"Arthur Mervyn" is evidently indebted to William Godwin, of whose "transcendent powers" in "Caleb Williams" Brown was an ardent admirer. But it as hard for the modern reader to see why either book is strikingly individual. Godwin's feelings about the travesties on justice indulged in by the English courts had been anticipated by Smollett in "Roderick Random" (chap. lxi ff.); and Caleb's hard times as a fugitive from a false charge are very similar to Roderick's. In the light of history it seems apparent that Brown was impressed by the book because it was widely popular when he was writing, and that its popularity was due not so much to its merits as to its political timeliness at a moment of revolutionary excitement. Of Brown's three remaining novels only one, "Edgar Huntly," is of any importance. This is a good detective story, fresher than any of his others. A somnambulist who murders while walking in his sleep supplies the horror and creates the mystery; and certain pictures of frontier life and Allegheny Mountain scenery, with an Indian massacre and a panther fight, are effectively homemade. Brown's novels should naturally be estimated in comparison with the works of his contemporaries rather than with the crisp and clean-cut narrative of the present, but even so they are burdened with very evident defects. The most flagrant of these are the natural fruits of hasty writing. He is quoted as saying to one of his friends, "Sir, good pens, thick paper, and ink well diluted, would facilitate my composition more than the prospect of the broadest expanse of clouds, water or mountains rising above the clouds." This suggests the steady craftsmanship of Anthony Trollope with his thousand words an hour. Yet he was in no respect of style or construction the equal of Trollope. His novels are full of loose ends and inconsequences. He is unblushing in his reliance on "the long arm of coincidence." Even when one untangles the plots from the maze of circumstance in which he involves them, they are unconvincing because they are so deficient in human motive. Moreover, in style they are expressed in language which is dizzily exalted even for the formal period in which they were written. "I proceeded to the bath, and filling the reservoir with water, speedily dissipated the heat that incommoded me." "I had been a stranger to what is called love. From subsequent reflection I have contracted a suspicion that the sentiment with which I regarded the lady was not untinctured from this source and that hence arose the turbulence of my feelings."