um.

ed to be the leading qualities of Bulwer's and his opinions, his taste and style, are writing. His style is vicious from excess those of a modern Frenchman. But these, of virtue, weak from repletion of strength. long subjected to English influences,_and Every word is a point, every clause a long trained to be candidates for an Engbeauty, the close of every sentence alish popularity, have been modified and climax. He is as sedulous of his every altered from their native bent. In all his stroke, as if the effect of the whole depend- writings, however, you breathe a foreign ed upon it. His pages are all sparkling atmosphere, and find very slight sympathy with minute and insulated splendors; not with the habits, manners, or tastes of his suffused with a uniform and sober glow, native country. Not Zanoni alone, of his nor shown in the reflected light of one sol- heroes, is cut off from country, as by a itary and surpassing beauty. Some writers chasm, or if held to it, held only by ties peril their reputation upon one long diffi- which might with equal strength bind him. cult leap, and it accomplished, walk on at to other planets: all his leading characters, their leisure. With others, writing is a whatever their own pretensions, or whatever succession of hops, steps, and jumps. This their creator may assert of them, are in rein general is productive of a feeling of tedi-ality citizens of the world, and have no It teases and fatigues the mind of the more genuine relation to the land whence reader. It is like crying perpetually upon they spring, than have the winds, which a hearer, who is attending with all his linger not over its loveliest landscapes, and might, to attend more carefully. It at hurry past its most endeared and consecraonce wearies and provokes, insults the ted spots. Eugene Aram is not an Englishreader, and betrays a fear of conscious man; Rienzi is hardly an Italian. Bulwer weakness on the part of the author. If in is perhaps the first instance of a great novBulwer's writings we weary less than in elist obtaining popularity without a particle others, it is owing to the artistic skill with of nationality in his spirit, or in his wriwhich he intermingles his points of humor tings. We do not question his attachment with those of sententious reflection or vivid to his own principles in his native country; narrative. All is point: but the point per- but of that tide of national prejudice, which petually varies from gay to grave, from lively Burns says, "shall boil on in his breast till to severe; including in it raillery and rea- the floodgates of life shut in eternal rest," soning, light dialogue and earnest discus- he betrays not one drop. His novels might sion, bursts of political feeling and raptures all have appeared as translations from a of poetical description; here a sarcasm, foreign language, and have lost but little of almost worthy of that "inspired monkey," their interest or verisimilitude. This is the Voltaire, and there a passage of pensive more remarkable, as his reign exactly grandeur, which Rousseau might have writ-divides the space between that of two ten in his tears. To keep up this per- others, who have obtained boundless fame, petual play of varied excellence, required greatly in consequence of the very quality, at once great vigor, and great versatility of talents for Bulwer never walks through his part, never proses, is never tame, and seldom indeed substitutes sound for sense, or mere flummery for force and fire. He generally writes his best; and our great quarrel, indeed, with him is, that he is too Akin to this, and connected either as uniformly erect in the stirrups, too con- cause or as effect with it, is a certain digscious himself of his exquisite manage-nified independence of thought and feeling, ment, of his complete equipment, of the inseparable from the motion of Bulwer's speed with which he devours the dust; and mind. He is not a great original thinker; seldom exhibits the careless grandeur of on no one subject can he be called proone who is riding at the pace of the whirl-found, but on all, he thinks and speaks for wind, with perfect self-oblivion, and with himself. He belongs to no school either in perfect security.

Bulwer reminds us less of an Englishman Frenchified, than of a Frenchman partially Anglicized. The original powers and tendencies of his mind, his eloquence, wit, sentiments, and feelings, his talents

in varied forms, which Bulwer lacks. Scott's knowledge and love of Scotland, Dickens' knowledge and love of London, stand in curious antithesis to Bulwer's intense cosmopolitanism, and ideal indifference.

literature or in politics, and he has created no school. He is too proud for a Radical, and too wide-minded for a Tory. He is too definite and decisive to belong to the mystic school of letters; too impetuous and impulsive to cling to the classical; too lib

without its iron entering into the soul, and eliciting that cry which becomes immortal.

eral to be blind to the beauties of either. I forms, a growing depth and truth of feelHe has attained, thus, an insulated and ing. Few, indeed, can even sportively original position, and may be viewed as a wear, for a long time, the yoke of genius, separate, nor yet a small estate, in our intellectual realm. He may take up for motto, "Nullius jurare addictus in verba Bulwer, as a novelist, has, from a commagistri ;"-he may emblazon on his shield pound of conflicting and imported materiDesdichado. Some are torn, by violence, als, reared to himself an independent strucfrom the sympathies and attachments of ture. He has united many of the qualities their native soil, without seeking to take of the fashionable novel, of the Godwin root elsewhere; others are early trans- philosophical novel, and of the Waverley planted, in heart and intellect, to other tale. He has the levity and thoroughbred countries; a few, again, seem born, rooted air of the first; much of the mental anatup, and remain so for ever. To this last omy and philosophical thought which often class we conceive Bulwer to belong. In overpower the narrative in the second; and the present day, the demand for earnest- a portion of the dramatic liveliness, the hisness, in its leading minds, has become in- torical interest, and the elaborate costume cessant and imperative. Men speak of it of the third. If, on the other hand, he is as if it had been lately erected into a new destitute of the long, solemn, overwhelmtest of admission into the privileges alike of ing swell of Godwin's style of writing, and St. Stephens and of Parnassus. A large of the variety, the sweet, natural, and and formidable jury, with Thomas Carlyle healthy tone of Scott's, he has some qualifor foreman, are diligently occupied in try- ties peculiar to himself,-point, polish-at ing each new aspirant, as well as back- times a classical elegance-at times a barspeiring the old, on this question: "Earn- baric brilliance, and a perpetual mint of est or a sham? Heroic or hearsay? Un- short sententious reflections, compact, der which king, Bezonian, speak, or die." rounded, and shining as new-made soveConcerning this cry for earnestness, we can reigns. We know no novelist from whose only say, en passant, that it is not, strictly writings we could extract so many striking speaking, new, but old; as old, surely, as sentences containing fine thoughts, chased that great question of Deborah's to recreant in imagery, "apples of gold in pictures of Reuben," Why abodest thou among the silver." The wisdom of Scott's sage resheep-folds to hear the bleating of the flections is homely but commonplace; Godflocks?" or that more awful query of the win beats his gold thin, and you gather his Tishbite's," How long halt ye between philosophical acumen rather from the whole two opinions?" That it is, in theory, a conduct and tone of the story, and his comrobust truth; and sometimes, in applica- mentary upon it, than from single and seption, an exaggeration and a fallacy; and arate thoughts. Dickens, whenever he that, unless preceded by the words "en- moralizes, in his own person, becomes inlightened" and "virtuous," earnestness is sufferably tame and feeble. But it is Bula quality no more intrinsically admirable, wer's beauty that he abounds in fine, though nay, as blind and brutal, as the rush of a not far gleams of insight; and it is his fault bull upon his foeman, or as the foaming that sometimes, while watching these, he fury of a madman. Bulwer is not, we fear, allows the story to stand still, or to drag in the full sense of the term, an earnest heavily, and sinks the character of novelist man: nay, we have heard of the great mod- in that of brilliant essay-writer, or inditer ern prophet of the quality, pronouncing of smart moral and political apothegms. him the most thoroughly false man of the In fact, his works are too varied and versaage; and another, of the same school, tile. They are not novels or romances so christens him "a double distilled scent- much as compounds of the newspaper artibottle of cant." In spite of this, however, cle, the essay, the political squib, the gay we deem him to possess, along with much and rapid dissertation; which, along with that is affected, much, also, that is true, the necessary ingredients of fiction, comand much that is deeply sympathetic with bine to form a junction, without constitusincerity, although no devouring fire of pur- ting a true artistic whole. pose has hitherto filled his being, or been seen to glare in his eye. And, as we hinted before, his later writings exhibit sometimes in mournful and melancholy

Reserving a few remarks upon one or two other of his works till afterwards, we recur to the three which seem to typify the stages of his progress; "Pelham," "Eugene

Aram," and "Zanoni.” "Pelham," like "Anastasius," begins with a prodigious affectation of wit. For several pages the reading is as gay and as wearisome as a jest-book. You sigh for a simple sentence, and would willingly dig even for dulness as for hid treasure. The wit, too, is not an irrepressible and involuntary issue, like that from the teeming brain of Hood; it is an artificial and forced flow; and the author and his reader are equally relieved, when the clear path of the tale at length breaks away from the luxuriant shrubbery in which it is at first buried, and strikes into more open and elevated ground. It is the same with "Anastasius;" but "Pelham," we must admit, does not reach those heights of tenderness, of nervous description, and of solemn moralizing, which have rendered the other the prose "Don Juan," and something better. It is, at most, a series, or rather string, of clever, dashing, disconnected sketches; and the moral problem it works out seems to be no more than this, that, under the corsets of a dandy, there sometimes beats a heart.

more unearthly of fossil remains. Call him rather a graft from Godwin's Falkland upon the rough reality of the actual "Eugene Aram;" for the worst of the matter is, that, after fabricating a being entirely new, he is compelled, at last, to clash him with the old pettifogging murderer, till the compound monstrosity is complete and intolerable. The philosopher, the poet, the lover, the sublime victim fighting with "more devils than vast hell can hold," sinks, in the trial scene, where precisely he should have risen up like a "pyramid of fire," into a sophister so mean and shallow, that you are reminded of the toad into which the lost archangel dwindled his giant stature. The morality, too, of the tale, seems to us detestable. The feelings with which you rise from its perusal, or, at least, with which the author seems to wish you to rise, are of regret and indignation, that, for the sin of an hour, such a noble being should perish, as if he would insinuate the wisdom of quarrel (how vain !) with those austere and awful laws, by which moments of crime expand into centuries of punishment! It is not wonderful that, in the struggle with such self-made difficulties, Bulwer has been defeated. The wonder is, that he has been able to cover his retreat amid such a cloud of beauties; and

profound, to a being whom we cannot, in our wildest dreams, identify with mankind. The whole tale is one of those hazardous experiments which have become so common of late years, in which a scanty success is sought at an infinite peril; like a wild-flower, of no great worth, snatched, by a hardy wanderer, from the very jaws of danger and death. We notice in it, however, with pleasure, the absence of that early levity which marked his writing, the shooting germ of a nobler purpose, and an air of sincerity fast becoming more than an air.

In "Eugene Aram," Bulwer evidently aims at a higher mark; and, in his own opinion, with considerable success. We gather his estimate of this work from the fact that he inscribes a labored and glow- to attach an interest almost human, and even ing panegyric on Scott with the words, "The Author of Eugene Aram." Now, probably he would exchange this for "The Author of Zanoni." Nor should we, at least, nor, we think, the public, object to the alteration. "Eugene Aram" seems, to us, as lamentable a perversion of talent as the literature of the age has exhibited. It is one of those works in which an unfortunate choice of subject neutralizes eloquence, genius, and even interest. It is with it as with the "Curse of Kehama," and the "Cenci," where the more splendid the decorations which surround the disgusting object, the more disgusting it be- In saying that "Zanoni" is our chief comes. It is, at best, deformity jewelled favorite among Bulwer's writings, we conand enthroned. Not content with the sciously expose ourselves to the charge of native difficulties of the subject-the trite- paradox. If we err, however, on this matness of the story-its recent date-its dead ter, we err in company with the author himlevel of certainty-the author has, in a sort self; and, we believe, with all Germany, of daring perversity, created new difficulties and with many enlightened enthusiasts at for himself to cope withal. He has not bid home. We refer, too, in our approbation, the real pallid murderer to sit to his pencil, more to the spirit than to the execution of and trusted for success to the severe accu- the work. As a whole, as a broad and racy of the portraiture. Him he has spir-brilliant picture of a period, and its hero, ited away, and has substituted the most fan-"Rienzi" is perhaps his greatest work, and tastic of all human fiends, resembling the "that shield he may hold up against all his more hideous of heraldic devices, or the enemies." "The Last Days of Pompeii,"

Its beauties.
Its very

on the other hand, is calculated to enchanting, lie like the "soft shadow of an angel's classical scholars, and the book glows like wing," upon its every page. a cinder from Vesuvius, and most gorgeous- are not of the "earth earthy." ly are the reelings of that fiery drunkard faults, cloudy, colossal, tower above our depicted. The Last of the Barons," petty judgment-seats, towards some higher again, as a cautious, yet skillful filling up of tribunal. the vast skeleton of Shakspeare, is attractive Best of all is that shade of mournful to all who relish English story. But we are grandeur which rests upon it. Granting mistaken, if in that class who love to see all its blemishes, the improbabilities of its the Unknown, the Invisible, and the Eternal, story, the occasional extravagancies of its looking in upon them, through the loops language, let it have its praises for its picand windows of the present; whose foot- tures of love and grief, of a love leading its steps turn instinctively toward the thick rotary to sacrifice stupendous privileges, and the dark places of the "wilderness of and reminding you of that which made anthis world" or who, by deep disappoint- gels resign their starry thrones for the ment or solemn sorrow, have been driven" daughters of men;" and of a grief, too to take up their permanent mental abode deep for tears, too sacred for lamentation, upon the perilous verge of the unseen world, the grief which he increaseth that inif "Zanoni" do not, on such, exert a creaseth knowledge, the grief which not mightier spell, and to their feelings be not earthly immortality, which death only can more sweetly attuned, than any other of this cure. The tears which the most beautiful writer's books. It is a book not to be read and melting close of the tale wrings from in the drawing-room, but in the fields-not our eyes, are not those which wet the last in the sunshine, but in the twilight shade- pages of ordinary novels: they come from not in the sunshine, unless indeed that sun- a deeper source; and as the lovers are unishine has been saddened, and sheathed by ted in death, to part no more, triumph a recent sorrow. Then will its wild and blends with the tenderness with which we mystic measures, its pathos, and its grand- witness the sad yet glorious union. Buleur, steal in like music, and mingle with the soul's emotions; till, like music, they seem a part of the soul itself.

No term has been more frequently abused than that of religious novel. This, as commonly employed, describes an equivocal birth, if not a monster, of which the worst and most popular specimen, is "Celebs in Search of a Wife," where a perfect and perfectly insipid gentleman goes out in search of, and succeeds in finding a perfect and perfectly insipid lady. It is amusing to see how its authoress deals with the fictitious part of her book. Holding it with a half shudder, and at arm's-length, as she might a phial of poison, she pours in the other and the other infusion of prose criticism, common-place moralizing, sage aphorism, &c., till it is fairly diluted down to her standard of utility and safety. But a religious novel, in the high and true sense of the term, is a noble thought: a parable of solemn truth, some great moral law, written out as it were in flowers: a principle, old as Deity, wreathed with beauty, dramatized in action, incarnated in life, purified by suffering and death. And we confess that to this ideal, we know no novel in this our country, that approaches so nearly as "Zanoni." An intense spirituality, a yearning earnestness, a deep religious feel

wer, in the last scene, has apparently in his eye the conclusion of the "Revolt of Islam," where Laon and Laone, springing in spirit from the funeral pile, are united in a happier region, in the "calm dwellings of the mighty dead," where on a fairer landscape rests a "holier day," and where the lesson awaits them, that

"Virtue though obscured on earth, no less Survives all mortal change, in lasting loveliness."

Amid the prodigious number of Bulwer's other productions, we may mention one or two "dearer than the rest." The "Student," from its disconnected plan, and the fact that the majority of its papers appeared previously, has seemed to many a mere published portfolio, if not an aimless collection of its author's study-sweepings. This, however, is not a fair or correct estimate of its merits. It in reality contains the cream of Bulwer's periodical writings. And the New Monthly Magazine, during his editorship, approached our ideal of a perfect Magazine; combining as it did impartiality, variety, and power. His "Conversations with an Ambitious Student in ill health," though hardly equal to the dialogues of Plato, contain many rich meditations and criticisms, suspended round a

honest writer, to shoot folly, expose error, strip false pretension, and denounce wrong, with greater safety and effect. A time may come, when the anonymous will require to be abandoned: but we are very doubtful if that time has yet arrived.

simple and affecting story. The word "ambitious," however, is unfortunate; for what student is not, and should not be ambitious? To study, is to climb "higher still, and higher like a cloud of fire." Talk of an ambitious chamois, or of an ambitious lark, as lief as of an ambitious student. In pursuing, at the commencement of this The allegories in the "Student," strikes us paper, a parallel between Byron and Bulas eminently fine, with glimpses of a more wer, we omitted to note a stage, the last in creative imagination, than we can find in the former's literary progress. Toward the any of his writings, save "Zanoni." We close of his career, his wild shrieking earnhave often regretted, that the serious alle- estness, subsided into Epicurean derision. gory, once too much affected, is now al-He became dissolved into one contemptumost obsolete. Why should it be so? why ous and unhappy sneer. Beginning with should not more heads be laid down upon the satiric bitterness of "English Bards," John Bunyan's pillow, to see more visions he ended with the fiendish gaiety of " Don and dream more dreams? Shall truth no Juan." He laughed at first that he "might more have its mounts of transfiguration? not weep; but ultimately this miserable Must Mirza no more be overheard in his mirth drowned his enthusiasm, his heart, soliloquies? And is the road to the "Den" and put out the few flickering embers of lost for ever? We trust, we trow not. In his natural piety. The deep tragedy disthe "Student," too, occurs his far-famed solved in a poor pickle herring," yet attack upon the anonymous in periodical mournful farce. We trust that our novelwriting. We do not coincide with him in ist will not complete his resemblance to the this. We do not think that the use of the poet, by sinking into a satirist. 'Tis inanonymous either could or should be re-deed a pitiful sight that, of one who has linquished. It is, to be sure, in some passed the meridian of life and reputation, measure, relinquished, as it is. The tidings grinning back in helpless mockery, and of the authorship of any article of conse-toothless laughter, upon the brilliant way quence, in a Review or Magazine, often which he has traversed, but to which he now pass with the speed of lightning, can return no more. We anticipate for through the literary world, till it is as well Bulwer a better destiny. He who has maknown in the book-shop of the country ted with the mighty spirit, which had almost town, or the post-office of the country vil-reared again the fallen Titanic form of relage, as in Albemarle or George Street.

publican Rome; whose genius has travelBut, in the first place, the anonymous led up the Rhine, like a breeze of music, forms a very profitable exercise for the " stealing and giving odor;" who in "Paul acuteness of our young critics, who become, Clifford," has searched some "dark bothrough it, masters in the science of inter- soms," and not in vain, for pathos and for nal evidence, and learn to detect the fine poetry; who in "England and the English," Roman hand of this and the other writer, has cast a rapid but vigorous glance upon even in the strokes of his t's, and the dots the tendencies of our wondrous age; who, of his i's. Besides, secondly, the anony-in his verse, has so admirably pictured the mous forms for the author an ideal charac- stages of romance in Milton's story; who ter, fixes him in an ideal position as it were, has gone down a diver lean and strong," projects him out of himself; and hence after Schiller, into the "innermost main," many writers have surpassed themselves, lifting with a fearless hand the "veil that both in power and popularity, while writing is woven with Night and with Terror;" under its shelter. So with Swift, in his and in "Zanoni" has essayed to relume "Tale of a Tub;" Pascal, Junius, Sydney the mystic fires of the Rosicrucians, and to Smith, Isaac Taylor, Walter Scott; Addi- reveal the dread secrets of the spiritual son, too, was never so good as when he put world; must worthily close a career so on the short face of the Spectator. Wil-illustrious. May the clouds and mists of son is never so good, as when he assumes detraction, against which he strove so long, the glorious alias of Christopher North.not fail, (to use the words of Hall), "to And, thirdly, the anonymous, when pre- form, at evening, a magnificent theatre for served, piques the curiosity of the reader, his reception, and to surround with augmystifies him into interest; and, on the mented glories the luminary which they other hand, sometimes allows a bold and cannot hide!"