Born [Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer], in London, 25 May 1803. Educated privately. Matric. Trin. Coll., Camb., Easter, 1822; removed to Trin. Hall, Oct. 1822; Chancellor’s Medal for Prize Poem, 1825; B.A., 1826; M.A., 1835. First visit to Paris, autumn of 1825. Married Rosina Doyle Wheeler, 29 Aug. 1827. Settled near Pangbourne. Prolific contributor to periodicals. Removed to London, Sept. 1829. Active literary life. Edited “New Monthly Mag.,” Nov. 1831 to Aug. 1833. M.P. for St. Ives, 1831–32. Legal separation from his wife, April 1836. Play, “The Duchess de la Vallière,” produced at Drury Lane, 1836; “The Lady of Lyons,” Drury Lane, 1838; “Richelieu,” Drury Lane, 1839; “The Sea-Captain” (afterwards called “The Rightful Heir”), Haymarket, 1839; “Money,” Haymarket, 1840. M.P. for Lincoln, 1833–41. Baronet, July 1838. Joint editor (with Brewster and Lardner) of “Monthly Chronicle,” 1841. Play, “Not so Bad as we Seem,” acted at Devonshire House, 1851. Succeeded to estate of Knebworth at his mother’s death, Dec. 1843; assumed surname of Lytton, Feb. 1844. M.P. for Hertfordshire, 1852–66. Hon. D.C.L., Oxford, 9 June 1853. Lord Rector of Glasgow Univ., 1856 and 1858. Sec. of State for Colonies, 1858–59. Privy Councillor, June 1858. Hon. LL.D., Cambridge, 1864. Created Baron Lytton of Knebworth, 14 July 1866. G.C.M.G. 15 Jan. 1870. Died, at Torquay, 18 Jan. 1873. Buried in Westminster Abbey. Works: “Ismael,” 1820; “Delmour” (anon.), 1823; “A Letter to a late Cabinet Minister,” 1824; “Sculpture” [1825]; “Weeds and Wild Flowers” (anon.; priv. ptd.), 1825; “O’Neill” (anon.), 1827; “Falkland” (anon.), 1827; “Pelham” (anon.), 1828; “The Disowned” (anon.), 1829; “Devereux” (anon.), 1829; “Paul Clifford” (under initials: E. B. L.), 1830; “The Siamese Twins,” 1831; “Eugene Aram” (anon.), 1832; “Asmodeus at large” (anon.), 1833; “Godolphin” (anon.), 1833; “England and the English,” 1833 (2nd edn. same year); “Pilgrims of the Rhine” (anon.), 1834; “The Last Days of Pompeii” (anon.), 1834; “Letter to a Cabinet Minister,” 1834; “The Student” (from “New Monthly Mag.”), 1835; “Rienzi,” 1835; “The Duchesse de la Vallière” (under initials: E. B. L.), 1836; “Athens, its rise and fall” (2 vols.), 1837; “Ernest Maltravers” (anon.), 1837; “Alice” (anon.), 1838; “Leila,” 1838; “Calderon the Courtier” (anon.), 1838; “The Lady of Lyons” (under initials: E. B. L.), 1838; “Richelieu” (anon.), 1838; “The Sea-Captain” (anon.), 1839; “Money” (anon.), 1840; “Works” (10 vols.), 1840; “Night and Morning” (anon.), 1841; “Dramatic Works,” 1841; “Zanoni” (anon.), 1842; “Eva,” 1842 (2nd edn. same year); “The Last of the Barons” (under initials: E. L. B.), 1843; “Confession of a Water Patient,” 1845; “The Crisis” (anon.), 1845; “The New Timon” (anon.), 1846; “Lucretia” (anon.), 1846; “A Word to the Public” (anon.), 1847; “Harold” (anon.), 1848; “King Arthur,” 1848–49 (2nd edn., 1849); “The Caxtons” (from “Blackwood’s Mag.”), 1849; “Night and Morning,” 1851; “Letter to John Bull, Esq.”, 1851 (11th edn. same year); “Not so Bad as we Seem,” 1851; “Outlines of the early history of the East,” 1852; “Poetical and Dramatic Works” (5 vols.), 1852–54; “My Novel” (from “Blackwood;” under pseud.: “Pisistratus Caxton”), 1853; “Address to the Associated Societies of the University of Edinburgh,” 1854; “Clytemnestra” (anon.), 1855; “Speech at the Leeds Mechanics’ Institution,” 1854; “What will he do with it?” (under pseud.: Pisistratus Caxton), 1859; “Novels” (43 vols.), 1859–63; “St. Stephen’s” (anon.), 1860; “A Strange Story” (anon.; from “All the Year Round”), 1862; “Caxtoniana,” 1863; “The Boatman” (from “Blackwood;” under pseud.: Pisistratus Caxton), 1864; “The Lost Tales of Miletus,” 1866; “The Rightful Heir” (anon.), 1868; “Miscellaneous Prose Works,” 1868; “Walpole,” 1869; “The Coming Race” (from “Blackwood;” anon.), 1871; “Kenelm Chillingly” (anon.), 1873; “The Parisians” (from “Blackwood”), 1873. Posthumous: “Speeches,” and other political writings, ed. by his son, 1874; “Pausanias the Spartan,” ed. by his son, 1876; “Life, Letters, and Literary Remains” (autobiog.), ed. by his son, 1883. He translated: “Poems and Ballads” from Schiller, 1844; Horace’s “Odes and Epodes,” 1869. Collected Works: in 37 vols., 1873–75.

Personal

  “Pelham” is writ by a Mr. Bulwer, a Norfolk squire, and horrid puppy. I have not read the book, from disliking the author, but shall do so since you approve it.

  Mr. Bulwer Lytton, a very young man and an enthusiast, wishes to be introduced to you. He is taking his degree at Cambridge; on his return pray let me make him acquainted with you.

  After the debate I walked about the streets with Bulwer till near three o’clock. I spoke to him about his novels with perfect sincerity, praising warmly, and criticising freely. He took the praise as a greedy boy takes apple pie, and the criticism as a good dutiful boy takes senna-tea. He has one eminent merit, that of being a most enthusiastic admirer of mine; so that I may be the hero of a novel yet, under the name of Delamere or Mortimer. Only think what an honor!

  Intrinsically a poor creature this Bulwer; has a bustling whisking agility and restlessness which may support him in a certain degree of significance with some, but which partakes much of the nature of levity. Nothing truly notable can come of him or of it

  The author of “Pelham” is a younger son and depends on his writings for a livelihood, and truly, measuring works of fancy by what they will bring (not an unfair standard perhaps), a glance around his luxurious and elegant rooms is worth reams of puff in the quarterlies. He lives in the heart of the fashionable quarter of London, where rents are ruinously extravagant, entertains a great deal, and is expensive in all his habits, and for this pay Messrs. Clifford, Pelham, and Aram—(it would seem) most excellent good bankers. As I looked at the beautiful woman [Mrs. Bulwer] seated on the costly ottoman before me, waiting to receive the rank and fashion of London, I thought that old close-fisted literature never had better reason for his partial largess. I half forgave the miser for starving a wilderness of poets.

  Yes, he is a thoroughly satin character; but then it is the richest satin. Whether it will wear as well as other less glossy materials remains to be seen. There was something inconceivably strange to me in his dwelling, with a sort of hankering, upon the Count d’Orsay’s physical advantages; something beneath the dignity of an author, my fastidiousness fancied, in the manner in which he spoke of his own works, saying that the new ones only interested him as far as they were experiments. It is a fine, energetic, inquisitive, romantic mind, if I mistake not, that has been blighted and opened too soon. There wants the repose “the peace that passeth all understanding,” which I must believe (and if it be a delusion, I hope I shall never cease to believe) is the accompaniment of the highest mind.

  Bulwer was here a few moments ago in his flash falsetto dress, with high-heel boots, a white great coat, and a flaming blue cravat. How different from Rogers who is sitting near me, reading the “North American;” or Hallam who is lolling in an easy chair; or Milman,—both absorbed in some of the last Reviews or Magazines.

	We know him, out of SHAKESPEARE’S art,
	And those fine curses which he spoke;
	The old TIMON, with his noble heart,
	That, strongly loathing, greatly broke.
	So died the Old; here comes the New.
	Regard him: a familiar face:
	I thought we knew him: What, it’s you,
	The padded man—that wears the stays—
	Who kill’d the girls and thrill’d the boys,
	With dandy pathos when you wrote,
	A Lion, you, that made a noise,
	And shook a mane en papillotes.
	And once you tried the Muses too;
	You fail’d, Sir: therefore now you turn,
	You fall on those who are to you,
	As Captain is to Subaltern.
	But men of long-enduring hopes,
	And careless what this hour may bring,
	Can pardon little would-be POPES
	And BRUMMELS, when they try to sing.
	*        *        *        *        *
	What profits now to understand
	The merits of a spotless shirt—
	A dapper boot—a little hand—
	If half the little soul is dirt?

  A man with rather disagreeable manners, reminding me of some of the sub-heroes in his own books.

  In the adamantine chain of Mr. Ponsonby Ferrars’ selfishness, to the links of which the complex miseries of OTHERS are ever appending, you develop the apparently contradictory, but perfectly compatible, vices of intense meanness and parsimony, with extreme ostentation and extravagance, which are the usual concomitants of the self-worshipping sensualist, and which is a true type of what our present social, or rather anti-social, system, with its intellectual fiorettori, can, and but too often does, produce, namely, a solid block of vice, gnarled with villainy but veneered with virtue! (?) and highly varnished with hypocrisy, which in these days of pretension and of SHAM, is a far more remarkable and popular commodity than the rococo genuine article of unvarnished excellence.

  His friendly temper, his generous heart, his excellent conversation (at his best) and his simple manners (when he forgot himself) have many a time “left me mourning” that such a being should allow himself to sport with perdition. Perhaps my interest in him was deepened by the evident growth of his deafness, and by seeing that he was not, as yet, equal to cope with the misfortune of personal infirmity. He could not bring himself practically to acknowledge it; and his ignoring of it occasioned scenes which, painful to others, must have been exquisitely so to a vain man like himself. I longed to speak, or get spoken, to him a word of warning and encouragement out of my own experience: but I never met with any who dared mention the subject to him; and I had no fair opportunity after the infirmity became conspicuous. From the time when, in contradicting in newspapers a report of his having lost his hearing altogether, he professed to think conversation not worth hearing, I had no hope for his fortitude: for it is the last resource of weakness to give out that grapes are sour.

  He is somewhat tall, and very spare, almost attenuated. He has a fine head and face, of which the portrait by Maclise gives a good representation. His nose is large, sharp, and prominent, fulfilling Napoleon’s requirement of a man with a large nose for great enterprises. His action in speaking is good, though not perfect. Sometimes it is a little “wild,” as when he draws back his head and slim body, and extends his arms, making one feel uncomfortable lest he should lose balance and upset. His voice is good,—strong, but not musical; and perhaps he is wanting in that delicate inflection of tone,—that variety, and light and shade, which the great orator is so careful to cultivate. Had Bulwer’s practice been greater, doubtless he would have remedied such defects; for we must not forget that his life has been that of a student and a literary man, rather than of a man of action and public enterprise.

  He was in a better state at Knebworth than I have ever seen him in all these years, a little weird occasionally regarding magic and spirits, but perfectly fair and frank under opposition. He was talkative, anecdotical, and droll; looked young and well, laughed heartily, and enjoyed some games we played with great zest. In his artist character and talk he was full of interest and matter, but that he always is. Socially, he seemed to me almost a new man. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and so did Georgina and Mary.

  At the east end of the street, some five-and-twenty years since, lived Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, in a house of moderate size on the north side, a few doors from Berkeley square. Sir Edward had the house embellished after his own taste: one of the drawing-rooms was a facsimile of a chamber which Bulwer had visited at Pompeii; vases, candelabra, chairs, tables, to correspond. James Smith humorously describes his hiding here: “Our host lighted a perfumed pastille modelled from Vesuvius. As soon as the cone of the mountain began to blaze, I found myself an inhabitant of the devoted city; and, as Pliny the elder, thus addressed Bulwer, my supposed nephew; ‘Our fate is accomplished, nephew! Hand me yonder volume! I shall die as a student in my vocation. Do thou hasten to take refuge on board the fleet at Misenum; yonder cloud of hot ashes chides thy longer delay. Feel no alarm for me; I shall live in story; the author of “Pelham” will rescue my name from oblivion.’ Pliny the younger made me a low bow,” &c. Sir Edward’s dining-room was furnished in the old English style, carved chairs, tables, and sideboard, which drew from a visitor the judicious remark that “such furniture is all right in old baronial halls, but to encounter it in a small house in a London street is too startling a transition.” In his ancestral seat, Knebworth, Sir Bulwer Lytton is at home.

  The most pleasing thing about Lord Lytton is his humanity. He goes into the cottages of the poor people, and they seem to adore him. They have known him ever since he was a boy, and called him Sir and Mr. instead of My Lord, and when they correct themselves and beg pardon he says, “O never mind that.”

  He is not very strong, this gentleman, and has a scared kind of stare—that, indeed, of a student out in the world. In this living face, and in photographs from it, there is a suspicion that it is “got up” to what its owner thinks its best; that Pelham would be younger than he is. Vain struggle with Time; what gentle waggoner can put a “skid” on his wheel when he is going down hill, “or with a finger stay Ixion’s wheel,” as Keats has it? Look at the hair brushed forward and manipulated, the eyebrows, whiskers, and hair somewhat darkened, the moustache and imperial! The whole look of the man has just the clever artistry—not insincerity, for Lord Lytton is a true man—which is the little bit of bad taste which has prevented its master from being the very first in his rank. The little reft within the lute, and little rotten speck of garnered fruit—you know the rest.

  Despite of physical defects which would have discouraged almost any other man from entering into public life at all, he had succeeded in winning a reputation as a great speaker in a debate where Palmerston, Gladstone, Bright, and Disraeli were champions. So deaf that he could not hear the arguments of his opponents, so defective in utterance as to become often almost unintelligible, he actually made the House of Commons doubt for a while whether a new great orator had not come among them.

  So Lytton is gone to Westminster Abbey. It was, on the whole, a noble life, for its untiring industry, energy, and many-sidedness both of genius and scholarship and practical business. He died pen in hand, and they say his novel soon to appear is among his best. His play of “Money,” which I have read, is running hundreds of nights now at one of the chief theatres in London. He was a good Grecian, Latinist, German. He was a respectable Cabinet Minister. He achieved a peerage for his declining years, and a tomb in Westminster Abbey. I knew him very well, and once spent a few days with him at Knebworth, and always thought him delightful company.

  He played in his time many parts, some admirably, none discreditably. He was the most accomplished and industrious man of letters of his age, the most polished of novelists, and the only dramatist of his generation whose name can be mentioned in the same breath as Sheridan. As one reads the narrative of Bulwer’s energy in the various rôles that he essayed, one is reminded of the Horatian ode, which paints the picture of the predestined votary of the Muses. Just as he whom Melpomene has marked for her own will neither win the laurels of the conqueror nor the glory of the statesman, nor vanquish his rivals in the palæstra, so, by a similar fatalism, was the heritage of distinction reserved for Bulwer purely and entirely literary.

  Like almost every man, he was indebted to his mother for his greatness. Of his father, General Bulwer, we learn nothing; but his mother must have been a lady who possessed a large mind and natural ability of high order. She was an heiress of the Lyttons of Knebworth, and Bulwer, her favorite son, inherited her wealth, and at her death in 1843 assumed the name of which she was always proud—that of Lytton. Mrs. Bulwer was tall and slight, of a commanding presence: silent—it was thought from pride. She certainly conveyed to me the idea that she lived too much with her ancestors. That her celebrated son was devotedly attached to her is certain…. I believe Bulwer to have been a man made to be admired rather than loved. He achieved fame, but I am not sure that it brought him happiness. He seldom gave one the idea that he was in earnest: the good he did seemed rather the result of calculation than of impulse. I believe there would have been even among his friends and admirers a greater number to rejoice at his failure than triumph at his success. Had his earlier life been different from what it was, his prime and his decline might—I think would—have presented another picture. A married man must ask his wife if he is to be loved and respected, and if she says, “No,” he will strive in vain to be either.

  He held strong opinions, and avowed them; he went into Parliament, and a literary career is even now with difficulty forgiven to a politician. Moreover, he was assuredly not orthodox in an age which had not forgiven Byron or Shelley, and an outward conformity at least was required to all the current religious acts and phrases in a degree which those can scarcely understand whose fate has fixed them in these latter days. Lord Lytton has a very interesting chapter on his father’s religious opinions; but if closely examined, it all comes to the statement of him who maintained that his religion was that of all sensible men, and on being further pressed to say what that might be, rejoined that sensible men never tell. This was not enough for the days of the Reform Bill and of Catholic Emancipation. But with all these things against him, Bulwer won his way, and gained his place in the first rank of English novelists.

  Next to Lord Lytton, the novelist, whose letters he [Charles Reade] religiously preserved, Charles Dickens occupied the highest place in his esteem.

  Bulwig, a name originally given to Lord Bulwer in Fraser’s Magazine in 1830. Thackeray, in Fraser and Punch, descended to personal sneers against Bulwer and his novel “Pelham,” resorting even to such a miserable substitute for wit as calling the author Bulwig. Years after, when Thackeray collected his magazine articles, he announced that he did not know Bulwer when he sneered at him; still, he did not avoid perpetuating it, but reprinted the name in his collected works.

  Lord Lytton had the very curious habit of making almost invisible hieroglyphics or crosses in his letters—at least I found them in those to me, as it were for luck. It was a very common practice from the most ancient Egyptian times to within two centuries. Lord Lytton’s were evidently intended to escape observation. But there was indeed a great deal in his character which would escape most persons, and which has not been revealed by any writer on him. This I speedily divined, though, of course, I never discovered what it all was.

  For Carlyle the first Lord Lytton was “a poor fribble,” and Mrs. Carlyle, who had espoused the cause of the novelist’s wife, and championed her grievances, was still more plain-spoken, calling him “a lanthorn-jawed quack!” She told me that Carlyle had refused I know not how many invitations to dine with him.

  He was notoriously, and even self-consciously, penurious, and used to explain this by saying that he had the blood of Elwes the miser in his veins; but he was at the same time totally deficient in real sympathy with anyone. He was a word-painter and ideologist.

Lady Lytton

  I have now given, from the only authentic record of them, all the particulars relative to the circumstances of my father’s marriage. Their multiplied evidence of his early affection for my mother is, I think, no unworthy tribute to her character and conduct at a time when, a young unmarried girl, she was placed in a very difficult and unhappy position. And on my father’s side the history illustrates with great force that depth and strength of character which it is my object to portray with the utmost fidelity in my power. The facts which have here been related without reserve will, I trust, greatly abbreviate my task in dealing with the painful sequel of the story, into which it would be impossible for me to enter minutely without the appearance of sitting in judgment on my parents. I might have spared a part of what I have printed already if their ill-omened union had not produced a multiplicity of published extravagances which would not permit me to dismiss the subject with the simple statement that, at an early age, my father married for love, contrary to the wishes of his mother, and that his marriage was imprudent and unhappy. His own letters will now enable all candid persons to judge for themselves whether the writer of them could have been capable of the brutality, the cruelty, the meanness and selfishness, attributed to him in the numerous libels which he himself scorned to notice, and which cannot be repeated by his son, even for the purpose of refuting them.

  His wife was beautiful, witty, and accomplished. Mr. Willis is entirely truthful when he speaks of her as the object of universal admiration in London. She was Irish by birth, and her maiden name was Rosina Wheeler. From early youth she had moved in a circle of some brilliancy in London, and had borne a distinguished place in it. In conjunction with Miss Elizabeth Spence she had written a novel called “Dame Rebecca Berry,” which had met with a certain measure of success. Miss Spence was a clever, kindly, and eccentric old maid, who affected literature and the society of eminent people. At her weekly reunions many of the rising celebrities were occasionally to be seen. It was here that Bulwer first met the lady who was to be his wife. Miss Wheeler was not then quite eighteen years of age, and Bulwer had only recently attained his majority. An attachment sprang up at once which soon developed into a passion, and when the young couple were married, it seemed as cordial a love-match as London society had ever known. And for a time perhaps it was. But a few years passed, and then it began to be known among Bulwer’s intimate friends that he had caught a Tartar. Mrs. Bulwer had a furious temper, and she was insanely jealous of her husband. She quarrelled with all his female friends, without respect to their age. She accused Lady Blessington of alienating his affections, though Lady Blessington was almost old enough to be his mother. She had a fight with Lady Caroline Lamb, who was even older. She resented Bulwer’s affection for Letitia Landon, the lively little woman who seemed so much his junior that his relations to her were almost paternal in their character. Nor did she vent her ill-humors on the ladies alone. She turned her husband’s home into a small domestic hell.

  Again, many years afterwards, he [my father] attempted to mediate between Lord and Lady Lytton (she was a cousin of ours), but in vain. Her temper was in such a state of inflammation, that she would listen to no moderate counsels, and my father had to sit still under her furious invectives whilst dying of heart disease. I have always thought that by her implacable egotism she shortened his life. Long after his death I put my resentment on one side, and tried to help her, but she soon became intractable. Lord Lytton, who always behaved with perfect courtesy both to my father and myself, offered to increase her allowance on certain conditions. I thought them reasonable enough, but the very mention of the word “conditions” drove her wild with rage, and a storm of abuse fell on my devoted head. Our intercourse ended with a letter, addressed to me thus:—

	SIR FRANCIS HASTINGS DOYLE,
	Bart., Receiver-General of Customs
	(However Infamous),
	Thames St.,
	London.

The inside of the letter matched the outside, and I never saw or communicated with her again.

  There are but a few more facts to narrate before I close this melancholy history. For the last seven years of her life Lady Lytton resided at a small house, “Glenômera,” at Upper Sydenham, latterly with only one servant. She rarely left her room, and the house once only during the last five years. Naturally of a too generous disposition, wholly unselfish, and frequently left to the care of a servant who was equally unable to comprehend or to supply her requirements, she could hardly have lived so long had it not been for friends who commiserated her neglected and desolate condition, and tried to alleviate her sorrows and to supply what were really necessities by assisting her to the utmost extent of their ability. Although in her eightieth year, she possessed to the last the remains of a beauty that had been so noted in her youth. Neither her general tone nor manners had deteriorated through adversity, but remained to the last as distinguished as they were polished and winning. She was full of anecdote and wit, and though not reticent on the subject of her wrongs, she never failed to impress upon her hearers a feeling of sadness and regret that so much capacity for all that was loving and affectionate had been so ruthlessly destroyed by neglect, wrong, and persecution. No one can defend some of her published extravagances, but our blame should more justly be laid upon those who abused her highly sensitive nature, and induced those feelings of exasperation under the infliction of wrong which she had no other opportunity to express.

Falkland, 1827

  Published anonymously, a dreary and striking tale of crime and sorrow, containing the germ of many after-creations. This work cost its author more trouble than any of his novels, and is the least known among them.

Pelham, 1828

  Pray who writes “Pelham?” I read it only yesterday and found it very interesting: the light is easy and gentleman-like, the dark very grand and sombrous. There are great improbabilities, but what can a poor devil do? There is, I am sorry to say, a slang tone of morality which is immoral, and of policy void of everything like sound wisdom. I am sorry if these should be the serious opinions of so powerful an author.

  Read sections 6–10 of the eleventh “Philippic,” and a very few chapters of “Pelham.” The notes are changed to tragic. The chapter giving the account of the murder of Sir John Tyrrell is written with great powers of description, both of the scenes of nature and of the dark passions of the soul. Walter Scott is the founder of this school of writing, and the author of “Pelham” is an imitator not inferior to his original. There is more of nature in the characters, more of variety in the dialogue, less of pedantry in the discourses, and more frequent transitions in the narrative, than in Scott. There is also more invention, the basis of Scott’s novels being historical, and this being altogether fictitious. All writing for the public should have some moral purpose. This indeed is the intended purpose of most, if not of all the novels of the present age. There is a refinement of delicacy in them which renders them more suitable for youth, but which takes from their merit as pictures of manners. Pelham goes to Paris, but he paints only Duchesses and gamblers, salons and boudoirs. In England it is the same—high life in London, and palaces in the country—Almacks or Newmarket. Notwithstanding this, he gives great interest to the story, and abounds with wit, though he has very little humor.

  Were a good novel a more rare production, we should have much more to say of the excellencies and defects of this, which, liable as it is to the gravest exceptions on account of its moral lessons, is certainly one of very high character for striking portraits, richness of thought, strength and originality of conception, and vivacity and energy of style.

  The publication of “Pelham” heralded a new intellectual dynasty of fops and puppies. Bulwer’s original idea of a hero was the greatest satire ever written by a man of talent on his own lack of mental elevation. He attempted to realize in a fictitious character his notion of what a man should be, and accordingly produced an agglomeration of qualities, called Pelham, in which the dandy, the scholar, the sentimentalist, the statesman, the roué, and the blackguard, were all to be included in one “many-sided” man, whose merits would win equal applause from the hearty and the heartless, the lover and the libertine. Among these, however, the dandy stood preëminent; and scholarship, sentiment, politics, licentiousness, and ruffianism, were all bedizened in the frippery of Almacks.

  Considered as a story, pure and simple, “Pelham” is full of power; and coming upon the world as it did in the period of Sir Walter Scott’s decline, must have been a revelation. It was the Byronic school reduced to prose, and acclimatised to Berkeley-square. Read for the first time, or re-read after a lapse of years, it quickens the pulse and stirs the blood of the most blasé novel-reader.

  The book is brilliant with intellect. But no word is ever spoken as it would have been spoken—no detail is ever narrated as it would have occurred.

  Few books contain more absurdity or more affectation than “Pelham;” yet it was at once evident that it could only be the production of a writer of more than ordinary talent. For so young an author it was certainly a wonderful effort, showing considerable originality of thought, some humour, and a remarkable power of narrative, specially evinced in the sensational scenes of the end.

  “Falkland” was succeeded by “Pelham,” which was published with his name, and which was the first, perhaps the most successful, and by far the most brilliant, of the novels in which authors have endeavoured to secure the rank of man of the world even more than that of man of letters, taking the method chiefly of fashionable, and therefore somewhat ephemeral, epigram.

  “Pelham,” written at twenty-five years of age, is a creditable boy’s book; it aims to portray character as well as to develop incidents, and in spite of the dreadful silliness of its melodramatic passages it has merit. Conventionally it is more nearly a work of art than that other famous boy’s book, Disraeli’s “Vivian Grey.”

  The surprise that Bulwer operated in “Pelham” must have been much greater than we can imagine now when we look back and find the story so vulgarly and viciously commonplace under the glare of its worldly splendor. He called it “The Adventures of a Gentleman,” and so it might have been, as gentlemen went in those days; but now it would rather be called “The Adventures of a Blackguard,” so much have gentlemen or blackguards since improved. In abandoning the fanciful realm of the romancers, and returning to the world of actualities Bulwer did not return to the unsparing ideal of the first realists, and seek the good of his reader by pointing the moral of his tale; still less did he conceive of the principle which has vitalized the later realists, and leave a faithful study of life, in cause and effect, to enforce its own lesson…. The literary technique is so much better than Scott’s; the story is so much shapelier, the style so much clearer and quicker, the diction so much more accurate, that one at first feels a certain joy in escaping to it. But this soon fades, and you find yourself longing for the foolishest page of romance, for the worst of Scott, of Cooper, of Brockden Brown, of Mrs. Radcliffe, as something truer and better, after all; for these authors, at their worst, were untrue only to the manifestations of human nature, and Bulwer, at his best, misrepresents the surface of life, and he is untrue to its essence.

Paul Clifford, 1830

  I have this moment finished the perusal of “Paul Clifford.” I know that you are not so wrapped up in self-confidence as not to feel a real pleasure in the approbation of others. And I regard it as a duty not to withhold my approbation when I am morally certain that it will be received as it is intended. There are parts of the book that I read with transport. There are many parts so divinely written that my first impulse was to throw my implements of writing in the fire, and to wish that I could consign all that I have published in the province of fiction to the same pyre. But this would be a useless sacrifice; and superior as I feel you to be in whatever kindles the finest emotions of the heart, I may yet preserve my peace, so far as relates to the mechanism of a story. This is but little, and does not satisfy my self-love, but I am capable of a sentiment that teaches me to rejoice in the triumph of others, without subjecting me to the mean and painful drawback of envy. I am bound to add that the penetration and acuteness you display are not inferior to the delicacy.

  No one, we think, can read the work before us, without reprobation and disgust; no one, we mean, who is properly impressed with the importance of moral duty and religious obligation, or who feels sensible that the regulations of society, in regard to property, industry, and personal security, are entitled to any respect.

  You have ruined me by writing “Paul Clifford.” I can think of nothing else. Adieu Jeremy Bentham! Adieu all my old teachers, more solemn, but not wiser, and less inspired! I thought that dramatic wit had died with Shakespeare. The meeting between Brandon and his wife is Dantesque. But there are others who can paint such scenes. The dramatic power of the book is wonderful, but it is in its wit that I find its wisdom. Wit I think your forte; and of all things it is what I envy most—perhaps because it never can be mine. Your “Tomlinsoniana,” by-the-way, seem to have excited some righteous indignation here.

  The publication of “Paul Clifford” did much to stimulate public opinion in favor of carrying Criminal Law Reform far beyond the point at which it had been left by the labors of Romilly: and the book itself was an incident in my father’s constant course of endeavor to improve the condition of that large portion of the population which is most tempted to crime through poverty and ignorance—not by the proclamation of Utopian promises, or recourse to violent constitutional changes, but through a better intellectual training facilitated by timely administrative reforms.

  Just after “Paul Clifford” had appeared, under the argot of which was concealed, and very effectually, a serious attempt to draw public attention to our then vicious prison discipline and our sanguinary penal code. This moral has been forgotten by the world, but the book remains the special delight of foreigners, who will persist in looking on Paul Clifford as a real historic personage, so that even in distant Iceland a traveller who bore the honoured name of Clifford, and was nicknamed “Paul” by his friends, was hailed by one of the authorities as the descendant of the great English outlaw, whose deeds were worthy of comparison with those of the outlaws of that famous isle.

Eugene Aram, 1833

  The offering which he had a right to lay at the feet of Scott.

  We consider that the revelations of genius here displayed may fairly be said to have recorded a consciousness that in the moral, as well as the physical frame, “we are fearfully and wonderfully made;” that when the instincts and the passions are over-mastered by the intellect, and man rests proudly on his boasted reason alone, he may work strange deeds before “high Heaven;” that he must beware of the casuistries of his brain no less than the wild workings of his heart, and that the affections and passions are the grand purifiers, the master movers, the voice of God in the soul, regulating the speculative, daring reason, and controlling as well as impelling action. This is to write greatly; to write philosophy and history, the physiology of sensation, and aggregate and individual truth.

  It was in “Eugene Aram” that he first showed the mettle that was in him; it was the first distinct print of the lion’s foot. Being early interested in the story of his hero, he set to work to collect the particulars of his life; and these he wove into a powerful and fascinating romance. In this story he has aimed to show what strange influences sometimes checker the web of life; how a mind essentially noble by deviating by an almost inperceptible angle from the path of virtue, may be gradually lured on till it is hopelessly entangled in the meshes of sin. Obsta principiis, “Resist beginnings,” is the moral which he preaches…. Some critics have objected to the psychological truthfulness of Eugene Aram’s portrait. Is it possible, they have asked, for a man to be betrayed into a dreadful crime at the very moment when he is full of ardor for truth and virtue? Can a man harbor in his bosom a household devil in the shape of a consciousness of being a murderer without the whole mental atmosphere being made foul and poisonous? Those who ask these questions forget that Eugene Aram did not strike the blow which caused the death, and found, doubtless, in this a plausible reason for his own self-justification. They forget that, morally as well as physically, we are “fearfully and wonderfully made;” that when man trusts to his reason alone, and suffers his instincts to be overmastered by his intellect,—his better feelings to be cheated by the casuistries of the brain,—there is no inconsistency of which he may not be guilty, no deed of horror which he may not commit. The female characters in this work, especially Madeline and Ellinor, are regarded by Bulwer’s admirers as masterpieces of portraiture.

The Last Days of Pompeii, 1834

  We feel throughout his book all the inspiration of the poetic and sublime creations of ancient genius, and share in the scholar-like fervor which evidently swells the author’s mind.

  “The Last Days of Pompeii,” wove into a story of deep interest and beauty, the memories of the classic times; and the character of Nydia, the blind girl, will last as long as our language endures.

  There is great talent, much learning, and vigorous conception, in the “Last Days of Pompeii,” by Bulwer; and the catastrophe with which it concludes is drawn with his very highest powers; but still it is felt by every class of readers to be uninteresting. We have no acquaintance or association with Roman manners; we know little of their habits; scarce anything of their conversation in private; they stand forth to us in history in a sort of shadowy grandeur totally distinct from the interest of novelist composition. No amount of learning or talent can make the dialogues of Titus and Lucius, or Gallius and Vespasia, interesting to a modern reader.

  “The Last Days of Pompeii” is also generally read with great interest; and though there is rather too much parade of not always very accurate antiquarian knowledge, it is written with great verve and brilliancy of imagination.

  Probably no historical romance has had more readers than “The Last Days of Pompeii.”

  I read all his books at that most impressionable time of life when but to name a woman’s name is to conjure up a phantom of delight in the young fancy; but nothing remains to me now from the multitude of his inventions in the figure of women but the vague image of the blind girl Nydia in “The Last Days of Pompeii.” I think this sort of general remembrance or oblivion no bad test in such matters, and I feel pretty sure that if Bulwer had imagined any other heroine of equal authenticity I should find some trace of her charm in my memory. But I find none from the books of an author whom I once thought so brilliant and profound, and whom I now think so solemnly empty, so imposingly unimportant…. Nydia fairly operates the whole action, in which the machinery creaks more audibly than it once did; but she is imagined upon old-fashioned lines of girlhood which have their charm. Like Milton’s ideal of poetry, she is “simple, sensuous, passionate,” and from her first meeting with Glaucus, the young Athenian swell who goes about snubbing the Latin civilization at Pompeii, she loves him. He saves her from the scourge of the savage virago who owns her, but when he has bought her he sends her to bear the declaration of his love to the beautiful Ione; and Nydia has to hear, if not to see, the tenderness of the lovers…. It may seem hard that a novelist whose fiction afterwards went so far and wide in the great English world of society and politics, should have lodged no other heroine so securely in the memory of his public as she of his early romance; but this appears to have been the fate of Bulwer. Yet, after all, it is no mean achievement. She was so well imagined, in a time when her type was fresher than now, that one’s regret is rather for the heroine than the author; one wishes that she had been the creature of a talent able to do her full justice in the realization.

Rienzi, 1835

  All the richness of colouring, and fidelity in drawing, in Sir L. Bulwer’s splendid historical romance of “Rienzi,” cannot take away the painful impression produced by the long interval which elapses between the commencement of the story, where the characters first appear, its middle, where the real interest is developed, and its termination, where the catastrophe occurs.

  This novel, which is also better constructed than his works usually are in point of plot, was to a certain degree a labour of love, inasmuch as it served the author to embody many of his political convictions.

  In style it is less pleasing than the “Last Days of Pompeii,” and in vividness of description, as well as variety of incident, it is scarcely its equal. Yet it possesses many qualities of interest which will commend it to all lovers of romance.

  This work is not only delightful as a romance, as a fascinating tale of ambition and love placed amid scenes deeply stirring to the imagination; it is, besides, a contribution to history of uncommon value. Previously to the publication of “Rienzi,” justice had never been done to the memory of the great Tribune, and even the Italians found in this romance the first correct view of their countryman. A legitimate criticism may be made concerning “Rienzi” to the effect that it contains too much historical material: that the fortunes of persons are deserted too often for the teachings and philosophy of history. But it is easy to forgive this artistic defect in view of the importance of the lessons to be learned from the Tribune’s career and the wisdom with which the causes of great political events are traced.

The Lady of Lyons, 1838

  February 15th.—Went to an early rehearsal of the new play. Acted Claude Melnotte in Bulwer’s play pretty well; the audience felt it very much, and were carried away by it; the play in the acting was completely successful. Was called for, and leading on Miss Faucit, was well received, gave out the play. Forster, Kenney, Bartley, &c., came into my room. February 17th.—Read over part of the play, being anxious to play well, as I knew Bulwer would be there. Acted pretty well; was called for, led on Miss Faucit, and was very cordially received. Bulwer came into my room, and expressed himself much pleased; offered to give his name whenever I might wish it.

  The charm of the “Lady of Lyons” results from the interest of the plot, the clear and often pathetic working of the story, the easy flow of the dialogue, the worldly morality, and the reality of the action, just sufficiently clothed in an atmosphere of poetry to take it out of the mere prose of existence, without calling upon the imagination for any effort to comprehend it. All this, united with every advantage that scenic effect and excellent acting could give, established the “Lady of Lyons” in a popularity which it has always retained. But this alone is not the mode of a great dramatist. The plot of the play in question will not bear examination by any high standard.

  Probably the most successful acting drama produced in England since the days of Shakespeare.

  He broke new ground and produced an acted play, “The Lady of Lyons,” that in spite of artificial sentiment, and a plot turning upon an unmanly fraud, touched the old chord of revolutionary sentiment and, by help of clever dramatic construction, set it vibrating again. “The Lady of Lyons” has held the stage throughout the reign.

  It must be admitted that there is a certain “high-flown” strain in particular passages, certainly “bombastic,” and which are almost impossible to deliver without provoking a smile. Such is the well-known description of the palace with which the suitor attempts to dazzle the imagination of his mistress. To the ordinary player this is, of course, inexpressibly dear, and perhaps the most precious morsel of “fat” in the whole…. The gracious, winsome part of Pauline has been essayed by all our most charming actresses, after being created by the once irresistible Miss Helen Faucit; and all, down to Miss Terry, Miss Anderson, and Mrs. Langtry, have increased their reputation by the performance. For over fifty years it has held its ground, and is always performed. Nay, it has been said that there is not a theatrical night in the year when it is not being played at some theatre of the kingdom. The young beginner, just stepping on the boards, turns fondly to the effective “gardener’s son,” and is certain he could deliver the passage ending, “Dost like the picture?”—a burst often laughed at, but never failing to tell. Every character is good and actable, and, though we may have seen it fifty times, as most playgoers have, there is always a reserve of novelty and attraction left which is certain to interest.

  The most popular of his dramas, “The Lady of Lyons,” has been a favourite work with the most distinguished players, and is still found to be a good acting piece. The plot may be improbable, and the hero’s conduct by no means above reproach, but the dialogue, with all its tinsel, has at times the fine ring of passion, the situations are telling, and the action never flags.

  It is the best specimen of Lytton’s dramatic work.

Richelieu, 1838

  In one peculiarity, at least, Bulwer-Lytton the novelist surpassed all his rivals and contemporaries. His range was so wide as to take in all circles and classes of English readers. He wrote fashionable novels, historical novels, political novels, metaphysical novels, psychological novels, moral-purpose novels, immoral-purpose novels. “Wilhelm Meister” was not too heavy nor “Tristram Shandy” too light for him. He tried to rival Scott in the historical romance; he strove hard to be another Goethe in his “Ernest Maltravers;” he quite surpassed Ainsworth’s “Jack Sheppard,” and the general run of what we in England call “thieves’ literature,” in his “Paul Clifford;” he became a sort of pinch-beck Sterne in “The Caxtons,” and was severely classical in “The Last Days of Pompeii.” One might divide his novels into at least half a dozen classes, each class quite distinct and different from all the rest, and yet the one author, the one Bulwer-Lytton, showing and shining through them all. Bulwer is always there. He is masquerading now in the garb of a mediæval baron, and now in that of an old Roman dandy; anon he is disguised as a thief from St. Giles’s, and again as a full-blooded aristocrat from the region of St. James’s. But he is the same man always, and you can hardly fail to recognize him even in his cleverest disguise. It may be questioned whether there is one spark of true and original genius in Bulwer.

  In this drama the story is told by direct action, out of which the language naturally flows,—tinged, it is true, with the romantic sentimentalism that thoroughly saturated Bulwer’s thought and style,—and to which, for the most part, it is a spontaneous necessity. It appears to have been Macready’s impression that Bulwer had drawn, under the name of Richelieu, a character entirely different from the historic original; but he records that Bulwer at length satisfied him as to the justice of the portrayal, from the evidence of history. There is no doubt, however, that the poet has considerably—though neither unjustly nor inartistically—idealized the character of Richelieu.

  Richelieu is a favourite character with all tragedians. We have seen in the earlier portion of this paper how much Mr. Macready admired the play; he had evidently an enjoyment, a positive pleasure in acting it. Mr. Phelps frequently acted Richelieu; he was admirably suited to the character, because he was a good comedian as well as a tragedian. There is an excellent likeness of him in this part at the Garrick Club; it is painted by Mr. Forbes Robertson, and was purchased by a subscription of some members of the club. It seems somewhat strange that Richelieu should not have been numbered amongst the characters of Mr. Charles Kean—surely it would have suited him; but I cannot find it on record that he ever acted it. He certainly did not in London. Cardinal Wolsey was a favourite character with him; Cardinal Richelieu might have proved a good companion-picture. Mr. Henry Irving has revived the play at the Lyceum. Mr. Barry Sullivan stars with it. Mr. Edwin Booth is now acting it at the Adelphi Theatre. Many of his admirers incline to place this personation foremost in his répertoire.

  This piece may be compared with the Cromwell of Victor Hugo. It was marked by the same mixture of tragedy and melodrama; the same display of historical documents and the same ignorance of what is essential in history; the same use of the lowest and the most eccentric expedients to raise a laugh or cause a shudder; the same superficial and crude psychology which in each character, male or female, great or small, reveals the personality of the author. Even when this author is a Victor Hugo it is bad enough! But when it is a Bulwer—!

  Booth’s Richelieu was a great personality; Bulwer’s, a mere suggestion, a skeleton of lath on which the fustian hung loosely.

The New Timon, 1846

  A perusal of “The New Timon” recalls another poet to the mind, however, much oftener than Crabbe. To us, it would rather seem as if the author had studied Byron with so intense an admiration, that not only in his style, but in the cast of his heroes, and even in some incidental passages of his verse, he has been unable to disengage his memory from the works of the object of his homage. Not that he is a mere imitator, and still less that he has intentionally borrowed anything from Byron; but that he has been unconsciously reflecting back impressions long ago received by him, and carefully treasured up until they seemed part and parcel of his native thoughts.

  The author of the “New Timon” avows himself a follower of Pope. We shall by-and-by have occasion to try him by his own standard. In the meantime, we shall barely remark, that his allusions to Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Keats are presumptuous and in bad taste. The fact that he misspells the name of one of these poets argues either a very petty affectation, or a shameful unfamiliarity with what he pretends to criticize…. The author is a professed disciple of Pope, but he is wanting in the vivid common-sense, the crystal terseness, and the epigrammatic point of his original. Moreover, he is something of a “snob.” His foundling Lucy must turn out to be an earl’s daughter; his Hindoo Timon must be a nabob. It is clear that he reverences those very artificial distinctions which he professes to scorn. So much contempt could not be lavished on what was insignificant. Himself the child of a highly artificial state of society, there seems to be something unfilial and against nature in his assaults upon it. His “New Timon” is made a Timon by the very things which he affects to despise. Pope was quite superior to so subaltern a feeling. The plot of the story is not much to our taste. Morvale, the hero, is the son of a half-Hindoo father and an English mother.

  Had, unfortunately, a romantic story interwoven with its satire; had it not that, had it been a satire pur et simple, it would have nearly equalled those of Pope, or, let us say, Gifford. In style, it was between the two.

King Arthur, 1848–49

  The poet, bringing to his task powers in their full maturity, and long and variously exercised, has not contented himself either with telling a pathetic love-tale, or with weaving together effusions of lyric emotion. He has conceived the bold design of constructing, out of materials wonderfully varied, a symmetrical and powerful work of epic art: and, in the poem thus produced, he has proved himself to possess, not only the genuine feeling and imagination of the poet, but also that which is rarer and higher still, the deep thoughtfulness of the poetic artist.

  I should be willing to exchange a great mass of fiction—perhaps all Sir Edward’s poem—for a few grains of unquestionable truth on the subject. Only, where this is not to be had, I think it wise to be content with the creature of the imagination, which after all is a fact, and a very precious fact, though of a different kind. The more I prize historical truth, the more jealous I am of all unauthenticated claims to its character. I do wish for leisure to read “Arthur,” though I strongly suspect that the author is mistaken in his estimate of its comparative value. I know that everybody does not like it, which I believe could not be said of any of his greater novels.

  “King Arthur” may have been the best epic of its year, but it is now as dead as the Arthurian lays of Sir Richard Blackmore. Yet Lytton professed to regard it as the crowning work of all his days:—“I am unalterably convinced,” he wrote, “that on this foundation I rest the least perishable monument of those thoughts and those labours which have made the life of my life.” The epic is written in stanzas, consisting each of a quartrain followed by a couplet, a form which is unsuited for a long narrative poem, and which in Lytton’s hands soon becomes intolerably monotonous. The allegory is dim, the story uninteresting, and the characters are puppets.

  The epic of “King Arthur” is scarcely worthy of mention.

  Not to be compared with Tennyson’s “Idylls” in simplicity and beauty and spiritual power is Bulwer’s “King Arthur.” This has originality and epigrammatic smartness, and now and then some poetic power, but it lacks almost wholly a sympathetic feeling for the old romances, and serves mainly as a vehicle for the author’s opinions on life and society.

The Caxtons, 1849

  It has well-drawn characters in it, but the style produces upon me the effect of a flashy waistcoat festooned with gold chains.

  The “Caxtons” is Bulwer’s magnum opus. The plot is simplicity itself, but there is, at least, one scene of rare dramatic power. The characters possess hardly the charm of perfect novelty, for they remind us of familiar figures, drawn by a master-hand, yet they surpass the older types, both in moral beauty and intellectual variety, and are matchless among the creations of modern writers…. The author of the “Caxtons” never descends to puddles. The atmosphere of this book is pure as the ether of that new world to which its hero goes in quest of fortune. What a change since “Pelham!” Instead of the young man’s knowledge of the world, we have the maturer mind, with its deep insight, its profound mastery of the human heart. Instead of the varnished graces of a Hervey or a Chesterfield, we have the soul of chivalry inspiring the modest acts and quiet words of English gentlemen—a life the most supremely Christian that fiction has ever embodied. If “Pelham” be a text-book for the worldling, a chart whereby the drawing-room navigator may avoid the rocks and shoals of society’s shallow ocean, the “Caxtons” is assuredly a gospel for the mind which has holier aspirations than worldly success—a lantern to light the way to the stars.

  “The Caxtons,” which practically retains its original simplicity throughout the three volumes. Austin and Roland Caxton are never thrust aside to make play for melodramatic schemers or conventional heroes, and the atmosphere in which they live is equally healthy from first to last. With these three novels, which rank so very much higher than any of his other works, the author’s literary career came more or less to a standstill, though he continued writing up to his death in 1873.

  As a straightforward and consecutive narrative of actual facts, duly set forth with appropriate comments, “Tristram Shandy” must be acknowledged, as Mr. Shandy said of the science of fortification, to have its weak points. Those who find it dull will probably find “The Caxtons” amusing, and I recommend them to try.

My Novel, 1853

  I have read it with great pleasure, though Bulwer’s nature is by no means a perfect one either, which makes itself felt in his book; but his gush, his better humour, his abundant materials, and his mellowed constructive skill—all these are great things.

  He paints the froth of society; and very gay froth it is, and very pretty bubbles he can make of it: but this is not reconciling classes, or giving a philosophic representation in fiction of the great organic being we call the English nation; and so far as “My Novel” pretends to be anything more than anybody else’s novel, anything more than a well-wrought story, constructed out of the old Bulwer-Lytton materials, the pretence is fabulous and the performance does not answer to it. We have a novel neither better nor worse than its predecessors; but we have not a great work of art reared on a basis so broad as a general survey of English life in the earlier half of the nineteenth century…. Dandy literature and superfine sensibilities are tokens and causes of a degenerate art and an emasculate morality; and among offenders in this way none has sinned more, or is of higher mark for a gibbet, than the author of “My Novel.” Such books as his, when they appear in their true characters, are judged according to one standard; but when they come in the guise of profound meaning and lofty aims, and give themselves the airs of being grand concrete philosophies, the judge looks at them in quite another light, tries them by a higher code, and condemns them accordingly, as well-dressed impostors.

  A work which commences as a perfect idyl of country life, but wanders off later into complicated intrigues and melodramatic episodes in an unreal world peopled with impossible characters like Randal Leslie or Harley Lestrange. As long as we remain in the village of Hazledean with the Squire and the Parson, Dr. Riccabocca and Lenny Fairfield, we desire no wider horizon and no better company, and we think it most unfortunate that the writer was not of the same mind.

The Coming Race, 1871

  Many thanks for Bulwer. Only think I never knew him, never even saw him, and learnt first after his death who had written “The Coming Race.” One ought not to be proud of anything, but I was very much delighted.

  The class of composition to which “The Coming Race” belongs is one peculiarly adapted to Bulwer’s genius. Bulwer possessed in a high degree the rich fancy of the romancist and the keen perception of the satirist. If he had been less of a romancist he would have been more effective as a novelist. In “The Coming Race” he was free to let his imagination run romantic riot without weakening the effect of his satire.

  The fact that in the fiftieth year of his authorship, after publishing at least fifty separate works, most of them popular, Lord Lytton had still vigor and freshness enough to make a new anonymous reputation with “The Coming Race” would seem to indicate that critics had not fairly gauged his versatility, and also that an erroneous fixed idea had been formed of his style.

  My two favourite novels are Dickens’s “Tale of Two Cities” and Lytton’s “Coming Race.” Both these books I can read again and again, and with an added pleasure. Only my delight in the last is always marred afresh by disgust at the behaviour of the hero, who, in order to return to this dull earth, put away the queenly Zoe’s love.

  “The Coming Race,” published anonymously and never acknowledged during his life, was an unexpected product of his mind, but is useful to mark his limitations. It is a forecast of the future, and proves, as nothing else could so well do, the utter absence in Bulwer of the creative imagination. It is an invention, cleverly conceived, mechanically and rather tediously worked out, and written in a style astonishingly commonplace. The man who wrote that book (one would say) had no heaven in his soul, nor any pinions whereon to soar heavenward. Yet it is full of thought and ingenuity, and the central conception of “vril” has been much commended. But the whole concoction is tainted with the deadness of stark materialism.

Kenelm Chillingly, 1873

  There is one—perhaps only one—of the criticisms which have been passed on Lord Lytton as a novelist that a candid review of his works will prove to be undeserved. He never wrote himself out. “Kenelm Chillingly” is in all respects a characteristic performance, and will leave its author’s reputation unaltered for better or worse. It may be that the characters are unreal, the thought shallow, and the feeling artificial; but from the days of “Pelham” onwards Lord Lytton’s works have shown a singular capacity for living through such accusations without needing to live them down. And whatever merits there were in Pelham are just as conspicuous in Kenelm. The author has kept pace with the times, and unless his public has grown more critical or is blasé with the number of competitors for its favour there is no reason why his last success should be less than his first.

  If he had been content to abandon his purpose in “Chillingly,” and end with the first volume by some such commonplace contrivance as giving “motive power” to his hero in the love of Cecilia Travers, it would have been the most perfect of his works in unity of humorous sentiment.

  I can only once remember thoroughly breaking down and making a discreditable exhibition of feeling over a book, though I have before now been moved to tears of another sort by the music of some chant of battle. It happened when I was a lad of seventeen or eighteen, and the work was “Kenelm Chillingly.” I read it till the small hours of the morning, and wept over the death of Lilly. It interested me much in after-years to learn from his biography that that episode was more or less real, taken from the life-experience of the writer and that he, too, broke down when he read it aloud. It had been written from the heart, and hence its hold upon the human sympathies.

  The story of “Kenelm Chillingly; his Adventures and Opinions,” by Lord Lytton is so simple, the plot so slight, that any one who takes up this novel hoping to find exciting adventures in it will be disappointed; but, on the other hand, we know of more than one habitual novel-reader who has cried before reaching the end, and no one can lay this book down without feeling the better for the pictures shown us of an upright country gentleman and his quaint, original son, of a noble woman who bears a secret sorrow bravely and patiently, and of one of the prettiest, most lovable heroines which an author of the male sex has ever drawn.

General

  Tickler.  “As for Mr. Bulwer, laying the most hackneyed common-places out of view, the majestic features, elegant mien, intense loves, and indomitable nerves which his heroes share with ten thousand Belvilles and Delvilles—these air-drawn personages are nothing, if not coxcombical. Who can think, with common patience of his endless chatter about their tapering fingers, their ‘feet small to a fault,’ their velvet robes-de-chambre, and the violet damask curtains of their dressing-rooms?”
  North.  “Horrid puppyism!—These books, however, all contain detached scenes of interest and power, both serious and comic—they are all written with ease and vigour, and abound in sentences and expressions which speak the man of observation and reflection—they convey the impressions of an ardent, ambitious, energetic mind, and of an elegant taste in letters.”

  Edward Lytton Bulwer has vigorous and varied powers; in all that he has touched on he has shown great mastery; his sense of the noble, the beautiful, or the ludicrous, is strong; he can move at will into the solemn or the sarcastic; he is equally excellent in describing a court or a cottage; and is familiar with gold spurs and with clouted shoon.

  You speak of Bulwer’s remarks on Englishwomen [“England and the English”] and their aristocratic tendencies. I doubt not they are true in the main. I have read only the first volume of his work as yet—a remarkable book, especially considering the haste in which it seems to have been thrown off. I felt that a man who could write so good a book ought to have written a better. He is generally superficial, and yet looks so often beneath the surface, that one wishes he had been more just to himself and his subject. His notions of religion are very crude. With all his egotism, he writes like a true friend of the people, of the mass of men. Is he not worthy this highest praise?

  In a vivid wit, in profundity and a Gothic massiveness of thought, in style, in a calm certainty and definiteness of purpose, in industry, and above all, in the power of controlling and regulating by volition his illimitable faculties of mind, he is unequalled, he is unapproached.

  If you care about the apinions, fur good or evil, of us poor suvvants, I tell you, in the most candied way, I like you, Barnet. I’ve had my fling at you in my day…. but I like you. One may objeck to an immence deal of your writings, which, betwigst you and me, contain more sham scentiment, sham morallaty, sham poatry, than you’d like to own; but, in spite of this, there’s the stuf in you: you’ve a kind and loyal heart in you, Barnet—a trifle deboshed, perhaps; a kean i, igspecially for what’s comic (as for your tradgady, it’s mighty flatchulent), and a ready plesnt pen. The man who says you are an As is an As himself. Don’t believe him, Barnet; not that I suppose you wil,—for, if I’ve formd a correck apinion of you from your wucks, you think your smallbeear as good as most men’s: every man does,—and why not? We brew, and we love our own tap—amen; but the pint betwigst us, is this stewpid, absudd way of crying out, because the public don’t like it too. Why shood they, my dear Barnet? You may vow that they are fools; or that the critix are your enemies; or that the wuld should judge your poams by your critticle rules, and not their own; you may beat your breast, and vow you are a marter, and you won’t mend the matter. Take heart, man! you’re not so misrabble after all; your spirits need not be so very cast down; you are not so very badly paid. I’d lay a wager that you make, with one thing or another,—plays, novvles, pamphlicks, and little odd jobbs here and there—your three thowsnd a-year. There’s many a man, dear Bullwig, that works for less, and lives content. Why shouldn’t you? Three thowsnd a-year is no such bad thing,—let alone the barnetcy: it must be a great comfort to have that bloody hand in your skitching.

  Lord Lytton is, many believe, the greatest of English novelists, and it is probable that he will always be ranked among the classic writers of his country…. The general tendency of his works is immoral, and they are nearly all imbued with a sickly and shallow philosophy. He has no faith in humanity. He breaks down the barriers between right and wrong. By presenting vice divested of its grossness he renders it attractive. Instead of holding up virtue as the only source of felicity he makes his criminals happy men, and challenges for them in every condition our admiration.

  Bulwer is rather an eloquent and accomplished rhetorician than a delineator of life and character. His intellect and feelings are both narrowed by his personal character, and things which clash with his individual tastes he criticizes rather than delineates. Everything he touches is Bulwerized. A man of large acquirements, and ever ready to copy or pilfer from other authors, he discolors all that he borrows.

  Do you mean calmly, advisedly, and with your eyes open, to have a chapter on the novelists, and omit Bulwer? Or do you (which would be a satisfactory explanation) give him a room to himself? But if so, why not refer to him in this paper as a leader in the highest class of the art, to be mentioned hereafter? Think of “Ernest Maltravers,” and “Alice,” worth all the historical novels—I was near saying that ever were written! You, a poet and dramatist, to forget the passionate unity of that great work! for the two romances complete the single work. And then, even if you succeed in lifting the historical romance over the head of all other kinds of romance (a position which I protest solemnly and vociferously against—as untenable and unworthy of a poet’s editorship), by that very sign, Sir Lytton Bulwer takes throne rank in his “Pompeii” and “Rienzi,” while Mr. James lies under the footstool.

  Burns’ Songs are better than Bulwer’s Epics.

  The brilliant fame of Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer as a novelist, and as a dramatic writer, has tended much to eclipse and disparage his appearances as a poet. In the two former departments he ranks deservedly as a magnate; in the last, his status is more questionable, although, I confess, this is a thing rather to be felt than explained. He constantly touches the confines of success, and stands before the gate—but the “Open Sesame!” comes not to his lips. Perhaps it is that, in his themes, we have rather able and eloquent treatment than that colouring glow of imagination which has been termed an inspiration. With fine descriptive powers, and with boundless range of illustration, there is a want of reliance on simple nature—of that fusion of the poet in his subject, which can alone give that subject consecration—the poetic art, without the poetic vision; and this defect is apparent in all his verse, from his early “Weeds and Wildflowers,” “O’Neil the Rebel,” “Ismael,” and “The Siamese Twins,” down to his “Eva, or the Ill-omened Marriage,” his “Modern Timon,” and his more elaborate and ambitious “King Arthur.” His translations of the poems and ballads of Schiller are, however, justly held in estimation among scholars for their spirit and fidelity.

  Who that ever read that glorious romance [“Zanoni”], with its pictures of love, and life, and death, and the mysteries of the unseen world; the fine dance of the human and the preternatural elements which are in it, and keep time so admirably to the music of the genius which has created both, and the melting sublimity of its close—will deny the author the name of poet?

  The author is an orator, and has tried to be a poet. Dickens’ John the Carrier was perpetually on the verge of a joke, but never made one: Bulwer’s relation to poetry is of the same provoking kind. The lips twitch, the face glows, the eyes light; but the joke is not there. An exquisite savoir faire has led him within sight of the intuitions of poetic instinct. Laborious calculation has almost stood for sight, but his maps and charts are not the earth and the heavens. His vision is not a dream, but a nightmare; you have Parnassus before you, but the light that never was on sea or shore is wanting. The whole reminds you of a lunar landscape, rocks and caves to spare, but no atmosphere. It is fairy-land travelled by dark. How you sigh even for the chaos, the discordia semina of genius, while toiling through the impotent waste of this sterile maturity.

  Few English writers, whose compositions consist chiefly of works in imagination have attained such an eminence in literature as he has done. From “Pelham” to “My Novel,” we have a series of works, extending to about fifty volumes, any one of which productions might suffice to make a reputation for an ordinary novelist…. One of the most characteristic features of Bulwer’s writings is the singular combination of worldly experience—perfect knowledge of life, and especially of life in the upper circles of society, a thorough acquaintance with its selfishness and specious fallacies—ses misères et ses bassesses, with the vast amount of genuine poetry that prevails in his prose writings.

  For Bulwer I always felt a cordial interest, amidst any amount of vexation and pity for his weakness. He seems to me to be a woman of genius enclosed by misadventure in a man’s form. If the life of his affections had been a natural and fortunate one; and if (which would have been the consequence) he had not plunged over head and ears in the metaphysics of morals, I believe he would have made himself a name which might have lasted as long as our literature. He has insight, experience, sympathy, letters, power and grace of expression, and an irrepressible impulse to utterance and industry which should have produced works of the noblest quality; and these have been intercepted by mischiefs which may be called misfortune rather than fault.

  Since seeing Captain Blackwood yesterday I have read over “Night and Morning,” and put in a few words about it; but I really do not feel that I can do more in conscience. For my own part, I think a true partisan of Bulwer’s ought to drop all his intermediate works. To say the best of them that one can, they are still only novels—more interesting than many, and perhaps rather more objectionable than most—freaks of his genius,—whereas his last works show all the nobler qualities of a great mind.

  Bulwer, an industrious writer, with occasional ability, is distinguished for his reverence of intellect as a temporality, and appeals to the worldly ambition of the student. His romances tend to fan these low flames.

  The special ability of Bulwer appears to lie in the delineation of that passion with which the novel is so deeply concerned, the passion of love. All true and manly passions, let it be said, are honored and illustrated in his pages. But he stands alone among novelists of his sex in the portraiture of love, and specially of love in the female breast. The heroism, the perfect trust, the strength in death, are painted by him with a sympathetic truth for which we know not where to seek a parallel. The effect of Eugene Aram’s speech at his trial, upon Madeline, his betrothed,—the calm, beautiful, satisfied smile, which lit up her wan features,—is a golden letter from the very handwriting of nature. Then, where, out of Shakspeare can we find such a series of female portraits as those in “Rienzi?” One scarce knows to which of the masterly delineations to accord the palm. There is the weak, womanly Adeline, strong only in love, able to die beautifully, but not to live well. In Irene, there is love’s complete, ineradicable devotion, all-subduing, spontaneous, self-sacrificing. In Nina, proud love gazes, self-reliant, and self-satisfied, on all the world around, but sinks in womanly tenderness on the breast of the loved one. Adeline is the soft, flower-like woman, growing fair in the calm summer radiance, but withering in the wintry blast. Irene is the human angel, of whom poets have so long sung. Nina is the queen, ready to live with, or die for, her husband-king. Rienzi himself is nobly imagined, endeavoring to tread the surges and engulfed.

  He has written a History, which may take its place on the same shelves with Gibbon and Arnold and Grote. His “Athens, its Rise and Fall,” has extorted praise from all quarters, and is a noble historical work, though but a fragment. In this department of literature Bulwer has succeeded where even Scott failed.

	Read not Milton, for he is dry; nor Shakespeare, for he wrote of common life:
	Nor Scott, for his romances, though fascinating, are yet intelligible:
	Nor Thackeray, for he is a Hogarth, a photographer who flattereth not:
	Nor Kingsley, for he shall teach thee that thou shouldst not dream, but do.
	Read incessantly thy Burke; that Burke who, nobler than he of old,
	Treateth of the Peer and Peeress, the truly Sublime and Beautiful:
	Likewise study the “creations” of “the Prince of modern Romance”;
	Sigh over Leonard the Martyr, and smile on Pelham the puppy:
	Learn how “love is the dram-drinking of existence”;
	And how we “invoke, in the Gadara of our still closets,
	The beautiful ghost of the Ideal, with the simple wand of the pen.”
	Listen how Maltravers and the orphan “forgot all but love,”
	And how Devereux’s family chaplain “made and unmade kings”;
	How Eugene Aram, though a thief, a liar, and a murderer,
	Yet, being intellectual, was among the noblest of mankind.
	So shalt thou live in a world peopled with heroes and master-spirits;
	And if thou canst not realize the Ideal, thou shalt at least idealize the Real.

  Sir E. is a great master of language, and almost unequalled in the construction of fiction. But I think there is some ground for a remark which I have seen of a foreign critic, that he stands too visibly aloof from his own creations—like a deity of Epicurus—and that there is more of his mind than of his heart in his works. Their brilliance is too much like that of ice or marble.

  Bulwer’s “Lost Tales of Miletus” is a most noble book! He is an extraordinary fellow, and fills me with admiration and wonder.

  Whether as an author, standing apart from all literary cliques and coteries, or as a politician, never wholly subject to the exclusive dictation of any political party, he always thought and acted in sympathy with every popular aspiration for the political, social, and intellectual improvement of the whole national life.

  Notwithstanding the eminence attained by the late Lord Lytton in so many different branches of literature, in poetry, in the drama, and in fiction, it is nevertheless strictly true that he was by no means a good English scholar. We have been struck in reading these volumes with the frequent occurrence of wrong words, clumsy constructions, and slipshod grammar; and we think that in some instances his editor would have done well to correct them.

  I am well aware of the modern tendency to belittle Bulwer, as a slight creature; but with the fresh recollection of his books as they fell upon my own boyhood, I cannot recall a single one which did not leave as a last residuum the picture in some sort of the chivalrous gentleman impressed upon my heart. I cheerfully admit that he sometimes came dangerously near snobbery, and that he was uncivil and undignified and many other bad things in the “New Timon” and the Tennyson quarrel; and I concede that it must be difficult for us—you and me, who are so superior and who have no faults of our own—to look upon these failings with patience; and yet I cannot help remembering that every novel of Bulwer’s is skillfully written and entertaining, and that there is not an ignoble thought or impure stimulus in the whole range of his works.

  In one ambition only he altogether failed; but unfortunately that ambition was his most burning and unquenchable one. There was something almost pitiable about the way in which he went on publishing poem after poem without ever attaining such success as would place them high even in the second rank of writers of verse. Nature, bountiful to him in many respects, had denied him the poetical faculty; even his highest performances of this kind would have been better had they been written in prose.

  Among the most famous writers of fiction of the nineteenth century will always be mentioned the name of Sir Bulwer Lytton. More than any other writer, he studied and developed the novel as a form of literature. Almost every novelist has taken some special field and has confined himself to that. Dickens, George Eliot, Thackeray, made occasional incursions on historic ground, but still their chief work was expended upon the novel of life and manners. Lytton attempted, and successfully, every department of fiction.

  Much that he wrote sustains the testimony of his wife and neighbors, that his personal character was not admirable. Marvellous jewelry of thought and fancy, brilliant with many dyes, has he bequeathed us; but he needed the heart that should bring him into sympathy with the phases of humanity, and give him permanency in popular regard.

  Invention and originality are matters of degree, and, though no one can deny that Lytton possessed great inventive powers, he did not put that individual stamp on his work without which no writer is entitled to a place in the foremost rank. He was not self-centred enough; he was too generally emulous to win the highest individual distinction. But his freshness of thought, brilliancy of invention, breadth and variety of portraiture, gave him a just title to his popularity, and, with all allowance for superficial affectations, his generous nobility of sentiment made his influence as wholesome as it was widespread.

  Was Bulwer a poet? His verse unquestionably has many poetical qualities,—grace, melody, striking imagery, picturesqueness,—but lacks that mysterious something, that divine afflatus, which we call poetry. The vigor, polish, and terseness of “St. Stephen’s” would not dishonor the masculine genius of Dryden; “The Lost Tales of Miletus” have charmed scholars with their playful fancy; and the translations from Schiller have been pronounced by Carlyle the ones from which an English reader will get the most vivid idea of the German poet.

  Lytton is one of the authors upon whose merits the critics have never agreed with the public. He won immense popularity in the face of generally hostile criticism, and even his success failed to obtain a reversal of the judgment. Some of his qualities, however, are incontestable. No English author has displayed more industry, energy, versatility, or less disposition to lapse into slovenliness. His last works are among his best.

  Told the same romantic tales with a trifle less of skill and more of clatter than did Scott.

  Bulwer, who knew better, would quite revel in a stagey bombast.

  I read all the novels of Bulwer, for whom I had already a great liking from “The Caxtons” and “My Novel.” I was dazzled by them, and I thought him a great writer, if not so great a one as he thought himself. Little or nothing of those romances, with their swelling prefaces about the poet and his function, their glittering criminals, and showy rakes and rogues of all kinds, and their patrician perfume and social splendor, remained with me; they may have been better or worse; I will not attempt to say. If I may call my fascination with them a passion at all, I must say that it was but a fitful fever.

  He had scholarship; he had indefatigable industry; he had abounding literary ambitions and enthusiasms, but he had no humor; I am afraid he had not a very sensitive conscience; and he had no such pervading refinement of literary taste as to make his work serve as the exemplar for other and honester workers.

  What Reade has in common with his greater brethren, and Lytton has not, is the light and shade of life. In Lytton all is polished glittering brilliance. The light is neither the sunlight of common day nor “the moonlight of romance,” but the glare of innumerable gas lamps,—the rays from the footlights to which he was about to betake himself. All the softer shades disappear, and quiet effects are impossible.

  Their popularity is not of the catchpenny sort; thoughtful people read them, as well as the great drove of the undiscriminating. For they are the product of thought: they show workmanship; they have quality; they are carefully made. If the literary critic never finds occasion to put off the shoes from his feet as in the sacred presence of genius, he is constantly moved to recognize with a friendly nod the presence of sterling talent. He is even inclined to think that nobody else ever had so much talent as this little red-haired, blue-eyed, high-nosed, dandified Edward Bulwer; the mere mass of it lifts him at times to the levels where genius dwells, though he never quite shares their nectar and ambrosia. He as it were catches echoes of the talk of the Immortals,—the turn of their phrase, the intonation of their utterance,—and straightway reproduces it with the fidelity of the phonograph. But, as in the phonograph, we find something lacking; our mind accepts the report as genuine, but our ear affirms an unreality; this is reproduction, indeed, but not creation. Bulwer, himself, when his fit is past, and his critical faculty re-awakens, probably knows as well as another that these labored and meritorious pages of his are not graven on the eternal adamant. But they are the best he can do, and perhaps there is none better of their kind. They have a right to be; for while genius may do harm as well as good, Bulwer never does harm, and in spite of sickly sentiment and sham philosophy, is uniformly instructive, amusing, and edifying.

  Bulwer passed himself off as a grand seigneur and a genius; he was really but a clever man and a dandy, who exploited literature for his social advancement. He affected a lofty originality, but his talents were mostly imitative. His chief gift, almost entirely wanting in his books, but very notable in his life, was what we call finesse. He took from the Byronian Satanism as much as England would put up with in 1840. He copied Victor Hugo secretly and discreetly. A sort of Gothic democrat, he managed at the same time to charm romantic youths and flatter the proletariat by pretending to hurl down that society in whose front rank he aspired to take his place. His novels were terribly long-winded, but there are generations which find such a quality to their taste. When at last it was discovered that his sublimity was a spurious sublimity, that his history was false history, his “middle-ages” bric-a-brac, his poetry mere rhetoric, his democracy a farce, his human heart a heart that had never beat in a man’s breast, his books mere windy bladders,—why, it was too late! The game had been played successfully and was over—the squireen of Knebworth, the self-styled descendant of the Vikings, had founded a family and hooked a peerage.

  Seemed a genius of the very highest order, but it was easily perceived that his dandiacal attitude was not perfectly sincere, that the graces of his style were too laboured and prolix, and that the tone of his novels fostered national conceit and prejudice at the expense of truth. His sentiment was mawkish, his creations were unsubstantial and often preposterous. But the public liked the fastidious elaborateness of a gentleman who catered for their pleasures “with his fingers covered with dazzling rings, and his feet delightfully pinched in a pair of looking-glass boots;” and Bulwer Lytton certainly possessed extraordinary gifts of activity, versatility, and sensitiveness to the requirements of his readers. What has shattered the once-glittering dome of his reputation is what early readers of “Zanoni” called his “fearfully beautiful word-painting,” his hollow rhetoric, his puerile horrors. Towards the end of his glorious career Lord Lytton contrived to prune his literary extravagances, and his latest works are his best.

  For style he cared nothing: his own manner remained the same, explosive, and undisciplined, except in the very rare cases where he was interested in his own productions. But as for the matter, there is no subject capable of romantic treatment which this astonishingly versatile man did not make his own. So long as cheap cynicism, paltry witticisms, and little stories about “success in society” paid, Lytton wrote them, and wrote them as well as stories of this kind can be written. When taste grew ultra-Byronic—perhaps under the stimulus of Lytton’s writing—Lytton followed it as far as was safe, and then commenced writing for the more domestic public. Thieves’ patter was in the fashion for some time, and Lytton promptly showed his admiring public that he knew more about the patter than the thieves themselves. Then came the turn of the historical novel, and “Rienzi,” “The Last of the Barons,” and “Devereux” showed that Lytton could write about any country and any period, and could write quite well enough for his works to sell. His ghost stories scared his readers literally into fits…. His commercial instincts were admirable, but his works have very little relation to literature. Had he lived now, he would have written English, as he could very well have done in his own time if he had cared to take the trouble. He did not care to take the trouble because it did not pay.

  Bulwer’s best quality is his inexhaustible invention; an exciting plot is the chief charm of his numerous stories. What makes him hardly endurable to the purified taste of educated readers of to-day is his inflated style. His narrative tone is foppish; he wants to make a show of his reading, of his worldly wisdom, even of his social position, the only result being that one looks upon him as a “snob.” Hardly one of his novels is wholly uninteresting, not one of them is entirely artistic. If they were to appear to-day they would be devoured with avidity by the great masses of “educated” and tasteless readers, like numerous other novels, only to be almost at once forgotten. They are excellent examples of a large class; of clever mediocrity, which has always had a sufficient public.

  Altogether, with due deduction for the affected, the sensational, the sentimental in Bulwer’s novels, the fact remains that his versatility and his long-continued energy make him a useful sign of the shifting literary currents during the middle years of the century.