BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY.

MEMOIR OF SIR E. BULWER LYTTON, BART.

WITH A PORTRAIT,

FROM AN ORIGINAL DRAWING BY RICHARD J. LANE.

In spite of a fiercely-contested reputation, there is no name which would more spontaneously present itself as that of the most eminent of our living authors than the name of Bulwer. If you were speaking to a foreigner on the subject of English literature, Bulwer's would be the first name which both of you would pronounce. Wordsworth or Tennyson would suggest themselves if you were speaking of poets; Sheridan Knowles, if you were speaking of dramatists; Grote or Hallam, if you were speaking of historians; Carlyle or John Mill if you were speaking of thinkers; Macaulay, if you were speaking of reviewers; Dickens, if you were speaking of comic genius or popularity; but, we repeat, if the subject were English literature in general, the name that would inevitably come first would be Bulwer. Twenty years of success have widened and legitimized his claims to that preeminence; twenty years of various labour have exhibited his versatile power. If he has lost something, in intenso, he has surely gained more than he has lost in extenso. He has given us the flippant novel, the slang novel, the historical novel, the philosophical novel, and the metaphysical novel; he has written tragedies, plays, and a comedy; he has written Grecian history and Edinburgh Review articles; poems and pamphlets; satires and essays. What living writer has shown such versatility? What living writer has better deserved success? Criticise each of these productions as severely as you will-they are open to it, but do not forget that each work is but a section of a large circle. A guinea may be a more valuable coin than a crown; but he is a richer man who has fifty crowns, than he who has but one guinea.

The time has not yet arrived when an estimate can be made of Bulwer's true worth. He is still a young man, and his intellect is obviously mellowing into richer ripeness with every succeeding year. He has gone on so steadily improving, and so healthily developing his mind, that we yet await new manifestations of his power. Though precocious in success, his may turn out a late mind. Burke and Dryden are glorious examples of what we mean. Be that as it may, we feel that no judgment can as yet be definitely pronounced upon him; he has not yet given us the measure of his

stature.

Far more agreeable will it be to trace the broad outlines of his successful career. The interest attached to the author will cast its reflex light upon the simplest details.

Let us begin with his genealogy. On the maternal side it is traceable as far back as Sir Robert de Lytton, of Lytton, in Derby,

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comptroller of the household to Henry IV. The Knebworth estates have been in the family possession ever since Henry VII. On the paternal side Burke will tell you how Tyrus, or Turold de Dalling enfeoffed of the lordships of Wood Dalling and Bynham, by Peter de Valoins, who held those lands from William the Conqueror, founded the house of Bulwer. Those curious in such matters have only to turn to Burke's Commoners of England, and there will find pages of information. From the foregoing details it will be seen that the author of "Pelham" has reason to pride himself upon his birth; and no one who calmly contemplates the influence of race, will sneer at such a source of satisfaction. It may provoke the ire of sturdy radicals who "sprang from nothing," and are ostentatiously "not ashamed to own it," to observe some perfectly stupid scion of an ancient house, smoothing his straw-coloured moustache, and talking of the "supewiowity of wank and family,”-it may gall the "aristocracy of nature" to notice noodles relying solely on their parchments for esteem; but when a man has other titles to our admiration, no one will grudge him a reasonable pride in his descent.

This remark is made to deprecate misconstruction when we say that Bulwer has created no small amount of not undeserved ill-will by a certain Walpole-foppery of wishing to be considered rather as a gentleman than as an author. It is a foppery which sits very ungracefully upon him. There are few authors of any station who have worked harder or reaped more substantial pudding and praise from their labours. Why, then, this otiose assumption of superiority -this impatience of Grub Street? It was surely ill-judged in him to exchange his celebrated name of Bulwer for the perfectly insignificant name of Lytton, however superior the latter may be in the pages of Burke, or in the annals of Hertfordshire.* Macaulay admirably says that posterity has refused to degrade the name of Bacon into that of Lord Verulam; in the same way Bulwer's contemporaries studiously refuse to call him Lytton. At Knebworth, or in Parliament, the name may be given to him; but no one talks of him except as Bulwer.

To return. He comes from a learned as well as a gentle stock. His maternal grandfather, Richard Warburton Lytton, was a remarkable scholar, and apparently a prodigious pedant, for he wrote a Hebrew play, and was astonished at not being able to find actors for it. Parr (him we mean of the dirt, dogmatism, and Greek, not him of the "Life Pills,") thought this Richard Lytton unsurpassed as a Latinist; and we suppose that is an authority not to be disputed. This Hebrew dramatist married the sister of Sir Richard Paul Jodrell, also a dramatist of an Oriental turn, though he wrote in ponderous English. Well do we remember, in our school days, sitting under a primitive tent, (constructed of cricket-bats and silkhandkerchiefs!) in company with Sir Richard's descendant, reading, ore rotundo, those amazing tragedies which his ancestor had published, and thinking them superb-they had such long words!

"Immured in Susa's adamantine tombs," was a line of frequent recurrence, and it has graven itself upon our memories. That word "adamantine" was so majestic, and so grandly incomprehensible to us.

A doubt arises in our mind as to whether, perhaps, this change of name was a condition of his inheriting the Knebworth property. Should this be so, the above objection will go for nothing.

Sir Richard Jodrell, though he wrote such adamantine tragedies, was a remarkable man, a great Greek scholar, member of the Grecian Club, and worth a passing remembrance as the host of Rousseau. Peace be to his manes! He achieved at least something in dramatic literature; he had one admirer out of his family! Could his spirit but have looked into that silken tent, and seen amidst indiscriminate pastry the reclining form of his intense admirer-could he but have heard his quarto tragedy, and very quarto iambics, spouted into the sultry summer air, his "last infirmity," his "sacred lust of praise," would have been satisfied.

The two striking events in Bulwer's earliest life-at least that he remembers where first, the recitation to him of Pope's Homer and the Percy Ballads, by his mother, together with some tales in verse of her own composition. To his mother he owes much; and in one of his dedications, we forget which, he affectionately mentions his obligations. Mrs. Lytton was a remarkable woman; a strange combination of business, talent, and natural literary taste and ability.

The second event was the death of his grandfather, which brought all the old gentleman's books into the house; a perfect deluge of literature! The whole house, from parlours to attics, was crowded with them; they were even strewed upon the floors. Bulwer, then having just begun to read, was allowed to range unrestrictedly amidst their solemn solitudes,—to shake from them the dust and cobwebs as he pleased, and to extract from them what nutriment he could. He formed an extraordinary passion for them; and read with equal avidity what he could, and what he could not understand. Who shall calculate the effect of such reading upon the young and eager mind?

He went to various schools, and speaks of Dr. Hooker's, Rottendean, as the best. The doctor grounded and prepared well. From thence he went to two private tutors, the first of whom, Wallington of Ealing, published for him some poems and translations, written between the ages of thirteen and fifteen. The second tutor, Dr. Thomson of St. Lawrence, near Ramsgate, lived in a house which formerly belonged to Bulwer's grandfather, and was therefore not without interest for him. Dr. Thomson prepared him for Cambridge as well as he could, but his pupil's bent was not scholastic. It was here that he first read Rousseau, who produced a powerful impression, an impression very traceable in Falkland, which was written between sixteen and seventeen, and more or less traceable throughout his writings. In the mixture of the ideal with the sensual, and of the rhetorical with the logical, we see in Bulwer the influence of Rousseau; the presence of other faculties, however, prevents our calling him a disciple.

History also became a passion with him; and before going to Cambridge he had carefully gone through most of the original authorities for the History of England. He made a complete abridgment of it down to the reign of George III. for his own use. He went up to Cambridge unusally young; first to Trinity, and then as a fellow commoner to Trinity Hall.

The ambition of distinguishing himself naturally made him at first determine to read for honours. He says he was led away from this by two counter attractions, to which, before specifying them, we venture to add a third, viz. a naturally discursive energy which

could not be restrained within the limits of " reading up" for honours; and the imperious demand of other faculties, which such reading could not call into play. The two causes he specifies are these:

He

1. The love for metaphysics and old English literature. belonged to a club set up for the purchase of old English books, of which Whewell, then an eminent fellow, and now Master of Trinity, and Professor Malden, were the heads. Metaphysics were somewhat fashionable amongst the young thinking men, and the usual appendage of political economy was not neglected. 2. The Union Debating Society, which was then at the height of its fame. A brilliant little club it was, and has turned out considerable men, to wit, Thomas Babington Macaulay; the present Earl Grey; Kennedy, the head master of Shrewsbury; Ord, who died a lord of the Treasury; Praed, the wit, and thought to be the best speaker; Cockburn, Charles Buller, and Charles Villiers. About ten or twelve years ago there was published a little book called "Conversations at Cambridge," which pleasantly reflected the spirit of that debating club, and in which Bulwer occupied a conspicuous place. At the Union he was considered a fair speaker, but not first-rate; pretty much what is to be said of his parliamentary career. threw more information into his speeches than most of the others, and was held to be a sort of authority on English History. He was subsequently made president of the society. To give the reader some higher notion of this society than that of an ordinary debating club, we may mention, that Macaulay, even after having taken his degree, came up from London to speak there.

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The biographer who will one day treat of this subject in full, will have a pleasant picture to paint of these college days, this club, its members, and its influence upon Bulwer. No such task is ours; so we pass on.

During his last year he tried for the University prize poem. The subject was Sculpture. He gained the prize, and doubtless congratulated himself upon being a poet. Let it be a matter of consolation to future mediocrity! Let not henceforth the successful prize poet look upon himself as irretrievably lost. He can name Bulwer, and say, He too gained a prize, and yet, in spite of that, you see he has turned out a considerable man.

Bulwer took his degree, and went abroad. We ought to have mentioned, that during the long vacation he travelled on foot over Scotland, and some parts of England, with knapsack on his back, and a heart in his bosom eager for adventure. In these rambles he picked up materials which were subsequently used in his novels. No better school for experience and reflection than that.

Among his adventures should be placed the time he lived with the gypsies, where he fell in with a celebrated hero of the lawless kind, a gentleman who rose against the "conventions" of society, and had several differences of opinion with the Government. From him Bulwer picked up some of the knowledge of that sort of life pictured in Paul Clifford," and the slang used in "Pelham," and other works.

The mention of this recalls a delicious story told of Pierce Egan, who, on some one speaking of Bulwer, said, "Yes, yes, Bulwer's a very clever fellow, I dare say;" then adding, with exquisite self

reference and pity, "but, sir, his knowledge of flash is very superficial!"

While at Paris, before he came of age, he wrote the greater part of " Pelham." The idea of this, he says, was taken from a hint in Madame de Stael, that a character both gay and sentimental is always popular; and a little also from Beaumont and Fletcher's "Humorous Lieutenant." Bulwer has always been accused of having drawn "Pelham" from himself; but, although there does appear some shew of justice in this prevalent notion, we believe that it admits of another explanation. "Pelham" really was modelled after an intimate friend, now living, a curious compound of learning and frivolity, of daring courage, and dandyism. He had travelled nearly all over the world, had seen and reflected upon life; and he exercised considerable influence upon his younger friend and admirer. Bulwer was his second in two duels, and had every opportunity for studying his character and consequently for drawing it.

But there must have been some strong sympathy between them ; in the young admirer there must have been something of that union of frivolity and learning which characterised his hero. Without, therefore, supposing Pelham" to have been drawn from himself, we may assume that Bulwer recognised in himself the elements he has there combined.

The publication of "Pelham" in 1828, marks the first step in his brilliant career. It was not successful at first, and "moved slowly," to use the technical phrase; but in this clever world of ours, cleverness is sure to be appreciated in a little while, and " Pelham " made a "sensation." Bulwer "found himself famous." His book was read by everybody, was largely imitated, and through successive editions has continued to be read, up to the present time. How many novels are there which have withstood twenty years of criticism?

Before the publication of "Pelham," however, we have to place his leaving Paris, and travelling alone on horseback through a great part of France.

On returning to England he published "Falkland," his first serious appearance in print. That "Marriage with the Muse" was followed by his marriage in real earnest; about which no more need here be said. Shutting himself up in Woodcote in Oxfordshire,-a lonely place, surrounded by beechwoods-he studied hard. Metaphysics principally occupied him. After long floundering in its bewildered and bewildering swamps, he finally withdrew himself from all further search, in the conviction that nothing satisfactory was to be found therein; at least, that he could find no solid ground on which to rest his foot, and was weary of splashing up mud and water about him.

In that year he published "Pelham," as mentioned, and the "Disowned in 1829. "Devereux" followed. In 1830 appeared " Paul

"

Clifford."

He had then removed to town, and had taken his seat in Parliament for a close borough, St. Ives in Cornwall, swept away by the Reform Bill. There was a great deal of curiosity as to what sort of figure the popular novelist would make amongst senators. A brilliant display he did not make; but neither did he fail. His name seldom occurs in Hansard, but when it does it will always be found on the