SOURCE: Gold, Alex, Jr. “It's Only Love: The Politics of Passion in Godwin's Caleb Williams.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 19, no. 2 (summer 1977): 135-60.

In the following essay, Gold studies the issue of governmental control over private life in Caleb Williams.

Equality fled and was no more; and love, almighty, perdurable love, came to supply its place.

—William Godwin, Thoughts on Man

The crucial scene in Godwin's Caleb Williams occurs, unfortunately, in a garden:

While I thus proceeded with hasty steps along the most secret paths of the garden, and from time to time gave vent to the tumult of my thoughts in involuntary exclamations, I felt as if my animal system had undergone a total revolution. My blood boiled within me. I was conscious to a kind of rapture for which I could not account. I was solemn, yet full of rapid emotion, burning with indignation and...