dramatist, a historian, a politician, a speculator in metaphysics, a poet, a novelist, the editor of a magazine, a member of Parliament, a subject of the cold-water cure, a philosophical Radical, and a moderate Conservative. In his youth, he worshipped Hazlitt and Shelley; in his middle age, he vibrated between Brougham and Coleridge; and, of late, he associates with Alison and Aytoun! He has poured out books in all manners, on all subjects, and in all styles; and his profusion might have seemed that of a spendthrift, if it had not been for the stores in the distance which even his scatterings by the wayside revealed. For versatility of genius, variety of intellectual experience, and the brilliant popularity which has followed him in all his diversified career, he reminds us rather of Goethe or Voltaire than of any living author. Like them he has worshipped the god Proteus, and so devoutly and diversely worshipped him, that he might almost, at times, be confounded with the object of his adoration.

We think decidedly, however, that this boundless fertility and elasticity have tended to lessen the general idea of Bulwer's powers, and to cast an air of tentative experiment and rash adventure over many of his works. Had he concentrated himself upon some grand topic, his fame had now been equally wide, not less brilliant, and much more solid than it is. Had he taken some one lofty Acropolis by storm, and shown the flag of his genius floating on its summit, instead of investing a hundred at once, he had been, and been counted, a greater general. We would willingly have accepted two or three superb novels, one large conclusive history, along with a single work of systematic and profound criticism, in exchange for all that motley and unequal, although most varied and imposing mass of fiction, history, plays, poems, and politics, which forms the collected works of Sir E. Lytton Bulwer.

Some of Sir Edward's admirers have ventured to compare him to Shakspeare and to Scott. Such comparisons are not just. Than Shakspeare he owes a great deal less to nature, and a great deal more to culture, as well as to that indomitable perseverance to which he has lately ascribed so much of his success, so that we may indeed call the one the least, and the other the most cultivated of great authors; and to Scott he is vastly inferior in that simple power, directness of aim,

natural dignity, manly spirit, fire, and health, which rank him immediately below Homer. We may here remark that, notwithstanding all that has been said and sung about the genius of Scott, we are convinced that justice has never been done to one feature of his novels-we mean their excellence as specimens of English style. Except in Burke and De Quincey, whose mode of thinking is so very different, we know of no passages in English prose which approach the better parts of the Waverley series in the union of elegance and strength, in manly force, natural grace, and noble rhythmical cadence. Would that any word of ours could recall the numerous admirers of the morbid magnificence and barbarous dissonance of Carlyle's style; of the curt affected jargon which mars the poetic beauty of Emerson's; of the loose fantastic verbiage in which Dickens chooses to indite most of his serious passages; and of the labored antithesis, uneasy brilliance, and assumed carelessness of Macaulay; and induce them to take up again the neglected pages of Burke, with all the wondrous treasures of wisdom, knowledge, imagery, and language they contain, and to read night and day Scott's novels-not for their story, or their pictures of national manners, but for the sake of their wells of English undefiled; the specimens of picturesque, simple, rich, and powerful writing which they so abundantly contain.

Bulwer, too, although even in his most favored hours he cannot write like Scott, is distinguished by the merit of his style. It has more point, if not so much simplicity; if possessing less strength, it has far more brilliance; and it has, moreover, a certain classical charm-a certain Attic elegance -a certain tinge of the antique-which few writers of the age can rival. If Disraeli's mode of writing remind you of the gorgeous dress of Jewish females, with their tiaras shining on the brow, their diamond necklaces gleaming above the breast, the vivid yellow or deep red of their garments, their broidered hair, and pearls, and costly array, Bulwer's. in his happier vein, reminds you of the attire of the Grecian women, shod with sandals, clothed with the simple yet elegant tunic, and bearing each on her head a light and tremulous urn.

Passing from his style, we have some remarks to make on the following points connected with him-the alleged non

poetical nature of his mind, his originality, the impersonal. faculty he possesses to such a degree, his remarkable width of mind, his dramatic power, the fact that with all his frequent flippancy, levity, and excess of point, he is equal to all the great crises of his narrative; and finally, to that power or principle of growth which has been so conspicuous in his literary history.

First, not a few have maintained that Bulwer, with all his brilliant effect and eloquence, is not, properly speaking, a poet. An eloquent detractor of his has said:"The author is an orator, and has tried to be a poet. Dickens's John the Carrier was perpetually on the verge of a joke, but never made one: Bulwer's relation to poetry is of the same provoking kind. The lips twitch, the face glows, the eyes light; but the joke is not there. An exquisite savoir faire has led him within sight of the intuitions of poetic instinct. Laborious calculation has almost stood for sight, but his maps and charts are not the earth and the heavens. His vision is not a dream, but a nightmare; you have Parnassus before you, but the light that never was on sea or shore is wanting. The whole reminds you of a lunar landscape, rocks and caves to spare, but no atmosphere. It is fairy-land travelled by dark. How you sigh even for the chaos, the discordia semina of genius, while toiling through the impotent waste of this sterile maturity."

This is vivid and vigorous, but hardly just. We need meet it only by pronouncing one magic word-"Zanoni." Who that ever read that glorious romance, with its pictures of love, and life, and death, and the mysteries of the unseen world; the fine dance of the human and the preternatural elements which are in it, and keep time so admirably to the music of the genius which has created both, and the melting sublimity of its close-will deny the author the name of poet? Or who that has ever read those allegories and little tales which are sprinkled through "The Student," and the "Pilgrims of the Rhine," can fail to see in them the creative element? Or, take the end of his Harold, the death of Rienzi, the Hell scene in "Night and Morning," and the closing chapters of the "Last Days of Pompeii"-the terms "oratory" or "art" will not measure these they are instinct with power; their words

are the mighty rushing wings of a supernal tempest; and to us, at least, they always, even at the twentieth perusal, give that deep delightful shiver, that thrill of awful joy, which proclaims that the Spirit of Genius is passing by, and is making every hair on our flesh start up to do him obeisance.

True genius is, and must be, original; so that the terms original genius" are a poor pleonasm. Now, we think that Bulwer can be proved to have originality; and originality in any department of the fine arts is genius. His thought, his imagery, his style, his form of fiction, are all intensely his own; and, therefore, since exerted on ideal subjects, all are those of a poet. He began his career indeed, as most writers do, with imitation. He found certain models in vogue at the time, besides some which, although not generally popular, were recommended to him by his own taste. Hence, in his early novels, he has now Godwin, now Scott, and now the authors of what were then called the fashionable novels, such as Tremaine and Almacks, in his eye. But he soon soared out of these trammels, and exhibited and began to realise his own ideal of fiction, the peculiarity of which perhaps lies in the extreme breadth of the purpose he seeks through the novel and romance to fulfil. He has tried to make it a cosmopolitan thing a mirror-not of low or high life exclusively, not of the everyday or the ideal alone, not of the past, or present, or future, merely; but of each and all;-each set in its proper proportions, and all shown in a brilliant light. Ward, and the whole of that school, including Disraeli in his "Vivian Grey" and "Young Duke," wrote for the fashionable classes. Godwin wrote for political and moral philosophers. Dickens writes for Londoners, Lever for Irishmen, and Thackeray for the microscopic students of human nature everywhere. Even Scott neither expressed the spirit of his own age, nor ever attempted to reproduce the classical periods; nor has he discovered any sympathy with the mighty metaphysical, moral, and religious problems with which all thinkers are now compelled to grapple. But Bulwer has written of the world, and for the world, in the broadest sense; has described society, from the glittering crown of its head, to the servile sole of its foot; has painted all kinds of life, the high, the middle, the mean, the town and the country, the convulsive and the calm

-that of noblemen, of gamesters, of students, of highwaymen, of murderers, and of milliners; has mated with the men and manners of all ages; has reproduced, with startling vraisemblance, the ancient Roman times, and breathed life into the gigantic skeletons of Herculaneum and Pompeii; has coped with many of the social and moral questions, as well as faithfully reflected the salient features of our own wondrous mother-age; and has with bold foot invaded those regions of speculation which blend with the shadows and splendors of the life to come. It is this wide and catholic character which makes his writings so popular on the Continent. We do not, indeed, say that he has completely filled up the broad outline of his purpose; otherwise he had been the greatest novelist, perhaps also the greatest writer, in the world. But he has succeeded so far as to induce us to class him with the first authors of his time. He has, although with much effort, long training, and over consciousness both of the toil and the triumph, fairly lifted himself above this "ignorant present time," and caught on his wings the wide calm light of the universe. Yet, with all this Goethe-like breadth, he has none of his icy indifference; but is one of the most fervid and glowing, as well as clear and cosmopolitan, of modern writers.

His depth has often been denied, nor are we careful to maintain it. There are in some of our authors certain quiet subtle touches, certain profound "asides," certain piercing single thoughts, which proclaim a native vein, communicating directly with the great Heart of Being; but which we seldom if ever, find in Bulwer. Although he be, in our judgment, a true poet, he is not a poet of the very highest order. But, perhaps, his exceeding width may be taken as in some measure a compensation for his deficiency in depth. Indeed, some may even contend that if there be the same amount of mind, it is of little consequence whether it be diffused over a hundred intellectual regions, or gathered together in one or two profound pits; that as depth and height are only relative terms, so it is with width and depth; and that as you call the sky indifferently either lofty or profound, so a very wide man is deep in one way and direction, and a very deep man is wide in another. Be this as it may, and there seems a proportion of truth as well as of fallacy in it, we contend that