The idea, as thus stated, is simply grand. It has a unity that overpowers us. Had the author contented himself with merely developing this idea, omitting every thing which had no necessary bearing on the dénouement, he would have produced an almost faultless story. But he has, in a great measure, failed in carrying out his conception. He has weakened the effect by diverging from the burden of the story. As the novel has been circulated in various cheap forms throughout the country, we shall take it for granted that our readers have perused the book. This will save us the necessity of recapitulating the plot as the basis of our remarks.
The plot is grossly defective in several important particulars. Many even of the leading incidents have no bearing on the dénouement. The compact betwixt Zanoni and the Evil Eye, at Venice, is of this character. The author’s original intention was to make the condition exacted from the husband play a prominent part at the crisis; but he subsequently changed his mind, and brought about the dénouement by other means, forgetting, however, to rewrite this scene, so as to adapt it to the altered aspect of the story. The Evil Eye, when he comes to assert his rights, is cavalierly dismissed, in a very inartistical manner. It would have contributed far more to the unity of effect of which we have spoken, if the author had pursued his original design, and made the condition exacted from Zanoni, the sacrifice of his own life, when, at any future period, he should wish again to preserve the life of Viola. By following out this plan, Bulwer would have been saved the necessity of introducing the sanguinary scenes of the French Revolution; and the crisis would have been brought about in a far more natural manner than it is at present. The introduction of Robespierre and his associates is forced; it renders involved an otherwise simple and effective plot. We are astonished that an adept in Art, such as Bulwer professes to be, should have committed a blunder for which, if he had been a schoolboy, he should have been soundly whipped. If he intended to enlist and keep up the interest of his readers in his two chief characters, why has he distracted the attention by the introduction of The Reign of Terror, that most real of tragedies, whose horrors exceed anything that romance can imagine, whose thrilling story stops the pulsation of the heart for anything less terrible? The mind should have been left undistracted to contemplate the stern, Doric self-sacrifice of Zanoni! The author should not have sacrificed the unity of effect for the dying struggles of Robespierre, or any other human butcher in the blood-bespattered shambles of Paris. We can see what misled Bulwer. Not satisfied with the grandeur of his original conception of the dénouement, he sought to increase the interest by the clap-trap effect of rapidly shifting the perilous incidents in which all the chief actors are involved. This is a trick he has learned behind the foot-lights, and not in the study of the great old masters.
There are numerous minor errors in the plot. Glyndon’s liaison with Floretta does not advance the story, and the only part she plays in evolving the crisis, is the betrayal of Viola at Paris. If the plot had been handled properly, there would have been no necessity for her agency here. But the desire to paint mere sensual love, in this character, induced Bulwer to patch her into the tale. He has been persuaded, from the same reason, to introduce other unimportant characters we might name. In short, his motley array of personages reminds us of Burke’s graphic picture of Chatham’s last piebald ministry, where he compares it to a piece of mosaic, “here a bit of black stone and there a bit of white,” and humorously depicts the consternation of men, who had been all their lives libelling each other, on finding themselves “pigging together in the same truckle-bed.” In like manner the robber figures in the scene. So do Mervale and that worthy shrew his wife. These are all gross faults; for the necessity of preserving that oneness and entireness of effect, of which we have spoken so much, exists in peculiar force in a highly imaginative work like this. The introduction of supernal agents is, at all times, a dangerous experiment; and, when they are introduced, the illusion is to be kept up at every sacrifice. This can scarcely be done where the reader listens on one page to the converse of immortal powers, and on the next to the wrangling of a cross, sleepy wife with a drunken husband—when we are hurried from the lofty aspirations of Menjour and Zanoni, to the silly love toying betwixt Glyndon and Floretta. This brings us to another error in the author—an error which lies at the very bottom of all his errors.
The subject is unfit for prose. It properly belongs to the drama. The true province of the imagination is poetry, and although this divine faculty may stoop to prose, it can never truly shine but in the celestial garments of the muse. We do not deny the impossibility of treating an ideal theme in prose—we only assert the superior advantages which poetry affords for the same object. Transitions may be tolerated in the drama which should be anathematized in prose. But, above all, poetry would favor the preservation of the illusion to which we have already referred. The tone of a story such as Zanoni is, could be better preserved in poetry. The idea of the tale is inexpressibly grand, and might have been worked out with terrible effect. The struggle in Zanoni’s mind betwixt his love for Viola and his longing for an earthly immortality would have produced, if evolved by a master hand, a tragedy equal to Manfred, Faust, we had almost said Prometheus.
But we have said enough under this head. Let us look at the characters.
Of Zanoni we have already spoken. His character belongs to a lofty region of the ideal. The conception of Pisani, also, is highly imaginative. He comes in, at the opening of the tale, with the same effect with which a fine overture precedes an opera. He prepares the mind, by his unearthly music, for the mysteries that are to follow. His barbican, his solitary life, his dreams of wild figures and wilder music in the air, entitle him to a high rank in the ideal. What a grand thought is that which represents him at the theatre, mechanically performing his part, while all the time his soul is thinking of his beloved opera, so that often, unconsciously to himself, he bursts out into its weird and startling music!
Viola, the impersonation of the purest love, unalloyed by any sensual feeling—Glyndon, the weak, vacillating, yet aspiring man—and Menjour, the embodiment of mere intellect, apart from any influence of the heart, good or bad, are well drawn characters—of their kind. Their fault is that they have no individuality. All Bulwer’s personages partake of this error. There is not, in his numerous novels, a single personage whom we can look back on as on a real individual. Falstaff and Nicol Jarvie are so life-like that it seems as if we had drunk canary with the one, at the Boar’s Head, and “had a crack” with the other, on the causeway of Glasgow. Bulwer’s characters have none of this personal identity—they are only embodiments of certain passions or peculiarities. His actors are like the knights of Spencer, mere stalking horses for particular vices or virtues—or, like a wigmaker’s block, the representative in turn of the heads of all his customers. Every personage in Zanoni, without, as we remember, a single exception, is thus ticketed for a particular vice or virtue, like passengers in a railroad car. Now, we do not object to the introduction of these personages if they are necessary to the plot; but, for heaven’s sake, Mr. Bulwer, give us something more than mere automatons! Don’t ask us in to a second Mrs. Jarley’s wax-works!
We have spoken, in terms of high praise, of the character of Zanoni. We have, however, said that the theme was more adapted for poetry than prose. Having chosen prose, the author has erred in calling his book A NOVEL. Let us be understood. Feeble as is the province of prose to do justice to so ideal a character as Zanoni, we do not base our present objection to the book on that ground. It is one of the inalienable rights of man to show his ignorance, to make a blunder, or in any other way to play the fool. This is not the question now. The work before us purports to be a novel, and nothing but a novel. It might have been named a romance, a mystery, or the Lord knows what! But it is put forth as a novel, under the imprimatur of the writer of “Art in Fiction,” of the man who sets up to be the high priest of the synagogue! Is it such?
A novel, in the true acceptation of the name, is a picture of real life. The plot may be involved, but it must not transcend probability. The agencies introduced must belong to real life. Such were Gil Blas and Tom Jones, confessedly the two best novels extant. Whether the title was properly applied, in the inception, is not the question. Usage and common sense have affixed a definite meaning to the word. When authors cease to paint real life they cease to write novels. The tales may be very good of their kind, but they are no more novels than a sirloin is a mutton chop, or than Bulwer is the artist he pretends to be. Judged by this standard, Zanoni is not a novel. There are pictures of real life in it; but to paint society, as it is, was only collateral to the chief aim of the work.
We say nothing of the moral of the story; for all that is truly noble in Bulwer’s imaginary doctrines of the Rosicrucians is stolen from the pure precepts of our holy religion.