GODWIN'S FLEETWOOD.

IT is needless to say any thing at this time of day of the peculiar merits of GODWIN'S Fleetwood. In interest, in truth, and nature, it is perhaps not equal to Caleb Williams ; but as a whole, it is far more complete and effective than St. Leon, beautiful and affecting as the latter may be in parts. This edition is rendered very interesting by a preface from its now aged author, in which he gives a minute account of the manner in which he composed his chef d' WM) re, his first and most enduring fiction. The whole is a lesson to genius ; and the world has much to learn from it, as to the views it entertains of the literary character. Posterity will be much better prepared to take just views of literary history, than preceding ages have had the opportunity of doing : the idea of making the author himself let us into the secret of his great works, was very ingenious. How much would we not give,for instance' for a history of Tom Jones, and its fabrication, by FIELDING himself, after the manner of this disclosure of Mr. GODWIN !

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. I was next called upon to conceive a dramatic and impressive situation ade quate to account for the impulse that the pursuer should feel, incessantly to* alarm and harass his victim, with an inextinguishable resolution never to allow him the least interval of peace and security. This I apprehended could best be effected by a secret murder, to the investigation of which the innocent victim should be impelled by an unconquerable spirit of curiosity. The murderer would thus have a sufficient motive to persecute the unhappy discoverer, that he might deprive him of peace, character, and credit, and have him for ever in his power. This constituted the outline of my second volume. The subject of the first volume was still to be invented. To account for the fearful events of the third, it was necessary that the pursuer should be invested

with every advantage of fortune, with a resolution that nothing could defeat or baffle, and with extraordinary resources of intellect. Nor could my purpose of giving an overpowering interest to my tale be answered, without his appearing to have been originally: endowed with a mighty store of amiable dispositions and virtues, so that his being driven to the first act of murder should be judged worthy of the deepest regret, and should be seen in some measure to have arisen out of his virtues themselves. It was necessary to make him, so to speak, the tenant of an atmosphere of romance, so that every reader should feel prompted almost to worship him for his high qualities. Here were ample materials for a first volume.

I felt that I had agreat advantage in thus carrying back my invention from the ultimate conclusion to the first commencement of the train of adventures upon which I purposed to employ my pen. An entire unity of plot would be the infallible result ; and the unity of spirit and interest in a tale truly considered, gives it a powerful hold on the reader, which can scarcely be generated with equal success in any other way.

I devoted about two or three weeks to the imagining and putting down hints for my story, before I engaged seriously and methodically in its composition. In these hints I began with my third volume, then proceeded to my second, and last of all grappled with the first. I filled two or three sheets of demy writingpaper, folded in octavo with these memorandums. They were put down with great brevity, yet explicitly enough to secure a perfect recollection of their meaning, within the time necessary for drawing out the story at full, in short paragraphs of two, three, four, five, or six lines each.

I then sat down to write my story from the beginning. I wrote for the most part but a short portion in any single day. I wrote only when the afflatus was upon me. I held it for a maxim, that any portion that was written when I was not fully in the vein, told for considerably worse than nothing. Idleness was a thousand times better in this case, than industry against the grain. Idleness was only time lost ; and the next day, it may be, was as promising as ever. It was merely a day perished from the calendar. But a passage written feebly, flatly,

• and in a wrong spirit, constituted an obstacle that it was next to impossible to correct and set right again. I wrote, therefore, by starts ; sometimes for a week or ten days not a line. Yet all came to the same thing in the sequel. On an average, a volume of Caleb Williams cost me four months, neither less nor more.

It must be admitted, however, that, during the whole period, bating a few intervals, my mind was in a high state of excitement. I said to myself 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." I put these things down just as they happened, and with the most entire frankness. I know that it will sound like the most pitiable degree of self-conceit. But such, perhaps, ought to be the state of mind of an author when he does his best. At any rate, I have said nothing of my vain-glorious impulse for nearly forty years.

When I had written about seven-tenths of the first volume I was prevailed upon, by the extreme importunity of an old and intimate friend, to allow him the perusal of my manuscript. On the second day, he returned it with a note to this purpose : "I return you your manuscript, because I promised to do BO. If I had obeyed the impulse of my own mind, I should have thrust it in the fire. If you persist, the book will infallibly prove the grave of your literary fame."

I doubtless felt no implicit deference for the judgment of my friendly critic. Yet it cost me at least two days of deep anxiety, before I recovered the shock. Let the reader picture to himself my situation. I felt no implicit deference for the judgment of my friendly critic. But it was all I had for it. This was my first experiment of an unbiassed decision. It stood in the place of all the world to me. I could not, and I did not feel disposed to, appeal any further. If I had, how could I tell that the second and third judgment would be more favourable than the first? Then what would have been the result ? No: I had nothing for it but to wrap myself in my own integrity. By dint of resolution I became invulnerable. I resolved to go on to the end, trusting as I could to my own anticipations of the whole, and bidding the world wait its time, before it should be admitted to the consult.

I began my narrative, as is the more usual way, in the third person. But I speedily became dissatisfied. I then assumed the first person, making the hero

of my tale his own historian; and in this mode I have persisted in all my subsequent attempts at works of fiction. It was infinitely the best adapted, at least, to my vein of delineation, where the thing in which my imagination revelled the most freely, was the analysis of the private and internal operations of the mind, employing my metaphysical dissecting knife in tracing and laying bare the involutions of motive and recording the gradually accumulating impulses, which led thepersonagesI had to describe primarily to adopt the particular way

i of proceeding n which they afterwards embarked.

When I had determined on the main purpose of my story, it was ever my method to get about me any productions of former authors that seemed to bear on my subject. I never entertained the fear, that in this way of proceeding I should be in danger of servilely copying my predecessors. I imagined that I had a vein of thinking that was properly my own, which would always preserve me from plagiarism. I read other authors, that I might see what they had done, or more properly, that I might forcibly hold my mind and occupy my thoughts in a particular train, I and my predecessors travelling in some sense to the same goal, at the same time that I struck out a path of my own, without ultimately heeding the direction they pursued, and disdaining to inquire whether by any chance it for a few steps coincided or did not coincide with mine. Thus, in the instance of Caleb Williams, I read over a little old book, entitled The Adventures of Mademoiselle de St. Phale, a French Protestant in the times of the fiercest persecution of the Huguenots, who fled through France in the utmost terror, in the midst of eternal alarms and hair-breadth escapes, having her quarters perpetually beaten up, and by scarcely any chance findinga moment's interval of security. I turned over the pages of a tremendous compilation, entitled God's Revenge against Murder, where the beam of the eye of Omniscience was represented as perpetually pursuing the guilty, and laying open his most hidden retreats to the light of day. I was extremely conversant with the Nemgate Calendar, and the Lives of the Pirates. In the mean time, no

works of fiction came amiss to rne, provided they were written with energy. The authors were still employed upon the same mine as myself, however difr eat was the vein they pursued : we were all of us engaged in exploring the entrails of mind and motive, and in tracing the various rencontres and clashes that may occur between man and mania the diversified scene of human life.

I rather amused myself with tracing a certain similitude between the story of

Caleb Williams and the tale of Bluebeard, than derived any hints from that admirable specimen of the terrific. Falkland was my Bluebeard, who had perpetrated atrocious crimes, which if discovered, he might expect to have all the

World roused to revenge against him. Caleb Williams was the wife, who, in spite of warning, persisted in his attempts to discover the forbidden secret ; and, when he had succeeded, struggled as fruitlessly to escape the consequences, as the

wife of Bluebeard in washing the key of the ensanguined chamber, who, as often as she cleared the stain of brood from the one side, found it showing itself with frightful distinctness on the other.

When I had proceeded as far as the early pages of my third volume, I found -myself completely at a stand. I rested on my arms from the 211 of January 1794, to the 1st of April following, without getting forward in the smallest degree. It has ever been thus with use in works of any continuance. The bow will not be for ever bent.

" Opere in 1ongo fas est obrepere somnum."

I endeavoured, however, to take my repose to myself in security, and not inflict a set of crude and incoherent dreams upon my readers. In the mean time, when I revived, I revived in earnest, and in the course of that month carried on my work with unabated speed to the end.