The Sun.
London, England, 1859-01-10 00:00:00

BULWER'S NEW WORK.

What will he do with it ?' By Pisistratus Caxton,
Author of "My Novel," &c. Four vols. Wm.
Blackwood and Sons.
The circumstances under which this remarkable
work of fiction makes its appearance in its com-
pleted form are not merely unusual, but we
believe altogether unprecedented. Imagina-
tive writers have, no doubt, ere this time been
members of our Government. Addison was a
Secretary of State. Sheridan was a Privy Coun-
cillor. As surely incidents like these have adorned
the annals of our national literature, as divers
other minor ones of a kindred character—as that
Mat Prior, for example, became ambassador at the
French Court—as that W ill Congreve held some
mysterious post in the Pipe-office. " Doesn't it
sound like a fable," asks Mr. Thackeray, " that
place in the Pipe-office? Ah, l'heureux temps
que celui de ces fables !" , Adding whimsically,
" Men of letters there still be; but I doubt
whether any pipe-offices are left. The public has
smoked them long ago." Not a bit of it : or if the
mystic pipe-offices have vanished, we have evi-
dence in our time that the loftiest" coigns of vantage'
in the edifice of the administration may still be at-
tained by the aspiring ambition of one whose
genius has already achieved in the world of letters
the glory of an enduring and eminent reputation.
The present instance, however, is unquestionably
the first upon record, in which a Minister of the
Crown has, by a mere coincidence of time, while yet
holding the seals of office, signalised anew his rare
capabilities as a Novelist. It has so happened upon
this occasion, we repeat, by a mere coincidence of time
—not as the result of any contemporaneous labour
on the part of the Author in his twofold capacity as
a Romancist and as an Administrator. What will
he do with it ?—the twentieth, the latest, and in
many respects the most elaborated of all his ghat
prose works of fiction—was (as we all know now
perfectly well) virtually completed several months
ago, nearly one entire half year, in fact, before the
date upon which Sir Bulwer Lytton accepted the
high and responsible post of her Majesty's Principal
Secretary of State for the Colonies. An " Adver-
tisement by the Publishers," prefixed to the first of
these four volumes, reiterates indeed, what the
writer had already, some time back, himself dis-
tinctly intimated in the course of his narrative
during the time of its periodical issue in the pages
of Blackwood's Magazine, namely, that " the entire
manuscript, ready for the press, was in their (the
Messrs. Blackwood's) possession at the close of last
January." It is consequently altogether without
even the smallest derogation from the dignity of
his Ministerial position, that the Master-Novelist of
his Age witnesses the publication of his last ro-
mance at a period when he himself has his every
faculty absorbed in theloyal and patriotic guidance
of the destinies of the Colonial Empire of England.
The coincidence, therefore, upon which we are here
not very unnaturally commenting, as one in every
way so unprecedented,.may be regarded both by
the Public and by the Author with unmingled
satisfaction.
The periodical issue of What will he do with it ?
in the classic pages of Maga, has now extended
over a period of no less than twenty months in un-
broken succession. Throughout this long sequence
of instalments, we have become familiarised with
its fictitious scenes, and perfectly intimate with all
its imaginary characters. The spell of its fascination
has continued so long, that what was at first a
luxury has grown at last to be a necessity. When
the ensuing month comes round, it is not an
affectation to say, that we shall sorely raiss the
ever-welcome voice in the number of Blackwood for
this next February.
Mutandus locus est, et deversoria nota
Praituragendus equus : Quo tendis ? non mihi Cumas
Est iter aut Baias.
Our imaginations will no longer stray as hitherto
into the green and tangled haunts of Old Fawley
Manor, loitering by the weedy margin of the lake
with Darrell, tracking the silver-footed Doe into
the coppice, wandering vaguely among shrubs and
thickets in search of the Magic Flute of Fair-
thorn. Prospero's wand, if not broken, is laid
aside—and his book, though not drowned, is at
the least completed. Its mysteries, some of them
so long inscrutable to the reader, have been solved.
The involved and knotted web of its plot has been
entirely unravelled, even when apparently most
hopeless in its 'tangled intricacy. The thread of
so many lives making up the skein of this plot,
moreover, has been dealt kindly with by the weird
Sisters—but once, if we remember rightly, has it
fallen asunder before the shears of Atropos, the rest
winding smoothly to the very close from the
distaff of ICotho to the wheel of Lachesis. The
one solitary victim of Poetical Justice at the ter-
mination of the fiction being, of course, the arch-
ruffian of the tale—Jasper Losely. Yet so gently
has Sir Bulwer Lytton treated even this semi-
diabolical personage, that Jasper's deathbed is
surrounded by the assuaging influences of a love
so truthful, so exquisite, so almost divine in its
perennial vitality that it is spoken of in one of the
quaint headings to the chapters of the Twelve
Books of this Prose Epic, as " the insinuation of the
highest compliment to Woman ever paid to her
sex by the Author." The faithful tenderness here
alluded to, is of course that manifested by grim
Arabella Crane—the affectionate hobgoblin in
iron grey, under whose frigid endearments the
stalwart and brawny prey of paralysis lies
down to die, wincing, but helpless. We
leave the wretch there with a sort of horrid relief
—leave him there in the tender clutches of that
love before: which his soul quails, his heart recoils.
These nearly the last words that come to us from
his parched lips, as we cross the threshold
of the bedchamber—" Basta, basta—l know
what it is to have a head now !—ache, ache !
—boom, boom—weight, weight—heavy as a
church bell—hollow as a church bell—noisy as
a church bell ! Brandy ! give me brandy you
witch !—I mean Bella, good Bella, give me
brandy." Terrible though the phantom of this
great evil character is from first to last, it incul-
cates one of the grandest morals of the book ; it is
one of the most remarkable and original creations
in the whole narrative ; it is the hero of what, to
Our mind, is the most powerful scene described in
these pages—the scene where Jasper beards the
ruffians in their den—standing though he does at
the outset entirely unarmed in the midst of the
lawless gang—strikes them down to the right
hand and to the left with his brandished chair-...
springs upon the table—snatches a revolver from
the ringleader—makes the rest pile their arms at
his feet ! Don't we yet hear the roar of his sten-
torian voice as he stands there defiant and derisive
—" Unbar the door, you two. You, orator Cutts,
go in front ; light a candle—open the door.
So—so--so. Who will treat me with a part-
ing cup—to your healths ? Thank you, sir.
Fall back there; stand back—along the wall—
each of you. Line my way. Ho, ho
you harm me—you daunt me—you----you! Stop—l
have a resolution to propose. Hear it and cheer.
'That this meeting rescinds the resolution for the
expulsion of General Jasper, and entreats him hum-
bly to remain, the guide and ornament of the club!'
Those who are for that resolution hold up their
hands—as many as are against it, theirs. Carried
unanimously. Gentlemen, I thank you—proudest
day of my life—but I'll see you hanged first ; and
till that sight diverts me—gentlemen, your health."
And so out, with a stride—along the passage—
through the street door—scatheless ! It is the
apogee in the orbit of his evil life. It is in the
glare of that den of infamy that we alone care to
think of him—seen by that light, his figure stands
forth in gigantesque proportions. Altogether it is
a wonderful delineation.. Among the villains of
fiction it will take rank as a dread original—at first
av athletic and symmetrical type of great physical
strength and beauty—towards the end a bloated
and almost loathsome wreck of crime and dissipa-
tion—immediately before the close of the wasted
life, ameliorated by the last awful change, supply-
ing " the delicacy that ends with youth by the
delicacy that comes with the approach of death,"
—" the goddess whose boons adorn the ontward
shell of the human spirit, coming back to
her favourite's death - couch as she had
come to the cradle—not now as the Venus
Erycina, goddess of Smile and Jest but as the
warning Venus Libitina, the goddess of Doom and
the Funeral." So falls the dark curtain betimes
upon Willy's son—leaving him at the moment
when he comes at length almost within the scope
of our commiseration.
Already, when the story was in its mid career,
we endeavoured in these columns to analyse the
varied merits of the plot, and passed in review the
motley personages making up the array of its con-
trasting characters. The enthralling history of
these fictitious people has since then been related
to its conclusion. The long estrangement of Guy
Darrell and Caroline Countess of Montfort has
happily terminated. The apparently hope-
less nuptials of Lionel Houghton and Sophy
—(there was a blank for the surname
almost to " The End")—has been consum-
mated. The character of the Remorseless Bandit,
of poor old Waife, of dear William Losely, of dar-
ling Willy, has been triumphantly vindicated.
Excellent Mr. Hartopp proves to have been in no
way deceived by the master of Sir Isaac—to have
been more sagacious in his humanity than his
head man Mr. Williams in his caution. Sir
blase himself has made such friends with the fame
doe before the book is finished, that the doe