is admirably portrayed; in the present time, in one case out of a hundred, it may be the natural, spontaneous, noble growth of the soul; while, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, it is the fruit of calculation or policy; in other words, in rare instances it deserves the name- -in the vast majority of matches there is only its counterfeit. It is observable that every important love-match in the book goes awry, except that of Pisistratus and Blanche; and, although it may be said that this is but in accordance with the old adage, yet we must remark the circumstance, that love here does not, after a troubled course, settle finally into a quiet woodland cove, as is the approved plan; it leaps over a ledge, and disappears in darkness. This is, perhaps, more accidental than intentional on the part of the novelist, but it is, nevertheless, true: in our present mechanical life, be it an improvement or be it not, the place of emotion is, save in rare conjunctions of circumstance, supplied by calculation.

|We do not positively assert that he was born for a poet; but, considering that his first honors were won in the livery of the Muses, we think it very probable that, had he devoted his life to poetry, his ear might have so improved, and his perception of the beautiful in sound so sharpened, that he might finally have succeeded in linking the beautiful in sound to the beautiful in sight, and so producing the highest embodiment of beauty-a poem. But, after twenty years of prose, to return to the jealous Muses! We fear they will never recognize thee for a true singer, but pluck thee for a syren.

We think "King Arthur" is deficient in three respects in melody, in blended poetic wholeness, and in belief, or the power of inspiring such. The melody is often trancingly sweet, but is somewhat monotonous, and occasionally stiff; the parts do not blend into each other, almost invisibly, yet without any loss of clearness, as they ought, and as they do, for instance, in Milton; and, last and fatal fault, the reader does not for a moment believe, or think that the author believes — Imagination does not fling her gold-dust in the eyes of Reason, so as to change for a moment their cold, scrutinizing light. In illustration and proof of this last assertion, read the following stanzas: it is impossible, in doing so, not to think that the author 18 laughing in his sleeve at the whole affair; the subject is the departure of Arthur : —

In "The Caxtons," we have, we venture to think, the final development of Sir Edward's powers the final product of his mind; we have that calmness which marks the greatest strength, that serenity which marks the truest wisdom, that unostentatious, peaceful dignity which marks perfection of style. We confer upon it very high praise, when we say that here Bulwer has shown himself possessed of true humor, of sympathy, we shall not say with the low, but with the humble, the homely, we might almost say the ridiculous; he has proved that he can convey to his pages those little occurrences which none but the keenest eye can see, and with which only the warmest heart can sympathize, which, as it were naïvely, wrinkle the face of life with smiles. The opening passage of "The Cax-Yet ne'er by prince more loved a crown was worn, tons," commencing with "It's a boy," is a sample of delicate and genuine humor, of a far higher sort than finds place in his other works, and far above the region of fun.

So much for Sir Edward as a novelist, in which character, certainly, he has won his greenest laurels; our glance at him in his other capacities must be very brief, for he has entered the lists in every form of contest, and competed for every crown.

Sir Edward is willing to stake his fame on "King Arthur;" we are happy it is out of his power to do so. He will never be considered a great poet. And he may be somewhat astonished when we assure him, that the very fact which he adduces as a presumptive proof that his great poem must be good, seems to us to be the great cause of its defects. For twenty years he devoted himself to prose composition, and then took up his harp to sing us an epic song. We suspect that twenty years of prose extinguished his power of melody; that his voice lost tune.

In street and mart still plies the busy craft;

Still beauty trims for stealthy steps the bower;
By lips as gay the Hirlas horn is quaft;
As when in Arthur men adored the sun;
And life's large rainbow took its hues from One!

To the dark bourne still flies as fast the hour,

And hadst thou ventured but to hint the doubt That loyal subjects ever ceased to mourn,

And that, without him, earth was joy without, Thou soon hadst joined in certain warm dominions The horned friends of pestilent opinions.

This is admirable, if the feat given is to hop, at a moment's notice, from the sublime to the ridiculous; if a rather poor and stale joke is, in the circumstances, utterly inconsistent with epic grandeur, the stanzas are utterly inadmissible.

But we might say much, too, very much, in praise of the poem. It contains numberless splendid lines; certain of its portraits, as that of the Vandal king, are drawn with amazing truth and point, and a very great command of imagery is shown.

The following picture of Arthur and Ægle we think extremely beautiful:

Lo! the sweet valley in the flush of eve!
Lo! side by side, where through the rose arcade
Steals the love-star, the hero and the maid!

66

The general characteristic which, more than another, distinguishes the subject of our sketch is vast diffusion accompanied with extraordinary power; diffusion of energy, width of sympathy, variety of intellectual faculty. This diffusion, this width, and this variety have perhaps been equalled in extent, but they have very rarely been equalled both in range and in strength; where they have, as in the case of Southey, the fact has been the marking one in the character. Neither emotionally nor intellectually, is Sir Edward's mind determined, with overwhelming force, in any one direction; round no one subject has centred his love; to no one subject have his intellectual powers, with exclusive and concentrated force, been directed. The result has been that, in neither case, he has attained the highest degree of excellence; as a thinker, his generation will never accept him for guide, or expect from him the deepest wisdom; as a poet he has failed. The novel may be regarded as that debatable ground, between the realms of the philosophic thinker and the poet, where those who are not irresistibly fixed by nature, either in the one sphere or in the other, may find fitting development and exercise for their powers: in the department of the novel, accordingly, Sir Edward has won very high honors. In opinion, striking generally the golden mean, he is remarkably safe. In composition, he honestly avoids the fantastic, and does not appear to be haunted with the dread of commonplace, which leads so many at present astray; if he cannot win our applause by lofty excellence, he scorns to do it by stage tricks: he floats, arrayed in fairest colors, between the region of the poet and the proser; he has not the belief, the music, the heaven-kindled enthusiasm of Milton; he has not the coldness and penetration of Butler or Foster; his poetry often degenerates into prose, his prose sometimes rises into a region of power and beauty which may be called poetic.

worship, wealth-worship, religious formalism, Jably the greatest novelist of the day it is "respectable" baseness, and most of the emotionally true; sympathizing with all that shams and anomalies that lurk about our so- is free and noble. In style it is fervid and lucial fabric. He does not cast his eye over the minous: on the whole, it is a fine book. time with the revealing lightning that sometimes dwells in that of Carlyle; he does not penetrate in many cases into the very root of our social evils; but he smites often with great effect, and in the proper quarter. The first of our following extracts contains a melancholy fact; the second is a clever, and doubtless a true portrait; the third we beseech our readers to take home and sleep over -they may get a glimpse of truth ere the morning: As the first impression the foreigner receives on entering England is that of the evidence of wealth, so the first thing that strikes the moral inquirer into our social system is the respect in which wealth is held; in some countries pleasure is the idea; in others glory, and the prouder desires of the world; but with us money is the mightiest of all deities." Mr. Bluff is the last character I shall describe in this chapter. He is the sensible, practical man. He despises all speculations but those in which he has a share. He is very intolerant to other people's hobby-horses; he hates both poets and philosophers. He has a great love of facts; if you could speak to him out of the multiplication table, he would think you a great orator. Ile does not observe how the facts are applied to the theory; he only wants the facts themselves. If you were to say to him thus, When abuses arise to a certain pitch, they must be remedied,' he would think you a shallow fellow -a theorist; but if you were to say to him, One thousand pauper children are born in London; in 1823 wheat was fortynine shillings; hop-grounds let from ten to twelve shillings an acre, and you must, therefore, confess that, when abuses rise to a certain pitch, they must be remedied,' Mr. Bluff would nod his wise head, and say of you to his next neighbor, That's the man for my money; you see what a quantity of facts he puts into his speech.' Facts, like stones, are nothing in themselves, their value consists in the manner they are put together, and the purpose to which they are applied. Accordingly, Mr. Bluff is always taken in. Looking only at a fact, he does not see an inch beyond it, and you might draw him into any imprudence, if you were constantly telling him two and two made four.' Mr. Bluff is wonderfully English. It is by practical men' that we have ever been seduced into the wildest speculations; and the most preposterous of living theorists always begins his harangues with Now, my friends, let us look to the facts.""

Our space is well-nigh exhausted; we cannot speak of "Athens." It shows the power of hard-working retained by him who is prob

Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer Lytton is the son of General Bulwer, of Haydon Hall, Norfolk. At college he was distinguished as a poetical prizer; an infallible indication of linguistic fluency, but almost never of poetic power. He published "Pelham" about the year 1827; and the order in which we have given his chief novels indicates chronologically the stages of his mind. He obtained his baronetcy from the whig government.

The firm foot is that which finds firm footing. The weak falters although it be standing upon a rock,

From Chambers' Journal.

THE LIFE AND POETRY OF EDGAR POE.

AMONG the results of that spirit of enterprise which has brought us into intimate connection with the other nations of the earth, a more extended knowledge of literature is certainly not the least interesting. The triumphs of science and human energy, which have done so much to change our ideas of distance, and to give us ample opportunities of becoming acquainted with the remote portions of the world, have had an effect in widening the circle of readers to such a degree, that authors may now be said to write, not for those of their own country merely, but for a worldwide public. This is especially the case in regard to those who, though separated from us by the mighty ocean, use the same language, and give expression to ideas very similar to our own. The extent to which our knowledge of American literature has increased within the last few years, is one of the most striking illustrations that could be adduced of the manner in which free communication between nation and nation contributes to the general diffusion of enlightenment, and the cultivation of an elevated taste. As may easily be supposed, our transatlantic cousins have hitherto profited most by these benefits. Their literature and art are little else as yet than reflections of our own; but we have, nevertheless, obtained some return for what they have derived from us, in the works of the more recent American authors-works which are now beginning to exhibit greater originality, and indicate the formation of what will in course of time be worthy of being considered a national literature. The poets and novelists are leading the van in this intellectual progress; for it is obvious that the specimens of American poetry with which we are now more or less familiar, evince a far higher order of genius, and more remarkable characteristics of originality, than anything of the kind which the poets of the New World formerly produced. They are distinguished by a greater degree of freshness, by a more delicate sense of the beautiful, and a higher tone of feeling; and although a great poem, in the true sense of the term, has not yet reached us from the other side of the Atlantic, not a few remarkable ones may now be pointed to in the works of such men as Longfellow, Bryant, Lowell, Whittier, and Poe. While the first two of these are now nearly as familiar to the lovers of poetry among us as they are in their own country, the others, equally worthy of notice, are by no means so well known as they deserve to be. Poe, as a writer of more than ordinary power, and as one who has evinced far more originality than any of his contemporaries, is especially worthy of attention; and we therefore propose, in

the course of this article, to present our readers with an outline of his strange, sad history, and a few selections from such of his poems as are most remarkable.

Three volumes of poems, tales, essays, and criticisms, recently collected and published in America, contain the contributions of Edgar Allan Poe to the periodical literature of his country, and form the sole basis upon which his reputation as a writer rests. Very recently, his poems alone have been republished in England, with a brief prefatory essay, in which his merits as a prose-writer are scarcely even referred to, while the moral of his life is obviously mistaken. From a biography prefixed to the New York edition, we are enabled to form an estimate of his personal character, such as his works do not afford; and we doubt if the records of human wretchedness and frailty can yield anything more painful than the facts upon which that estimate is founded. Mental philosophy will scarcely enable us to account for the consistency of a fine sense of the beautiful, both in physics and in morals, with an extreme practical demoralization; but that it did exist in the case before us, as in many others, there is no room to doubt; for never, we believe, was genius allied to vice in its grosser forms more apparent than in the career of Edgar Poe. Unhappily, circumstances of the most unfavorable kind surrounded him at his very birth, for both his parents died while he was a mere child, leaving him little else than the dangerous inheritance of strong passions and a restless disposition. His lot, in a worldly point of view, was by no means a hard one, however, for at his father's death he was adopted by a gentleman of ample means and a kindly heart, who strove with true paternal solicitude to guide and control the wayward boy. His efforts were unavailing; for no sooner had Poe returned from England, where he had been taken by his foster-father for the purpose of obtaining the advantages of a liberal education, than he entered upon the course of recklessness and dissipation which ended only with his life. Expelled from an American university, he returned home to repay his guardian's kindness with insults and ingratitude of the worst description, and subsequently set forth on a Quixotic journey to join the Greeks in their struggle for independence. Greece he never reached, however, but was picked up a wandering beggar in Russia, and sent back only to be cashiered from a military establishment into which he had been admitted by influence of no ordinary kind.

We next hear of him as a private soldier, then as the successful competitor for a prize offered by an enterprising publisher for a tale and poem, and again as a miserable and halffamished writer for obscure periodicals. Poe's genius was not such as to remain long in ob

scurity, and accordingly his writings speedily it would seem as if this tenderness and solicibrought him into notice, and procured him tude had brought back Poe to a sense of lucrative and honorable employment. For a shame. He again turned earnestly to his pen; time he seemed to have overcome his evil pro-and in 1848, produced Eureka, a work to the pensities, and to have resolved upon a new composition of which he brought his capacities course of life. He married a young, beautiful, obviously in their most complete development. and gentle wife -"The Beautiful Annabel It is a prose poem on the cosmogony of the Lee" of his touching and exquisite lyric. He universe, a work of rare power, and the effect surrounded his home with all those refine- of which in America was beyond anything that ments which a highly-cultivated taste could had been experienced for years. It greatly suggest and a moderate income allow. In his increased the number of Poe's admirers, among humble yet poetical home, he appeared to whom was a lady spoken of by his biographer, those who knew him best to have begun that as " one of the most brilliant women in New career of high endeavor for which his genius England." Whether from sufficient cause or was so well fitted, and to have entered upon a not, the name of this lady and that of the course which would soon lead to fame and admired but wretched poet were frequently fortune. A few months, however, and all associated, and it was hoped that their exthis was at an end. His employers were pected union might have a beneficial influence compelled, reluctantly it is believed, to free upon his character. This, however, did not themselves from a connection with one whose take place - Poe, in a fit of almost incomprepower they appreciated, but whose irregulari- hensible brutality, having obtruded himself, ties and apparent insanity were continually designedly it was thought, upon a circle of the source not only of annoyance, but of great her friends, and in her own presence, in a pecuniary risk; for Poe's antipathies, always state of wild inebriety. Another, and the violent, were rendered tenfold more so by in- last, temporary reformation followed this occurtemperance, and he seldom scrupled as to the rence. He once more gave evidence of a means of giving expression to them. After determination of amendment-spoke with continued periods of dissipation, intervals of unaffected horror of his past life, and became sobriety and great labor occurred. There were jealous of seduction into his former courses. times of remorse, and often of brilliant achieve- Temptation assailed him, however, at an unment. Let no one deem such language mis- guarded moment, while on his way to accept applied in the case of one who was as yet only of an honorable invitation from a literary a writer of fugitive papers for ordinary period- institute, and he fell never again to rise. icals. The periodicalism of America has After days of dissipation and madness, he fostered all its best writers; and there, not died in the public hospital of Baltimore, in less than with us, do we find the highest October, 1849, at the early age of thirty-eight. evidences of intellectual strength in what is designed to last only for a few days. The nature of many of Poe's contributions was, however, enduring; they bore the impress of genius; and, twenty years hence, the best of them will probably be much more familiar to English readers than they are now. These were thrown off with amazing rapidity, considering their character, at a time when, after his settlement in New York, all who admired them, and were interested in their author, deemed that he had entered upon a new and purer course of life.

This hopeful period, however, was soon at an end. In two years after, his wife, whom he seems to have really loved, died in abject penury, and he had once more plunged into the wildest excesses. Desperately depraved, reckless, and mad, he still, at intervals, astonished his countrymen with some new proof of his genius. The literary circles of New York were always open to him in his sober hours; and even in his worst days he lacked not the self-sacrificing devotedness of woman. The mother of his dead wife clung to him, hoping against hope, caring for him, screening him, and, amid all his self-abandonment, watching over and seeking help for him. Occasionally

The moral of this melancholy history lies upon the surface. Dark sometimes, dreadfully dark as is the page on which are written the records of genius, we know of nothing more sad and painful than this, for never, we believe, was the poetic gift allied with so much that was essentially depraved. It is more than doubtful whether the daring recklessness, the wild license with which men like Poe sported with the responsibilities of life, have not done far more for Satan, than in their highest and purest works they have done for man. And yet the poetry of this poor inebriate is free from aught of that viciousness which marked his life; for the most part, it is a mournful wail of one whose natural endowments were never called into play without uttering unconsciously deep and touching sorrow over the wreck of the spirit of which they formed a part. It is the sad, dirge-like music of those moments which were pauses in a lawless life-a strain in which the agony of remorse seems to thrill with all its intensity, or to grasp at strange, quaint fancies, and force them to interpret things it dare not distinctly utter. And thus much that Poe has written, is autobiographical in a stricter sense than poetry of a strongly sub