The effect is entire and satisfactory in proportion.  The work (so to speak) and the author are one.  We are not puzzled to decide upon their respective pretensions.  In reading Mr. Godwin’s novels, we know what share of merit the author has in them.  In reading the Scotch Novels, we are perpetually embarrassed in asking ourselves this question; and perhaps it is not altogether a false modesty that prevents the editor from putting his name in the title-page—­he is (for any thing we know to the contrary) only a more voluminous sort of Allen-a-Dale.  At least, we may claim this advantage for the English author, that the chains with which he rivets our attention are forged out of his own thoughts, link by link, blow for blow, with glowing enthusiasm:  we see the genuine ore melted in the furnace of fervid feeling, and moulded into stately and ideal forms; and this is so far better than peeping into an old iron shop, or pilfering from a dealer in marine stores!  There is one drawback, however, attending this mode of proceeding, which attaches generally, indeed, to all originality of composition; namely, that it has a tendency to a certain degree of monotony.  He who draws upon his own resources, easily comes to an end of his wealth.  Mr. Godwin, in all his writings, dwells upon one idea or exclusive view of a subject, aggrandises a sentiment, exaggerates a character, or pushes an argument to extremes, and makes up by the force of style and continuity of feeling for what he wants in variety of incident or ease of manner.  This necessary defect is observable in his best works, and is still more so in Fleetwood and Mandeville; the one of which, compared with his more admired performances, is mawkish, and the other morbid.  Mr. Godwin is also an essayist, an historian—­in short, what is he not, that belongs to the character of an indefatigable and accomplished author?  His Life of Chaucer would have given celebrity to any man of letters possessed of three thousand a year, with leisure to write quartos:  as the legal acuteness displayed in his Remarks on Judge Eyre’s Charge to the Jury would have raised any briefless barrister to the height of his profession.  This temporary effusion did more—­it gave a turn to the trials for high treason in the year 1794, and possibly saved the lives of twelve innocent individuals, marked out as political victims to the Moloch of Legitimacy, which then skulked behind a British throne, and had not yet dared to stalk forth (as it has done since) from its lurking-place, in the face of day, to brave the opinion of the world.  If it had then glutted its maw with its intended prey (the sharpness of Mr. Godwin’s pen cut the legal cords with which it was attempted to bind them), it might have done so sooner, and with more lasting effect.  The world do not know (and we are not sure but the intelligence may startle Mr. Godwin himself), that he is the author of a volume of Sermons, and of a Life of Chatham.[C]