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

HAROLD lIARDRADA.

" 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
ar 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 liar-
tirade 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
commanding.above hum an a t
On
tnu ret
haen d
contrary,strengh rhaitsh eprromonstrousproportions
.
chronicler remarks in his shape, was
just, his appearance noble ; and the sole defect that the
" His face hadinat`that his hands
and feet were large, rtions were
but these were well made.'
the fair beauty of the Norsemen ;
his hair, parted
the daring of the of
bard, fell in glitterinito gold over a brow that be-
spokewarrior and the genius of the
profusion to his shoulders ; a
short beard and long
trimmed,
dache of the same colour as
the hair. carefully
added to the grand and
masculine beauty of the countenance in which the only
what
blemihigheash wr
thanone
something m,%.aeve something more
For, quick of impulse, the Poet-Titan smiled and
frofrowned
.
often."
Besides these there are pictures--
paintings in lan-
guage—of Siward, the Earl of Northumbria.
immor-
talised by Shakspere in Afacbeth ;of William itz°
borne, the Lord of Breteuil ; of Haco ; of Odo, Bishop
of Bayeux; of Aired, Bishop of Winchester; of
Vebba 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 ki.ight—evidently a great favourite
of Sir Bulwer Lytton. In the portraiture of Queen
Edith there is a graceful plagiarism frcm 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 wicgs ;
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 Madeline.'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: Porphvro grew faint ;
She knelt, so pure a thing, so tree from 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. Ex. gr.
" Prudence, patience, labour, valour; those 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 where he speaks of Harold
" shaking the evil memories from his soul as a lion
shakes the dews from his mane ;" 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 !" Hilda is perhaps the only
actual creation in the book, and Hilda is worthy of
the imagination which conceived Arbaces and
Adam Warner, and Dallihard, 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 envelopes 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 Leot wine, or even to the hand.
some and cruel Tostig. The fascination which sur-
rounds the priestess is the fascination of terror.
Perhaps the prineipal 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 one of the
greatest works yet written by Sir Buiwer Lytton.
And already he has written with an eloquence, arid a
versatility, and an erudition, and 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,
Ld Money, and the Sea Captain, and the Lady of
ons. Already he has assumed' a prominent place
and
g our national essayists by the pregnant
dan , 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
and Dryden—we allude not merely to "Eva ; or the
Companionship with the verses of Cowley
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 Buiwer Lytton has achieved
great things as a novelist and as an historical roman-
cist.
" Pelham" and " Godolphin" have revealed
his capacity to appreciate the fictions of Dickens and
Fielding ; his " E
have surpassed the wild and eccentric popularity of
Ainsworth ; his
"Last " Rienzi," his " Zanoni," and his
Dap 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,':
Lucretia," and his
." Pilgrims of the Rhine,'
in his
have severally demonstrated the fecundity of his ima-
gination and the originality of his invention ; while
work, he
" Last of the Barons" and in his present
" Harold, the last of the Saxon Kings,"
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 theozee,
of the lithsmen, and the reeve, and
the /rankling; we think of the bode, the nuncius, and
the Procers ; we see the mane in his stall, the six-

handman in the pasture, and the burgher in the city ;
we hear the voice of the scop in the hall, and the
battle-song of the impassioned scald roaring above
the din of the axe and the shield ; we behold again
the torque glittering with its zimmes upon the brow
of Gry ffyth, the gonna flowing ruund the form of
Vebba, and the ateghar blazing in the grasp of
) Gurth ; we see before us once more the satraps of
Harold, and the vavasours of William; and above all,
and beyond all, and through all, we look with a loving
and reverential admiration upon the memory of the
last Saxon King—the beautiful and sublime memory
of Harold the Royal and the Dauntless.