college, who, after a rebuke pronounced in character by one of the quizzers, who chanced to be a ventriloquift, proceeds, by fome unknown mechanifm, to inflict upon Withers the academical difcipline under which Milton is faid to have fmarted of yore; but, far from imitating the fubmiflion of bis fublime prototype, the modern bard kicked and cuffed in ftout oppofition, till he difcovered the impaffible character of his antagonist. The joke ends by Withers going mad, and the ingenious authors of his diftrefs being rufticated. We prefume the ventriloquift found a refuge with Fitz-James, and the mechanist with Merlin or Maillardet. What connexion this facetious tale has with Fleetwood, or his history, does not appear; but we reverence the established privilege of an Oxonian to profe about all that happened when he was at Chrift-Church.

We now accompany Fleetwood on his travels. Paris was his first stage, where he had the strange and uncommon misfortune to be jilted by two miftreifes. The firft was a certain Marchionefs, whofe mind refembled an eel,' and who delighted in the bold, the intrepid, and the mafculine. Her lover was greeted with an impudent amazonian ftare, a fmack of the whip, a flap on the back, and a loud and unexpected accent that made the hearer ftart again. Upon difcovering the infidelity of this gentle Jady, Fleetwood, being in Paris, followed the example of the Parifians, but not without experiencing certain twinges of pain, and revolutions of aftonifhment, to which we believe thefe good

people,

people, on fuch occafions, are usually ftrangers. In a word, he took another mistress. The Countefs de B. had every gentle amiability under heaven, and only one fault, which might be expreffed in one word if we chose it, but we prefer the more prolix explanation of the author.

Yet the paffion of the Countess was rather an abstract propensity, than the preference of an individual. A given quantity of perfonal merit and accomplished manners was fure to charm her. A fresh and agreeable complexion, a fparkling eye, a well-turned leg, a grace in dancing or in performing the manoeuvres of gallantry, were claims that the countefs de B. was never known to refift.' vol. I. p. 152.

Upon difcovery of this frailty, our hero's patience forfook him; and he raved, fumed, and agonized, till ours likewife was on the verge of departure. In this paroxyfm, his taste for the mountain and the defert returned upon him like a frenzy; and as there were none nearer than the Alps, to the Alps he flies incontinently on the wings of defpair. He repairs to the manfion of a venerable old Swifs gentleman, a friend of his father, delightfully fituated in the valley of Urfereen, in a wood of tall and venerable trees; a very extraordinary and fortunate circumstance for the poffeffor, as we will venture to say that it is the only wood that ever grew in that celebrated valley, which is the highest inhabited ground in the Alps. The hoft of Fleetwood carries him to a pleasure party on the lake of Uri, and chufes that time and place to acquaint him, that while he was living jollily at Paris, his father had taken the opportunity of dying quietly in Merionethshire. The effect of this intelligence upon Fleetwood, is inexpreffibly ftriking. He ate no breakfast the next morning; and it was not till the arrival of dinner, that hunger at length fubdued the obstinacy of his grief.' Ruffigny, his hoft, now joins him; and after a reafonable allowance of fympathy and confolation, entertains him with the hiftory of his connexion with his father.

Ruffigny, left in infancy to the guardianship of a wicked uncle who thirfted after his inheritance, had been trepanned to Lyons, and bound apprentice to a filk-weaver, or rather employed in the more laborious part of his drudgery. His feelings, on being gradually fubjected to this monotonous and degrading labour, are very well defcribed, as alfo the enthufiaftic refolution which he forms, of throwing himfelf at the feet of the

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By the way, we greatly queftion the locality here pitched on. We know of no fuch lake as the lake of Uri; but we fuppofe the lake of Lucerne, a lake of the four cantons, was the scene of this affecting difcovery. But Mr Godwin is not much at home in Switzerland.

of this, (which, nevertheless, we do not propofe as a good method of analyfis, but only as one infinitely better than our author's), he decompofes all the binary or ternary compounds of which the plant may have confifted; and thus gives a molt indeterminate and fallacious folution of the problem. He finds carbonic acid formed, and deduces from thence the quantity of carbon contained in the plant: he finds water formed, and thence deduces the quantity of hydrogen contained in the plant. But does it follow that thofe elements, carbon and hydrogen, may not have exifted in a ftate of union in the plant? Would not the fame refults have followed, had the plant contained oil, without one particle of either loofe carbon or loofe hydrogen? Would not the combustion of this oil have prefented water and carbonie acid exactly in the fame manner? Would not water and carbonic acid have been formed by burning the plant, if it had been compofed of oil and carbon-or oil and hydrogen-or oil, carbon, and hydrogen-or carbon and hydrogen-or carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, in any imaginable proportions? It is obvious, then, that the analyfis is the moft fallacious that can be conceived in this point of view. But, in another refpect, it is at Feaft equally fo. Our author obtains water from the process of combuftion; and concludes from thence, that this water owes its oxygen entirely to the atmospherical air, the plant having only, according to him, furnished the hydrogen. But if the plant had contained oxygen as well as hydrogen feparately, might not water have been formed without a particle of atmospherical air? And if water had exifted already formed in the plant, would not the very fame refult have been obtained? Thirdly, he concludes, from finding carbonic acid gas, that carbon exifted in the plant, and that it was oxygenated by the atmofpherical air. But, fuppofe carbonic acid had exifted in the plant already formed, would hot the heat have drawn it off, and prefented the very result from whence our author draws an inference, that carbon unoxygenated exifted in the plant? Or, if carbon and carbonic acid had Both been prefent in any imaginable proportion, would not carbonic acid have been obtained in the receiver of cauftic alkali? Therefore, in three material refpects, our author's inference is abfolutely fallacious: it makes no allowance for the poffible exiftence of water, carbonic acid, and oil in the plants; and lays it down as certain, that certain fubftances, hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen, formed the fole conftituent parts of the vegetable, when it is very poffible that not a particle of either, per fe, may have existed in it. Nor fhould we forget, that the nature of the foil, in which the plants are proved by our author's own experiments ∞ have grown, renders it extremely probable that our fuppofition

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