The Philosophy of Composition

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Charles Dickens, in a note now lying before me, alluding to an examination I once made of the

mechanism of "Barnaby Rudge," says- "By the way, are you aware that Godwin wrote his 'Caleb

Williams' backwards? He first involved his hero in a web of difficulties, forming the second

volume, and then, for the first, cast about him for some mode of accounting for what had been

done."

I cannot think this the precise mode of procedure on the part of Godwin- and indeed what he

himself acknowledges, is not altogether in accordance with Mr. Dickens' idea- but the author of

"Caleb Williams" was too good an artist not to perceive the advantage derivable from at least a

somewhat similar process. Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be

elaborated to its denouement before anything be attempted with the pen. It is only with the

denouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its indispensable air of consequence, or