Page:Edward Lytton Bulwer.pdf/9

Rh never gained without great desert. All will admit, that the first-rate talent of our time has been developed in the novel. It is an error to say, that this is because it is the most amusing; it is rather because it is the most appropriate. Still, in literature, as in life, the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, even unto the third and fourth generation; and works, like Scott's, which have done more towards giving us real ideas of the days of yore, and drawn closer the links of the past and present, than any chronicle ever written; or works like Godwin's, and these of the author now before us, full of the most important truths, are to receive for their heritage the ill name of works in which, if the scene were laid in former days, a dungeon, a beauty, white plumes and iron fetters, a little valour, and a great deal of love, (love à l’impossible en passant,) were all that could be required; or if of modern life, the lover first raked, and then reformed; the heroine was first miserable and then married. Such was the circulating cycle, and hence the novel was held, nay, is still held by many, to be the Paris of literature. Truly may it be said, that to change an opinion is difficult; but to remove a prejudice is impossible. Before we resume our analysis, we cannot but remark on the singular silence preserved towards the most rising author of their day, in the two pseudo-called great Reviews, the Edinburgh and Quarterly. The former might have hesitated to censure in the very beginning, made wise by experience: for nothing is more mortifying than your own prophecy unfulfilled; and it is somewhat disagreeable to find the general judgment in direct opposition to your criticism. We may suppose that Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, &c. have served as landmarks. Every one of these names are now standard ones in our "land's language;" and the Reviewer is remembered by his injustice. Mr. Jeffrey was the Judge Jeffries of literature,—a most partial and unjust judge. The faculty of appreciation, that highest sign of a great mind, was wanting in his: and, take the range of our first-rate authors, they are all instances of public opinion reversing the verdict which proceeded from his tribunal. As for the Quarterly, we all know it is too well trained, to wander beyond the districts of Moravia.* It has not room, forsooth, for works that are in every one's hands, whose thoughts and whose feelings are actuating thousands; but, let a dull tragedy, now as much forgotten as the Emperor of Constantinople,† whose name it bears; or a volume of travels, whose young writer carefully records the slender ankles and dark eyes of every Spanish girl with whom he had a flirtation; or let the laureate of "Wat Tyler," and the apotheosis of George III. put forth the poetical annals of the pantry, and mark in italics the pathos of a young lady, not ringing her bell for coals or candles;—let any of these issue from Albemarle-street, and the Quarterly at once finds room for analysis and adulation. The truth is, that we have no great literary review, each being engrossed in politics, busy deciding whether Sadler is a fool, or Malthus a demon. Still, we wonder that