Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/165

 husband. Her beloved son has been forced to drop his disreputable father and she herself is dying under the shock. A page or two of eloquence ends with the remarks—

"How unhappy the wretch, the monster rather let me say, who is without an equal, who looks through the world and in the world cannot find a brother, who is endowed with attributes which no living being participates with him, who is therefore cut off for ever from all cordiality and confidence, can never unbend himself, but lives a solitary joyless inhabitant of a prison, the materials of which are emeralds and rubies. How unhappy this wretch, how weak and ignoble the man who voluntarily accepts this odious existence."

The lady's passion has clearly not impeded her command of grammar.

The modern novelist does not accept this method of giving 'the most impressive form' to 'real life.' In truth it is only tolerable so long as there is some real force behind the queer old-fashioned mannerism. Godwin, by the time of St. Leon, was forcing his vein under pressure of embarrassment, and the usual result followed. In Caleb Williams it was by a kind of good luck that his philosophy provided him with an effective situation, and though it did not in the least prove his moral, and though characters and incidents are simply preposterous, gave a certain power to his