13 DECEMBER 1828, Page 11

THE DISOWNED*

WE see how we fell into the mistake of attributing Pelham to the author of Vivian Grey. The Disowned lets us into a secret. The true writer of Pelham is a cameleon—his works take the com plexion of his reading or his company. The Disowned is as dif ferent a composition from Pelham as green is from black. Mr. BULWER is an imitator—a man with an extraordinary facility at

imitation, amounting to genius: but we allow that he is more than an imitator—he is a young man of various and really great talents, of extensive but hasty reading, of excellent intentions, and consi

derable ambition of the lighter and least steady kind. In Pelluini he carried Vivian Grey a stage further: he in fact took him up, and the author, in carrying on the series, really let him down. Before writing the Disowned, very different have been his models, very different his course of reading. No two books were ever more unlike than the former and the present ; a variety which exempts the author altogether from the unpleasantness of being confounded with the coxcomb he invented. We (lid say before that the feelings excited by reading Pelham were of that mingled species of contempt and indignation which leads a man to kick a puppy (meaning the thing painted, not the painter) : but the author of the Disowned is one we should willingly take by the hand—a young man whom at some time it will be an honour to know—whom at present, however, all things considered, we confess we regret to read. He is pouring out crudities by the stone-weight : he will soon be ashamed of them, and be prevented perhaps by disgust from maturing the powers he evidently possesses. At present he is the most malleable of persons, and time and circumstances would undoubtedly work such stuff into something eminently good and useful ; but there is no saying what these dead weights hanging about his neck may bring him to.

It is only, however, as a whole that the Disowned can be spoken of in such terms : if it did not occasionally exhibit resources characteristic of a very powerful and a very active intellect, we certainly should not trouble ourselves either about it or its author. We may say with perfect truth, that, taking the four bulky volumes together, we never saw such a chaotic mass : we never saw any heap of MSS. which had more evidently been improvised : it has been written all day long and all night long—there is scarcely a gap for a meal: here the writer has worked himself into a fever— here he sinks into fatigue : now hispen is worn to the stump—then it is nibbed—and then, all of a sudden, he takes a new one, and opens a chapter, clear, bright, and cool. We have fashionable novels, romantic novels, historical novels, but here is a hu rt yscurry novel—a tale going post—a complete Johnny Gilpin runaway romance. "Away go hat and wig !"—now the author pulls with might and main—now he clasps securely by the horse's neck, going twenty miles an hour—now he rushes headlong, he knows not whither, till Pegasus and penman together are stopped by sonic friendly turnpike, in the shape of a "finis" placed by the publisher,—who, in a manner, lays hold of the bridle and lets him down from his breakneck flight ; or, in other words, informs him that four volumes are finished, and that he cannot possibly receive any more matter. The Spectator speaks of a beau with a wellconsidered and much-corrected impromptu found in his pocket : the practice is now reversed—our beaus are discovered with four volumes of real impromptu in a drawer, written currente calamo, without a blot or an erasure. The impromptus of our days are as long and as big as the great American sea serpent. We need not repeat the maxim about easy writing being hard reading—it is not exactly applicable. We have had harder tasks than reading the Disowned,— the Principle for instance, especially the second volume : the theory of tides and the figure of the earth are very difficult subjects but here the fault lies with the incapacity of the reader ; and probably the author of the Disowned is ot opinion that this is the case in the parallel instance. He is, however, we are sure, a candid person, and when he hears that all the world agrees with us that there is no reading the Disowned through, regularly and without skipping, he will allow that we are not quite so stupid as he took us to be. But though all the world should say that the Disowned is dull, let not the author thereupon fancy that he is to revert to Pelham as a model. It has undoubtedly been much read, and somewhat liked; at any rate it has amused— people are not ennuyed by the smart or the ridiculous: but Mr. WARD and De Vera, with his statesmen, his essays, and his reading in BOLINGBROKE and CLARENDON, are more hazardous persons with an idle and frivolous public.

The truth is, that the Disowned, now in four volumes, contains one volume at least of great excellence—a drop of prussic acid in a pint of water. We will enumerate the brilliant points of this bale of goods, rids and rare in spots, as a whole to be taken by the cubic foot First, the gipsey scenes are good—very good : the character of King Cole is original, well conceived, well supported —it smacks of FIELDING, of :SoorsoN, and Mr. W ARD. Then Morris Brown the broker is a clever oddity, with his " presents," his lady Wandilove and her wardrobe: he is an amusing bore, well kept up, and not greatly over-dosed for ettl2et. He made its laugh several times, by the mere force of quiet ibration. We love his selfish humour, his sly hypocrisy, his assLmal stolidity, his imperturbable temper, his persevering love of the main chance : his mind, like his business, is a broker's shop—old pictures, china jars, stuffed apes, and candlesticks. The tragical scenes in the history of the proud and reserved, the virtuous and high-minded

Mordaunt, are powerfully written : the affection of his wife is beautiful both in life and death. Lord Borodaile is tolerably well supported, but his death is a fine scene. And this reminds us of the rugged republican Wolfe, an erroneous, ill-tempered, well-intentioned man, who plays the part of Thistlewood at the end of the tale, and shoots, as he supposes, the Prime Minister. There is, moreover, a short scene, which, in our humble opinion, equals anything

of the kind from FIELDING to SCOTT ;—we mean the brief but passionate dialogue between the Disowned and his father, when the son steals into his room in the evening to attempt to restore himself to his parent's affections, or at least to crave his blessing. It must be observed, that the Disowned is an amiable young man, driven from his father's house, and forbidden to bear his name, in consequence of his mother's infidelity. The old lord doubts the fact of the boy being his own—antedates his wife's error, and shifts from a dusting love of his child to a wild, capricious, and intern. perate hatred of the very name and sight of him.

These are the characters and portions of the story, if so it may be

called, which struck us most on a hasty perusal. Of other kinds of beauty, we should pick out the author's descriptions of English scenery. We scarcely know anything more exquisite than sonic of the park sketches. Our painters have a term, "dress scenery:" it is a thoroughly English description of painting : Horrokxn excels in it : the author of the Disowned has a bright eye and a graceful pen for the description of it. He tells us he has been familiar with deer from his infancy ! it is certainly clear that he is acquainted with finer park's than Knelworth. When we think of all that we have thus run over, and much that we might still pick oat of the mass of writing under the name of the Disowned, we cannot help almost bitterly lamenting that the author has suffered his pen to wander through such multitudes of half-formed thoughts, which in fact make up the ballast of this his last cargo : argumentative discussions, and literary and moral essays, occur in a profusion almost sufficient to smother the actual story. Mr. BuLwEn should remember that Mr. WARD is a much older man than himself (we remember him in blue and silver); has seen far more of the world than he can pretend to have seen ; has reflected much ; and his opinions and remarks come with the weight of ex

and are supported at any rate with deliberate argument. Many of Mr. BuLwER's thoughts are ingenious, many original; but they are mostly half-born and indigested: they ought to have been kept in his mind for years, and considered and applied ; they would then have appeared in a shape far better worth attending to. Now the reader sees a clever young man playing the profound, and with great gravity and much of the oracle in his manner, pronouncing the decisions of age, sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but always with an air of extreme wisdom.

" The tottle of the whole" is, that the author of the Disowned has

written a novel, full of faults, interspersed with excellences of various kinds ; and that he himself is a young man of very considerable powers, of virtuous intentions, and in the way of becoming a very superior man (to be a senator and an orator is evidently his ambition). " Ife has his capabilities ." soil better worth cultivating does not often occur : if he may not be made to grow corn of the highest price, he may be turned into a very highly ornamented piece of pleasure-ground.

We forgot to say, that the scheme of the Dismanedis an exceed ingly good design for a novel, and we are only sorry that the author did not elaborate its details with more care. Had he not been in such haste, it might, as far as the fable goes, have been made the rival of Torn .Jones; and fable is a more important thing than he imagines. We think we could set him right in several of the notions about novels, tales, story, scenes, and dialogue, which he has broached in his Introduction.

These are our first impressions—but the author recollects some

thing about ldrga, fo",5-,3=;: if he will send us his second edition, we will compare our second thoughts with his, and promise to do what is in our case a huge exception—to read a novel over a second time, and that more carefully : itis impossible to read a book in comfort when all the world is waiting to snatch it out of our hands.