The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-18 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Sir B. Bulwer Lytton's New Work.

Caxtoniana : A Series of Essays on Life, Litera•
ture, and Manners. By Sir E. Bulwer Lytton
Bart., Author of "The Caxtons," &c. Two vole,
Blackwood and Sons.

Although far from being Sir Edward Lytton's
greatest work, Caxtoniaia is certainly, in many
respects, among all his numerous and various writ-
ings, to our thinking, one of the most remarkable.
In some respects, even, we would go so far as to say,
it is, among them all, in our own estimation, almost
the most remarkable. During the. lengthened in-
terval within which these seven•and-twenty Essays
upon Life, Literature, and Manners, were being pub
lished by instalments in the pages of Blackwood,
the author's design appeared to us, we will confess
it, rather vague and straggling—a wondrous, if not
a mighty, maze, and altogether without a plan.
Now, however, that the whole series has, imme-
diately upon its completion, been collected together,
being, here, laid before us in its entirety in the
shape of these two singularly handsome volumes,
we will acknowledge ourselves to have been, in this,
in a very great measure mistaken. What, even then,
to our precipitate judgment, when Caxtoniana first
came to be regarded only piecemeal, bit by bit, bore
An aspect, almost we might say, of incoherence,
now that we have been enabled to regard it as a com-
prehensive whole, not only at once assumes to itself
a readily appreciable coherence, but wins anew our
admiration by reason of the harmony of its propor-
tions and the symmetry of its general arrangement.
Descanting in the first instance—(with the subtlest
sympathy for the thought he thus undertakes to
articulate in the inaugural essay of the seven-and-
twenty)—upon a certain marvellous evidence of in-
creased attention to Outward Nature he has ob •
served among thoughtful men towards the Decline
of Life, Sir Bulwer Lytton here takes from what
thus seems to him, as he charmingly expresses it,
distinctly indicative, that " life in age rounds its
completing circle towards the point at which it
touches the circle of life in childhood," our Author
takes that one mystic point in the rounding orbit
of human existence, as his own starting-point in
these his deeply thought-out meditations upon Life.
For Essays, they are, it should be particularly borne
in mind while reading them, it should certainly
be borne in mind by us while commenting upon
them thus analytically, Essays they are peculiarly
and essentially and above all—upon Life. The
other two themes mentioned upon the title-page of
Caxtoniana, are altogether subordinated to that far
grander theme of Human Life, to which those added
minor themes of Literature and Manners are, as it
were, but accessories and adornments, are here, in
a certain sense, so to speak, but supplemental, and
subsidiary. Upon Manners and upon Literature,
the philosophic mind of Pisistratus enlarges, no
doubt, repeatedly, in Caxtoniana, with a charming
discursiveness. Instance, his ninth essay " On Style
and Diction," his eleventh, " On the Moral Effect of
Writers," his fifth, in which he delineates so delight.
fully the salient attributes of that social paragon the
" Superior man," and his eighth, " On Rhythm in
Prose as conducive to Precision and Clearness." Bu

if we might so express it without any appearance of
affectation, the thread of the whole discourse—the
thread upon which are here strung together in such
curious contrast, and in such affluent abundance,
thoughts as varied both in outward appearance and
in intrinsic value as a chequered succession of pearls,
and berries, and pebbles, and precious stones—the
one unbroken, elastic, devious thread of the dis-
course upon which these thoughts are all strung to-
gether in Caxtoniana, is that marvellous, mysteri-
ous gossamer thread of Life, manipulated by the
weird sisters of the old mythology, the fated
thread touched successively by the distaff, the

whet], and, at the last, by " the abhor! ed shears."
A noble topic of discourse, in truth—and
ore which, with manifestly the profoundest sense
of its awful import, the reverent genius of
Bulwer, here, in some of the finest pages he has ever
written, most nobly discourses. Not merely has it
appeared to us, as already intimated, that, with a
tender significance, the mystic meeting-point in
the rounding circle of human life, above indicated,

has been selected by the author as his own starting.

point in these meditations of his upon Life (and in a
lesser sense also upon Literature and Manners)—but
it seems to us that we have, at the very close of

that first essay "Oa the Increased Attention
to Outward Nature in the Decline cf Life"—a key to
the innermost meaning, purport, tendency of these
same earnest, more than heart-barn, soul-born
meditations. A key, it is, to their innermost mean-
ing : and, beyond that, otherwise to express it, the
keynote, likewise, to the dominant harmony run-
ning through these, ever most musical, often most

melancholy, musings upon Life, these seven-and-
twenty Essays of Caxtoniana. Allusion being

here made to what appears to us the subtle
significance of that double echo at the close of the
first of these thoughtful Essays—that concordant

echo of words human and divine—lovely words
from an old poet, sacred words from the New
Testament—here Sir John Davies instilling into
our heart's core the benignant truth, "Death is
nought but the Soul's Birth"—here Holy Lips
breathing into our very soul, "Make yourselves as
little children, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."
Having said thus much upon the general design

of Caxtoniana, upon the pure tone and elevated
character of the work as a philosophic and artistic
whole, we have already, we conoeive,justified to the

full whatever we have before remarked in com-
mendation of it, as a worthy expression of the

matured genius of the Author. How far it really

does afford evidence of his genius in its maturity
might, perhaps, be rendered the moat readily ap-
preciable upon a comparison of Caxtoniana with
a former collection of Essays penned by the same
hand. Whereas in the two volumes of " The Stu-

dent" written by our author,now a good many years
ago, when he was, for a very brief but a very bril•
liant interval, Editor of the New Monthly, in
which magazine those earlier essays appeared, from

month to month, as the Editor's own contributions
to his periodical--.whereas in those two volumes of

" The Student" the reader could wander, as he
listed, b 0 to express it, through an orchard in the
spring time, in its first tender verdure and abound-

ng Efflorescence—here in these two volumes of

" Ca.ctoniana,"Bulwer's reader has hardly so much
wilful inclination to wander fitfully as he lists—
the orchard is no longer of the spring time, it is in

.he full wealth of an abundant autumn, the richest

colouring on the leaves, the ruddiest fruit clustered
thickly in the boughs—the ripest of it all drop-

ping about us as we pass onwards. Or, to adopt yet

another simile, one of Pisistratus Caxton's own,
that wonderful simile of the River which he has

recently worked up into so exquisite an allegory i❑
his Schiller-like poemuf " The Boatman" in the last

❑umber of Blackwood—whereas in" The Student,"

he current of thought, along the margin of which we

loitered years ago with such unaffectedly pleasur-
able emotions, was so near the fountain head of the
stream as to be, here and there, shallow perhaps, but
wondrously crystalline in the sunlight, sparkling
among the reeds, dimpled by the pebbles in its bed,
ruffled but by the breeze or by the passing wing of
the midge and the dragon fly--that same current of
thought now rolls byus, here in Caxtoniana, broad
ened, deepened, impetuously, no longer amongttihlee
oastoral landscapes, but through the midst of
roaring city,with at intervals, one alight
theocean
almost say,
a briny sense, as by a tidal influence, of
in common with
awaiting it, and towards which it,