pose, uses fiction as a means of illustrating history, and making its facts more 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 warranted 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, but he has not the power to transport us there. 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 feast and revel. The art of the novelist 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 mediæval 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 mysteryperception of the history we know is have all been thrown into the shade by no doubt quickened and animated, and the larger, mellower, broader pictures of that is a result worth the labour; but the an art which had purified itself from its general world has not widened round us, native exaggeration, and to which true nor has any new man or woman taken humour and the tenderest pathos had possession of our mind and fancy. The come with time. Bulwer had been first result is good but it is not the highest among the magicians of a score of prethat might have been obtained. vious 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 66 used to be! What a difference! More sky, more earth, more and bigger people. No longer the stock triumphs and stock difficulties of old! but now spontaneous human complications through which the new personages struggle hardly, not always having the best of it. Such was the new world which opened to us in the Caxtons," and which England received with acclamations, seeing itself as in a a glass yet not itself, something nobler, better, more beautiful. The effect has lasted, though the one series of books, like the other, has long lost its novelty, and has been judged by the calm judgment of time and years. At this present 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. shaken; the apprenticeship must be carried out, through what changed circumstances soever the training has to be accomplished. This leading and favourite idea is never abandoned. It is to be discovered in everything Lord Lytton wrote. But how fine and how curiously widened out as we have said, from all the traditions of his earlier life, is the first group which he sets before us! Instead of the little round of worldlings, the fluttering fashionables, the calm and polished votaries of self, the pedants and the butterflies-comes softly, unfolded out of nature itself and truest art, that cluster of kindred figures. The scholar Austin, 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 doubting steps into the mystery of life; it is the proud and poor gentleman Lionel Haughton - not all-conquering as of old, yet somehow finding his way to success and honour; a being not so great in society, not so wonderful in talk, but truer, broader in his personality, more of a man. The Maltravers-Meister, making his way through cycles of semi-disreputable adventure and questionable relations the Godolphin, gloomy and grand even the Pelham, all-accomplished in his foppery, bravery, unscrupulous selfishness, and disinterested devotion are 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 der of them, letting us laugh at them with a soft, kind, and genial laughter, never with the ridicule which is of kin to contempt. How great a difference this makes in literature as in life! But true humour, which is the rarest of gifts, is always kind- cannot exist, indeed, without secret admiration, veneration, deep and tender insight. Austin Caxton is as admirable an example of this as can be produced, as fine as uncle Toby, of whom, indeed, there is a distinct reflection, both in the scholar and the soldier brothers. Mr. Caxton is not like Mr. Shandy; he has too sweet a nature to 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 more true to a high nature than the com- tion. In this point Lord Lytton has all monplace superiority of the scholar-hus- the superiority of the man who was at band, the contemptuous affection or once artist and statesman in his own permuch-bored endurance which is the usual sentiment of such a character in fiction! Mr. Caxton knows a great deal better; he laughs at her softly, banters her tenderly, upholds, supports, and venerates, even while he has his gentle joke at her expense, and is amused by her frequent non-comprehension of himself and his quaint words and ways. The respect and the love are so true, that he ventures to be amused, to smile at her, to gibe on occasion, but with gibes which do not hurt nor wound-delightful genial banter, which never withdraws from her, in her own eyes or any one else's, one jot of the reverence that is her due. How subtly and finely this is done, and how much easier it would have been, and according to the traditions of conventional fiction, to make the simple wife merely laughable and silly, and no more, the reader will easily perceive. The other family, the Trevanion group, which is of the world worldly, though full of generosity and honour and fine feeling in the midst of the inevitable bondage of ambition, is less attractive, because, in fact there are fewer elements of attraction possible; but Trevanion himself is one of Lord Lytton's creations the first real statesman he has placed on his canvas, and perhaps the most characteristic. The troublesome candour of mind which keeps him from ever being what his position demands, the head of a party; his devouring appetite for work, and conviction that the best thing he can do for his young protégé is to supply him with perpetual occupation; the humorous distresses of his impartial judgment, which form the lighter side of the picture and the sombre sense of unsuccess, at least of the failure of such success as was worthy his aspirations and dreams, which is its tragic side-are all drawn with a masterly hand. Without in the least degree undervaluing the objects of Trevanion's ambition - - nay, while giving its full and highest importance to that science of government which is the noblest of professions - he makes us perceive without a word the superior qualities of the lowlier man, the gentle recluse, whose mild eyes penetrate and pity the difficulties of the statesman. But in that pity there is no superiority no elevation of the contemplative over the active, nothing of the artist's selfassertion over the man of greater ambi son, to whom all these differing experiences were alike open, and who had learned the greatest lesson which experience can teach that all ambition, even the highest, must end more or less in disappointment; that the most successful career may bring everything but sat-' isfaction; and that the high ideals of youth, the better hopes of manhood, fade and fail, and have to give way to the merely attainable, leaving a certain subdued bitterness and sense of failure, even in the most complete career. The scholar whose learning comes to so little -- the soldier who hazards life and limb for a medal and an obscure captain's half-pay -the statesman who has to give up the ideal rule of the Best, for miserable expediencies and necessities of party, which can boast over the other? But it is the philosopher's privilege to anticipate this universal fact, and to submit ; while the rarely fortunate man who has the repose of domestic happiness to fall back upon, has the only ideal compensasation for all that life takes from him. Such is the lesson, unlike that which youth can or ought to draw from its brighter and narrower information, which comes with the wisdom of maturity. lesson sad but lofty, strangely different from the all-dazzling success which of old awaited the hero, and made him and the young audience which applauded his adventures happy. But the very perfection of this lesson, and of the development of experience and world-knowledge which produces it, would be less satisfactory, did we not remember how differently our author felt once-how pleased and proud he was of his juvenile triumphs, how certain of living happy ever after, as one after another of his glorious young heroes received from his glowing hands the laurel and the myrtle wreaths, the crown of happiness and fame. a "My Novel" came into the world with all the prestige gained by the "Caxtons," and all the advantage of its author's name to extend its sway and in this great work we think Lord Lytton's genius culminated. Something more of the old romance -a little Bulwerism from which the "Caxtons was free, betrays, perhaps designedly, the well-known hand which had now given up all attempt to disguise itself; and we do not know what other modern work could be placed by the side of this which can successfully strained passion, and critical situations; but at the most stirring moment the reader is never reluctant to turn aside to Riccabocca, to watch his delightful jesuitry, which his Jemima routs horse and man by one natural womanly appeal — to note his Machiavellian utterances, and his generous doings, his all-sympathizing soul, and the delicious humbug of his cynicism in words. compare with its variety of character, its | smile. The fine distinctions of his nationfulness of life and humour and wisdom. ality, too, do but more clearly display the Even Thackeray in his crowded pictures naturalness of the man, who with all his can give us but one Colonel Newcome; strange ways is so widely sympathetic, so but here the multiplicity of the figures genial in his humanity. Who but an Italian does but enhance the sense of easy would have lived shut up in his casino, wealth; and we feel as we read that in- upon meagre fare of stickle-backs, and stead of rare appearances here and there, turned the patient genius of his race to the world is full of those noble sim- work upon the irrigation of the English ple figures, child-like sages, wise com- hill-side? We like him a great deal betpanions, who see through and through us, ter as Dr. Rickeybockey than as the Duke and yet are kind as ignorance never is di Serrano. But yet, such is his creator's tolerant, all-comprehending, all-appreciat- skill, that the quaint and meagre philosoing as gods, but brimful of delicious hu- pher might be a king without surprising man imperfection as schoolboys. The us. What a true gentleman he is, even man who has enriched English literature in his simple fortune-hunting, which is so with two such creations as Riccabocca naïve, so straightforward, so Italian! The and Parson Dale, has merited Westmins- book is full of exciting scenes, of highter if ever man did. Two wise men, philosophers and scholars- yet so distinct, so individual, so perfect-distinct, too, from Austin Caxton, their brother sage, each of them himself and no other. What lavish yet delicate power is in these impersonations! It is not an easy art to create, and win the reverence and the love of thousands of readers for, such types of men; men in themselves above the common understanding, with little to catch the eye or charm the imagination; displayed to us in all the gravity of middle life — moralists, preachers in their way, commentators upon existence rather than actors in it-yet touching our hearts and moving our interest more warmly than any youthful hero beloved of fortune. The Italian noble with the most astute and worldly wisdom on his lips, a cynic in speech, a Quixote in sentiment, with a heart as pure as a girl's and as simple as an infant's-philosopher, scholar, misanthrope, romanticist, his eyes full of genial humour, his heart trembling with tenderness-is more akin to the great hero of Spanish fiction than any modern creation we know of. And yet Riccabocca, in his learning and shrewdness, the practical skill and patient diligence which belongs to his country, and, above all, in the profound and delicate sense of humour which smiles in his eyes, is of a broader development than Quixote. His musings, his embarrassments, his social difficulties, his proud poverty, and the simple, honest mercenariness of his matrimonial speculation, are all threaded through with this humorous self-consciousness. He is the first to see the jest at his own expense, and to smile at it. Such humour dwells next door to pathos, and does not interfere with the tear which has always some share in the 58 LIVING AGE, VOL. II Parson Dale is a man of very different metal. Spiritual ruler of his little world, deep in many men's secrets, not permitted to stand quietly by and look on, but compelled actively to interfere, to warn and admonish and direct-his philosophy is of a less speculative kind. Machiavel he knows not, but deep is the natural craft with which he points the needful lesson, and guides the refractory intelligence. Fretted by his adversary's trump or his partner's revoke, but ready to put himself to any annoyance for the regulation of a cottage or the guidance of a gardener boy-solemn and impressive in his warnings to the sinner, however highly placed, but complacent about his own journey on unaccustomed horseback-how kindly, how simple, how genial, how wise is this parish priest! He is as English as his brother sage is Italian-true old Tory in politics, genuine Liberal in heart, with an inconsistency which is as admirably true to the type of man as are the gentle human faults which endear his goodness. Would that Providence had established our lot in a parish blessed with a Parson Dale! But, indeed, there can be little doubt that the parish of Hazeldean, with the good squire and his wife for its temporal heads, with Parson Dale for its pope, and that Machiavel lurking in the Casino with his astute counsels, was the happiest parish in all England. The book is over |