work upon the familiar ground. "The delineation of crime," says he, "has only been employed for the grave and impressive purpose which brings it within the due province of the poet as an element of terror and a warning to the heart." An excuse which proves how patiently Bulwer listened to the voice of his age.

One other common - place virtue was his: he was monstrously industrious. The demon of work pursued him from his cradle to his grave. Whether he was writing against time or with it, his facility never slackened. The mere list of his works is enough to appal the trifler. And all the while he insisted upon regarding himself as one who "knocked off" a book now and then because it amused him. He once told an audience of schoolboys that never had he devoted more than three hours a-day to reading and writing, and it is not likely that he persuaded anybody, not even a schoolboy, to believe him. The mere speed at which he produced his stories and his plays and his pamphlets convinces us that when once he had set himself down to his desk he lost all count of time. To 'Richelieu' and 'The Lady of Lyons' he devoted a fortnight apiece. He composed 'Harold' in less than a month. "A few weeks in Rome and Naples," writes Lord Lytton, "provided material for two new novels," and saw the writing of a great part of them. Here is a list of the works which he achieved in a brief decade. "In the ten

years from 1827 to 1837," Lord Lytton tells us, "Bulwer completed ten novels, two long poems, one political pamphlet, one play, the political sketches on 'England and the English,' three volumes of the 'History of Athens' (only two of which were ever published), and all the essays and tales collected in the 'Student.' At the same time he was editor of the 'New Monthly Magazine,' to which he contributed regularly. He also wrote anonymously in the 'Edinburgh Review,' the Westminster Review,' the Monthly Chronicle,' the 'Examiner,' the 'Literary Gazette,' and other periodicals.' It is a record which induces headache even in those who think about it, and it helps to explain why Bulwer is read with less appreciation now than once he was. That which is written with so sublime an ease proves in the long-run the most difficult of reading.

In his own day he won all the praise and profit that he could desire. It is true that the professional critics were loud in depreciation, and that Bulwer, like many another savage critic, was exquisitely sensitive to criticism. But he won what was far more agreeable, the admiration of his friends and the applause of the people. He seemed, indeed, the conqueror of a dozen worlds. He had written the most popular novel of his day. His plays alone availed to hold the stage, whether it was comedy, which amused him, or tragedy. His pamphlet on 'The Crisis' was more widely read and quoted

wearied, steadfast perseverance with which you prosecute this painfullest but also noblest of human callings, almost the summary of all that is left of nobleness in human callings in these poor days." These words sound strangely in our ears to-day, and they suggest that even the sternest of critics is not always able to hear aright the voice of his own time.

To explain Bulwer's twofold popularity is not easy. It owed something, no doubt, to the vague gift called imagination, the trick of writing about things which never were known by land or sea. Bulwer had no difficulty in carrying off his readers into places and times in which neither he nor they had ever been. He took them out of themselves, as the current phrase is. That is to say, he appealed to the sentiment, not to the brain of his age. And then, as we have suggested, his versatility was enough of itself to give him a high position in the public esteem. He satisfied the romantic standard, which required that a man should succeed at everything which his hand touched.

Men

were happy in worshipping him, because they were at the same time worshipping success. To-day we are rightly persuaded to take another view. We look at him in relation to greater writers than himself. We are compelled to recognise that much of his fiction is mere fluency and fashion, which he composed so rapidly that he did not give himself time either to think or write. His plays still hold the stage, because the

stage remains a place of public resort, in which the taste of the audience is depressed to the modest level which ensures a profitable house. We know well enough that the rhetoric of "The Lady of Lyons" cannot bear the strain of criticism, and "Money," though its author was brave enough to describe it as "a comedy of manners," is no better than a mechanical contrivance. And yet, when we have discarded the many works which once were thought masterpieces, and which we recognise to-day as artistic failures, there remain one or two books which will keep the wayward memory of Bulwer green. Above all, we may take pride in the fact that after many years of stooping to the public he produced in 'The Caxtons' a work which has emerged triumphantly into our own age. He is not content to play here the tune of the time. 'The Caxtons' is an honest return to the great tradition of English literature. It is not marred by the facile quality of false imagination, on which our forefathers set so much store. It is a work of humour and fancy, of wit and scholarship. It gave Bulwer a chance of turning to good account the studies, deep and wide, which he had made into the literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The story owed not a little to 'Tristram Shandy' in motive and machinery. But Bulwer had no desire to belittle his legitimate debt, and makes no pretence to having invented a new kind.

"Con

ceive for a model," says he to John Blackwood, "what Voltaire would have been had he relinquished some of his cold wit for Goldsmith's genial humour, and had he, instead of seeking to change society, sought to cement it. Voltaire, however, begins to vanish, and the influence of Goldsmith to be more predominant." To be sure, there is nothing of Voltaire in The Caxtons,' and not much Goldsmith. The origin of Pisistratus Caxton and my Uncle Roland must be sought elsewhere. But it matters not whence they come. They easily justify themselves, and give to 'The Caxtons' a permanence which the once popular romances of Bulwer may never claim.

And as if the task of writing novels and plays were too light for him to carry alone, Bulwer added to his load the heavy responsibilities of politics. He entered the House as a Radical member, and lived to hold a seat in a Tory Cabinet. It is possible that in politics he might have found his proper career. His sense of affairs was acute; he was an eloquent, if affected speaker; and by no means without tact in administration. At his first entrance into the House he won a practical triumph. He lost no time in fighting bravely the battle of his craft, and demanded a committee of inquiry into the laws which affected the drama. In 1832 a dramatic author had no property in his own work. "The commonest invention in calico," said Bulwer in his

speech, "a new pattern in the most trumpery article of dress, a new bit to our bridles, a new wheel to our carriages, may make the fortune of the inventor, but the intellectual invention of the finest drama in the world may not relieve by a groat the poverty of the inventor." It was Bulwer's energy and good sense which abolished this monstrous injustice, and the creation of dramatic copyright, now the most valuable property in the world, was his and his alone.

Though Bulwer began life as a Radical, and ended, like many another, as a sound Tory, there was one cause to which he was always faithful-the cause of Protection. In 1846 he saw more clearly than most the real danger which lay behind the repeal of the Corn Laws. It was no mere unsettling of a great industry; it was no generous method of obtaining cheap food for the people. "In the repeal of the Corn Laws," he wrote to to John Forster, "it seems to me that the real consequences have been overlooked by both Parties. Those consequences lie in the next age. The question then

to be decided is whether by altering

the proportionate labour of the population, whether by augmenting yet more, not the prosperity of commerce and manufactures alone, but the masses of men employed in them, you have not altered for the worse the staple character and spirit of the people." Such is the question which lies