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an expedient possible to another kind of intelligence - he made a series of remarkable efforts to escape on the other side by demonstrating it to be within the reach of ordinary human agencies, cultivated to their highest point. How far he succeeded in this attempt is a totally different question; but to ourselves it is impossible to accept "Zanoni " and a "Strange Story" as mere freaks of genius- the wild outpouring of a morbid fancy. The one book has a distinct relation to the other. It is the obverse of the medal; and by the very effort and strain of the contrast proves how strong a hold this theory had of the author's mind.

In the curious impersonation of Margrave, Lord Lytton has developed an idea altogether new to modern art. His leading thought here is to represent the effect of a mere vulgar love of life, as life, upon a corrupt and selfish, yet powerful intelligence. He gives us a glimpse of a fiery, presumptuous spirit, with no moral restraint upon its actions, and with an insatiable desire for existence and enjoyment, which, after wearing out in wild indulgence and passion the single human life alotted to it, finds suddenly within its grasp, by help of crime, treachery, and murder, the means of indefinitely prolonging, or rather resuming, that life

a pact with evil, but a struggle against it. The first step of initiation consists in the banishment of all corrupt thoughts, all desire after the pleasures of the flesh. These mystic neophytes are like the virgin-knights of Christian legend watching their consecrated arms all night amid assaults and temptations of every kind, ere they ventured to put on the armour and take their place among proved warriors. This novel rendering of an old dream is one of the most remarkable developments of the author's individuality and independence of thought. Not half-adozen, perhaps, of the many readers who have been thrilled by that most wonderful of ghost-stories, "The House and the Brain," afterwards published under the title of "The Haunted and the Haunters," but has felt a certain annoyance and resentment at the latter part of the storythe "attempt to explain," as people say, and to bring down the wildly marvellous within the reach of material means and ordinary reason. We confess to having shared the feeling; and yet no feeling could be more unreasonable for the whole aim and object of the author is this so-called explanation. For this he weaves his net of wonder before our eyes, for this summons out of the teeming darkness those pale shapes of mystery those luminous shadows. His object, from beginning to end, is to prove — or means which it seizes remorselessly. to attempt to prove - that human nature But the renewed life thus secured, being may possess itself of the secrets of the sought from the lowest motives, and by unseen, and that without guilt, or even the most guilty and cruel means, instead presumption that the clue to all that of elevating, debases its possessor. mystic labyrinth of unknown powers and gives him the most brilliant outward apintelligences is in our hands, if we but pearance of youth, and stimulates all his chose to seize and follow it-that this superficial gifts and the meaner and crustrange and awful knowledge may be eller parts of his intellectual nature; but turned to purposes of the highest benev- it takes his manhood from him, and all olence; and, so far from being necessari- the special characteristics of humanity. ly a "black art," may be the instrument He becomes a splendid, beautiful, engagof the highest purity and perfection. It ing, and destructive animal, without heart, is this which gives its originality among sympathy, or capacity for affection. In modern works, and in the realm of poetry, short, he is made into the Faun of classic to "Zanoni." We are not in a position to romance—a creature to whom life, air, inform the reader whether Lord Lytton sunshine, mere existence, is everything, really believed in the possibility of such whose universe is concentrated in itself, an attainment; but, whether he had any and who neither knows nor understands personal faith in it or not, here is his the- nor aspires to anything beyond the wild ory-and that it was a favourite theory and somewhat foolish whirl of physical with him no reader of his works will enjoyment in which its empty days are doubt. Probably we would state it more spent. In one of the most poetical efforts clearly were we to say that his eager, high- of recent fiction, Mr. Hawthorne set forth toned, and impatient mind, impatient of before us the means by which a native boundary or limit anywhere, had difficulty Faun of the Italian woods was charmed in allowing anything to be supernatural: and stung by the terrible realities of life and as it was impossible for him to escape into manhood- -a picture of which most from the supernatural by denying its ex-readers have acknowledged the fantastic

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but genuine power. We do not think that | works of mystic meaning-works which, the same justice has been done to Lord to the minds of many, represent rather a Lytton's equally powerful-and let us momentary aberration of genius than any allow equally fantastic-conception. Yet serious thought or purpose. To our own Lord Lytton's has so far the advantage mind, however, they represent a very imover the other that there is a profound portant feature of Lord Lytton's peculiar moral involved in the wild story. Many and individual organization. His strong a nameless minstrel, and some of the conviction that no kind of knowledge greatest of poets, have used their powers ought to be forbidden, and that all kinds to show to us the misery of that lofty of knowledge ought to be pursued in a loneliness of soul in which the man pos- noble and lofty way, not for selfish ends sessed of supernatural power is elevated or individual gratification, whether that above his fellows. In the greatest of all of the body or the spirit, is to our thinkthe fictions which have been woven about ing even more clearly embodied in these this mysterious theme, it has been the works than is the natural tendency of an poet's object to mock the contemptible imaginative and aspiring mind towards the pettiness of that world of coarse magic marvellous and unaccountable. Everyand debased spirits through which Faust body is aware of, and many have smiled storms in scornful greatness of his hu- at, the interest which he is known to have manity. But no one has shown us how taken in the so-called spiritual manifestahumanity itself may be debased by a con- tions which are still so hotly discussed nection altogether lawless and selfish with among us, and about the nature of which the supernatural. The character of Mar- opinions are as much, or more divided grave throughout is wonderfully consist- than ever. Most of us, however, by way ent and striking. He is not a man: un- of making up to ourselves for the exagder the guise of manhood, does not the gerated respect which we pay to the reader perceive at once the strange earth- | guesses of Science, permit ourselves an ly being earthly, yet with no real sym- absolute licence of contempt for the pathetic relation to the earth, playful, ca- guesses in another direction, even when ressing, and cruel as a young tiger, sense- the latter are much more naturally symless as the merest brute, frivolous, giddy, pathetic to our minds. The truth which and volatile, more peevish than a child, concerns us in our lives is probably as more destructive than any fabulous ogre? little affected by the one kind of specuWe submit that no critic and few readers lation as by the other. But poetry must have done full justice to the weird con- always have infinitely more to do with ception. Most of the comments upon the vagaries of the Spiritualist, and even the work have been occupied with the im- of the Magician, than with the ghastly probability of the machinery, and above dreams of anatomy; and for our all with the unsatisfactoriness of the "ex-part we cannot but recognize in Lord planations." The Cauldron in the last chapter and the gigantic Foot which penetrates into the magic circle, have quite obliterated the real meaning and power of the strange tale. Perhaps now, when we who are Lord Lytton's contemporaries have suddenly become, by the touch of that Death which has removed him from our midst, that Posterity which is the final judge of all art—justice may be done to the highly wrought and everywhere consistent idea of the "Strange Story." The The group of historical novels is one one passion which remains in the Faun- which it is somewhat difficult to discuss Man, the absorbing and devouring eager-except at length and to discuss them at ness of his search for the means of pre- length would be beyond the possibilities serving life, throws a tragic light upon of our space. They are all conscientious his last appearance; but even in the and careful performances, founded upon tragedy there is nothing which ennobles. a principle much more thorough than that It is a wild, strange mixture of Intellect which is to be found in most historical and Animalism at which we gaze and novels. Lord Lytton informs us more wonder; it is no longer a man. than once in his prefaces that he does not The reader may perhaps think that we take up a historical period as a help to give disproportionate importance to these | fiction, but deliberately, and of set pur

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Lytton's "Strange Story" at once a fine and curious poetical conception, and the illustration of an interesting theory. Right or wrong, this theory was very dear to his mind: and it is evident that he considered it capable of conveying a lofty and powerful moral lesson - -a lesson which he teaches in other ways, with many an iteration, and to which, as one of the leading principles of his genius, we shall recur again.

pose, uses fiction as a means of illustrat- | but he has not the power to transport us ing history, and making its facts more there. vivid and easily realized. He does not take the costume of a past century to give character and interest to one of those ordinary human romances which abound in all periods, but he employs the lantern of his special art as a means of illuminating the obscurity of the past, and repeating the curious lessons of history, with the additional effect which may be given by the livelier portrait-painting and more dramatic interest of art. This serious aim we may allow that he has carried out with grace and dignity. But perhaps because Art declines the secondary place - perhaps that a warmer inspiration is necessary to transport us bodily into a different age, and give us a living interest in the heroes and heroines whose language and manners are so unlike our own these careful and elaborate studies lay but little hold upon the reader. The fact that the student of history may be war-feast and revel. The art of the novelist ranted in depending upon them, in receiving them as aids to the heavier volumes from which he draws his lore, is a fact to which we bow with infinite respect, but which does not otherwise affect our appreciation of these volumes as works of art. No such certainty could be predicated of "Ivanhoe," which runs away with us, and carries us straight into the lists at Ashby, breathless, without time to ask whether it is correct or not. Lord Lytton is, no doubt, correct in the main, in his reference to the singular faithfulness with which Shakespeare himself, the first of all poetical models, adhered to the old chronicles from which he drew so many of his plots; but Lord Lytton himself is an evidence that our great poet was not always so faithful, and that the fierce partisanship which dictated his picture of "crook-back Richard" has established an image in our minds which no array of facts, and no gentle illumination of fiction, can ever undo. This deviation on the part of Shakespeare from historical accuracy makes the counter inspiration of those who follow him in the path of history all but futile for the reason, we suppose, that Shakespeare's Richard is so entirely real and living that the actual Richard, being dead, has no more chance against him than has the dead lion of the proverb. To this point of inspiration our author (we need not say-for who has ever created like Shakespeare?) does not attain. He presents us with an often brilliant, always careful, learned, and able picture of the time he illustrates,

It requires some boldness, however, to make this assertion in face of the fact that none, we believe, of Lord Lytton's novels have been more popular than his historical series. The Last Days of Pompeii," for instance, a sketch all glorious with purple and gold, all glowing with sentiment and passion, with music and song, had "the good fortune to be so general a favourite with the public" that the author felt himself spared the task of making any comment upon it in the preface to his collected edition. And this popularity, so far as we are aware, continues; and we do not remember any other attempt to make the manners of that far-distant period visible to modern readers which is at all equal in power to the glowing scenes through which the gentle image of the blind Nydia wanders, and in which Glaucus and his friends

has here been so highly acknowledged as to connect itself even with the solemn ruins of the disinterred city, and has given a name to the house, once distinguished as that of the "Dramatic Poet," but which now, to all its English visitors at least, is the house of Glaucus. The same may be said of the fine and careful study of Rienzi, which the author had the satisfaction of seeing translated into Italian, and diligently studied in the land to which it was naturally most interesting. He had even the further gratification of believing that his work had been instrumental in "restoring the great Tribune to his long-forgotten claims on the love and reverence of the Italian land"-a real and high reward such as at all times goes to the heart of the artist. The two fine pictures drawn from English history of "Harold" and the "Last of the Barons," should be still more popular on English ground. The very names, however, of all these works show the strictly historical character which their author has chosen for them. The catastrophe of each is a public and historical catastrophe. In "Ivanhoe," on the contrary, our interest is centred in a group of private persons, with whose fate no doubt the legendary fortunes of the lion-hearted king are involved, but who have no place otherwise in the annals of their time. The Templar and the Jewess are pure creations of romance, and their fate is brought about by the same agencies which work in the Greek drama and in the modern poem. It is not any vast convulsion

of the country, no historical crisis which | many a triumphant proof on both sides, cuts the knot of their distresses. But to show that it must, and that it could Lord Lytton has made a different selec- not be. We recollect even, with the hot tion of materials. He has taken in every confidence of youth, pledging our own case a period of history which is summed discrimination, save the mark! against up and concluded with tragic complete- the possibility that an author so long beness in some great downfall; the last of fore the world, and, according to the the barons, the last of the Saxon kings, judgment of adolescence, worn out althe last of the Tribunes even the last ready, could be the writer of anything so days of the doomed city. Thus, as he fresh, so full of life, so original, and so himself says, he allows History to choose pure. The impression made by the the complications of his tragedy, and has "Caxtons" at the moment of its appearevery event mapped out before him inde-ance, was not less than that made by the pendent of his creating will. Upon no real first work of a great author, which secondary group whom he is free to deal appeared - we may be allowed some natwith as he pleases does he direct our at-ural pride in saying-in these same tention, but boldly fixes upon Harold pages some years after, the "Scenes himself, upon Warwick, upon the noble of Clerical Life." It is a most curious revolutionary of medieval Rome. This is and indeed unaccountable fact, that the bold and it is perhaps wise in a histori- painful and unfortunate "Lucretia" was cal point of view-but we doubt if it is a product of about the same period, and advantageous in point of Art. Fiction, of powers equally matured; and that bepoetry, does not love to be fettered; and fore the din of disapproval which waited the stronger the bonds of historical accu- that performance had died away, the racy, the less easy are the movements of author was called upon to receive the the wayward handmaid who loves no laurels of a new and anonymous reputabondage at all. We doubt, therefore, tion. He did not keep the public long whether the highest spontaneity of origi- in suspense: and the fame thus won by nal work can be conjoined with so stern universal acknowledgment became his an adherence to historical truth, or highest and surest claim to immortality. whether anything beyond what Lord Lyt- All that went before has fallen into secton has certainly attained -a careful, ondary importance in comparison with elaborate, conscientious representation, this later group of contemporary novels. sometimes brilliant, always admirable in The splendid heroics and vast successes its way, but seldom inspiring us with any of his youth, the mystic conceptions of absolute sense of reality- could be hoped his weird imagination, and those burrowfor by this mode of treatment. Our his-ings into cause and effect which led him torical knowledge or rather our vivid to examine crime as well as mystery perception of the history we know-is no doubt quickened and animated, and that is a result worth the labour; but the general world has not widened round us, nor has any new man or woman taken possession of our mind and fancy. The result is good-but it is not the highest that might have been obtained.

have all been thrown into the shade by the larger, mellower, broader pictures of an art which had purified itself from its native exaggeration, and to which true humour and the tenderest pathos had come with time. Bulwer had been first among the magicians of a score of previous years; but now Bulwer was beaten We are not aware how long was the - by Lytton. Wonderful strife and pause between the last production of Lord most singular victory! There is a size and Lytton in what we may call his first pe- greatness and poetical force about the one riod, and the singular outburst of devel- which was not to be seen in the other. oped and mature power of which the world This is the first point of difference that became sensible in the "Caxtons." We strikes us. It is the world itself that has are old enough to remember the first ap-grown and widened out, and filled into pearance of that wonderful book. The vaster horizons; there are more people questions, the bold replies, the whis- in it, and more varieties of people. There pered suggestions as to its authorship, is more emotion, and that of a nobler and which resembled so pathetically the more generous kind. We cannot say questions and answers lately hazarded that there is more talk, for conversation touching the same author's last produc- had never been wanting in vast quantity: tion. "Bulwer!" "No, impossible! it but how much the very talk has widened cannot be Bulwer," said the whole world-growing playful, natural, genial, inof readers, debating the question, with stead of pedantic, or high-flown, as it

used to be! What a difference! More | shaken; the apprenticeship must be carsky, more earth, more and bigger people. ried out, through what changed circumNo longer the stock triumphs and stock stances soever the training has to be acdifficulties of old! but now spontaneous complished. This leading and favourite human complications through which the idea is never abandoned. It is to be disnew personages struggle hardly, not al- covered in everything Lord Lytton wrote. ways having the best of it. Such was But how fine and how curiously the new world which opened to us in the widened out as we have said, from all the "Caxtons," and which England received traditions of his earlier life, is the first with acclamations, seeing itself as in a group which he sets before us! Instead a glass - yet not itself, something nobler, of the little round of worldlings, the flutbetter, more beautiful. The effect has tering fashionables, the calm and polished lasted, though the one series of books, votaries of self, the pedants and the butlike the other, has long lost its novelty, terflies-comes softly, unfolded out of and has been judged by the calm judg-nature itself and truest art, that cluster ment of time and years. At this present of kindred figures. The scholar Austin, period the productions which come to the mind of every reader when Lord Lytton's name is mentioned, are not the earlier works which we have just discussed, but the more recent-the loftier, broader produce of a mellowed intelligence and a riper heart.

the soldier Roland, each with his faults so playfully, so tenderly indicated, held up to us in full light, irradiated with that smile of humour, most human of all faculties-that smile which is of the very essence of respect and love, though it sometimes bears the guise of ridicule; But the subtle difference which exists the mother, foolish and simple, yet wise between these books and their predeces- as love and truth can make her, a homesors, is intensified by a resemblance not ly, commonplace woman, yet sacred; the less striking. It is no longer the young sanguine, selfish uncle, hero of a thouman setting out upon life, and feeling sand schemes, unscrupulous out of mere that the world is his oyster, which by buoyancy, animal spirits, and self-confistrength or skill he has to open. Instead dence. How clearly the whole party of this there grows upon us in soft radi- stands out before us, arguing, reflecting, ance a family group, with other families discussing, pulling every subject to pieces interlacing, widening out the canvas that comes into their hands, with a sponyet lo! through the genial and gentle taneous warmth and naturalness of comcrowd, there, too, is the Youth in his per-ment, which is so unlike, yet so like, the ennial apprenticeship, setting out yet always clever, but often stilted and interonce and once again to persuade fortune minable, conversations of the previous and to win fame. It is Pisistratus, the works! We are never tired of the Caxscholar's anachronism, moving lightly ton talk. It never falls into an exchange under the bonds of human affection, of abstractions-it is always lively, induty, and love, unknown to the independ-dividual, humourous, kind. The author ent heroes of an earlier day; it is the loves all these good people. He is tenpoet Leonard groping through his first der of them, letting us laugh at them with doubting steps into the mystery of life; a soft, kind, and genial laughter, never it is the proud and poor gentleman Lionel with the ridicule which is of kin to conHaughton not all-conquering as of old, | tempt. How great a difference this yet somehow finding his way to success makes in literature as in life! But true and honour; a being not so great in so- humour, which is the rarest of gifts, is alciety, not so wonderful in talk, but ways kind - cannot exist, indeed, withtruer, broader in his personality, more of out secret admiration, veneration, deep a man. The Maltravers-Meister, making and tender insight. Austin Caxton is as his way through cycles of semi-disreput- admirable an example of this as can be able adventure and questionable relations produced,-as fine as uncle Toby, of -the Godolphin, gloomy and grand-whom, indeed, there is a distinct refleceven the Pelham, all-accomplished in his tion, both in the scholar and the soldier foppery, bravery, unscrupulous selfish- brothers. Mr. Caxton is not like Mr. ness, and disinterested devotion are Shandy; he has too sweet a nature to be to be found no longer. But still the author cannot abandon his favourite and unfailing theme. The youth must be trained and shaped into manhood, should the very foundations of the earth be

a bookworm, and is incapable of contempt for anything, except, perhaps, false pretensions or false quantities. How beautiful, for instance, is his treatment of his simple wife! how much finer and