Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-11-29

in another man, are
considered con.
o'een Meredith temptible in him.
The two Pitts only furnish the exception
that proves the rule.
The other day John Albert Bright was
taunted by Lord Grinston in the Times with
being ''the very small inheritor of a very
great name;;" and the caricaturists are
never tired of ridiculing Herbert Gladstone
as pigmy beside his colossal father We
see the same thing in America President
Harrison is called block to hang his grand
fathers hat on. If George Washington had
left son his position would not have been
enyiable
A Difficult Man to Come After
Now, if there ever was in this world a
difficult man to ''come sfter," it was Lord
Iytton, better known as Sir Edward Bulwer
Lytton. He was almost everything that q
man could be, and whatever he did, he did
brilliantly. He was the foremost English.
man of letters of his time, a novelist of
equal rank with Dickens, Thackeray and
Disraei, a highly successful dramatist q
poet tar above mediocrity, and at the same
time he was powerful statesman, capable
administrator, a splendid orator, keen
politician, country gentleman of COM
mandlng influence, q rare scholar, and the
unrivaled leader of fashion. He was born
with great advantages, and he used them SO
as TO raise the faculty of getting on in life
to one Of the ine arts. His career was
continuous blaze of success, and his varied
reputation never stood higher than when he
died at ripe old age.
His son, with far less advantages than he
had, managed to get on in life and push the
family fortunes, even more that he did.
The most curious thing about the Earl of
Iytton was that he did this without having
had any early education worth speaking Of
he was at Harrow for q little while when
that now famous seminary of learning was
about at its lowest ebb; and he went straight
from school into the Foreign Office at an
age when his playmates were puzzling their
brains over propriaque maribus and As in
present.. His father had always had
maxim that diplomacy was the best school
of ststesmanship. He despised political
and parliamentary arts, although he ex-
celled in them himself; and SO it came about
that the younger Lytton never had any of
that kind of experience which is generally
deemed essential for public man.
Served as Boy at Washington.
He was q mere boy when he went as an
sttache to Washington, where his uncle, Sir
Henry Bulwer. afterward Lord Dalling
was British Minister; and it was among
Americans that he gained his first impress
sions of the great world of men and man.
ners. He is still remembered at Washing
ton as shy youth, but great fsvorite in
the ladies' society, and he on his part de-
clares that he got an insight into human
nature there which was worth more than
years Of official routine.
His DeYt move however what really
influenced his career. He was sent to
Florence, and there he devoted himself to
the study Of languages and European liter
ature in such thorough going way that he
might fairly be said to have been a distin-
guished literateur in any country he
might happen to go TO. Englishmen, as a
rule, learn foreign languages with diff
Guilty and speak them very badly; and it is
a well-deserved reproach against British
dIplomatists that they content themselves
with French and despise the native Ian
guages Of the people with whose affairs they
nevertheless profess to be familiar 1t was
quite the contrary with Lytton. Some idea
of the variety of his experiences may be
gathered from the fact that he served as at
tsche, secretary. charge d'af1airs or ambas-
sador at Washington, Florence, The Hague,
st. Petersburg, Constantinople, Vienna,
Belgrade, Copenhagen, Athens, Lisbon,
haCTlQ, nome anu L dIls. III eacn country
he learned the language well enough not
only to speak it fuently, but to study its
literature and even to write books in it
himself
His first striking success in diplomacy
was in Servia, q country of which very little
was known at that time, and where the
political parties consisted practically of
two rival bands of brigands, only combining
IN conspiracies against the Turkish rule
His Reputation in Literature.
Long before this, Lord Lytton had made
his reputation as a poet, novelist and biog-
rapher; and he had made it In a peculiar
and thoroughly characteristic way. From
boyhood he had had burning ambition for
literary fame, but he was determined in the
first place not to come into rivalry, as it
were, with his father, of whom he was in
tensely proud, and secondly not to owe any,
thing to his advantages of rank and parent
age. He resolved TO succeed on his merits
or not at all For this reason he published
all his early works under an assumed name,
and it was many years before Owen Mere
dith, the admired poet and author OF many
charming works in English, French, Italian,
Polish, Turkish, Romaie, Danish, was pub
licly known to be identical with the rising
young diplomatist
1t was not until his fathers death, indeed,
that he came out openly as man of letters,
and it was then that he got into painful |
affair which brought him good deal of dis |
credit on both father and son. One of his |
dearest aspirations was to produce really |
worthy biography of his father, and the |
whole literary world looked forward to his |
achievement with an interest equal to his |
own. There was q difficulty, however, of |
which the world at that time knew little or |
nothing. 1t was no secret that the first Lord |
Lytton did not get on well with his wife;
but the naughty pride of the family had
always kept the skeleton shut up in the
cupboard
Airing the Family Skeleton.
As soon as the first volume Of the biog-
raphy appeared, however, it was noticed
that the author scarcely mentioned his
mother at all, while in some passages there
were expressions of sympathy with bis
father on account of certain domestic un-
happiness, which seemed to reflect very in