The Sun.
London, England, 1853-03-14 00:00:00

the charm of a spontaneous eloquence, and infus-
ing into the whole work the spell of a most sweet
and natural fascination. Never before, indeed,
has Sir Bulwer Lytton 'manifested more delightfully
the highest skill of all—the firs celare arte that
skill which is, in, truth, the offspring of his more
elevated aspirations, as it is the reward of his pro-
longed and indomitable perseverance. 1
Riccabocca we would at once select from among
the crowd of imaginary beings depicted in " My
Novel " as our especial favourite. Numerous other
favourites we have, of course, amidst all that motley
concourse of his companions. We halve an affee-
tion for the bluff old Squire of the parish of Hazel-
dean—an affection none the less Sincere because -of
our malicious pleasure in the remembrance that
his nether man was only clad in nankden when he
tumbled among the thistles, and none the less ear-
nest because .of our contempt for the stacks and our
admiration for the sermon on the text from Gala-
tians. We have an affection, too, for the pure-minded
and gentle-hearted Parson of that same parish of
Hazledean—in spite of his irritability over the
fluctuations of a rubber, and this, even though we
cannot refrain from chuckling at the recollection
of his discomposure on that horrible, high-trotting
horse, when hailed from the postchame window by
Richard Avenel's inquiry of--" How's the leather ?"
We have a kindness even for that saun Dick Ave-
nel—the true type of your go-ahead manufacturer,
fresh from the inspiriting influences of the political
atmosphere of Yankeelatid=liking him not a jot'
the less became we- happen-to be amused when he
is so " catawampoilsly chawed up" (to employ one
of his own characteristic expressions) on venturing
to aspire to the attainment of 'a baronetcy through
the interest of Audley Egerton. For Audley
Egerton himself we cherish, through all those
clouds of suspicion, sentiments only of the tender-
est sympathy and the fullest admiration. For it is
impossible not to recognise in his instance, under
the conventional frigidity of public life, the warmth
of the human affections. Harley L'Estrange—let
us acknowledge it at once—we should have loved
incomparably the most of all, but that we conceive
that most exquisite creation to have been strangely
marred towards the close of the narrative. Na-
tural though the change depicted by our author in
the whole character by Lord L'Estrange—wakened
to revenge as he is only by the discovery of what
he imagines at the first to be an act of unexampled
I turpitude—it must, nevertheless, be admitted, to
our thinking, that, if -in 'this Sir Bulwer Lytton
has evidenced his superior allegiance to the True,
he has in the very act of so doing—sacrificed the
Beautiful. Until this sudden and startling trans-
formation in Harley's nature we should have
laughed to scorn the judgment of any reader who
could for a single instant have hesitated in accord-
ing to him a decided preference among all the
characters. Since that change, however, our par-
tiality in his regard has been, as it were against
our own inclination, utterly dissipated. Every-
thing he does, even when restored to his former
suavity, fails to revive in its early freshness
our genial estimate of his temperament. There
is a flaw in What was previously the " one
entire and peifect chrysolite" of his really love-
able idiocyncrasy. And . so—Harley L'Estrange
brought down from his pedestal—we turn with un-
divided admiration to the disguised Duke of Ser-
rano, the good Alphonso, the gentle, the wise, the
guileless even where he fancies himself most full of
guile, the homely and yet stately, the chivalrous
and yet fantastic, the magnanimous and kindly lord
of the little Casino, feeding upon sticklebacks, and
ever thumbing the pages of that dreadful Machia-
velli—Dr. Riccabocca. Even Melancthon must
have loved him in spite of his being one of those
incorrigible " Papishes" even Melancthon, we
say, because was it not his mild voice that was
raised in applause when Servetus was slowly roasted
to death by Calvin ? Yes, forbidden by the records
of the fourth volume to sustain our preference for
Lord L'Estrange, we select Dr. Riecobocca from
among all the more attractive characters in
"My Novel," as our favourite of favourites.
And this, notwithstanding that we have amongst
those favourites not already mentioned several
whom we cannot regard otherwise than with very
peculiar tenderness. There is John Barley the
wasted genius—a companion picture to David
Fallen, companion we mean as affording a touching
contrast to that exquisite delineation—poor John
Burley illustrating his baulked ambition by that
one-eyed perch which he declared to be the Delilah
of his existence ; squandering the resources of his
rare intellect upon that detestable Beehive which
was only another name for Oblivion ; and in the
downward anguish of his despair seeking to degrade
to the gaudy squalor of a gin-palace the dieties of
whom Schiller had sung so divinely in his glorious
Dithyramb ! There is` Leonard Fairfield, the
young poet, or rather the lovely ideal of a youne*
poet—all the freshness of youth and all the
passion of poetry constituting the charm of
his individuality—winning his way to our heart
first by his refusal of the sixpence, and first imbib-
ing the bitter wisdom of experience from the terrible
life and death of Chatterton. We are not without
a partiality, moreover, for Dr. Morran, the good-
natured homoeopathist ; for Frank Hazeldean, the
young Guardsman, who is as generous a ne'er-do-
wed as lie is undoubtedly a thoughtless scapegrace;
for the faithful Jackynio, ever looking after the
small fry in the fish-pond, when he is not tending
his garden, or invoking the aid of his sainted name-
sake. Besides those already mentioned, what
crowds there are of other and very different cha-
racters 1 *A glimpse of the broken-hearted soldier.
Digby. An outline sketch (but such an outline
sketch !), as suggestive and all-sufficient as oue of those
from the pencil of Moritz-Retzsch—of the dyspeptic
poor relation, Higginbotham with " expectations!"
A callotype of old John Avenel, the imbecile wreck of
a small, retired, provincial tradesman. A kind of si-
houette, in profile of the haughty Colonel Pompley,
an officer having a supreme horror of Vulgarians.
Beyond all these, in addition to a multitude of
other personages, ranging through all the ranks of
society in England, as the second title of the story
naturally leads the reader to anticipate, besides a
concourse extending upwards in the social scale
from Stirn, the hard-headed Steward of Squire
Hazeldean, to the Earl of Lansmere, the father of
Harley, Lord L'Estrange—there are minor figures
grouped elsewhere on this broad canvas duly su-
bordmated, of course, to those which are placed in
the foreground more conspicuously. Prominent,
howbeit, among the less prominent, are Mark
Fairfield, the poet carpenter—Mr. Norreys, the
London Man of Letters—Mr. Prickett, the book-
seller—Spendquick, the man about town—Borrow-
well, unquestionably his half-brother—Mr. Sprott,
the tinker, the gentleman who enters into that
very admirable arrangement with his beast of bur-
den (vol. i. p. 26)—" The Tinker went behind
and sung, the Donkey went before and was
thwacked." Maunder Slugge Leslie, Esquire, -of
Rood-hall, the decayed landed proprietor—Oliver,
his youngest son, not too proud to play at cricket
with the children of the villagers—honest Farmer
Bruce of Hawleigh—even the nameless Austrian
Prince, and the equally nameless Boniface of the
Lansmere Arms, the latter being the dogmatical
disputator who poses Parson Dale when piqued
upon the inaccuracy of his knowledge as a philolo-
gist, by sententiously observing, in regard to the
'difference between bumptious and gumptious (vol.
i. p. 320), " Bumptious is bumptious, and gump-
tious is gumptious. Now, the town beadle is
bumptious, and Mrs. Avenel is gumptious." All
these are delineated with a bold and apparently
careless facility ; but yet, at the same time, it may
be remarked, in every instance with singular
niceness of discrimination. Perhaps still more
admirably contrasted with each other are the three
principal villains of the narrative—the brilliant,
hardy, and relentless Giulio Franziui, Count di
Peschiera—the sleek, Jew money-lender, Baron
Levy, who first appears upon the scene (Vol. ii.,
p. 137) as " a handsome man with, a camelia in his
button-hole ;"—and wiliest of all the schemers in
"My Novel," Randal Leslie, the protege' of
Audley Egerton, as crafty as lago. and meaner than
qachimo, one who evidently coincided with the
Duke do Lauzun (" Duchess de la Valliere," Act
i., sc. iv.) in believing that
"The best hero is- -the cleverest rogue."
Randal may be regarded, we conjecture, as placed
in the balance against Leonard, just as Levy the
usurer has the direct counterpoise of interest to
Egerton the statesman, or as Peachier°. may
so ibe
viewed in the light of a foil or antithesi t R:cc
bocca—the true hero of the book being H
Lord L'Estrange. Randal's position arley
genius of the story is happily indicated in
as the bad
thrower
describing him gliding after nightfall a passage
when (Vol.
darkened streets of the metropolis, the
p. 282) " solitary amidst the v- t in.)
and on
through the machinery of eivilisa. city,
cation, went the still
Spirit of Intellectual Evil." Tliro 1 + n uagsieonus ~e
ouifierporioei
gress of the tale, it is always with
that we find ourselves carried away from an ex-
amination of the intri
tion of the subtle butes of
Leslie to a the
unsuspicious harmless philosophy of the
unsuspicious and benignant_.
ter on among all thosecold-blooded Riccabocca. We saun -
little villanous casuistriesan.d
proverbs making up the staple
conversation, with a
gentle nature of that
the disciplesof
most uncontaminated
Machiavelli. Whenever we
ourselves in his it " if
we
were
shelter and
and sunny " Pl
company is as
among the flower :beds
to impart
even the most of his
find
in the
beds of some green
im nature seems, by
easannce." HF bizarrel dignity to
grotesqueafS:
that costume being,.
masquerade. .11
brella becomes _
Chinese Emperor.a species of habitual
rt:tfo n s of his costume—
r theninnianner even his red TlM-
glord. —like' the symbol of a
book—carried under his