réchauffé of the original thing is most curiously illustrated in his humour and his poetry. With no inconsiderable share of wit, he has but a bare spark of humour in his composition; yet how cleverly the imitation of it is got up in his later novels! The "augh baugh" and other clumsy and laboured jocularity of the Corporal in Eugene Aram is exchanged for something much more like the real thing in later works. Still, every reader of common penetration sees that it does not come naturally from him; that it is collected elsewhere, or painstakingly invented, and sewn on like gold-lace on a coat. A humorous man could not possibly have printed many of the things which Bulwer presents us with as humorous; he would have despised himself if they had occurred to him. But they never would have occurred to him. Their very presence indicates blindness, absence of faculty. Any clever man may, with more or less success, imitate humorous sayings; but it is a clear proof that he is thus imitating, and has no sense of the humorous in himself, when he can mistake for humour such things as are presented to the insulted reader in the headings of some of the chapters of What will he do with it?

None of Bulwer's early novels deal with the affections. When he bethought himself to be humorous, and affectionately instead of passionately sentimental, he took down his Sterne. And he has availed himself well of his studies. He has not only familiarised himself with the style and manner of his master, he has been bold enough to appropriate his greatest work. And his Bowdler's edition of Tristram Shandy is extremely well done. Poor Uncle Toby comes off the worst; with a tight stock round his throat and a poker down his back, he sits there in rigid strait-lacedness, doing lasting penance for the too unconstrained ease of his former demeanour; condemned to be eternally sentimental, and to be denied the solace of laughter. A word as to the plagiarism. It was permissible to any one to take his suggestions for his leading

characters, his hints of humour and his mode of style, from a work of such recognised fame as Tristram Shandy; but it has always been esteemed a part of candour to recognise obligations so great, and a perfect silence in such a case contrasts ill with the somewhat officious recognition of small and unimportant ones scattered here and there through the writings of Bulwer. It does not improve the matter that The Caxtons is mainly adapted to be a favourite with female readers; and that with them, happily, the sources from which it was drawn would be tolerably sure to escape detection. Throughout his works Bulwer is not very strict in availing himself of foreign resources. Even his last novel bears, in the character of Mrs. Crane, and in the style of narrative, very evident traces, not so much of his having been influenced by as of his having consulted the writings of Mr. Dickens and Mr. Charles Read. He condescends even to adopt Sterne's little buffooneries in printing; and it was an unblushing thing to feed a second donkey after the model of the macaroon scene in The Sentimental Journey.

Nothing can more forcibly indicate Sir E. Bulwer Lytton's absolute deficiency in true poetical genius than the value he assigns to his own poetry. After ample time for reflection, he has deliberately placed it on record that his King Arthur is the highest effort of his powers, and the work on which he rests his claims to posthumous fame. This is to be most unjust to himself. No poet could have written King Arthur. But granting so difficult an hypothesis, it is impossible he could have imposed upon himself with it. No reader gifted with the humblest susceptibility to imaginative impressions can be deceived by it. He may be puzzled to explain why it is not poetry; but his native instincts infallibly consign it

to dumb forgetfulness a prey." He may not be able to say why it is unreadable, but he will not read it. The true solution is, that it is not a poem at all, but a very clever imitation of one; and poetry is a thing which does

not admit of imitations, however clever. A man with Sir Bulwer Lytton's endowments can no more sit down and say, I will write a great epic poem, than a plain woman can resolve to have a handsome face. All he can

do is what is here done. He can skilfully put together the materials which poets use. No man is absolutely destitute of fancy, or even of the true imaginative faculty; but for Bulwer to attempt to vivify a poem of twelve books with the amount of bardic fire and insight which is at his disposal, is as if one should attempt to light up St. Paul's with a single composition-candle. We had proposed to make it the subject of some detailed criticisms, but our heart has failed us. The mosaic splendour of strained expression and exaggerated sentiment which, as in the case of an over-dressed gentleman, gives an air of vulgarity not always deserved to his prose works, shines out in his poems in a yet higher degree. For the rest, they serve only to illustrate, with somewhat sharper lines, the deficiencies we have noted in his prose works; they are, indeed, only novels spoiled into verse, and they have scarcely readers enough to make it desirable that they should find commentators.

With his novels it is different. They have attractions which cannot fail to secure them a wide perusal. But their claims to a more lasting reputation must depend on their real merits, not on their false pretensions, still less on the author's direct and hungry demand for applause. It is the voice of the fit audience though few, gaining fresh adherents from each new generation, which makes fame permanent. Bulwer has got a radically false notion, the presence and influence of which pervades all his works. He thinks the ideal, the poetical, is something separate from, something even in contrast with reality, and that we can in our creations transcend nature and improve upon the work of the Almighty; whereas all we can do is to give a special completeness within a certain narrow sphere, and concentrate the elements of perfection by con

fining ourselves to a particular aspect. No poet can grasp the great whole of the universe, explore its plan, or comprehend its beauty; he sees only patches of the world, he apprehends only fleeting glimpses of life: but the power is given him out of that which he does see to make a whole of his own; to conceive, to create something; petty, indeed, and limited, compared to the vast creation from which it is drawn, and within which it stands, yet which moves on its own axis and is entire within itself. But it must rest on reality; there must be some sense in which imagination, even in its wildest flights, keeps harmony with the universe in which we live, or we recoil from its births as distorted and monstrous. Bulwer deserves

sincere admiration for the zeal and perseverance with which he has devoted himself to his profession of a novelwriter; but he is a warning that no mere mastery of the machinery of art can compensate for a severance from the truths of nature.

393

WOMAN.*

[October 1858.]

THE influence of women on modern European society, Mr. Buckle tells us, has, on the whole, been extremely beneficial. We presume the influence of men has also, on the whole, been extremely beneficial. Yet it would seem odd to urge this. What is the origin of this curious habit, by which we so often speak and think of women as something outside of general humanity, or at least a lesser distinguishable part, whose relation to the whole may be made the subject of estimate? Are they not in reality human society as much as men are? If one looks at the subject with a fresh sudden glance, it seems as strange to speak of women exercising a beneficial influence on society as of the branches and leaves exercising a beneficial influence on the tree. Yet a mode of speech so universal, and of antiquity so undated, must have some true basis. Man" cannot mean both men and women for nothing; and mean it in all times and all languages. Does this expression imply that the nature of the man comprehends, includes within it, that of the woman? Not this probably; but it does imply that

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* Industrial and Social Position of Women in the Middle and Lower Ranks. London: Chapman and Hall, 1857.

The Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge. By Henry Thomas Buckle. "Fraser's Magazine," April 1858.

London: J. W. Parker and Son.

The Englishwoman's Journal. London, 1858.

Remarks on the Education of Girls. By Bessie Rayner Parkes. Third edition. London: John Chapman, 1856.