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never seems to have occurred to him. that we should reintroduce to the reader As he endows them with every gift to the most delightful of coxcombs, the begin with personal beauty, genius, most triumphant of dandies-that fine culture, courage, readiness and deter- fleur of social humbug and falsity, who, mination- so he makes their progress notwithstanding his Chesterfieldian traintriumphant through a subjugated world. ing and universal irresistibility, is yet a Success is the very condition of their ex- true friend and a true lover, and altoistence; even the poetical trifler who gether worthy of his good fortune. The does nothing, manages by mere doing consummate skill with which so young a of nothing to attract to himself the writer managed to mingle these most difeyes of the world, and acquires a reputa- ferent attributes to make us perfectly tion for which there is no cause that we aware of the illimitable powers of mancan see except the young author's de-agement, flattery, and even polite lying, lightful certainty of success- -the tradi- so gaily exercised by his hero, and yet to tion of fame and glory which has become retain our respect for his real virtue, is inevitable in his mind. We do not say one of the greatest triumphs ever won in that success is his god, for this would be literature. We do not remember any to give but a weak and ineffectual de- other leading character in fiction so enscription of his prevailing sentiment. tirely artificial, yet so true. Pelham's Success is his atmosphere-he under- faithlessness, his astounding fibs, his stands nothing else, believes in nothing self-adaptation to every sort of manelse. That all those paths by which his young heroes-shadows of his own buoyant and intense self-consciousness set out over the earth, must lead one way or another to glory, is a simple necessity of nature to him. He is not even influenced by the fact that the reader wills it so, and that - howsoever the true lover of art or the true student of human nature may prefer that fiction should accommodate itself to the more ordinary rules of actual life-the public loves above everything else "a happy ending." No such secondary cause affects the young Bulwer. He too, like the public, abominates failure nay, he is incapable of it; it does not come within the limit of misfortunes possible to his nature. His young men succeed as he does, as they breathe, by sheer necessity of being. In this point he differs from all other modern writers, most of whom, bound by the timidity of less daring natures, or disabled by the sneers of criticism, allow in general that heroes, like other men, must content themselves with a modest level of good fortune, and cannot all hope to reach the very empyrean of success. But Bulwer allows no such limitation. He will have the highest round on the ladder, the brightest crown within reach. His diplomatist must subdue all opposition; his author must fill the world with his renown; his adventurer must conquer fame | and fortune; his very dreamer, as we have said, must attract to himself the universal attention, wonder, curiosity. and admiring envy of the world.

"Pelham," which is the best of his early works, is the most striking instance of this characteristic. It is not necessary

If

not to say woman; his perfect toleration
of any code of morals, or rather no
morals; his clear realization that politics
are a craft to live by, and the world in
general an oyster to be opened, which
almost in any other hands would disgust
and repel the reader, are hear so skilfully
interwoven with the real honour of the
man, his disinterestedness, his readiness
to serve and help, his power of just reflec-
tion and courageous action, that all our
moralities are silenced on our lips.
any of Sir Walter's virtuous heroes had
committed himself by one-tenth part of
the adventures through which Pelham
moves so lightly, what depths of igno-
miny and remorse would he have
dropped into ! Even Mr. Thackeray's
careless young man, whom he laughs at
and quizzes through three volumes, could
not venture upon half the humbug re-
sorted to by Pelham, without losing the
little hold he has upon our regard. But
so judicious is the combination, so spir-
ited the embodiment of this typical man
of the world, that we accept him as we
would have accepted him had we known
him in person, acknowledging all his arti-
ficiality, his insincerity, his dauntless de-
termination to make himself agreeable at
any cost, without letting these peccadil-
loes at all affect our admiration of him-
self and of the real fund of merit in his
character. This is almost a contradic-
tion to what we have said above of the
youthfulness of Bulwer's earliest works;
for such a mingling of good and evil is
the last thing which youth recognizes as
possible, in most cases. That he had
even in his earliest beginning so much of
a higher insight as enabled him to realize

this profoundest truth of human nature, is perhaps as great a testimony to his power as anything that could be said.

less degree, wfth the followers of this first triumphant hero. The disowned son, Clarence Linden, makes for himself But to return to the consideration with a position in the world which his elder which we started-Pelham is the very and undistinguished brother, heir to all impersonation of success. Over the the family honours, might well envy. whole book there is diffused a subdued Maltravers acquires a European fame. radiance of continual triumph. Be it Godolphin wins his countess, wealth, the scholar's shrewish wife or the grande honour, every thing that heart can aspire dame in a Parisian salon, be it the clever to; and even Philip Morton, after the rogue or the philosophical and titled vo- wild and theatrical heroics of his youth, luptuary, wherever Mr. Pelham tries his reaps such a harvest of honours as fall to inimitable powers he must overcome all the lot of few. The author cannot bear obstacles. With a whisper, with a look, to offer to his children any reward less with a well-timed compliment, he sub-perfect-it is their birthright. The very dues every one whom he encounters. fact of so many men and women of genius Nothing comes amiss to him; and the all appearing together about the same certainty of inevitable triumph is so period of the world's history - all flutterstrong in his mind that he hesitates at no ing the dovecots of social quiet, and winexertion of his skill, whether great orning wondrous honours, above all and small, whether arduous or easy. This everywhere success, is the strangest thing unbounded confidence in himself makes to realize. The critic, if he had the him enter unknown and with few intro- heart, would demand some counterpoise ductions the most brilliant circles in to all this brightness; and here and there Paris, calmly certain to win all the laurels such a counterpoise is, indeed, afforded possible and leads him secure through to us in the blighted splendour of Glanthe labyrinth of the thieves' den in Lon- ville, and the melodramatic misfortunes don. Probably, with the mixture of dar- of Mordaunt. But with these fine pering and coolness peculiar to him, he sonages we have not sympathy enough would consider the perils of the last the to accept them as shadows in the picture least alarming of the two. A vulgar--they are not half so lifelike, nay, they minded observer might call Pelham's are dead as mummies beside our inimconfidence impudence; but it is not im-itable dandy, our knight of universal conpudence it is the delightful sense of a good fortune which has never failed him; which he indeed deserves, but which no man ever secures by merely deserving it. His luck is simply unbounded. If at any time it may happen to him to be disconcerted or even discomfited for a moment, out of that very discomfiture will come the means of Success. Success-always Success! He is one of those born to rule the world, and to turn every stream into the channel that suits him; and perhaps this very consciousness is the one that most powerfully influences us in our admiration for him. We go forth with him in the fullest confidence, knowing that however discouraging the circumstances may appear, they will but whet the courage and make more conspicuous the triumph of our hero. How dexterously he manages Lord Guloseton -how he humours Job Jonson!- how he wins over even Mrs. Clutterbuck! He is gaily invincible without effort, without overstrain. He cannot be beaten -his own pride and his author's alike forbid it. Pelham was born but to conquer.

The same thing is true, though in a

quest. This is the great fundamental distinction of the young Bulwer's heroes. They are all successful men. Sometimes they are practical and enjoy their success; sometimes they are sentimental and despise it: but at least they come out invariable winners out of every struggle. It is the condition of their existence that they succeed.

And by the side of these accomplished heroes, so fertile in resource, so fortunate in friends, so gifted in conversation, what a curious apparition is that of the old man of the world, whom the author loves to introduce, not by way of obvious moral, yet surely with a certain sense of the obverse of the picture, and consciousness that the darker side of worldliness should somehow be brought into evidence! The sketch of Savile in "Godolphin," for instance, is one of singular vividness and force. He is not an old villain like Lord Lilburn in "Night and Morning," but only a perfectly suave, irreproachable Epicurean, occupied about his personal comfort as the younger men are about their progress and reputation, and following that grand aim with a steadfastness, which becomes respectable by

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or the torments of a conventional hell. That wise, keen, cultivated, unloving intelligence, which up to its last moment of mortal breath is visibly as individual, as potent in its self-concentration, as clearsighted and as dauntless as in its prime, what an amazing mystery is its disappearance beyond our ken and vision! This, we feel, is not such stuff as either angels or devils are made of -and what then? It is curious in the very first rejoicing outburst of romance to catch this first tone of the wonder which seems to have haunted his life and beguiled him into much study, and perhaps some credulity, in his later days.

dint of mere continuance, and grows into something like a moral quality in its perfect seriousness and good faith. Savile's death, which is accomplished with perfect calm and coolness- the philosopher being determined to retain his comfort to the last moment, and dying quite undisturbed by any invasions of the emotional or spiritual—is a curious conception to have occurred to a young man. It has, we believe, a deeper truth to nature than the more amiable dreams with which the imagination of mankind, always pitiful of the last scene in a tragedy, has surrounded the conventional deathbed. That the approach of death must awaken emotions of a profound and penetrating character is one of the delusions which nothing but experience will banish from the general mind and it will always seem incredible that a man should be able to die without thinking of God and of the judgment to come. For this reason the picture of the death-bed of the philosophical man of the world, so strictly in accordance with his life, is not only a very original and striking sketch, but manifests the existence in the young writer, even at this early period, of that profound and searching curiosity (to call it by no higher name) into the last issues and mysteries of life and death which afterwards tempted him into the realms of Magic and Mystery, and seems during his whole life to have existed with unusual strength and persistency within him. When we find him at so early a period tracking the steps of his worldly sage down into the last darkness, we can understand better his fanciful investigations into the mystery of the life elixir in later days; and the strange and weird impersonation of that thirst for mere existence which could buy life even by the sacrifice of soul, with which he astonished and troubled many readers further on in his career. Already, amid all the glow and exuberance of youth, amid the throng of the young heroes, victorious in love, in Something of the moral curiosity which war, in diplomacy, and in song, with we have attributed to Bulwer in respect whom the young author sweeps along tri- to the last mystery of existence, no doubt umphant, had this wonder seized him. moved him to the composition of those Not the wonder and curiosity, so com- stories which we have called Romances mon to men, as to what must occur when of Crime. To trace out, through the disthe last boundary line is passed, and we mal tragedy of Eugene Aram, how the ourselves have entered upon the new ex- mind of a scholar could be moved to the istence beyond death with all its incom- meanness of robbery and brutality of prehensible changes. Bulwer's curiosity murder, is a morbid exercise of this great takes a different form. His mind in- sentiment, and the effect to ourselves is a stinctively selects that type of being which most disagreeable one, characterized by it is most difficult to translate in imagin- all the faults and few of the merits of the ation either into the beatitudes of heaven | author's peculiar genius; but yet it is a

Bulwer, however, always retained a fondness for the character which no other hand has drawn so well, - that of the accomplished, polished, able, experienced, clear-sighted, and selfish man of the world; with amiability but without heart; possessing no moral code save that which enjoins upon members of society the necessity of not being found out, and no spiritual consciousness of any kind. He grew more merciful as he grew older, ripening this same impersonation into warmer and kinder and more human shape, replacing the Savile of his remorseless youth with the Alban Morley of mellower days; but it always remained one of his favourite characters, and it seems to us unquestionably one of his best. It is our natural standard, the ideal upon which we fall back when we wish to identify the philosopher of society; just as Pelham has been, for more than one generation, consciously or unconsciously, the model of the brilliant young diplomatist, the splendid neophyte of a school of politicians which we fear is dying out among us-a class of men educated not only at school and college, but by constant and much diversified studies in life, and inheriting the worldly wisdom and knowledge of men acquired by their fathers, the training of a race.

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searching and anxious investigation into | to their origin, is not of a kind which a moral problem. The still earlier ro- could ever gain the sympathy of humanmance of "Paul Clifford" is neither so ity. We shrink from the investigation of dismal nor so tedious. It is an attempt such dread events. We prefer not to to show how the evil influences of educa- know how by one tortuous way after antion could corrupt a young spirit natur- other the murderer is led from blood to ally honourable and pure. And no doubt blood. It is the least seductive of all the attempt is thoroughly successful; and kinds of guilt, and we believe may be no one who reads the narrative of the safely trusted to lead no one into imitayoung highwayman's early days will be at tion; but perhaps for that very reason it any loss to perceive how and why it was is the least popular. There are readers that he came to take up with that perilous enough who love to be stimulated and exprofession. It is, however, very much cited by descriptions of the rise and demore difficult to find out how a true velopment of another kind of passion brother of the school of Pelham and Lin- descriptions really much more dangerous den, a gay, noble, generous, chivalric, and and much more likely to tempt and lead commanding hero, finding his place natu- astray than all the spiritual anatomy of rally among gentlemen, and possessed not "Lucretia ;" but while we admit the latonly of the instincts but the manners of ter to be less pernicious, it is more inhuthe best society, should have been man. Lord Lytton himself, who seems to brought up among the thieves and ribalds | have considered this investigation of of the lowest dens of London, without moral mysteries as one of the rights of even the consciousness to elevate him, his office, was evidently somewhat bewilthat he himself was of better blood. This dered and disconcerted by the storm of is the great error of the conception; but opposition which rose against this work. it is a weakness of a generous kind, and Almost sternly, as well as indignantly, he one which naturally belongs to the roman- repels the accusation of having lent the tic age and spirit. It is far less easy to weight of his name and authority to the account for the much more elaborate ef- defence and encouragement of crime;" fort made by our author in "Lucretia," to and with very good reason; for, certainly, trace the full development of crime, out of all works of fiction ever composed, of mere heartlessness and ambitious long-"Lucretia" is the least adapted to "ening for the possession of an old man's courage" crime. But he misses, we fortune, to the darkest deliberation of think, the real point in the charges guilt, long premeditated and often repeat- against him when he attributes this unied murder. He himself tells us with in-versal disapprobation to the public dislike dignation that the book in which he embodied this dark history was attacked by the critics as a book of immoral tendency; and it is evident that this reproach struck him to the heart. So deep was the blow that he did what no writer should allow himself to be tempted to do: he published a reply to the remarks of his assailants, and a defence of the attacked novel. Such defences are always futile. It is true, indeed, that the horrible crimes of Lucretia are followed by such tremendous justice, and are throughout presented to us in such a gloomy and revolting light, that even in her softest moments we are never allowed to pity or take part with the guilty woman; and in this point of view the book is infinitely more moral than Maltravers, for instance, in which something very like vice is made to look like a more than ordinarily ethereal virtue. Nobody can say that crime is recommended or excused in the gloomy pages of "Lucretia;" but the curiosity which investigates the workings of such a mind, and endeavours to trace its crimes

of painful impressions. The cause is deeper. Men and women are almost all subject to movements of the passion of love, the passion most discussed in books, and accordingly follow with a certain inevitable interest even its darkest and guiltiest developments. But few of us are moved with homicidal impulses, and, therefore, human sympathy totally fails in their analyzation. The first may do us harm they are distinctly immoral and evil in their tendency; yet even the sternest moralist can scarcely shut his ears entirely to them, unless they stoop to the lowest and coarsest depths. But our interest fails in the other, however finely and tragically drawn. Human nature has no sympathy with the murderer as it has with the lover, however guilty.

On this point, accordingly, the author, carried away by his art and by his inclination to investigate the secrets which he saw before him, parted company with his audience to his evident astonishment. It is clear that this was not only a surprise, but something of a shock to him; and

consequently here his anatomy of crime | the old professors of occult arts, who reended abruptly—a fact which every true fused to be bound by mortal conditions, admirer of Lord Lytton hailed with pleas- and set all their faculties to work at the ure. We do not suppose that in the other inconceivable task of extorting a kind of still wilder and stranger field of occult eternity from nature. To mankind in geninvestigation to which he more than once eral any such attempt to interfere with recurred there was so complete a separa- the common fate and constitution of the tion and failure of sympathy between his race has always seemed unhallowed work; readers and himself; yet it is certain that but it has undoubtedly exercised a strong the class to whose interest he appeals in fascination over many individual men. the weird romance of "Zanoni," and in It is this idea which Lord Lytton has the still more weird adventures of the endeavoured to embody in Zanoni. He "Strange Story," is a different class from has attempted to place before us two huthat which applauded "Pelham," or which man beings who have achieved Immorgave a new, nobler, and wider reputation tality-one being the representative of than any he had gained in his youth to the Everlasting Age, beyond passion, beyond author of the "Caxtons." Yet the mys- personal feeling-calm, benignant, bloodterious unseen world which surrounds us, less, an intellect rather than a man; but of which we know so little by our reason, yet an intellect with all the moral sentiand so much by our fancy, about which ments intensified and strengthened, spotevery one believes much which his mind less in integrity and goodness, though rejects, and feels much which his senses dead to human affections. The other are unconscious of, must ever have a possesses an immortality of Youth, full、 charm, not only for the fanciful and vis- of the capacity to enjoy, and alas! also ionary, but for all to whom facts and cer- to love, and as a necessity of that love to tainty do not sum up the possibilities of sorrow and despair; to be subject to all existence. We have said that the germ the penalties which make length of life of that spiritual curiosity which led to a punishment rather than a blessing. We such conceptions as those of Zanoni, need not remind the reader how Zanoni Mejnour, and Margrave, appears to us to loves, how his everlasting calm is broken, show itself in the singular picture of the how simple manhood, with all its cares worldly philosopher's death-bed, above and anxieties, breaks into the perfection referred to. The idea of that calm and of his being; and how finally he gives up unimpassioned, yet intense love of life the life which had come to hang upon the which makes the sage of society decline existence of another, in order to save that to lose in sleep the hour or two of exist- other the trembling and wholly human ence which remained to him, might well wife, whose love has drawn him out of his develop into the acceptance of any or- lofty solitude and elevation. Zanoni dies, deal which would prolong that life, wheth- because to outlive love was impossible to er it was the mysterious spiritual struggle him, and all around him, wife and child, with the powers of darkness embodied in were mortal. But Mejnour lives, who one romance, or the wild magical concoc-loved not; whose sphere was thought and tion of the material Elixir in the other. not affection. This is the moral of the There is something wildly attractive to the imagination in such a thought, as is evident by its constant reappearance in poetic literature. There is, we suppose, no more widely-spread superstition than that which conjures up the figure of the everlasting wanderer- the Juif errant of Christendom; and it is touchingly characteristic of humanity that this strange figure should be always to the popular imagination the victim of a curse, a creature doomed and miserable, not a superior being, honoured and elevated above men. What an affecting revelation of the humility of human nature and loyal reception of its great law and condition of mortality lies in this widespread and universal myth! Not such, however, was the idea of the mystic philosophers, of

wild fable, and yet not all its teaching; the moral itself has been dwelt upon before in many a primitive legend of nymph and fairy, through which humanity has always glorified its own conditions, by insisting upon the misery of immortality without love; but to this familiar lesson Lord Lytton has added an original suggestion. In all ancient fables of the kind the desire for earthly immortality has been a wildly presumptuous and irreligious desire, the art that aimed at it a "black art," and the end generally attained by that immemorial bargain with the devil, the possibility of which has thrilled humankind for centuries. But the bargain which Faust made is totally different from the ordeal by which Mejnour and Zanoni fight their way into immortality. Theirs is not

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