But surely Mr. Ward (who, although he did write "De Vere," is by no means a fool) could never have put to paper, in his sober senses, anything so absurd as the paragraph quoted above, without stopping at every third word to hold his sides, or thrust his pocket-handkerchief into his mouth. If the serious intention be insisted upon, however, I have to remark that the opinion is the mere opinion of a writer remarkable for no other good trait than his facility at putting his readers to sleep according to rules Addisonian and with the least possible loss of labor and time. But as the mere opinion of even a Jeffrey or a Macaulay, I have an inalienable right to meet it with another.

As a novelist, then, Bulwer is far more than respectable; although generally inferior to Scott, Godwin, D'Israeli, Miss Burney, Sue, Dumas, Dickens, the author of "Ellen Wareham," the author of " "Jane Eyre," and several others. From the list of foreign novels I could select a hundred which he could neither have written nor conceived. As a dramatist, he deserves more credit, although he receives less. His 66 Richelieu,' Money," and "Lady of Lyons" have done much in the way of opening the public eyes to the true value of what is superciliously termed stage-effect" in the hands of one able to manage it. But if commendable at this point, his dramas fail egregiously in points more important; so that, upon the whole, he can be said to have written a good play, only when we think of him in connexion with the still more contemptible old-dramatist" imitators who are

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his contemporaries and friends. As historian, he is sufficiently dignified, sufficiently ornate, and more than sufficiently self-sufficient. His " Athens" would have received an Etonian prize, and has all the happy air of an Etonian prize-essay re-vamped. His political pamphlets are very good as political pamphlets and very disreputable as anything else. anything else. His essays leave no doubt

upon anybody's mind that, with the writer, they have His criticism is really beneath heen essays indeed. them, of ev His moral philosophy is the most ridiculous Thus, the range of Imaginatioh's ever have been imEven out or terials extend throughout the universe. deformities it fabricates that Beauty which is at once its But, in general, the sole object and its inevitable test. richness or force of the matters combined; the facility of discovering combinable novelties worth combining ; and, especially the absolute chemical combination of the completed mass are the particulars to be reIt is this garded in our estimate of Imagination. thorough harmony of an imaginative work which so often causes it to be undervalued by the thoughtless, through the character of obviousness which is superinduced. We are apt to find ourselves asking why it is that these combinations have never been imagined before.

"He (Bulwer) is the most accomplished writer of the most accomplished era of English Letters; practising all styles and classes of composition, and eminent in all — novelist, dramatist, poet, historian, moral philosopher, essayist, critic, political pamphleteer ; — in each superior to all others, and only rivalled in each by himself." WARD author of "Tremaine."

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enkindled beneath its influence, fairly enkindled we never are. That Bulwer is no poet, follows as a corollary from what has been already said : - for to speak of a poet without genius, is merely to put forth a flat contradiction in terms.

Quaintness, within reasonable limits, is not only not to be regarded as affectation, but has its proper uses, in aiding a fantastic effect. Miss Barrett will afford me two examples. In some lines to a Dog, she says:

Leap! thy broad tail waves a light.

Leap! thy slender feet are bright,
Canopied in fringes.

Leap! those tasselled ears of thine
Flicker strangely fair and fine
Down their golden inches.

"

And again in the Song of a Tree-Spirit."

The Divine impulsion cleaves

In dim movements to the leaves

Dropt and lifted— dropt and lifted —
In the sun-light greenly sifted
In the sun-light and the moon-light
Greenly sifted through the trees.
Ever wave the Eden trees

In the night-light and the moon-light
With a ruffling of green branches
Shaded off to resonances

Never stirred by rain or breeze.

The thoughts here belong to a high order of poetry, but could not have been wrought into effective expression, without the aid of those repetitions those unusual phrases those quaintnesses, in a word, which it has been too long the fashion to censure, indiscriminately, under the one general head of "affectation." No poet will fail to be pleased with the two extracts I

have here given; but no doubt there are some who will find it hard to reconcile the psychal impossibility of refraining from admiration, with the too-hastily attained mental conviction that, critically, there is nothing to admire.

XIII.

[Text: Southern Literary Messenger, June, 1849.]

PURE Diabolism is but Absolute Insanity. Lucifer was merely unfortunate in having been created without brains.

When a man of genius speaks of "the difficult" he means, simply, the impossible.'

We, of the nineteenth century, need some worker of miracles for our regeneration; but so degraded have we become that the only prophet, or preacher, who could render us much service, would be the St. Francis who converted the beasts.

The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.

Samuel Butler, of Hudibrastic memory, must have had a prophetic eye to the American Congress when he defined a rabble as "A congregation or assembly of the States-General - every one being of a several judgment concerning whatever business be under consideration." They meet only to quarrel," he adds, "and then return home full of satisfaction and narrative."

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The Romans worshipped their standards; and the Roman standard happened to be an eagle. Our standard is only one-tenth of an Eagle- a Dollar but we make all even by adoring it with ten-fold devotion.

He that is born to be a man, ""

his Peregrinus Proteus,"

says Wieland in should nor can be any

thing nobler, greater, or better than a man. The fact is, that in efforts to soar above our nature, we invariably fall below it. Your reformist demigods are merely devils turned inside out.

It is only the philosophical lynxeye that, through the indignity-mist of Man's life, can still discern the dignity of Man.

It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.

In drawing a line of distinction between a people and a mob, we shall find that a people aroused to action are a mob; and that a mob, trying to think, subside into a people.

Tell a scoundrel, three or four times a day, that he is the pink of probity, and you make him at least the perfection of "respectability" in good earnest. On the other hand, accuse an honorable man, too pertinaciously, of being a villain, and you fill him with a perverse ambition to show you that you are not altogether in the wrong.

VOL. XVI. - II