The Sun.
London, England, 1848-06-15 00:00:00

GRYFFYTII.

" But in the centre of the space, leading on a fresh
troop of shouting Welchmea who had forced their way
from another part, was a form which seemed charmed
against arrow and spear. For the defensive arms of this
chief were as slight as if worn but for ornament : a
small coralet of gold covered only the centre of his
breast, a gold collar of twisted wires circled his throat,
and a gold bracelet adorned his bare arm, dropping gore,
not his own, from the wrist to the elbow. He was small
and slight-shaped below the common standard of
men—but he seemed as one made a giant by the sublime
inspiration of war. He wore no helmet, merely a golden
circlet; and his hair, of deep red (longer than was usual
' with the Welch), hung like the mane of a lion over his
shoulders, tossing loose with each stride. His eyes glared
like a tiger's at night, and he leaped on the spears with
a bound. Lost a moment amidst hostile ranks, save by
the swift glitter of his short sword, he made, amidst
all, a path for himself and his followers, and emerged
from the heart of the steel unscathed and loud-breathing;
while, round the line he had broken, wheeled and closed
his wild men, striking, rushing, slaying, slain."

1 . _
HAROLD HARDRADA.
" The host rose from his seat, and passed through the
porch and stood on the bleak rock under the light of the
moon; and so seen, he seemed scarcely human, but some
war chief of the farthest time—yea, of a time ere the
deluge had shivered those rocks, and left beds on the
land for the realm of that icy sea. For Harold Har-
drada was in height above all the children of modern men.
Five ells of Norway made the height of Harold Har-
drada. Nor was this stature accompanied by any of those
imperfections in symmetry, nor by that heaviness of as-
pect, which generally render any remarkable excess
above human stature and strength rather monstrous than
TuTt:is
.:nding- On the contrary, his proportions were
chronicler
remarks in his sa
h pe, was ' that his Lhands
and feet were large, but
thesevierewell made.'
" His face had all the fair
his hair, parted in lock beauty of the Norsemen ;
spoke the daring of thea of gold over a brow that be-
warrior and the genius of the
bard, fell in glitterinmg
moustache
to his shoulders ; a
short beard and long
•heof the same colour as
the hair, carefully trimmed, added to the grand and
masculine beauty of the countenance, in which the only
blemish was the peculiarity of one eyebrow being some-
siniste
what hrigtohehis fr than th
run
e oth
something more arch to his smile.
, s
For, quick of impulse, the Poet-Titan smiled and frowned
often.'

Besides these there are pictures—painting in lan-
guage—of Siward, the Earl of Northumbriis
immor-
talised by Shakspere in Macbeth; of W itzborne, the Lord of Breteuil ; of Haco ; of Odo, Bishop
of Bayeux ; of Alred, Bishop of .Winchester ; of-
Vebba the Kentman ; of Leofric, Earl of Mercia; of
Rolf, Earl of Hereford ; of Meredydd, the Welch
chieftain ; and of Messire William Mallet de Gra-
ville, a Norman kLight—evidently a great favourite
of Sir Bulwer Lytton. In the portraiture of Queen
Edith there is a graceful plagiarism from Keats.
" The purple light of a high narrow window, shaped
in the Saxon arch, streamed rich and full over the
Queen's bended head like a glory, and tinged her pale
cheek, as with a maiden blush; and she might have
furnished a sweet model for an early artist in his
dreams of St. Mary the Mother, &.c." Who does not
remember those two matchless stanzas in " The Eve
of St. Agnes ?"
" A casement high, and triple• arched there was,
All garlanded with careen imageries
Of fruits, and flowers, and branches of knot•grass,
And diamonded with frames of quaint device,
Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,
As on the tiger-moth's deep damask'd wings ;
And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries,

And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,
A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of
,queens and
kings.

" Full on the casement shone the wintry moon,
And threw warm gules on Aladeline's fair breast,
As down she knelt for heaven's great boon,
Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
And on her silver cross soft amethyst,
And on her hair a glory like a saint:
She seem'd a splendid angel newly drest,
Save wings for heaven: Porphyro grew faint ;
Shia knelt, so pure a thing, so tree trom mortal taint."

Several of the sentences incidentally penned in the
composition of " Harold" are worthy of separate re-
membrance—as the crystallization not of mere flies
in amber, but of gems of thought. Er. gr.
" Prudence, patience, labour, valour; these are the
stars that rule the careers of mortals."
" No man should grieve for what he can help—still
less for what he cannot help."
" The grateful have the power to bless."
" The illiterate are ever children," &c.

Sometimes, indeed, our author permits himself to
mar his masculine and idiomatic composition by a
casual commonplace, as a here he speaks of Harold
" shaking the evil memories from his soul as a lion
shakes the dews from his inane ;" but sometimes,
again, he redeems a trivial fault of this kind by a
sudden gleam of satire, as when writing of the Cha-
teau d'Eu he says of it, quite, as it were, in paren-
thesis, " this chateau, not famous in aftertimes for the
good faith of its lords I" Hilda is perhaps the only
actual creation in the book, and Hilda is worthy of
the imagination which conceived Arbaces and
Adam Warner, and Dallibard, and Zanoni.
Of Hilda, the author speaks thus—solemnly
and reverently of his own creation—" On the
verge of the mighty Heathenesse sinking fast
into the night of ages, she towered amidst the
shades, a shade herself; and round her gathered the
last demons of the Dire Belief, defying the march of
their luminous foe, and concentering round their mortal
priestess, the wrecks of their horrent empire overaworld
redeemed." In spite of the awe which envtlopes the
very idea of Hilda the Vala, there is nevertheless a
loathsomeness about her sombre and dismal deeds—
especially in reference to the hag by whose revela-
tions she is at last destroyed— that there is al ways a
sense of relief when the narrative turns from the
Druid stones, the cromleche (or as the author is fond
of calling it, the crommel) elsewhere—to the bluff
Vebba, or to the merry Leofwine, or even to the hand-
some and cruel Tostig. The fascination which sur-
rounds the priestess is the fascination of terror.
Perhaps the principal blemish in the whole production
is the delineation of the character of King Edward
the Confessor that delineation approaching rather
to a caricature than to an historical vraisemblance,
and perhaps the most flagrant and yet the least
noticeable blunder in the three volumes, is the
mention of the Saxon Monarch's devotions at mass
in the moonlight, on the eve of the terrible conflict at
Sanguelac ; whereas, if we may credit the declara-
tions of the Romish ritual, that office is never, except
on the vigil of Christmas,
performed until daybreak.
With all these subordinate blemishes, however,
" Harold," if not the greatest, is assuredly 071 C of the
greatest works yet written by Sir Bulwer Lytton.
And already he has written with an eloquence, and a
versatility, and an erudition, end an inspiration—the
inspiration of a scholarly and cultivated genius—such
as have placed his, name conspicuously in the fore-
most rank of modern English literature. Already
he has enriched our dramatic library with Richelieu,
and Money, and the Sea Captain, and the Lady of
llons• Already he has assumed' a prominent place
among
our national essayists by; the pregnant
and meditative papers contained in the " Stu-
dent." Already he has materially aided in
popularizing politics through the medium of
his ingenious and admirable book called
" England and the English ;" and has successfully
emulated the classical researches of Gibbon and Mit-
ford in his durable " History of the Rise and Fall of
Athens." Already he has acquired a very distin-
guished celebrity by his poetical effusions—effusions
worthy of companionship with the verses of Cowley
and Dryden—we allude not merely to " Eva ; or the
111-omened Marriage," but to more pretentious and
remarkable works, which, for particular reasons, we
abstain from enumerating. But especially, and
above all, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton has achieved
great things as a novelist and as an historical, roman-
cist. His " Pelham" and " Godolphin" have revealed
his capacity to appreciate the fictions of Dickens and
Fielding ; his " Eugene Aram" and " Paul Clifford"
have surpassed the wild and eccentric popularity of
Ainsworth ; his " Rienzi," his " Zanoni, ' and his
"Last Days of Pompeii" have opened new and gor-
geous fields in our fictitious literature; his "Night
and Morning," his " Falkland," his " Disowned," his
Devereux," his "Ernest Maltravers," his "Alice,"
his " Lucretia," and his
." Pilgrims of the Rhine,'
have severally demonstrated the fecundity of his ima-
gination and the originality of his invention ; while
in his " Last of the Barons" and in his present
work, " Harold, the last of the Saxon Kings," he
has dared to penetrate into that sanctuary which
still resounded with the giant footsteps of the im-
mortal Scott. In this last venture our author has
acted nevertheless with anything but an insane te-
merity. He has emerged from his researches among
our ancient annals, not disgraced but victorious. On
Closing the last volume of " Harold," the memory
reverts with joy to the age of the thegn, and the ceorl,
and the theowe,
the franlding; wof the lithsmen, and the reeve, and
e think of the bode, the nuncitu, and
the procere ; we see the mone in his stall, the diX•