Sharon Turner, 1768-1847: among many historical efforts, principally concerning England in different periods, his History of the Anglo-Saxons stands out prominently as a great work. He was an eccentric scholar, and an antiquarian, and he found just the place to delve in when he undertook that history. The style is not good—too epigrammatic and broken; but his research is great, his speculations bold, and his information concerning the numbers, manners, arts, learning, and other characters of the Anglo-Saxons, immense. The student of English history must read Turner for a knowledge of the Saxon period.
Thomas Arnold, 1795-1832: widely known and revered as the Great Schoolmaster. He was head-master at Rugby, and influenced his pupils more than any modern English instructor. Accepting the views of Niebuhr, he wrote a work on Roman History up to the close of the second Punic war. But he is more generally known by his historical lectures delivered at Oxford, where he was Professor of Modern History. A man of original views and great honesty of purpose, his influence in England has been strengthened by the excellent biography written by his friend Dean Stanley.
William Hepworth Dixon, born 1821: he was for some time editor of The Athenæum. In historic biography he appears as a champion of men who have been maligned by former writers. He vindicates William Penn from the aspersions of Lord Macaulay, and Bacon from the charges of meanness and corruption.
Charles Merivale, born 1808: he is a clergyman, and a late Fellow of Cambridge, and is favorably known by his admirable work entitled, The History of the Romans under the Empire. It forms an introduction to Gibbon, and displays a thorough grasp of the great epoch, varied scholarship, and excellent taste. His analyses of Roman literature are very valuable, and his pictures of social life so vivid that we seem to live in the times of the Cæsars as we read.
Chapter XL.
The Later Novelists as Social Reformers.
[Bulwer]. [Changes in Writing]. [Dickens's Novels]. [American Notes]. [His Varied Powers]. [Second Visit to America]. [Thackeray]. [Vanity Fair]. [Henry Esmond]. [The Newcomes]. [The Georges]. [Estimate of his Powers].
The great feature in the realm of prose fiction, since the appearance of the works of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, had been the Waverley novels of Sir Walter Scott; but these apart, the prose romance had not played a brilliant part in literature until the appearance of Bulwer, who began, in his youth, to write novels in the old style; but who underwent several organic changes in modes of thought and expression, and at last stood confessed as the founder of a new school.
Bulwer.—Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer was a younger son of General Bulwer of Heydon Hall, Norfolk, England. He was born, in 1806, to wealth and ease, but was early and always a student. Educated at Cambridge, he took the Chancellor's prize for a poem on Sculpture. His first public effort was a volume of fugitive poems, called Weeds and Wild Flowers, of more promise than merit. In 1827 he published Falkland, and very soon after Pelham, or the Adventures of a Gentleman. The first was not received favorably; but Pelham was at once popular, neither for the skill of the plot nor for its morality, but because it describes the character, dissipations, and good qualities of a fashionable young man, which are always interesting to an English public. Those novels that immediately followed are so alike in general features that they may be called the Pelham series. Of these the principal are The Disowned, Devereux, and Paul Clifford—the last of which throws a sentimental, rosy light upon the person and adventures of a highwayman; but it is too unreal to have done as much injury as the Pirate's Own Book, or the Adventures of Jack Sheppard. It may be safely asserted that Paul Clifford never produced a highwayman. Of the same period is Eugene Aram, founded upon the true story of a scholar who was a murderer—a painful subject powerfully handled.
In 1831 Bulwer entered Parliament, and seems to have at once commenced a new life. With his public duties he combined severe historical study; and the novels he now produced gave witness of his riper and better learning. Chief among these were Rienzi, and The Last Days of Pompeii. The former is based upon the history of that wonderful and unfortunate man who, in the fourteenth century, attempted to restore the Roman republic, and govern it like an ancient tribune. The latter is a noble production: he has caught the very spirit of the day in which Pompeii was submerged by the lava-flood; his characters are masterpieces of historic delineation; he handles like an adept the conflicting theologies, Christian, Roman, and Egyptian; and his natural scenes—Vesuvius in fury, the Bay of Naples in the lurid light, the crowded amphitheatre, and the terror which fell on man and beast, gladiator and lion—are chef-d'œuvres of Romantic art.