the force of habit; and thus, though he has not said it himself, has
enabled others to say to the towering aspirations after good, and to the
over-bearing pride of human intellect--"Thus far shalt thou come, and no
farther!" Captain Parry would be thought to have rendered a service
to navigation and his country, no less by proving that there is no
North-West Passage, than if he had ascertained that there is one: so Mr.
Godwin has rendered an essential service to moral science, by attempting
(in vain) to pass the Arctic Circle and Frozen Regions, where the
understanding is no longer warmed by the affections, nor fanned by the
breeze of fancy! This is the effect of all bold, original, and powerful
thinking, that it either discovers the truth, or detects where error
lies; and the only crime with which Mr. Godwin can be charged as a
political and moral reasoner is, that he has displayed a more ardent
spirit, and a more independent activity of thought than others, in
establishing the fallacy (if fallacy it be) of an old popular prejudice
that _the Just and True were one_, by "championing it to the Outrance,"
and in the final result placing the Gothic structure of human virtue
on an humbler, but a wider and safer foundation than it had hitherto
occupied in the volumes and systems of the learned. Mr. Godwin is an
inventor in the regions of romance, as well as a skilful and hardy
explorer of those of moral truth. _Caleb Williams_ and _St. Leon_ are
two of the most splendid and impressive works of the imagination that
have appeared in our times. It is not merely that these novels are very
well for a philosopher to have produced--they are admirable and complete
in themselves, and would not lead you to suppose that the author, who is
so entirely at home in human character and dramatic situation, had ever
dabbled in logic or metaphysics. The first of these, particularly, is
a master-piece, both as to invention and execution. The romantic and
chivalrous principle of the love of personal fame is embodied in the
finest possible manner in the character of Falkland;[B] as in Caleb