us novels, Pelham and Godolphin are the only ones
which take their absolute groundwork in what is called "The Fashionable
World." I have sought in each to make the general composition in
some harmony with the principal figure in the foreground. Pelham
is represented as almost wholly unsusceptible to the more poetical
influences. He has the physical compound, which, versatile and joyous,
amalgamates easily with the world--he views life with the lenient
philosophy that Horace commends in Aristippus: he laughs at the
follies he shares; and is ever ready to turn into uses ultimately (if
indirectly) serious, the frivolities that only serve to sharpen his wit,
and augment that peculiar expression which we term "knowledge of the
world." In a word, dispel all his fopperies, real or assumed, he is
still the active man of crowds and cities, determined to succeed,
and gifted with the ordinary qualities of success. Godolphin, on the
contrary, is the man of poetical temperament, out of his place alike
among the trifling idlers and the bustling actors of the world--wanting
the stimulus of necessity--or the higher motive which springs from
benevolence, to give energy to his powers, or definite purpose to his
fluctuating desires; not strong enough to break the bonds that confine
his genius--not supple enough to accommodate its movements to their
purpose. He is the moral antipodes to Pelham. In evading the struggles
of the world, he grows indifferent to its duties--he strives with no
obstacles--he can triumph in no career. Represented as possessing mental
qualities of a higher and a richer nature than those to which Pelham can
pretend, he is also represented as very inferior to him in constitution
of character, and he is certainly a more ordinary type of the
intellectual trifler.

The characters grouped around Godolphin are those with which such a
man usually associates his life. They are designed to have a certain
grace--a certain harmony with one form or the other of his twofold
temperament:--viz., either its conventional elegance of taste, or its
constitutional poetry of idea. But all alike are brought under varying
operations of similar influences; or whether in Saville, Constance,
Fanny, or Lucilla--the picture presented is still the picture of gifts
misapplied--of life misunderstood. The Preacher who exclaimed, "Vanity
of vanities! all is vanity," perhaps solved his own mournful saying,
when he added elsewhere, "This only have I f