New-York tribune., 1873-02-14
BVLWER.

| BVLWER .nrs..
English exchanges still come to us full of
tributes to Buwer or Lord Lytton, as they
prefer to call him. lie was buried IN West
minister Abbey, and assuredly belonged to that
assembage of dead representative men. for he
had been in the very grain an Engishman OF
the English. He had that settled, sober am
| bitiOn toward one defined end which serves to
lift John Bull, in lieu of the fierce elan of the
Irishman, or Frenchman, or Our own nervous,
discOntented unrest. He had the bulldog pluck
and power of holding on and, above all. that
cool, arrogant faith in himself beyond his fel-
low creatures which belongs to every genuine
Briton. Nowhere else than in England could
achievement so brilliant or reputation so solid
and wide have been elaborated out of such
scant materials. Bulwer,' says one of his
critics, twas not born an orator" He was
not born novelist, still less a poet. But he
made up his mind when a boy to be all three,
and succeeded SO far as to be the foremost
representative literary man in England
at bis death. His first book was weak i'll plot
and in character, the style forced and turgid
the pathos and humOr labored The marks of
the tools are painfully apparent in every part
of the work. 1t was his habit at this period
to shut himself up, We are told, for six hours
day to write, at first producing in the day
but two OF three MSS. pages. But what
ever the failure of yesterday, the key would
turn in the lock to day at the given moment.
Without spark OF that original creative
power which we call genius, Bulwer had
talent for constructing plots, shrewd Obserya-
ton aud delicate tastes. He measured and
urged his talents to their exact bounds, but
never went beyond them by hair-line.
Hence, while there is none OF that sense OF
repressed power of strength at rest to be
found in his books which belongs to the
utterances OF greater men, we are never
offended by the weak and thin exaggeration
which ofends us in the attempts of his in-
ferOrs.
Here, such success would be impossible.
There is neither time nor encouragement nor
succulence in our society for such slow and
temperate grOwths. We have no cOmpacted
dominant class such as that in which Lord
Lytton was born. where the careful culture of
generations inheres as a brthright; where
knowledge of government, of literature, of the
higher, more genial, gracious levels in the
world, as well as of the pettier bienseances of
daily life are breathed in the very atmosphere
from the cradle. Bulwer, with this birth and
training, had thus the advantage of almost
unconscious good taste as starting ground.
His daily associates could not teach him what
to say perhaps but they taught him what
not TO say, which, TO a man without the finer
instinct of genius, is a great matter. There
was, too, an audience for him in England to
which we can hardly yet afford to furnish a
counterpart, class in which, without scholar
ship to read is held to be the business of life.
It was by this class Bulwer was appreciated
and raised step by step during his slow devel-
opment. Ii is curious to notice, by the way
how English writers are Influenced to their
detriment by social exclusion from this class;
even George Eliot though in her foremost
literary place, in her cynical bitterness, and
Dickens in his labOred exaggerations and
efforts at ease.
Bulwer, with us, would have found no leisure
to dig about and prune his tardy growth of
intellect. In all probability he would have been
hustled by the necessity for bread and butter
into a newspaper or magazine office. 1t
has been the fate of nine-tenths of our liter
ary men. In the driving or dragged lives
that we lead literary work, to be successful,
must have a flash. an electric force about it
TO attract attention. "YOu must Int this peo
"ple downright blow between the eyes," a
wary publisher was wont to say, "before
they will stop to look at you This hope of
sudden success has been with us the bane of
mediocrity. The plant which, with long and
careful training might have attained fair
and stately growth, has shot up into preco-
cious weakness and deformity. Even men of
great ability have yielded to the temptation
of making money in society where money is
an unduly potent force. The shrewd observer
can lay his finger on the exact point in the
career of most of them where Pegasus folded
his wings and put on the harness of hack.
Many years of social growth will be needed
before our Bulwers can find shades of lettered
ease or our Richters shades of lettered poverty
in which to attain their full stature.
Prof Agassizs speech before the Committee on
Education, at Boston. last week, was practical,