The Sun.
London, England, 1849-01-30 00:00:00

Our national literature does not contain a more
brilliant example of versatility than that which is
afforded by the career of Sir Edward Buiwer Lytton.
Nor is the versatility of this illustrious author cha-
racterised by any of that intellectual mediocrity which
is generally the result of a miscellaneous application
of the mind to the various branches of knowledge.
He has, on the contrary, acquired for himself an ele-
vated position in the different departments of letters,
to which he may, from time to time, have dedicated
his very distinguished abilities. Whatever he has
endeavoured to accomplish in earnest he has achieved
with the most felicitous success. As a dramatic
writer Le has produced several of the finest plays of
modern times; and among these the most effective
"stock piece" that has appeared in our generation.
In political composition he has penned a work which
must always rank him high in the list of constitu-
tional reformers—a work which might not inaptly be
designated the wade mecum of a young illeinlxr of the
British Parliament. To the Historical Library, he
has contributed a fragment riot unworthy in its elo
quence of one who hes aspired to commemorate the
glory of the Attic republicans. As a metrical trans-
lator he has displayed a remarkeble capacity to
embody in a new language not merely the signi-
fication, but the very manner of the (a iginal.
He has revealed a depth of contemplation,
and an abstraction from things familiar in his'
essays which goes far to prove the command he pos-
sesses over his imagination. He has revived not only
the landscapes and the manners, but the souls and
the individualities of the past in his historical ro-
mances. He has sounded the innermost recesses of
his own nature in those domestic novels, which con-
tain more of himself, more of his fancy, of his sensi-
bility, and of his faculty for observation, than per-
haps all the rest of his effusions put together. Beyond
this he has created in the flowery regions of fiction a
species of narrative fraught with a beautiful though
indistinct fascination—we mean those narratives
which combine, in such delicate confusion, reality and
ideality, the sensuous end the metaphysical. That he
might, if he so pleased, rise to considerable eminence
es a biographer was testified two or three years since
by a brief but noble panegyric on one of his deceased
contemporaries. Yet, unsatisfied with reaping the
harvests of celebrity in these splendid fields of litera-
ture, he has now adventured t.-on a track already
trodden by so many august predecessors, that track
which conducts to the loftiest fane of Immortality,
that track which has been sown with the tears and
the life-drops of aspiring pilgrims—the path of
Poetry. After touching his lyre into a symphony of
minor songs, elegies, ballads, satires, sonnets, odes,
and idylls, he has at last dared to lift his voice to the
sublime tones of the epic, and that epic the grand
national epic of KING ARTHUR. There is in all this a
patience that extorts our respect, a genius that wins
our admiration, a perseverance that excites our won-
der, and an audacity that almost disarms our criti-
cism. We recognise in the gradual ascension of our
, author's intellect from the tale to the history, from the
essay to the drama, from the song to the epic, a com-
bination of all those qualities which tend to ensure a
victory if only accompanied by innate power and ex-
traneous determination. In "King Arthur" ' we be-
hold the crowning achievement of his life. His am-
bition cannot rise to a greater altitude. He has ac-
complished that which once had its seductions for
the deathless and majestic mind of Milton. In
Romance he had already taken his place with Scott,
and Victor Hugo, and Boccaccio. As a novelist he
. had long been numbered in the same catalogue with
Fielding, and Le Sage, and Dickens: as a political
• philosopher with Condorcet, and Defoe, and Consi-
derant : as an essayist with Steele, and Budgell, and
Lamb: as a dramatist with Sheridan, and I'aifourd,
and Knowles : as an historian with those celebrants
of antiquity who are neither so profound as Niebuhr
• or so voluminous as Gibbon. He has now assumed a
place in that division of our library which we love so
earnestly—a place among the Kings of English
Poetry, among our Drydens and our Cowleys, our
-Walters and our- Coleridoes.
. Actuated by a sentiment of candour, and impelled
to the confessional by his reiterated identification
with the authorship of the preVious portions of the
present work, and with the preliminary poem of the
"New Tinton," Sir Edward Buiwer Lytton has at
length affixed his name to " King Arthur." We
must be allowed in some measure to felicitate our-
selves upon this circumstance, as we had so fie quently
and so emphatically insisted upon the fact that Bul-
ever was, and that no one but Bulwer could be, the
anonymous bard of both productions. Our opinic n
was enforced by quotations from his acknowledged
writings, and the correctness of this opinion has now
been . L
be eam_ i •
, ly demonstrated. The conclusion of
"Ring Arthur" is lying before us in eight books—
completing the number which constitute " i'aradise
Lost," end the " 2Eneid." There is throughout the
whole of the composition an evidence that the theme
has not been lightly scanned by the poet prior to ,
its development as en epic. Sir Edward has mani-
festly prepared his mind for the undertaking not
°t'l3', as he himself expresses it, in his Preface, by a
, "prolonged apprenticeship to the principles of art,
cy the contemplation of its masterpieces in many
-languages, and by such familiarity with the re-
• sources of his native tongue as study and practice
could enable him to obtain, but also in a particular
manner by his examination of the literature of the earlier
Scandinavians, of the ancient Cymrians, of the a:axon
• Chroniclers, and of the whole Teutonic family, as
well as by a careful perusal of the records of the
poveres, the Fabliasts, and the Troubadours. lin-
ull(d with a reverential affection for the primitive
ages of his country, he has commenced and com-
Pleed his commemorative poem of the favourite hero
of England. In this poem he has united all the prin-
cipal elements of what may be termed for want of a
better epithet—Christian Romnce. Those elements
radiate trom a binary centre of Mar and Love; and
the atmosphere of the entire work is coloured with
.t. he gorgeous hues of Fairyland and Enchantment.
•Laythur himself—the very emhodiment of Christian
triple
conducted through the vicissitudes of his
virtues
enterprise to the acquisition of the most sublime
Jrtnes of humanity. ljeder the symbolical forms of
sword, the shield, end the virgin—the sword of ,
the mere, the shield of Thor, and the maiden of the
tcrob—he acquires Knowledge, Liberty, and Happi-
..‘i'eLss—the three Gifts which man is continually
labouring to attain in his advance towards civilization.
l`While over the Is hole narrative there is diffused the
sieght of a twofold purpose, firstly the conservation of
• ttiOe British People end of British independence from the
s_sallits of an invading enemy, and, secondly, the
ttcdestructs-. nof idolatrous creed of the heathens by
" potent beneficence of Christianity. In this there
surely extraordinary grandeur of intention and
yarseilous symmetry of proportion. Of the aim of
21re:composition we can only speak in the language of
e]tceptionable eulogium. Our province in that di-
-I;ecilon extends no further. We can merely state the
nature of the author's purpose, and dismiss it with ex-
Pr.essions of unqualified commendation. It is simply
with the treatment of the subject that we have to do
as \VerS. And with the treatment of the mate-
r_,l 12 which compose the epic of "King Arthur" we
matters
find much difficulty to quarrel, saving only in
of a very subordinate importance. The poem
Is worthy of the portions already published, and of the
reputation already gained by its author. It is worthy
of
the genius of the poet, and of the subject selected
by him for celebration. It is worthy of Bulwer and
of Arthur, !among the comparatively lesser merits
of the composition there is one which we must, never-
theless, mention at once, seeing that it attaches to a
work treating altogether of antiquity an imme-
diate and even contemporary interest. We mean
thecle introduction, under an assumed guise, of
caustic allusions to the events of the present epoch,
coupledtl with portraitures of men still living under
'flask of fictitious or legendary characters. In
this respect Sir Edward has availed himself of the
ePr,,cedents afforded by the medeeval poets, and elpe-
by the sarcastic and debonnair romaunts of the
roubadours. Queen Isabelle was thus depicted as
embroideringor the tent cloths of Darius, and the
the•tr rich laureate was described among the courtiers of
the Alacedonian Conqueror in the elaborate poem of
lexandriade. The Fabliasts have, in like manner,
employedr the eame license; agreeing in that parti-
a
V zio„,o with the immortal writer of the Orlando
extenuation,
so. While, as an additional and conclusive
it may be borne in remembrance that
Virgil thus made reference to the age of Augustus,
and that Spenser thus off
Elizabeth. how successfullye homage to the Court of
Lytton has delineated our Sir Edward Bulwer
mostm conspicuous states-
men, orators, and warriors
appreciated by
those who perused the sketches ouiLbee John Russell,
Lord Palmerston, Lord Durham, Lorrwlie
lardinge, the
gton, the
Marquis of Anglesea, the Duke of
and Mr.
Right Hon. Thomas Babington Macaullaliu
Renjamin Disraeli, which were transcribed' into our
columns on Monday, the 22d instant,
eminent personages, it will not be forgotten, Those
tyre clothed in the costume of the Knights or thee Round Table ; and it is after their delineation that
Hie poet breathes forth this most admirable stanza—a
tlanza. in which the metaphor is as perfect as any.
131101:2 g we know in the language. It expresses the
"r of patriotism in combining in one harmo-
chl°aurascbtearnsd:fn of the most opposite and antagonistic
" Thus class'd distinct in peace—let war dismay,
Straight in one bond the divers natures blend—
o y
arying tints in tranquil sunshine play,
But form one iris if the d - d rains ei.cen• ,
I,Acnrdis;_furd in light against the clouds that lower,
"I'4 We deluge while they (mu the iheyfer:"