in method is that we soon forget the details of Mrs. Radcliffe’s plots, but remember isolated pictures.  After reading Caleb Williams we recollect the outline of the story in so far as it relates to the psychology of Falkland and his secretary; but of the actual scenes and people only vague images drift through our memory.  Godwin’s point of view was not that of an artist but of a scientist, who, after patiently investigating and analysing mental and emotional phenomena, chose to embody his results in the form of a novel.  He spared no pains to make his narrative arresting and convincing.  The story is told by Caleb Williams himself, who, in describing his adventures, revives the passions and emotions that had stirred him in the past.  By this device Godwin trusted to lend energy and vitality to his story.

Caleb Williams, a raw country youth, becomes secretary to Falkland, a benevolent country gentleman, who has come to settle in England after spending some years in Italy.  Collins, the steward, tells Williams his patron’s history.  Falkland has always been renowned for the nobility of his character.  In Italy, where he inspired the love and devotion of an Italian lady, he avoided, by “magnanimity,” a duel with her lover.  On Falkland’s return to England, Tyrrel, a brutal squire who was jealous of his popularity, conceived a violent hatred against him.  When Miss Melville, Tyrrel’s ill-used ward, fell in love with Falkland, who had rescued her from a fire, her guardian sought to marry her to a boorish, brutal farm-labourer.  Though Falkland’s timely intervention saved her in this crisis, the girl eventually died as the result of Tyrrel’s cruelty.  As she was the victim of tyranny, Falkland felt it his duty at a public assembly to denounce Tyrrel as her murderer.  The squire retaliated by making a personal assault on his antagonist.  As Falkland “had perceived the nullity of all expostulation with Mr. Tyrrel,” and as duelling according to the Godwinian principles was “the vilest of all egotism,” he was deprived of the natural satisfaction of meeting his assailant in physical or even mental combat.  Yet “he was too deeply pervaded with the idle and groundless romances of chivalry ever to forget the situation”—­as Godwin seems to think a “man of reason” might have done in these circumstances.  Tyrrel was stabbed in the dark, and Falkland, on whom suspicion naturally fell, was tried, but eventually acquitted without a stain on his character.  Two men—­a father and son called Hawkins—­whom Falkland had befriended against the overbearing Tyrrel, were condemned and executed for the crime.  This is the state of affairs when Caleb Williams enters Falkland’s service and takes up the thread of the narrative.  On hearing the story of the murder, Williams, who has been perplexed by the gloomy moods of his master, allows his suspicions to rest on Falkland, and to gratify his overmastering passion of curiosity determines to spy incessantly until he has solved the problem.