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

SIR BULWER LYTTON'S EPIC.
KING ARTHUR.
PARTS 11. AND 111.

Our national literature does not contain a more
brilliant example of versatility than that which is
afforded by the career of Sir Edward Bulwer 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 he 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 vade meenm of a young Member of the
British Parliament. To the Historical Library, he
has contributed a fragment tot unworthy in its elo
quence of one who has aspired to commemorate the
glory of the Attic republicans. As a metrical trans-
lator he has displayed a remarkable capacity to
embody in a new language not merely the signi-
fication, but the very manner of the original.
Ile Las 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 and the metaphysical. That he
might, if he so pleased, rise to considerable eminence
as 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 upon 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-
C'sren• 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
ad 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 'l'alfourd,
and Knowles : as an historian with those celebrants
of antiquity who are neither so profound as Niebuhr
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
\Yellers and our Coleridees.
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 Timon," Sir Edward Bulwer 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 frequently
and so emphatically insisted upon the fact that Bul-
wer was, and that no one but Bulwer could be, the
anonymous bard of both productions. Our opinion
Was enforced by quotations from his acknowledged
and the correctness of this opinion has now
been happily demonstrated. The conclusion of
c4ing Arthur" is lying before us in eight books—
rlieting the number which constitute " Paradise
‘.23t) and the "..Eneid." There is throughout the
hag not
of the composition an evidence that the theme
it 8 not been lightly scanned by the poet prior to
fes
tdievelopment as an epic. Sir Edward has mani-
c, 81 3' Prepared his mind for the undertaking not
-,nY, as he himself expresses it, in his Preface, by a
,t`Prolonged apprenticeship to the principles of art,
1713' th e contemplation of its masterpieces in many
setPlageel and by such familiarity with the re-
sereee f
, nts native tongue as study and practice
re-
could enable him to obtain, but also in a particular
'lnner by his examination of the literature of the earlier
cl'andinavians, of the ancient Cymrians, of the axon
vvecicirliclers, and of the whole Teutonic family, as
Te as by a careful perusal of the records of the
buk,°_,vere,s, the Fabliasts, and the Troubad sirs.
of
elWith a reverential affection for the primitive
e, of his country, he has commenced and com-
eeelend
,his commemorative poem of the favourite hero
ti g'4lld. In this poem he has united all the prin.
bePta elements of what may be termed for want of a
t-pithet—Christian Horn- ace. Those elements
the from a binary centre of War and Love; and
the atmosphere of the entire work is coloured with
Agorgeous hues of Fairyland and Enchantment.
rthur himself—the very eembodiment of Christian
tri l eai,rY— is conducted through the vicissitudes of his
enterprise to the acquisition of the most sublime
**lles of humanity. Ui der the symbolical forms of
the aword, the shield, and the virgin—the sword of
toreit;nere, the shield of Thor, and the maiden of the
ness --he acquires Knowledge, Liberty, and Happi-
lee "...the three Gifts which man is continually
lei'l)!-I,"Ing to attain in his advance towards civilization.
lißhltie over the N.N hole narrative there is diffused the
.f a twee le purpose, firstly the conservation of
the British People and ofßritish independence from the
ts of an invading enemy, and, secondly, the
isdestructi( n of the idulatreue creed of the heathens by
e_Potent beneficence of Christianity. In this there
relY extraordinary grandeur of intention and
nArvelle
the
co us symmetry of proportion. Of the aim of
une mposition we can only speak in the language of
ree,f cePtionable eulogium. Our province in that di-
n extends no further. We can merely state the
peesnr,o of the author's purpose, and dismiss it with ex-
ions of unqualified commendation. It is simply
s the treatment of the subject that we have to do
eielreviewers. And with the treatment of the mate-
-84181 which compose the epic of "King Arthur" we
matte Find much difficulty to quarrel, saving only in
te of a very subordinate importance. The poem
,"_llWorthy of the portions already published, and of the
'tee Cation already gained by its author. It is worthy
tilet.he genius of the poet, and of the subject selected
nf for celebration. Arthur. It is worthy of Bulwer and
A
Of the • Amon the comparatively lesser merits
thei composition there is one which we must, never-
es, mention at once, seeing that it attaches to a
th"c4k
t, treating altogether of' antiquity an imme-
t and even contemporary interest. We mean
introduction,
eaus, under an assumed guise, of
cee`,Jc allusions to the events of the present epoch,
the vied with portraitures of men still living under
this Mask of fictitious or legendary characters. In
_e respect Sir Edward has availed himself of the
e ,
elane uents afforded by the medreval poets, and espe-
T, bY the sarcastic and debonnair romaunts of the
criVadours. Queen Isabelle was thus depicted as
reidering the tent cloths of Darius, and the
Drench I •
Cho 34 aureate was described among the courtiers of
the ated°nlan Conqueror in the elaborate poem of
etneiallexandriade. The Fabliasts have, in like manner,
euil'e.nYed the same license; agreeing in that parti-
let,7l with the immortal writer of the Orlando
ten nation,Bo.NVhile, as an additional and conclusive
vie may be borne in remembrance that
l thus made reference to the age of Augustus,
and that a,Spenser thus offered homage to the Court of
t`aleabeth Ho
Sir Edward Bulwer
•-,ltton has* w
delineatedswacacrerosisuoferusi Imyost conspicuous states
ken, orators, and
d the sketchesmoatyLordappreciated by
those who peruse
fiTohrdn•Russell,
Lord Palmerston, Lord Durham, Lord int ge, the
Marquis of Anglesea, the Duke of Weill. Ling ore
'gilt Hon. Thomas Babington Ma fight • • the
cau ay, and Mr
j'istnin Disraeli, which were transcribed into our.
;°l7ll`}trans on Monday, the 22d instant. Those
th inent personages, it will not be forgotten, wee,
leera clothed in the costume of the Knights of the
tOund Table ; and it is after their di lineation that
at: Poet breathe! forth this most admirable stanza—a
tlentiaa in which the metaphor is as perfect as any.
peel,R we know in the language. It expresses the
tieuet, of patriotism in combining in one hartno
the, 'and men of the most opposite and antagonistic
tketers
" Thus class'd, distinct in peace—let war dismay,
~c,Straight in one bond the divers natures blend—
varying tints in tranquil sunshine play,
But form one iris if the rains desearei ;
fused
in light against the clouds that lower,
For Old the deluge while they own the shower!"