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

SIR BULWER LYTTON'S NEW
WORK.

HAROLD, THE LAST OF THE SAXON
ICINGS. 3 Vols. By Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton.
Another work from the pen of a romancist so dis-
' tinguished in our national literature as Sir Edward
Bulwer Lytton is welcomed by us with all the cor-
diality awarded to an old favourite. We will not
affect an indifference which we do not feel,—we will
not disguise the sentiments with which we opened
the first volume of " Harold,"—we will not conceal
the fact that we were predisposed to be gratified
when the work was first announced for publication.
Criticism, we are perfectly aware, is altogether worth-
less unless guided by the most profound impartiality.
To be entitled to any consideration whatever, to ren-
der his praise or his blame of any (even the smallest)
importance, the critic must be uninfluenced by emo-
tions whether of partiality or prejudice ; he must be
as unimpassioned as truth, as ruthless as death, as
implacable, as impassable, and as pitiless as the Gre-
cian Nemesis. Conscious as we are of this neces-
sity, and solicitous as we are that our opinion should
not be regarded as worthless, we, nevertheless, ac-
knowledge at once that before a syllable of the narra-
tion under consideration had been perused by
ourselves, we were prepared to imbibe from its pages
a new sensation of enthusiasm. We preface our
criticism with that avowal, and we do
so all the more readily because we are
satisfied that a work of this character only
passes through a severer ordeal in proportion to the
loftier anticipations of the reviewer. Expecting
much, the imagination is more alive to disappoint-
ment. Judging the composition from its very com-
mencement by a high standard the mind of the
reader is rendered only the more exacting and the
more fastidious. So f'ar, therefore, from considering
our admiration for the genius of Sir Edward Bulwer
Lytton as a circumstance calculated to depreciate the
correctness of our estimate,: either as to his merits or
his demerits as a novelist, we feel that that admira-
tion is the best guarantee we could afford of our most
severe and perfect impartiality. So much for our
anticipations; now for their non-fulfilment, or their
realisation. Happily for those who cannot perceive
that the skilful delineations of crime—crime, the
basest or the grandest—are inculcative of the holiest
principles and of the most sublime morality, the last
fiction of Sir Bulwer Lytton is not a companion story
to " Lucretia." In the hideous incidents which con-
stituted the chief attraction of that morbid but extra-
ordinary production—that production which, al
though the atmosphere surrounding it was an
atmosphere of murder, and treachery, and vice,
although its heroine was the very incarnation of
infamy, although her principle yearning was homi-
cide although the whole book, so to speak, was
reeking with poison, and absolutely smelt of
blood, was as much entitled to respect for its
tendency towards good as the truthful history of
Macbeth, or the fictitious history of Orestes—in the
hideous incidents, we say, which formed the paramount
fascination of " Lucretia" the author pourtrayed the
deeds of the Children of Night. His tone was one of
congenial horror, and was for the most part comme-
morative of two anonymous criminals spawned
towards the conclusion of the eighteenth century,
the one amidst the terrors of the First Revolution in
France, time other amidst the domestic pomp of a
country mansion in England. In the vicissitudes of
" Harold " the author has selected a theme of a very
opposite description, and most assuredly one better
adapted to his capabilities as a writer, as well as to his
predilections as a man. If the work bears any direct
resemblance to one of his former productions the si-
militude is certainly traceable between " The Last of
the Barons " and "The Last of the Saxon Kings."
Nor does the resemblance consist merely in the simi-
larity of the titles, in the fact that both tales are illus-
trative of the same national annals, or in the kindred
and peculiar pathos which pervades both, as the record
of the extinction of a race and a dynasty. There is a
more subtle affinity and a more intimate relationship
between the two. They both relate to epochs in our
national history of such supreme importance that any
effort to familiarize the popular mind with the events
which led to those epochs, and the motives
which originated those events, any attempt to
bring the more remarkable characters of those
times more vividly before the imaginations of the
multitude, and to reveal the virtues and blemishes of
those characters with all the accuracy and with more
than the minuteness of the historian, is eminently
entitled to our commendation. The one intervenes
between the downfal of the Houses of York and
Lancaster, and the accession of the Tudors ; the
other between the extinction of the Danish and
Saxon dynasties and the subsequent elevation of the
Norman line and the line of the Plantagenets. The
latter epoch, the epoch of Harold the Dauntless and
of William the Conqueror, is one of a very singular
and august character ; it is one the mere remem-
brance of which after the lapse of nearly eight
centuries is fraught with so much that is noble,
grand, heroic, and unfortunate on the part of our
Saxon ancestors, as well as with so much that is
glorious, daring, and successful on the part of our
Norman forefathers (for the present sons of the soil
of England are the descendants of the two races in
nearly equal proportions, from continual intermar-
riage), that it inflames the heart, ,and arouses the
sympathies, and elevates the patriotism of the
most phlegmatic. A loftier subject could scarcely
have been selected by the distinguished author
of " Rienzi" and the " Last of the Barons," and he
has handled it with a reverent love, with a love not
unworthy of the royal son of Godwin, the hero of
the Saxon land, the champion of Saxon liberty, and
the last wearer of the Saxon diadem. In the " Dedi-
catory Epistle" to the Right Hon. Charles Tennyson
D'Eyncourt, Sir Bulwer Lytton gracefully ac-
knowledges the hospitality which placed at his
disposal the treasures of an ancient and voluminous
library in the residence of his host, the liberal
representative of Lambeth. From that library—the
library, we suppose, at Bayons Manor, Lincolnshire
—he has culled the materials of his new historical
romance, dipping not only into the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle, the " Chronicles" of Florence, of William
of Malmesbury, of William of Poictiers, of Hoveden,
&c., but likewise gathering corroboration from the
Roman de Rou, from Snorro Sturleson, from the
Bayeux Tapestry, and from the recent investigations of
Thierry, Sismondi, Palgrave, and Sharon Turner.
The result of this elaborate and laborious inquiry is
manifest in the historical accuracy which is preserved
in the midst of a fictitious underplot. One
great distortion of the truth there is, but that
Sir E. B. Lytton himself proclaims in the introduc-
tion, we mean the nature of the relationship subsisting
between Harold the Dauntless and Edith the Fair.
Instead of representing Ediva Fairs as the concubine
of the Saxon monarch, he, for reasons enumerated in
the " Dedicatory Epistle," describes them simply as
betrothed to each other, although that is a direct con-
tradiction to the statements of the ancient chroniclers.
We quarrel not with this delicate transmutation of
history into romance, for the effect is exquisite and
bewitching ; but there are one or two minor mis-
representations on the part of our author, which we
will mention at the right opportunity. The narra-
tive of " Harold " is, on the whole, however, so strictly
incidents n
seveeirnygsethhoaotlbto;
h
in accordance with the narrative given by our diffe-
rent annalists—by flume and Rapin; by Henry and
Holinshed, by Lingard and Mackintosh, by Palgrave
and Sharon Turner—that we are compelled to refrain
tshavegiving an
becomeepit familiarised
epitome of the storyt'o, e
in the ingenious catechisms of Pinnock and the
condensed chapters of Goldsmith. It were as
frivolous in us to recapitulate in a dry cata-
logue the events which transpired in England
from the visit of William Count of the Normans
to the Court of Edward the Confessor down to the
oS
his
inggcuoeul ar
courtiers.
i, •
rass.
catastrophe which gave the victoryf to that same
the anecdote of Alfred toast-
e fieid
it would be to detail
reproving
importance occurring be-
Count of the Normoafnsc on the
ing the cakes, or
between the visit of William
tween those two eveios2,
and the close of the ever-
to England, A.D.
certain extent the ever-deplorable
memorable and to a
.. .
p 1066, being an interval of
Battle of Hastings, il
Every circurnstancenotfs_any
ears and a half, calculating from
exactly fourteen y
is woven into the imaginary under-
May to October
hand 0 deft and a touch so refined that
plot with a s t
of the book as a romance nor
of ry ,
neither the sy kas a history • • h '
the vi or
the faithfulness _
alluded to, marred] or muti-
few exceptions already
fated. Without unnecessarily tunnecessarily wearying the attention
f those events, a recalaion
with a recapitulationou o
already explained to be superflpituuous,t we
which we have
rapid manner give some notion of the
inayver; f the book as an historical romance, by
construc4..on y o
.ovving
!particulars. " Harold" is
stating the fll
, Books—the moiety of a prose epic 1
divided into Tzcel .c' ,
'leis
Norman Visitor, the Sa
xon
Ring
Book I. entitled
King and the Danish Prophetess," recounts the fes-
tivities at the Court of King Edward the Confessor,
f the visit of William of Normandy,
on the occasion 0
rs of the English •
how the manners courtiers
and shows
were mimicked from the Norman courtiers at Rouen
the gates of Westminster striking
up minstrels at
song of Norman ly " the battleg
the household
up Paladin of Charles'-Great,"
the
Roland the
hymn of I
ur of the Count, and partially in
partially roof ono
t. nal
the Da io minstrelsy. Book Jr.,
contempt
the Scholar," brings the tale down
headed " Lanfranc
,11.
T 'll '
of ‘N i iam. ai efer, the renowned
to the departure
warrior minstrel ofwith
f the Normans, is introduced
admirable humour,
and chaunts a
e,characteristicro-
meant, called
Ballad of R
" 'Thenu. The introduc-
tion of Lan franc, franc however, is still finer, in particular
the description of the close of the h ' great sc olar s
speech to
the Count, when William " transported
ed up and embra dth ' •
ce e priest with
from himself leap .
he kissed his cheek, he kissed his fore-
his vast arms ;
days king kissed king withthe kiss
of as in those
of peace:' When the Count prepares to leave Lon-
don, Sivvard the great Earl of Northumbria, says to
him—" If England needs defenders when I and God-