The Sun.
London, England, 1868-02-19 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON", WEDNESDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 19, 1868.

last c pmmunications which the Secretary for India
reedi ed from Sir ROBERT NAPIER were dated the
nd 25th of January. In the first of these he
sap the total amount of water daily condensed
by th e two fixed condensers and by the vessels in
harbo ur amounts to one hundred and sixty tons.
Of those 120 tons are daily placed on shore, which
affo. Nis a copious supply for all the troops, fol-
lowe ts, and animals at present at Zulla. The letter
of t. hi 25th, dated from Zoomayloo, goes into
furtb en details, and is even more reasoning. " This
place„"' writes Sir R. NAPIER, " is one of great im-
portm ce to us ; it has the first good water. The
wells ;are in the bed of a river, the water excellent
and ph mtiful, requiring only the means of pumping
it out.. I think there is little doubt that this should
be our supply for Zulla, having the convenience of
the railway to bring out the piping, and the con-
venien reof the pipes to supply water for the engines."
It is a very important question. The human con-
sumers of water at Zulla by the last estimate
amounted to 11,500, and a failing of water would
be something not to be thought of without anxiety.
Of course as long as we have our condensers at
work we are sure of a general supply, but if a bad
gale came the ships might be out of gear for a
time. The wells at Zoomayloo will be a most
valuable source of supply, and will not be subject
to the influences which might affect the con-
densers. So far as the Government has yet received
information, there has been no lack of water. On
the contrary, all official accounts have showed that
the supply was abundant. So much then for one
great danger.

Another subject of anxiety to the British taxpayer
has been the monthly cost of freight which has been
estimated at something like £400,000. Sir STAF-
FORD NORTHCOTE could give no exact information
on this point, not having received the details he
wished for from Bombay, but from what he knew he
believed the amount would be much less. As for
THEODORE'S arrival at Magdala, it is possible, like
many other things, but entirely uncertain.
The movements of the Egyptians, like other in-
cidents, have been greatly exaggerated. So far
from a formidable body of Egyptian troops having
entered Abyssinia simultaneously with Sir ROBERT
NAPIER'S advance, the VICEROY has given orders
for the recall of the solitary battalion which he had
sent to Massowah. Lord STANLEY represented to
to him that such a movement might be misunder-
stood by the Abyssinians, who might suppose that
we were in alliance with their dreaded neighbours
and rivals, and also that the advance of Egyptian
troops would be very inconvenient to us, as they
must naturally draw their supplies from the same
sources. The VICEROY received these suggestions
in the most friendly spirit, and while he assured
Lord STANLEY that the number of men advancing
to Massowah had been greatly exaggerated, he pro-
mised to recall them immediately. The ac-
counts of the large body of troops en-
tering Abyssinia independently of our force
must therefore have originated in fact ; but,

like other reports of the kind, they grow with time
and repetition. It would be a little singular if the
VICEROY, so soon after his visit to this country,
should rashly provoke the power of England against
himself, and we can scarcely suppose he would be
so rash and so impolitic. Altogether the intelli-

gence which Sir STAFFORD NORTIICOTE has received,
and which he last night communicated to the House
of Commons, is calculated to reassure the public
mind, and to dissipate any anxiety which might

have existed as to the present well-being and
future prospects of our expeditionary force.

LITERATURE.

Lord Lytton's Fasays and Criticisms

The Miscellaneous Works of Edward Bulwer, Lord
Lytton. Three Vols. Richard Bentley.

If there is one English author now living whose
name may be regarded as, beyond all others, typi-
cal of English literature it is the author of these
volumes. There are writers among his con-
temporaries who stand forth conspicuously as the
representatives of their own chosen departments in
that literature : several of them being men illustri-
ous by the splendour of their genius or by the
variety of their achievements. Among novelists, for
example, there is Charles Dickens. Among histo-
ria.ns there is George Grote. Among biographers
there is John Forster. Goldsmith—Greece—and
how many inimitable masterpieces of fiction from
Pickwick to Copperfield, from the Christmas
Carol to Great Expectations, afford evidence
in each of these three familiar instances of
the perfect accuracy of our assertions. Then,
too, among our popular poets, among our popular
dramatists, among our philosophic essayists, among
our Parliamentary orators, other names might just
as readily, as in the foregoing instances, be adduced.
Yet, as comprehending within the scope of a single
genius, within the compass of a single career, within
the mastery of a single ambition, these, and to-
gether with these, a variety of other distinct and
distinguished reputations, the name of Edward
Bulwer, Lord Lytton, stands forth, among them all
and above them all, without any rival or competitor
whatsoever. As a writer of fiction he is our English
Sir Walter Scott. As a philosophic thinker he is
recognised, appreciated, and honoured beyond the
boundaries of England, but especially far and wide
throughout the great German Fatherland. As
a Parliamentary orator, how is it that he was
spoken of—and that, too, but very recently—by an
orator no less accomplished himself than the Lord
Chief Justice of England ? Why, in terms no less
emphatic, in terms no less avowedly prophetic, than
these : speaking of Lord Lytton's reputation as a
statesman and orator of the highest order, but more
especially of his reputation in the latter capacity--
" I venture to predict," said the Lord Chief Justice
upon the occasion we are referring to, " that those
speeches which in the great arena of political con-
flict, the British House of Commons, my noble
friend has pronounced will remain as models of the
highest and the noblest eloquence and of deep
thought—such as should characterise the statesman
and politician—clothed in the glowing and graceful
language of which no man is a more complete mas-
ter." The enumeration, however, of a mere selection
from among the masterpieces he has produced, in such
variety and at the same time in such affluent abun-
dance, will more than justify us in claiming for
him that distinctive pre-eminence which we have not

hesitated to pronounce his by right, namely, that
of being in his own person the typical representa-
tive of the whole mass of our living literature. As
a Poet he has securely and nobly assutned his posi-
_

tion in the national Walhalla. As an Epic Poet
by right of that "life of his life"—Dryden's dream
deserved for his realization—his patriotic and
chivalric celebration of " King Arthur." As a
Poetic Satirist by right of tha " New. Ticaon."

As a Lyrist by right of hour many ex.
visite snatches of harmonious song —nn

least charming among them, Nydia the blind girl's
tender ditty about the flowers in " The Last Days
of Pompeii." In his capacity as a Dramatist, again,
the eminence he has long since won for himself is,
to say the least of it, sufficiently conspicuous and
assured. His is the most brilliant comedy of mo-
dern times—" Money." His the happiest achieve-
ment in the department of the historical drama—
" Richelieu." His that most charming of romantic
plays, that sweetest love story put into action and
dialogue—" The Lady of Lyons." Reverting for a
moment to a consideration of his larger and more
comprehensive fame as a Novelist or Romancist—a
character in which his celebrity is intensely and
essentially that of Bulwer rather than of Lytton
—how comprehensive and diversified have been
the raids of his adventurous genius beyond
the borderlands of Fable, beyond the boun-
daries of Dreamland, as a great Master of

Fiction akin in the daring, the vividness, and
the grasp of his itnagination, to the loftiest
even among such dreamers of dreams, to Scott, to
Vwon re-
putation lists often
Le Sage, and to Boccaccio ! And here it is suffi-
ciently remarkable to notice, in regard to Bulwer
as a
upon Novelist, that he
reputation.has in thatEnteg
ri
nctPtalicei
with vizor closed—disdaining the aid of the prestige
appertaining to him by reason of his already recog-
nised achievements as an imaginative writer--he has
Godolphin" had
repeatedly won success anew upon the unassisted
and isolated merits of this or that individual pro-
rdnuncttiohnrn.
ugAhseeavfearsahl eiodnaitbinlenenobveefln, i
before
it was ackno 0/-
lodged. "The Cantons," again, appearing anony-
mously in Maga, there mastered the admiration of
its first readers before its in the
authorship was
least suspected. Just as "The New Timon" some
ygaeainrsedpthreeveiaorunslfyt,haeupdub
alifet,etrhwoanrgdh the Poet's identitys " King Arthur"
all the while remained sedulously concealed. Or,
as, in yet another instance, "The Lady of Lyons,"
had charmed the playgoers nightly for a whole week
before the name of the successful playwright had
been announced. What is still more remarkable,
however, in regard to Lord Lytton's reputation in
all his various and widely-contrasting characters, is
the very simple and perfectly well-known fact that
the progress of his career has been facilitated in no
one instance by any adventitious aid towards
the furthering of his or of its advance-

meat. In other and plainer words, he
has always stood from first to last altoge-
ther aloof from any and every literary clique
or coterie. He has no reason to thank the
literary critics of his own time in his own
country. Elsewhere his genius and his achieve-
mants—his genius in all its phases, his achievements
in their manifold diversity—have had full and gene-

roux recognition. Elsewhere they have had this full
and generous recognition—in France, in America,

,n Germany, more especially in Germany—not in

England, not at least as a rule among the English
critics, whether daily, woekly, monthly, or quar-
terly. Ile has no reason, we repeat, to thank

them for having participated in any, even the

smallest, way in the building up of his reputation.
He has less reason, indeed, than any author

now living to thank the critics of England for even

civility in the consideration of his many rare and
lofty merits. The singular, almost we had said an-

tagonistic, attitude which the English critics have
always thus assumed in regard to him, through-

out his career, still remains however we

may scrutinise it —as in a very great degree
incomprehensible. It has been consisten`4, we

should perhaps rather say persistently, main-
tained by them from first to last through the

three principal epochs or divisions of his life, when he
has been familiarly known and honoured among the
general public as Author, Statesman, Orator—asPo at,
Novelist, Dramatist—as Administrator, or Mau-
__ _ _

of-letters, now as Mr. Bulwer, now as Sir Edward,
now as Lord Lytton. Whatever the reason of the an-
tagonism referred to—whether arising from any

constitutional disdain on his part of anything having
about it even the merest semblance of a conciliatory

have been attributable in its origin advance, or to whatever else it may all this while
has been from first to last, a fact sufficiently uu-
gin—there the fact

generous so far as the critics themselves are con-

cerned and by the author himself (it
must even be
allowed by them) altogether unprovoked. It is a
fact, however, so far of value that it establigies be-

yond the possibility of contradiction this truth—

that a wide and itninense reputation may be firmly
established and long maintained quite irresPec-

Avely of professional criticism, we would oven B►Y
.n absolute defiance of its pertinacious and implac-

able antagonism. No author has had so many

editions during his lifetime. None bas been read

more widely or more eagerly. In the Tauchnitz re-
_ . . . .

print of his writings,
his books are thumbed and
dogs-eared all over the Continent. Music and
Painting have offered the tributes of their embellish-

meat to his imaginings. But otherwise than in

,hese particulars, the public recognitions of the

genius of Balwer as an Author and as an Orator,

and of the duplex reputation he has won, here in
the Senate, here in the World of Letters, have
been TWO two sufficiently conspicuous, hoW-
ever, and sufficiently illustrious as it has
happened. His nomination to a baronetcy by one
Prime Minister (Lord Melbourne) at the time of her
Majesty's Coronation ; his elevation to the peerage
by another Prime Minister (Lord Derby) —both as
tributes to his genius as an Author and as an Orator,
to his achievements in Statesmanship and in Lite-
rature. As a Baronet in whom letters were
honoured, Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer was gazetted
simultaneously with Sir John Herschell as one in
whom Science was honoured by the Government.
As Lord Lytton, Bulwer entered the House of Peers
fittingly and appropriately in the wake of his some
time contemporary, Lord Macaulay. Numerous
and considerable though his more important
achievements have been in the building up of his
many-sided reputation, it is especially noticeable in
regard to Lord Lytton that there are several
among his various productions which, while they
have been merely subsidiary to the achieve-
ment of his general fame as a writer, when
they come to be regarded separately and apart,
seem to have been almost overlooked in their pecu-
liar excellence as isolated masterpieces—or if not
overlooked seem to have been, at the least, over-
shadowed. Entirely apart from his other produc-
tions as a Poet, apart from his epic of " King
Arthur," his satire of the " New Timon," his mis-
cellaneous Poems (published in a separate volume
by Murray), his dramatic pieces (published by Rout-
ledge), including among them " The Duchess de la
Valliere, " The Sea Captain," and " Not so Bad
as we Seem"—apart from his masterly translations
from Schiller, and his charming re-bodying forth of
" The Lost Tales of Miletus"—there is that Poli-
tical Poem of " St. Stephens," which is in itself
worthy of securing to any author, no matter whom,
a distinct and separate reputation For, it is a
masterpiece. Minor masterpieces there are which
he has written and which " the world will not
willingly let die"—radiant among them that, to our
mind, loveliest among all his lesser poems, the one
beginning—
"l do confess that I have wished to give
My land the gift of no ignoble name"—
an aspiration which he has at least the consolation
of knowing that he has long since and very nobly
realised. Another of these minor masterpieces—
one purely incidental of its kind—is that delight-
fully humoristic Apologue of the Dog, the Cat,
and the Griffin, recounted in the " Pilgrims of the
Rhine." There is, moreover, that finest Ghost Story
surely that has ever yet been penned, " The Haunted
and the Haunters," which may be found in the tenth
volume of the " Tales from Blackwood," and which
is not only the gem of that particular volume, but
the gem of the whole collection. Books within
books, too, he has with a curious felicity shadowed
forth; and those, though each of them, as one may
say, the veriest adumbration of a masterpiece, as such
a masterpiece in the mere conception of it never-
theless. Instance this, that literary achievement
of Leonard Fairfield in "My Novel"—a bijou book
at once the envy and the despair of Randal Leslie.
Instance this again, Mr. Austin Caxton's great work
on "The History of Human Error," always pre-
paring for publication, but never yet completed.
Besides the original edition of each of his works
at the time of its first or separate publication, Lord
Lytton's writings, as already remarked, have passed
through an unusual variety of collective reprints.
His Poems, for example, issued in five handsome
volumes by the Messrs. Chapman and Hall, have
also appeared in a single volume, at once cheaper,
compacter, and more generally accessible, thanks
to tha.enterprise of the Messrs. Routledge of London
and New York. The latter publishers, again, have
endeavoured by a series of what may with justice
be called extraordinary adventures, to compete in
the dissemination of the collected Novels, Tales, and
Romances of Sir Edward Bulwer now Lord Lytton,
with the beautiful Library Edition published in from
forty to fifty yolurnes by the Messrs. Blackwood
and Sons of Edinburgh and London—who have al-
most, one might say, assumed by right the position
of publishers in ordinary to the Poet and Novelist
to whom of late years 131ackwoods Magazine has
been mainly indebted for the continuance of its

pre-eminence %mong the monthly periodicals. Maga
having been the medium through which were first
introduced to public notice, besides the Translations
of the Poems of Schiller, and the Parliamentary
gallery of oratorical portraits sketched in poetry
under the title of "St. Stephens," besides minor
talcs, such as the "Haunted and the Haunters," and
minor Poems, such as " The Boatman" (a poem
worthy of Schiller himself) —the whole of the
Caxton Essays, and, better than all, the whole
series of the Caxton Novels, namely, " The Caxtons"
"My Novel," and " What will he do with it ?" Com-
peting with the Messrs. Blackwood, as we have
said, even under the so far depressing influence of
the latter being placed upon a " coign of 'vantage"
as the publishers of the choicest, that is, of the
Library Edition of Lord Lytton's Novels and
Romances—the Messrs. Routledge have, by the
payment to the. noble author within these last
fifteen years of the sum of thirty thousand
pounds, secured to themselves during that interval
the privilege of scattering those famous fic-
tions of his far and wide over both hemi-

pheres, wherever the English language is spoken or
read, in a succession of cheap editions, that seem at
last to have fairly exhausted their ingenuity as
caterers for the reading public in the shape of
thoroughly good and yet readily accessible—in other
words, wonderfully cheap—literature. Last year,
for example, each work was published complete in
itself for a shilling : while just now the whole set of
novels is announced as having been reissued in a
new form in eleven volumes of 800 pages each,
price thirty shillings. And yet, notwithstanding
all this multiplication of editions, separate and
collective, cheap and costly, compact and volumi-
nous, there still remains one other, which, according
to our notion, not only might, but ought to be
issued from the press, if only as a crowning tribute
to the industry and the diversity of the genius of a
Great Author whose writings are in every way so
remarkable. A Comprehensive Edition we mean of
the whole of those writings of his, without exc3p-
tion, whether prose or poetical, whether dramatic
or oratorical—an edition comprising within it the
whole of his Poems, the whole of his Plays, all his
Novels and Romances, all his reported Speeches in
Parliament and out of Parliament, and together with
these his numerous miscellaneous productions,includ-
ing among them even those of a more or less fugi-

tive or seemingly ephemeral character. Such, let
us say, as his Political Squib (about the Pike, the
Perch, the Tench, the Dace, and the other occu-
pants of the fishpond) which, it may be remembered,
was published some few years since in the columns
of the Times, apropos to the then European " Situa-
tion." Or such, let us add, as his celebrated
pamphlet of " The Crisis," a pamphlet that ran
through an astonishing number of editions within
a few weeks after its first appearance, and the
trenchant arguments of which materially affected
the balance of parties in the General Election
immediately afterwards ensuing. A comprehen-

sive edition of " The Works of Lord Lytton," such

as we are here suggesting—not of his Poems
merely, or of Ilia Novels and Romances, or of his

Dramas, or of his Speeches—but of the whole of his
varied and voluminous productions without excep-
tion, might, we would still further suggest, be even
then considerably enhanced in interest and in general
attraction by being profusely and appropriately
illustrated with intermingled steel engravings and
woo lcuts, after the fashion of the largest and most

valuable edition of the various writings of Sir
Walter Scott. In the embellishment of such a

comprehensive edition as the one hero proposed, the
principal book illustrators of our own time would

beyond any doubt of it be proud to co-operate,
just as the Stodarts, Leslies, and others of the pre-
ceding generation, were eager to take part in the
pictorial adornment of the fancies, whether prose

or poetic, of thatXizard of the North, the author of
"Marmion" and of " Waverley." The pencillings

of Millais and the etchings of George Cruikshank,
the landscape vignettes of Birket Foster, and the
character drawings of John Tenniel, might fittingly
be combined with those of John Gilbert, and

Charles Keene, and Harrison Weir, and of