The Sun.
London, England, 1857-06-01 00:00:00

MAGAZINE DAY.

Blackwood.—Glorious news for the readers of
Blackwood! Bulwer again wi ii all his vivacity,
with .all his orizinality, with all his genius, faci e
princeps among Maya's noble b incl of contributors.
Here, in tact, is the commencement of his new
story, under the rather eccenttic title " What will
he do withiit ?" Another great composite fiction
—" By Pisistratns Caxton"—delinew,ive of the
" Varieties of English L;fe." No hist irical
romance taking us back to the days of Epaminon-
dasto the age of the Plantagen4ts—to. the epoch
of Boccaccio—to the comparatively recent times of
our own Bolingbroke. But in lieu of this, some-
thing far better from a great mater-hand like.that
of Bulwer Lyttoa—a picture of ourselves " as, ,we
are" seen by those keen eyes of his, with our sorrowi,.
and our hopes, and our loves, and our aspirations
—all pasSed in turn thro' the al, rabic of Lis gene-
kits sympathies ! L is a new vereion of " England
and the English !" Thera are no less than eight
chapters in the present
.(the initial) instalment.
An it is not difficult to conjecture through those
eight chapters the scope and diversi,y of the ornate
and elaborate work of art of which those eight chap-.
ters are but the commenceme ut. The dry hu ;nom' of
Our Atithor twinkles out upon us even through the
terse explanatory heading of Chap. One, intimating
that it (ch. i.) descriptive of various mat t 3rsof not e,
" conveyed in artless dialogue after the manner of
Herodotus, Father of History (Mother unknown)."
One of those quaint thoughts one marvels no one
ever lit upon before—a scholastic freak that de 'r
old Austin Caxton himself would have chuckled
over—and one that another dear old friend of 'us all
(Charles Lamb) would htve relished like a :nut !
Already we can see enough of the new tale by our
English Sir Walter—this strangely-entitled story
of " What will he do with it?"—to recognise i s
striking dissimilarity from all its famous and diver-
sified predecessors. It promises to be as different
from them, one and all, as they have been each
different from the other. Yet, so to speak, with
something generically kindled to " My Novel," as
befits a purely wholesome English story penn,A by
no other pen than that of Pisi',trttus Caxton, vivi-.

fled by a genius ever sparkling, fresh, and adoles-
cent.. As to that genius—nothing appears to pall,
or fade, or mar in any way its "infinite variety:"
Its advance is still steadily—Upwards. Read
in-
troductory chapters of " What will he do with it ?"
and they read with all the exhilarating vivacity of
" Pelham" —but with ripened wisdom glowing
through their animation. The tree is not all leaves
now, sprinkled with casual blossoms, but has go'den
fruit clustering in among the branches plentifully.
Everything around him appears to be strangely
suggestive to this vigilant and meditative observer.
The scene opens in the midst of an English_ Fair
upon a village. green in Surrey. Sir E. Lytton has
not sauntered through one of those gay, homely
rural scenes to no purpose ! He has not (to speak
of these things in common parlance) talked, with
an Astrologer for nothing ! He has not peerel
himself into the mystic fairyland, dreamland, cloud-
land of a Magic Crystal for nothing ! Hence—
Merle the Cobbler 1 Hence—the egg-shaped ball
of a glassy something, in the which ale Juliet
Araminta sees the reflection of her own sweet face
distorted—" so long !" Already—lightly sketched
in, though they are as yet (and that necessarily)—
the characters introduced are, many of them,
radiant with originality. Waife, iudeed, is a veri-
table creation—a wonderful creation : worthy of
being ranked with Burley The Ruined Genius,
or with David Fallen in " Not so bad as we Seem."
Here is the sketch Of GENTLENIAN WAIFE—THE"
• STROLLING PLAYER.

"Yes, the Bandit, who appeared but in the last
scene, and even then uttered not a
,word, was the once
great actor on that itinerant Thespian stage, known
threugh many a fah: for his exuberant humour, his im-
promptu jokes, his arch eye, his redundant life of drol-
lery, and the strange pathos or dignity with which he
could suddenly cacAlt a jester's part, and call forth tears
in the startled hush of laughter ; he whom the cobblcr
had rightly said, "might have made his fortune at
Covent Garden." There was the remnant of the cl,l
popular mime I—all his attributes of tl9quence reduced
to dumb show ! Masterly touch of nature and of art in
this representation of him—touch which all, who bad
even in former years seen and heard him on that stage,
telt simultaneously. He came in for his personal por-
tion of dramatic tears. Waife, \Vaife!' cried many a
village voice, as the little girl led him to the fr•mt of the
stage. He hobbled ; there was a bandage round his eyes,
The plot in describing the accident that had befallen
the Bandit, idealised the genuine infirmities of the man
—infirmities that had befallen him since he last seen
in that village. He was blind of one eye; he had be
come crippled.; some malady of the trachea or larynx
had seemingly broken up the once joyous key of the old
pleasant voice, He did not trust himself to speak,
even on that
.stage, but silently bent his head to the
ru,tic audience ; and Vance, who was an habitual play-
goer, saw in that simple salutation that the man was an
artistic actor."

Sophy, the little girl who can't see into the Crystal,
and "Grandy," as she calls poor broken down
Waife, her grandfather—are as unlike another
little girl and her grandfather, familiar, long since,
to the leaders of English Story, as any human
beings can well be. Yet, in their mysterious wan-
deriugs together, do these two bear a dim resein-
biance, in some faint degree, to Little Nell and
her Grandfather, in the " Old Curiosity Shop."
The ghost-like semblance of this shadow of ashade
of a similarity, we doubt not, will disappear alto-
gether as the tale advances in its elaboration. We
wish much, very much indeed, however, that some of
the names selected for the dramatispersonce in "What
will he do with it 1" were not provokingly and con-
fusingly identical with other names with which we
have elsewhere become familiarised. Merle, .the
astrolog;cal cobbler, for example, reminding us of
the Jew Gauibler in Lever'sestoty of " The Mar-
tins." And Rugge, the strolling manager, clashing
in our memory with Pancks's l-gal friend at Pen-
tonville, in Dickens's " Little Dorrit." Enough,
however, very nearly has -been said in 'regard to
this notable introductory contribution to, the June
number of Blackwood. It is Maga in her glory
with Billwer in his glory—a deer favourite 'of us
all, redivivus So—may they long flourish together.
So—may we linger enthralled for many mouths to
come over the pages tending to reveal to us,,bit by
bit, What he will do with it . . . As Sir
Edward Lytton's story begins, Mrs. Oliphant's
story is brought, as we anticipated het month it
would be brought; to a'conclusion.- It con fi retie our
admiration for the genial and graceful abiiitiesbf the
authoreS;L'lt itaeharming tale charthingly told, and
one that closes (save in regard to the one fact that
it tiocg•-elose) to everyone's satisfaction,' There is
one lapsus, however, in the plot,• that, -honestly b 3
it said, altogether passes our comprehension., Mrs.
Oliphant describes and Blackwood's Magazine prints
the solecism as a mere matter of course—B. .w
Lord Winterboutne's title and estates are made the
subject of a Trial at the Assizes, instead of in the
House of Lords ! What does Mr. Warren say to
such a "-slip" as this in the magazine, glorified
twenty years ago by the legal lore, as well as the
social drolleries of "Ten Thousand a Year?' Has he
winced-at it We have scarcely left ourselVes lei-
sure to remark otherwise than cursorily of the seven
other contributions in this number of Blackwood,
—one of these seven contributions being a graceful
poetic celebration of Maga'S Birthday, .zitatis, Five
Hundred, An art-critic ably surveys in one paper,
the " Manchester Exhibition of Art-Treasures '—
while a book-critic weighs in the balance, no_ less
ably in his way, the historical writings of Sir
Francis Palgrave. " Stewart's Practical Angler"
is examined scrutinisingly by another reviewer;
and " China and Japan are scanned by yet an-
other contributor to Maga, through the lens of
certain recent " American Explorations." A
tolerably familiar serial by this t.me, the delinea-
tion of " Phases of Clerical Life "—is continued.
A new serial, portraying some fresh " Seaside
Studies," will be foUnd wisely descriptive of the
Scilly Islands;" in this its first instalment. So—
' flourishes. Blackwood perennially. And so—
"And long may she flourish in beauty and worth,
The loved of the muses, the pride of the North !
Long, long may she shine in her bountiful light,
t
Like the ruddy Aurora that kindles the night .
And when she has doubled the span of her age,
With the vigour of youth ever stamped on ber page,
That
someaane
canul in swtirtehl
Mn rapturen
ea nd
thousand
triumph
c do
In epcal dare, e,
.

The Dublin,.—" The Cardinal Treaties of Me-
diveval and Modern History," by Professor Creasy,
are again resumed this month ; the subject here
under consideratioais "The Peace of Westphalia,"

.w.~:.,,:;.,.