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Godolphin, 1833; and The Pilgrims of the Rhine, 1834. Bulwer now turned to
historical romance, and achieved a marvellous success with The Last Days of Pompeii
in 1834, and Rienzi in 1835. His marriage had proved a very unlucky one, and
in 1836 he obtained a judicial separation. The next few years were those in which
Bulwer held the stage with The Duchess de la Vallière, 1836; The Lady of Lyons,
1838; Richelieu and The Rightful Heir, 1839; and Money, 1840. In 1838 his
political services were rewarded with a baronetcy, and in 1843, upon the death
of his mother, he came into the Knebworth estates and assumed the name of
Lytton. He re-entered Parliament in 1852, and served for some time as Colonial
Secretary. In 1866 he was created Baron Lytton of Knebworth. Of his later

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MS. Verses by Lytton

writings may be chronicled here, Ernest Maltravers, 1837; Zanoni, 1842; The Last
of the Barons, 1843; The Caxtons, 1849; My Novel, 1853; A Strange Story, 1862;
The Coming Race,-1871; and Kenelm Chillingly, 1873. Towards the close of his
life he resided at Torquay, where he died on the 18th of January 1873, and was
buried in Westminster Abbey. Bulwer-Lytton was a man of unbounded energy and
versatility, who cultivated in public the languor of a dandy and the affectations of
a fop to conceal the intensity with which he pursued his professional career.
lived with wasteful violence, and long before his death he suffered from a physical
decay which his mental vigour belied. On other men of letters, such as Tennyson
and Thackeray, his airs and graces, his schemes to "aristocratise the community,"
and the amazing oddities of his garb and speech, produced an effect that was almost
maddening.

FROM "PELHAM."

Well, gentle reader (I love, by-the-bye, as you already perceive, that old-fashioned courtesy of addressing you)—well, to finish this part of my life, which, as it treats rather of my attempts at reformation than my success in error, must begin to weary you exceedingly, I acquired, more from my uncle's conversation than the books we read, a

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Letter from Bulwer to Lady Blessington, 1833 (or 1834)|

sufficient acquaintance with the elements of knowledge to satisfy myself, and to please my instructor. And I must say, in justification of my studies and my tutor, that I derived one benefit from them which has continued with me to this hour-viz., I obtained a clear knowledge of moral principle. Before that time, the little ability I possessed only led me into acts, which, I fear, most benevolent reader, thou hast already sufficiently condemned; my good feelings-for I was not naturally bad-never availed me the least when present temptation came into my way. I had no guide but passion; no rule but the impulse of the moment. What else could have been the result of my education? If I was immoral, it was because I was never taught morality? Nothing, perhaps, is less innate than virtue. I own that the lessons of my uncle did not work miraclesthat, living in the world, I have not separated myself from its errors and its follies: the vortex was too strong-the atmosphere too contagious; but I have at least avoided the crimes into which my temper would most likely have driven me. I ceased to look upon the world as a game one was to play fairly, if possible-but where a little cheating was readily allowed: I no longer divorced the interests of other men from my own: if I endeavoured to blind them, it was neither by unlawful means, nor for a purely selfish end :-if-but come, Henry Pelham, thou hast praised thyself enough for the present; and, after all, thy future adventures will best tell if thou art really amended.

To early contemporaries the novels of BENJAMIN DISRAELI, long after- Disraeli wards Earl of BEACONSFIELD, seemed more extravagant and whimsical than even those of Bulwer. Disraeli,

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too, belonged to the great company of the dandies-to the Brummels and Lauzuns of literature. His early novels were baffling miscellanies of the wildest and the most foppish folly combined with rare political wit and a singular clairvoyance. A like inconsistency marked their style, which is now almost crazy in its incoherence, and now of a florid but restrained beauty to which Bulwer, with all his machinery of rhetoric, never attained. Contarini Fleming may be said to record a step towards the emancipation of English romance, in its extraordinary buoyancy of Byronic stimulus. But as a writer, Disraeli was at his best and steadily improving from Venetia to

Benjamin Disraeli

From a Portrait taken when a young man

Tancred. In these novels he is less tawdry in his ornament, less glittering in his affectation of Voltairean epigram, less inflated and impracticable than in his earlier, and certainly than in his two latest novels, those curious fruits of his old age. The dandy style, of which Barbey d'Aurevilly was the contemporary type in France, is best studied in England in

Disraeli, whose novels, though they no longer appeal to the masses, preserve better than Bulwer's the attention of cultivated readers. In these Byronic novelists, who preserved for their heroes "the dear corsair expression, half savage, half soft," love of the romance of pure adventure was handed down, across Dickens and Thackeray, and in an indirect way Bulwer and Disraeli are the progenitors of the Cuidas and Rider Haggards of a later age.

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), Earl of Beaconsfield, was the son of Isaac Disraeli and of his wife Maria Basevi. He was born in London on the 21st of December 1804. The place of his birth is uncertain; among the addresses claimed for it are 215 Upper Street, Islington, and 6 John Street, Bedford Row. In 1817 his father inherited a fortune, and moved into a large house in Bloomsbury Square. At the same time the family left the Jewish communion, and on the 31st of July Disraeli was baptized into the English Church. He was sent to a Unitarian school at Walthamstow, and in 1821 he was articled to a solicitor in Old Jewry. When it was still not decided what profession he should choose, he wrote Vivian Grey, 1826, an absurd and daring novel, which produced a considerable sensation. Disraeli now became the victim of a curious illness, a sort of vertigo, which made professional study impossible to him. He retired to his father's country-house at Bradenham, in Buckinghamshire, for several years. Here he wrote several of his best early works, Popanilla, Ixion in Heaven, and The Young Duke. As his health grew no better, foreign travel was recommended, and in 1828 he started for the Mediterranean, lingering long, and reaching Jerusalem in 1831. With health restored, Disraeli came back to England and burst upon London as a literary lion. His fantastic appearance "velvet coat thrown wide open, shirt collar turned down in Byronic fashion, elaboHouse in Upper Street, Islington, the rate embroidered waistcoat, from which issued supposed Birthplace of Disraeli voluminous folds of frill, black hair pomatumed and elaborately curled, and person redolent with perfume"-increased the curiosity with which his books were read. Contarini Fleming was published in 1832, Alroy in 1833, and The Revolutionary Epic in 1834. Disraeli dazzled society with an extraordinary mixture of ardour and calculated affectation. In 1837 he published Venetia and Henrietta Temple, and entered Parliament. In 1838 he married a widow,

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