Even if it were now to cease, it is actually funded and vested to Godwin's credit in the _grand livre_ of literary history: and it can never be written off.

Perhaps _Caleb_ is the one book of the later English eighteenth century in novel for which there must always be a public as soon as it is presented to that public.

And when this is said and endorsed by those who do not personally much care for the book, it is at once a sufficient testimony to the position of the author, and a vindication of the not absolutely imbecile position of those who thought that he might have written _Waverley_ and its successors.

The way in which Godwin in his later novels came down from the mountain-tops of theory and paradox just as he came down from those of _Political Justice_ itself is interesting and amusing, but not for us.

As novels they are certainly inferior.