AS an orator, dramatist, poet, politician, and novelist, “Bulwer Lytton” acquitted himself with credit, winning his chief celebrity and perhaps his greatest usefulness by the long list of novels which continue to be read in spite of the disapproval of Thackeray whose usually mild temper was stirred almost to virulence by everything “Bulwig” did. But Thackeray to the contrary notwithstanding, several of these novels have already vindicated their places as classics, and at least one of them, “The Last Days of Pompeii,” has taken almost as strong a hold on popular favor as the higher and more artistic fiction of Scott himself. As an essayist, Lord Lytton is at his best. He writes easily and gracefully, is always interesting and is frequently surprising in the novelty, if not in the originality, of his thought. As a poet, he lacked only a very little of high excellence; but in the useful translations of Horace, in which he attempts to represent the original rhythm of that most melodious of the Augustan lyric poets, he shows that this little is an inherent defect in his sense of time in language. Such failures at his climaxes are not altogether rare even in his prose; but in view of his excellencies, no one who follows him long will remember them against him. He was a “Conservative” in politics, and the violent animosities which some of his celebrated contemporaries wreaked upon him were largely a result of political partisanship, which his works have long ago outlived.