But we could never bring ourselves to attach any idea of merit to mere length in the abstract. A long story does not appear to us necessarily twice as good as one only half so long. The ordinary talk about “continuous and sustained effort” is pure twaddle and nothing more. Perseverance is one thing and genius is another—whatever Buffon or Hogarth may assert to the contrary—and notwithstanding that, in many passages of the dogmatical literature of old Rome, such phrases as “diligentia maxima,” “diligentia mirabilis,” can be construed only as “great talent” or “wonderful ability.” Now if the author of “Ernest Maltravers,” implicitly following authority like les moutons de Panurge, will persist in writing long romances because long romances have been written before—if, in short, he cannot be satisfied with the brief tale (a species of composition which admits of the highest development of artistical power in alliance with the wildest vigor of imagination)—he must then content himself, perforce, with a more simply and more rigidly narrative form.
And here, could he see these comments upon a work which, (estimating it, as is the wont of all artists of his calibre, by the labor which it has cost him,) he considers his chef d’œuvre, he would assure us, with a smile, that it is precisely because the book is not narrative, and is dramatic, that he holds it in so lofty an esteem. Now in regard to its being dramatic, we should reply that, so far as the radical and ineradicable deficiencies of the drama go—it is. This continual and vexatious shifting of scene, with a view of bringing up events to the time being, originated at a period when books were not; and in fact, had the drama not preceded books, it might never have succeeded them—we might, and probably should, never have had a drama at all. By the frequent “bringing up” of his events the dramatist strove to supply, as well as he could, the want of the combining, arranging, and especially of the commenting power, now in possession of the narrative author. No doubt it was a deep but vague sense of this want which brought into birth the Greek chorus—a thing altogether apart from the drama itself—never upon the stage—and representing, or personifying, the expression of the sympathy of the audience in the matters transacted.
In brief, while the drama of colloquy, vivacious and breathing of life, is well adopted into narration, the drama of action and passion will always prove, when employed beyond due limits, a source of embarrassment to the narrator, and it can afford him, at best, nothing which he does not already possess in full force. We have spoken upon this head much at length; for we remember that, in some preface to one of his previous novels, (some preface in which he endeavored to pre-reason and pre-coax us into admiration of what was to follow—a bad practice,) Mr. Bulwer was at great pains to insist upon the peculiar merits of what he even then termed the dramatic conduct of his story. The simple truth was that, then as now, he had merely concentrated into his book all the necessary evils of the stage.
Giving up his attention to the one point upon which we have commented, our novelist has failed to do himself justice in others. The overstrained effort at perfection of plot has seduced him into absurd sacrifices of verisimilitude, as regards the connexion of his dramatis personæ each with each, and each with the main events. However incidental be the appearance of any personage upon the stage, this personage is sure to be linked in, will I nill I, with the matters in hand. Philip, on the stage-coach, for example, converses with but one individual, William Gawtrey; yet this man’s fate (not subsequently but previously) is interwoven into that of Philip himself, through the latter’s relationship to Lilburne. The hero goes to his mother’s grave, and there comes in contact with this Gawtrey’s father. He meets Fanny, and Fanny happens to be also involved in his destiny (a pet word, conveying a pet idea of the author’s) through her relationship to Lilburne. The witness in the case of his mother’s marriage is missing, and this individual turns up at last in the brother of that very Charles De Burgh Smith with whom so perfectly accidental an intimacy has already been established. The wronged heir proceeds at random to look for a lawyer, and stumbles at once upon the precise one who had figured before in the story, and who knows all about previous investigations. Setting out in search of Liancourt, the first person he sees is that gentleman himself. Entering a horse-bazaar in a remote portion of the country, the steed up for sale at the exact moment of his entrance is recognised as the pet of his better days. Now our quarrel with these coincidences is not that they sometimes, but that they everlastingly occur, and that nothing occurs besides. We find no fault with Philip for chancing, at the identically proper moment, upon the identical men, women, and horses necessary for his own ends and the ends of the story—but we do think it excessively hard that he should never happen upon anything else.
In delineation of character, our artist has done little worth notice. His highest merit in this respect is, with a solitary exception, the negative one of not having subjected himself to dispraise. Catharine and Camilla are—pretty well in their way. Philip is very much like all other heroes—perhaps a little more stiff, a little more obstinate, and a little more desperately unlucky than the generality of his class. Sydney is drawn with truth. Plaskwith, Plimmins, and the Mortons, just sufficiently caricatured, are very good outline copies from the shaded originals of Dickens. Of Gawtrey—father and son,—of De Burgh Smith, of Robert Beaufort and of Lilburne, what is it possible to say, except that they belong to that extensive firm of Gawtrey, Smith, Beaufort, Lilburne and company, which has figured in every novel since the days of Charles Grandison, and which is doomed to the same eternal configuration till romance-writing shall be no more?
For Fanny the author distinctly avows a partiality; and he does not err in his preference. We have observed, in some previous review, that original characters, so called, can only be critically praised as such, either when presenting qualities known in real life, but never before depicted (a combination nearly impossible) or when presenting qualities which, although unknown, or even known to be hypothetical, are so skilfully adapted to the circumstances around them, that our sense of fitness is not offended, and we find ourselves seeking a reason why those things might not have been which we are still satisfied are not. Fanny appertains to this latter class of originality—which in itself belongs to the loftier regions of the Ideal. Her first movements in the story, before her conception (which we have already characterized as an after-thought) had assumed distinct shape in the brain of the author, are altogether ineffective and frivolous. They consist of the unmeaning affectation and rhodomontade with which it is customary to invest the lunatic in common-place fiction. But the subsequent effects of love upon her mental development are finely imagined and richly painted; and, although reason teaches us their impossibility, yet it is sufficient for the purposes of the artist that fancy delights in believing them possible.
Mr. Bulwer has been often and justly charged with defects of style; but the charges have been sadly deficient in specification, and for the most part have confounded the idea of mere language with that of style itself, although the former is no more the latter, than an oak is a forest, or than a word is a thought. Without pausing to define what a little reflection will enable any reader to define for himself, we may say that the chief constituent of a good style (a constituent which, in the case of Washington Irving, has been mistaken for the thing constituted) is what artists have agreed to denominate tone. The writer who, varying this as occasion may require, well adapts it to the fluctuations of his narrative, accomplishes an important object in style. Mr. Bulwer’s tone is always correct; and so great is the virtue of this quality that he can scarcely be termed, upon the whole, a bad stylist.
His mere English is grossly defective—turgid, involved, and ungrammatical. There is scarcely a page of “Night and Morning” upon which a school-boy could not detect at least half a dozen instances of faulty construction. Sentences such as this are continually occurring—“And at last silenced, if not convinced, his eyes closed, and the tears yet wet upon their lashes, fell asleep.” Here, strictly speaking, it is the eyes which “fell asleep,” and which were “silent if not convinced.” The pronoun, “he,” is wanting for the verb “fell.” The whole would read better thus—“And at last, silent, if not convinced, he closed his eyes, and fell asleep with the tears yet on the lashes.” It will be seen that, besides other modifications, we have changed “upon” into “on,” and omitted “wet” as superfluous when applied to tear; who ever heard of a dry one? The sentence in question, which occurs at page 83, vol. 1, was the first which arrested our attention on opening the book at random; but its errors are sufficiently illustrative of the character of those faults of phraseology in which the work abounds, and which have arisen, not so much through carelessness, as from a peculiar bias in the mind of the writer, leading him, per force, into involution, whether here in style, or elsewhere in plot. The beauty of simplicity is not that which can be appreciated by Mr. Bulwer; and whatever may be the true merits of his intelligence, the merit of luminous and precise thought is evidently not one of the number.
At page 194, vol. 1, we have this—“I am not what you seem to suppose—exactly a swindler, certainly not a robber.” Here, to make himself intelligible, the speaker should have repeated the words “I am not,” before “exactly.” As it stands, the sentence does not imply that “I am not exactly a swindler, &c.” but (if anything) that the person addressed, imagined me to be certainly not a robber but exactly a swindler—an implication which it was not intended to convey. Such awkwardness in a practised writer would be inconceivable, did we not refer in memory to that moral bias of which we have just spoken. Our readers will of course examine the English of “Night and Morning” for themselves. From the evidence of one or two sentences we cannot expect them to form a judgment in the premises. Dreading indeed the suspicion of unfairness, we had pencilled item after item for comment—but we have abandoned the task in despair. It would be an endless labor to proceed with examples. In fact it is folly to particularize where the blunders would be the rule, and the grammar the exception.
Sir Lytton has one desperate mannerism of which we would be glad to see him well rid—a fashion of beginning short sentences, after very long ones, with the phrase “So there,” or something equivalent, and this too, when there is no sequence in the matter to warrant the use of the word “So.” Thus, at page 136, vol. I,—“So there they sat on the cold stone, these two orphans;” at page 179,—“So there by the calm banks of the placid lake, the youngest born of Catharine passed his tranquil days,”—and just below, on the same page,—“So thus was he severed from both his protectors, Arthur and Philip;” and at page 241, vol. II,—“So there sat the old man,” &c. &c.—and in innumerable other instances throughout the work.