Godwin tells us that, when thinking over "Caleb Williams," he said to himself a thousand times: "I will write a tale, that shall constitute an epoch in the mind of the reader, that no one, after he has read it, shall ever be exactly the same man that he was before." The effort, and straining after effect which this confession implies, are evident throughout the work. The reader's curiosity is continually excited by the promise of new interest and new developments, but he is as continually disappointed. The main idea of the story is certainly a striking one, but it is feebly carried out. The constitution of society cannot be effectively attacked by so improbable and exceptional an illustration of tyranny as the persecution of Caleb Williams. [Footnote 189: It would be difficult to find a more bare-faced and impudent literary theft than the case in which Sterne appropriated to himself the remonstrance of Burton ("Anatomy of Melancholy"), against that very plagiarism which he (Sterne) was then committing. Burton said: "As apothecaries, we make new mixtures, every day pour out of one vessel into another * * * We weave the same web, still twist the same rope again and again." Sterne says, with an effrontery all his own: "Shall we forever make new books, as apothecaries make new medicines, by pouring only out of one vessel into another? Are we forever to be twisting and untwisting the same rope--forever in the same track? forever at the same pace?" For Sterne's plagiarism, see Dr. Ferriar's "Essay and Illustrations," also Scott's "Life of Sterne."] [Footnote 190: "Tristram Shandy," orig. ed., vol. viii, chap. 8.] [Footnote 191: "Rasselas," chap. xliv. Contrast with Porter on "The Human Intellect," pp. 371-2.] [Footnote 192: See Scott's "Memoir of Johnson."] [Footnote 193: "The Reverie," "The History of Arbaces," "The Pilgrim," "The History of John Juniper."] [Footnote 194: The facts of Brooke's life are taken from the introduction to the "Fool of Quality," by Rev. Charles Kingsley, New York, 1860.] [Footnote 195: Charles Kingsley, preface to the "Fool of Quality."] [Footnote 196: Kingsley's preface to "Fool of Quality."] [Footnote 197: "Alwyn," "Anna St. Ives," "Hugh Trevor," "Bryan Perdue."] [Footnote 198: Published in 1817, when the author was far advanced in years.] III.