LORD LYTTON AS LITTERATEUR.
'4' DE mortals nil nisi bonum" is a good-natured, if not very
sound rule, but we seem juat at present to be pushing good- nature rather far. It may be wise to be kindly to a man's memory ; it is absurd because he is dead to alter a deliberate estimate of his literary works. We have nothing to say against Lord. Lytton himself, whose character and history will hardly be understood till the memoirs of this generation have been pub- lished; but we are not going to admit, just because he is dead, that a mighty genius has passed away from among men. That he was a hard worker, as careful a student as rich men ever are, and a man of unusually wide and varied knowledge—which, however, was seldom thorough—may be readily admitted ; as also that he possessed unusual power of making a transcendental political speech ; but all these things do not make up genius, the mysterious something which everyone describes and no one defines, and which in our judgment was wanting to Lord Lytton. He was one of the cleverest men who ever lived, who thought he must have genius because he knew so many things that other men did not know, and could do so many things other men could not do, and went about ever after with a torch in his hand hunting to discover where his genius lay. In every department he tried he achieved a measure of success, all the more consoling because he thought it greater than it really was, but in none did he achieve a complete or lasting triumph. He wrote plays, and two or three of his plays are so good that they keep possession of the stage ; but their good- ness is cleverness only, the cleverness of keen, though shallow social observation. It is this, coupled with a genuine admiration for scenic situation, an admiration constantly apparent in his novels, which makes his plays seem strong, but he has not added a character to the store of English characters, or a phrase to the Eng- lish wealth of racy colloquialisms. It is with the greatest diffi- culty that ordinary men recall even the names of his personages, and we doubt if a sentence uttered by any one of them can be found to have worked its way into the language. The situations are striking, the dialogues often happy, the senti- ments sometimes elevated, though more apt to be inflated ; but it is all ordinary work, clever writing, which will not live as, to quote a precise analogy, the best of Sheridan's comedies will live. Sheridan, himself only a genius in his humour, had in virtue of that humour just the power, which Bulwer lacked, of appealing to universal human nature. You can act the "School for Scandal" before any audience, and they will miss nothing except perhaps the true meaning of Mrs. Candour, lost in a corrupt stage tradition ; but try to act " Money " in the New Cut. Lord Lytton wrote history, descriptive history, but his "Athens," a book fall of rare and carious information, as enjoyable as an old piece of fantastic china, may be said to be absolutely forgotten. He wrote poetry, much of it very nice in- deed ; but with one decided exception, not a line of it lives in the
thoughts or imaginations of men. There is fancy often in the 4' Loet Tales of Miletus," and in one passage depicting the misery of deathlessness there is power—power due mainly to the author's lifelong consideration of the effect that mysterious position would have upon the mind—but only the political sketches in " The New Timon " are alive. Those, we admit, have high merit, such high
merit that we are half tempted to recall our statement that Lord Lytton had not genius. We are not quite sure even in our own minds that had Lord Lytton recognised his own capacities in this direction, and cultivated them sedulously, bad he observed men for their sake, and cured himself in order to perfect them of his love for wordiness, he might not, as a satirist, have rivalled Dryden. The sketch of Lord Derby so often quoted is only clever, giving the popular, not the true impression of the man ; but that of Lord John Russell has insight. When we have all said our say about him, we shall only have said :-
"But see our statesman when the steam is on, And languid Johnny glows to glorious John ;" and,—
"Not his the wealth to some large natures lent, Divinely lavish, though so oft misspent."
Lord Lytton's satire lacks fire, but it is at all events real, and is de- void of that sense of strain which pervades all his other work, and I made him write in prose sentiments or apophthegms full of capital letters, and either nonsense or platitudes dressed up in draw- ing-room Carlylese, and in poetry such tumid and unreal staff as the songs in " Rienzi" or " The Last Days of Pompeii."
All the observations we have made apply in a still stronger degree to the vast mass of novels given by Lord Lytton to the world. They all display the results of vast and varied reading. They are all full of a certain thin pictorial charm derived mainly from that reading. They are made tolerable by social sketches, some of which, like the little kit- cat of Pelham's mother, the account of Audley Egerton the states- man in " My Novel," the picture of the lady who kept a salon in the aristocratic quarter of a country town in "A Strange Story," and the description of Sir Sydney Beaudesert and Lord Castleton in "The Cartons," display a subdued satiric power which, if cultivated, might have indefinitely increased Lord Lytton's rank in English literature. What, for example, can be better in its way than this passage describing the rich boy Peer, the Marquis of Castleton. It is a little long, but as it is by far the most complete illustration of our view, we venture to give it entire :-
"Conversation succeeded, by galvanic jerks and spasmodic starts— a conversation that Lord Castleton contrived to tug so completely out of poor Sir Sedley's ordinary course of small and polished small-talk, that that charming personage, accustomed, as he well deserved, to be Coryphains at his own table, was completely silenced. With his light reading, his rich stores of anecdote, his good-humoured knowledge of the drawing-room world, he had scarce a word that would fit intothe great, rough, serious matters which Lord Castleton threw upon the table, as he nibbled his toast. Nothing but the most grave and prac- tical subjects of human interest seemed to attract this future loader of mankind. The fact is that Lord Castleton had boon taught everything that relates to property—(a knowledge which embraces a very wide circumference). It had been said to him, You will be an immense proprietor—knowledge is essential to your self-preservation. You will be puzzled, bubbled, ridiculed, duped every day of your life, if you do not make yourself acquainted with all by which property is assailed or defended, impoverished or increased. You have a vast stake in the country—you must learn all the interests of Europe—nay, of the civilised world—for those interests react on the country, and the interests of the country are of the greatest possible consequence to the interests of the Marquis of Castleton.' Thus the state of the Continent—the policy of Metternich—the condition of the Papacy—the growth of Dissent—the proper mode of dealing with the general spirit of Democracy, which was the epidemic of European monarchies—the relative proportions of the agricultural and manufacturing population—corn laws, currency, and the laws that regulate wages—a criticism on the leading speakers of the House of Commons, with some discursive observations on the import- ance of fattening cattle—the introduction of flax into Ireland—emigra- tion—the condition of the poor—the doctrines of Mr. Owen—the pathology of potatoes ; the connection between potatoes, pauperism, and patriotism ; these, and suchlike stupendous subjects for reflection—all branching more or loss intricately from the single idea of the Castleton property—the young lord discussed and disposed of in half-a-dozen prim, poised sentences—evincing, I must say in justice, no inconsider- able information, and a mighty solemn turn of mind. The oddity was, that the subjects so selected and treated should not come rather from some young barrister, or mature political economist, than from so gorgeous a lily of the field. Of a man loss elevated in rank one would certainly have said—' Cleverish, but a prig ;' but there really was some- thing so respectable in a personage born to such fortunes, and having nothing to do but to bask in the sunshine, voluntarily taking such pains with himself, and condescending to identify his own interests—the interests of the Castleton property—with the concerns of his lessor fellow-mortals, that one felt the young marquis had in him the stuff to become a very considerable man."
Men who never saw that kind of person in their lives feel that sketch to be literally correct, and it is but one of many scattered throughout Lord Lytton's social novels. But he never remained long in this vein—in which he might have rivalled Mr. Disraeli_ andin the veins he more affected he seem to us, we confess, poor. Boys admire the situations in the " Last Days of Pompeii," and men may recognise its knowledge ; but compare it with " Romola," or even " Hypatia," and how vast is the intellectual interval. The finest character, Nydia, the blind girl, is essentially and intolerably modern, while the majority of the personages are mere lay figures, without originality, force, or interest for the reader, except so far as he is interested in sensa- tional, though quasi-historic scenes, and in antiquarian research. And this is by far the best of Lord Lytton's historic novels. "Rienzi, the Last of the Tribunes," is a failure, in spite of a certain melancholy grandeur in the central figure, for we do not recognise the mighty difference between life in the middle ages and life now ; " Harold " is admitted to be dull, and is that most intoler- able of all things, an imitation Saga without unconsciousness ; and the "Last of the Barons " would, but for Edward IV., be a tiresome romance in very stilted English. Edward IV. is really well done, as well done as Scott's failures, e.g., Margaret of Anjou, in " Anne of Geierstein,"and is, we imagine, historically nearer the truth than the account in most histories, but as a work of art, compare it with Scott's Louis XI. or any of Dumas' sketches of any member of the House of Valois, especially Charles IX. At best we cannot say that it would be quite unworthy James. As to the criminal novels, one of them, " Lucretia," has considerable power, for Gabriel Varney is a literal reproduction of a Mr. Wainwright, a great criminal, whom Lord Lytton knew and Understood, but "Paul Clifford" is—in all reverence be it spoken—sentimental rubbish, infinitely inferior as a work of art to the Macheath of the " Beggars' Opera." " Pelham " is an admir- able social novel while Pelham is on the stage, and an insufferable melodrama when he is off it ; and although the modern novels, "The Cartons," "My Novel," and the rest, are lively, they are deformed by direct and poor imitations of Sterne, for which Lord Lytton had not the requisite humour, and rarely rise above ordinary novelist's work. Let any one who doubts this think what Thackeray would have made of Roland Carton, or George Eliot of Squire Hazeldean, or even Henry Kingsley of Vivian, and he will see in an instant the difference between- work inspired by genius and work directed by mere cleverness and knowledge. The best of the whole is "The Cartons"—though in " What Will He Do with It ?" we recognise great merit in the figure of Jasper Lowly, the modern bandit,—and in " The Cartons," what is the character of Pisistratus ? We defy any human being even to form an opinion, unless it be this,—that he is a much dressed-up edition of Nicholas Nickleby, who is a lay figure.
There remains a group of novels by Lord Lytton upon which a separate judgment must be passed, that group of which the idea is to describe a man released by Rosicrucian knowledge from the ordinary conditions of humanity. To Lord Lytton the composi- tion of "Zanoni " and " A Strange Story " was, we suspect, a labour of love, a work into which he threw the whole power he possessed, power reinforced by wide reading, and by what appears to us an instinctive appreciation of Oriental thought. He re- curred to the subject again and again at different periods of his life, and in his first sketch of " A Strange Story," published in Blackwood, and in our judgment incomparably the beat piece of work he ever did in his life, he formulated his theory of magic. He held, as the Hindoo dreamers have always held, that it was possible by continued exertion so to intensify the will as to give it supernatural power over the wills and thoughts of other men, and even bring under it, or into relation with it, beings exempted from mortal conditions. This theory, if he had fairly worked it out, would have made his two Rosicrucian studies remarkable works of art ; but he was unequal to the task, and both in "Zanoni " and " A Strange Story" not only brings in a Rosicrucian machinery in the way of drugs of the stupidest and least imaginative kind, but constantly violates his own theory by inconsistent assumptions, as, for instance, making Zanoni prophecy, and giving to Margrave prepos- terous intolerance of pain. Nevertheless, in spite of all, " Zanoni " and "A Strange Story-" are remarkable books, full of weird fancies and poetic dreams, which one would enjoy deeply, but that they are crossed or, as it were, shot by so many wilful absurdities, such as the anti-climax of Margrave's history, where a supernatural scene, worked up with the greatest and most evi- dent strain, ends in the apparition of a gigantic Foot. Lord Lytton did not see that this was grotesque, any more than he saw the absurdity of his apophthegms, and in that incapacity of humour, of perceiving the incongruities of things, lay, we believe, the ulti- mate secret of his failure. For he has failed. He has produced a vast mass of work with many merits in parts of it, but he never realised his own ideal of his own literary power.
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