Hoarse with this cry, the self-same throats Dear sister Isle! be hopeful, calm, Then shall internal discords cease, O, Gentlemen of Erin! ye her stream, Where pleasure's voice entices, Home! and devote head, heart, and hand To guide and aid your native land In this transition crisis. Ye Bards who blazon fancied wrongs, The power with which ye're gifted, Erin, old Ocean's gem and pride, Men of each party, sect, and line, To work this consummation. And Thou, O, God of Goodness! heed "LUCRETIA."-BY SIR E. BULWER LYTTON.* THE publication of a work of remarkable interest and power, by the greatest living English novelist, after a lapse of four years, since the author has appeared as a writer of fiction, has naturally caused a great sensation in the world of letters. Amid the anxiety of some, the enthusiasm of others, and the curiosity of all, the cry of a few critical detractors has not failed to make itself heard, and that in a tone of malevolence which demands a word or two of comment. Considering it as a fact established by all precedent, that it is in the portraiture of gigantic crime that the poet has rightly found his sphere, and fulfilled his destiny of teacher, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton has, under the title of "Lucretia; or, the Children of Night," given the history of two criminals who lived in our own age, and whose crimes, incredible as it may seem, actually took place within the last seventeen years. While delineating the profound knowledge and intellectual capacities of one criminal, and the glittering accomplishments of the other, with no exaggeration in the extent of the crimes, little departure from the details, the means employed having also their foundation in facts, the author insists in eloquent and impressive language, that the moral to be drawn from such pictures is, that the greatest friend to man is labour, that knowledge (and he might have added wealth) without toil is worthless, and that it is not wealth suddenly acquired which is deserving of homage, but the virtues which a man exercises in the slow pursuit of wealth, the abilities so called forth, the self-denials so imposed-in a word, that "Labour and Patience are the true schoolmasters on earth." 66 66 "All that romance which our own time affords," says Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, is not more the romance than the philosophy of the time. Tragedy never quits the world-it surrounds us everywhere. We have but to look, wakeful and vigilant, abroad-and from the age of Pelops to that of Borgia, the same crimes, though under different garbs, will stalk on our paths. Each age comprehends in itself specimens of every virtue and every vice, which has ever inspired our love, or moved our horror." Yet it is in the face of these great facts, here so ably set forth, that a class of bad critics ever yearning for temporary applause at the expense of honesty and justice, have denounced the book as "a bad book and of a bad school," stigmatised it as a "revolting" picture of human crime and human suffering, and forgetful of the common decencies of Christian as well as of literary decorum, have called upon the Deity to brand the purpose of the work, so as to deter men from holding communication with such productions, and to cause this kind of literature to perish. To such miserable detraction, it would be sufficient to oppose the intentions and purposes of the author, as announced by himself; but a principle is involved in the amiable wishes of the critic so charitably expressed, which must be placed in its proper light. If the vituperative writer really considered Sir E. Bulwer Lytton to be in error when he stated that the sphere of great poets and novelists as teachers, was essentially * Lucretia; or, the Children of Night. By the Author of Rienzi, &c. &c. 3 vols. Saunders and Ottley. connected with the portraiture of crime, he should have demonstrated the fallacy of the statement by argument or by proof. Failing to do this, his charge utterly falls to the ground. From the days of Chaucer, who, in his eloquent description of death by poison, says, Ev'ry lacert in his breast adown, Is shent with venom and corruption to the present day, the tragic drama and the epic will be found to be based on crime, as opposed to goodness, or, on vice, as brought into contrast with virtue. This principle is equally characteristic of the romance. The direction and objects of the latter have admitted of greater latitude than the tragic drama. But it is still the same thing. A story of any kind must always derive its main interest from the triumph of good over evil, or the successful war waged by virtue against vice. The injustice of attaching to any living novelist the foundation of a school of crime, must be manifest to any one of the slightest reading. That such a stigma is so attached for party purposes is evident from this one fact, that while "a tale of English low life of vice, wretchedness, and misery" (we use the critic's words) "of one living novelist are said to be drawn with the truth and vigour of Crabbe, another is condemned for painting ghastly and hideous details of human suffering." This is dishonest criticism, for what is praised in the one is condemned in the other. When the critic asserts that it was Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton who first introduced what has been stigmatised as "thieves' literature" into the novel, either he must have been unacquainted with Head's "English Rogue," Luna's "Lazarillo de Tormes," "Guzman's D'Alfarache," Quevedo's "Paul the Sharper," Fielding's "Jonathan Wild," and a whole host of other tales of a similar class, or he must have penned the statement, which he knew to be false, to suit a purpose. A weekly journal, celebrated for its knowledge of all that is psychological and æsthetic (what an affected, repulsive word, says the gallant author of "Canada and the Canadians"), pronounces, in its usual dogmatic tone, against which there is no appeal, that "Lucretia" does not belong to psychological fiction. If the astute critic wishes to intimate that the work does not possess any principle of conduct or developments which have reference to the operations of mind, a more unfounded statement was never made. Never, perhaps, was the gradual preparation of the intellect for crime, and the mysterious workings of passion to effect its object, more searchingly or more skilfully portrayed. The inconsistent critic himself speaks of "Lucretia" as "the intellectual criminal," and of the author as "a philosophical novelist," yet neither constitute, in his æsthetic ideas, the accessories of a psychological fiction. A higher authority than the foregoing journal, intimates that Sir E. Bulwer Lytton's novel " may have been penned with the purpose of deterring men from crime, and that the end, therefore, would be a good one, but that that is not a mooted question." According to this view of the subject, the lofty purpose of deterring men from crime is nothing, the objects of a novel are beneath consideration, the end sought for is too insignificant to dwell upon : it suffices that the author has sinned by depicting dark pictures to the world. As if light itself could be known but by contrast with darkness; good except by its contrast with evil; perfection by its contrast with imperfection, and virtue by its contrast with vice. Injustice is always inconsistent. The same critic, who, with unpardonable personality, traces these much reprobated dark pictures to the author's domestic afflictions, also ventures on such delicate grounds as to assert of Sir E. Bulwer Lytton that "his is the opprobrium of having suggested, if not actually promoted, the corruption of a large proportion of our population." This would be truly a serious accusation if the bungling manner in which it is announced did not convert it into something farcical. The falsity of the statement has been already shown; but the inconsistency of an author being at one moment allowed to be writing to deter mankind from crime, and at another paraded as a stalking horror-a pestilential thing, that can spoil and corrupt half a nation attests such a confusion of intellect and ideas as to prevent the slightest importance being attached to the accusation. But there is one more feature peculiar to this sanctimonious school of criticism too characteristic to be passed over, inasmuch as it attests in the most striking manner not only the hypocrisy but the dishonesty of criticism when so prostituted. It is that those very journals which croak loudest against fiction founded on crime, never fail to condense into their own pages as much as they possibly can of the reprobated matter, always indeed taking care to select the most obnoxious portions! This is par with depreciating a merchant's bills in the market, and then using them to your own advantage. The honourable reviewer blames the public taste and then panders to it with the most uncompromising prostitution of his pages, and that to the most unblushing extent. upon It is time, however, to pass from this worthless school of criticism to the splendid fiction itself, the outcry against which has called forth our indignation. This eventful history opens during the Reign of Terror in Paris, where we are introduced to the criminal, yet intellectual Oliver Dalibard, on the eve of conducting his young son Gabriel to witness the execution of his mother. This portentous beginning passes like a summer cloud, to give by its temporary shadow additional brightness to the glowing beauties of Laughton, the old English country seat of Sir Miles St. John, an aristocratic and wealthy squire, who dwells in that fine old mansion with his niece and presumptive heiress, Lucretia Clavering. Into this hitherto tranquil and unpolluted house, proud of its gallery of reproachless ancestors, and with an unstained escutcheon at its portals, the quondam friend of Robespierre, has obtained a footing as tutor to the young lady-a fiend destined to bring crime and ruin in his train. The game now played between the two has terror in its suspense, and as an intermediate there is the boy Gabriel, nursed in profligacy and crime, but drawn to Lucretia by an indefinable instinct of similarity in many traits of their characters," the whelp-leopard sporting fearlessly round the she panther." While Sir Miles on his own side is contemplating the fusion of Laughton Manor with Vernon Grange, by an union between the heiress and the gentlemanlike roué Charles Vernon, and Dalibard is maturing his Satanic schemes, on his part; Lucretia herself has given her wayward heart to William Mainwaring, a young man, of whom it is sufficient to say, that he is without ancestry or career. The scene in which Moonbeam and Starbeam penetrate into that old house to betray Lucretia's midnight ponderings over the death, which will enable her to bestow Laughton on her lover, and in which the same Moonbeam and Starbeam brood over a father disturbing his child's slumbers to claim his allegiance in crime, is one of the most poetical creations in modern literature. With the assistance of Gabriel, Dalibard betrays to the proud old Sir Miles, his niece's clandestine correspondence with Mainwaring. By a skilfully developed contrivance, a letter is brought forth from a strange post office-an old historical oak in the manor- -and that letter not only contains the secret of her love, but also her anxious yearnings for the death of her aged and confiding protector. The old man does not long survive the discovery of that household perfidy to which "in all lands, in all ages, God's curse seems to cleave, and to God's curse man abandons it." He dies soon after, and in his will he leaves the Laughton property to Charles Vernon, disinheriting Lucretia of all, save the sum of 10,000l. He also leaves the same sum to Susan Mivers a sister of Lucretia's by her mother's second nuptials, a marriage which being deemed a kind of mésalliance, by one so proud of family descent as Sir Miles, its offspring had never been recognised by him. To Olivier Dalibard, he leaves an annuity of 2007. a year, and to Gabriel 30007. besides sundry other legacies, not forgetting the only friends who had proved themselves such to the last, his favourite dogs. It is further willed that the Laughton estate shall pass on the failure of Mr. Vernon's issue to the issue of Susan Mivers; next to that of Lucretia Clavering. Mr. Vernon while so far seconding Sir Miles's views as to have been once a suitor for Lucretia's hand, no sooner obtains the property without the lady, than he weds a certain Mary for whom he has entertained a previous predilection. The issue of this marriage is three boys, one of whom, Percival by name, alone lives to grow up to manhood. In a similar manner William Mainwaring, for a time led astray by the superior intelligence and indomitable will of Lucretia Clavering, in reality loves the more amiable and humble Susan Mivers, who has been brought up in the family of Mr. Fielden, a Hampshire vicar. By Dalibard's contrivance, Lucretia is made aware of the preference given by her lover for another, and nothing remains for the disinherited and castoff young woman, but to give herself up to the disciple of intellect and crime, who has so steadily and so successfully through ruin and death, worked his way up to the goal of his ambition. The scene changes to Paris. Olivier Dalibard is intimate with the First Consul, and becomes a main instrument in the detection of the conspiracy of the Chouans and of Georges Cadoudel. Dalibard has also a rich cousin, Bellanger by name, whose wealth he covets, and it is at this period that Lucretia, become initiated into the chemical secrets of her crafty husband, begins herself to dabble in the use of poisons. Bellanger removed out of the way there remained a widow, whose next object it becomes Dalibard's plan to make his own. But Lucretia must first be got rid of, and through the means of Gabriel she is warned of the fate that awaits her. Then comes the duel for life and death, intellect against intellect, husband against wife. 66 "That mute coma of horror! that suspense of two foes in the conflict of death, for the subtle prying eye of Olivier Dalibard sees that he himself is susJan.-VOL. LXXIX. No. CCCXIII. K |
