in the popular idea of the strong man to-day. But no one who knew Lord Lyons can doubt that these qualities were in him a great part of his strength. He was, and must always be to those who knew him, very much of an enigma, and it certainly would not have been his own wish that any great effort should be made to interpret his inner life to the world at large." This scruple has been loyally respected, and no more is revealed to us of Lord Lyons than may persuade us to believe that in him we have the best modern example of the complete Ambassador. A clearer contrast to Lord Lyons in temper and achieve ment could not be found than the fourth Earl of Clarendon, whose 'Life and Letters,' by Sir Herbert Maxwell, have rerecently been published. If we followed the method of Plutarch we could find in these two men no chance of parallel.1 They were as the poles apart in character and in talent. Lord Lyons was wholly and exclusively a diplomatist. He cared nothing, as we have seen, for society or the outside world. Lord Clarendon, on the other hand, delighted in the company of his fellows, in the free interchange of social courtesies. He was as ready in speech as Lord Lyons was shy. He lived at large with ease and pleasure, while Lord Lyons shut himself up austerely in his Embassy. And, as he is presented in Sir Herbert Maxwell's entertaining volumes, he is undoubtedly a gracious and attractive figure. In the skilful hands of his biographer, his life becomes no mere record of political service, but a vivid picture of English society and English manners as they were observed in the nineteenth century. Sir Herbert has had the good fortune to discover excellent journals and vivacious letters, and he has made the best possible use of them. If we have to choose a dominant characteristic in this eminent Minister, it would be the faculty of conciliation. Wedded though he was to party and its warfare, he never forgot the tact and courtesy of the great gentleman. Gladstone found him, of all the colleagues who had passed through his Cabinets, the easiest and most attractive. As an example of his power, the ascendancy which he obtained and preserved over Napoleon III. may well be cited. An anecdote, told by Sir Herbert Maxwell, illustrates more plainly than a page of comment his undisputed influence. "Never in my life,' said life,' said Bismarck to Lord Clarendon's daughter, Lady Emily Russell, was I more glad to hear of anything than I was to hear of your father's death.' Lady Emily was naturally taken aback by such an extraordinary speech, and showed it; whereupon 1 'The Life and Letters of George William Frederick, Fourth Earl of Clarendon.' By the Right Hon. Herbert Maxwell. 2 vols. London: Arnold. Bismarck, patting her hand, said, Ach, dear Lady, you must not take it like that. What I mean is that, if your father had lived, he would have prevented the war.'" That is a very high tribute, perhaps not wholly deserved. But at least it reveals the good opinion of one who was never lavish of praise. And if we set beside Bismarck's eulogy the portrait drawn by Henry Reeve, we shall see clearly enough how Lord Clarendon appeared to his contemporaries. "By the common consent of those," wrote Reeve, "who are acquainted with the society of England, Lord Clarendon was regarded as the most finished gentleman, the most charming and genial companion, and the most accomplished Foreign Minister of our time. His person in early life was singularly handsome. He had the air of refinement which Vandyke was wont to give to his portraits, and which seemed as much an inheritance of George Villiers as his name. Even in age, when the hair grew thin and the face blanched with toil, his eye had lost none of its brightness, nor his figure any of its unstudied elegance. His manners to men of every degree and of every country had a charm which unbent the most rugged antagonist, and inspired confidence alike to the timid and suspicious." The portrait is painted in the colours of panegyric, which do not recall for a moment the sternly concentrated devotion of Lord Lyons to the business of diplomacy. But if we must end on a parallel, let it be said that each of these distinguished men spent his life in the willing service of his country, and that neither renounced that service until the last summons of death came to him. 3 к VOL. CXCIV.-NO. MCLXXVIII. MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD. HIS AMAZING 'THE THE FIRST LORD LYTTON-BYRON AND THE DANDIES—'PELHAM' EDWARD BULWER, Lord Lytton, was born just a century ago; he has been dead but thirty years, and already he seems to belong to the time that was before the flood. To rediscover him is an act of research. Modern as he appeared the day before yesterday, he already inhabits the province of archæology. And the reason why he has been dismoded so soon is that, except in one or two rare intervals of talent, he was nothing more than the expression, a high expression, if you will, of his own age. He said so many convincing things to his contemporaries that there is little in the vast number of his - THE TANNER AND THE But Homer's popularity came to him by the way. He did not keep always before his eyes what the people wanted, and thus, writing for himself, he wrote for all time. The popularity, which Bulwer sought and achieved, was the popularity of another kind, wrung from the willing crowd by a conscious artifice, and sacrificed speedily to the inevitable change of taste and manners. of In life, as in literature, Bulwer reflected with a perfect accuracy the spirit and temper of the early nineteenth century. He was part the great romantic movement which shook Europe from 1830 to 1850. He was Byronic still, yet less savage than the master. He was a dandy, to whom the fierce egoism of Brummel would have seemed monstrous. And his self-consciousness, less triumphant than Byron's or Brummel's, is far more openly thrust upon our sight than was theirs. Bulwer's art, at any rate, was not high enough to conceal itself. He was, as Lord Lytton1 says in a very happy phrase, "an artist in a bad period"; and though he might have gone 1 The Life of Edward Bulwer, First Lord Lytton. By his Grandson, the Earl of Lytton. 2 vols. London: Macmillan. back to the best models, he did in fancy," and showed that not profit by their example. not even the Norman inIn brief, he was a dandy, vasion had wholly quelled but a dandy who was not the savage that still lurked dressed but over-dressed. He in his breast. Yet he liked could no more have escaped to think that in 'Pelham' notice walking down St he had set a quieter, more James's Street, as Brummel modest fashion. Apropos of did, than he could have writ- the complexion," wrote Lady ten "Don Juan." He liked Frances Pelham to her son, highly-coloured dressing-gowns "I did not like that blue and chibouks. It delighted him coat you wore when last I to cut and clip his beard and saw you. You look best in whiskers into odd shapes. Lord black, which is a great comLytton gives us a list of his pliment, for people must be experiments in facial topiary. very distinguished in appearAnd you cannot help recog- ance to do so." That is true, nising that he has taken a though it is not original. By deep step down from the precept, if not by example, dandyism which was practised Bulwer was merely carrying under the regency. Yet he out Brummel's stern theory of was ready, with his accus- sartorial rectitude. tomed ease, to defend his own extravagances. "There is poetry in dress," he wrote. "All our great ancestors who were gentlemen had something of the Beau-Aristotle as well as Alcibiades. A Greek was an exquisite par excellence. So, again, the Romans, and SO the Elizabethan heroesRaleigh, Sidney, &c. Look to their portraits. I have it in my Norman blood. The Normans were the gentlemen of the world. As for conceit in manner or conversation, of that they acquit me. Let them fall foul of the garb if they will. Like the cameldriver, I give up my clothes to the camel, let him trample on them and fancy he crushes me." There was something more than the influence of Norman blood in Bulwer's apparel. It was, as Polonius would have said, "expressed The Byronism, moreover, which he could not escape, was clipped and cropped to suit a timider, more sentimental age. Bulwer, in fact, prides himself on having inaugurated a reaction. "Whether it answered all the objects it attempted I cannot say,' he writes of ' Pelham,' "but one, at least, I imagine, it did answer. I think that, above most works, it contributed to put an end to the Satanic Mania-to turn the thoughts and ambitions of young gentlemen without neckcloths, and young clerks who are sallow, from playing the Corsair and boasting that they were villains. If, mistaking the irony of Pelham, they went to the extreme of emulating the foibles which that hero attributes to himself, these at least were foibles more harmless, and even more manly and noble, than the conceit of a general detestation of man- Prison-discipline, and a sankind, or the vanity of storm- guinary Criminal Code. . ing our pity by lamentations A second and a lighter object over imaginary sorrows and in the novel of 'Paul Clifford' sombre hints at the fatal bur- was to show that there was den of inexpiable events." It nothing essentially different would be a nice exercise of between vulgar vulgar vice and casuistry to argue that the fashionable vice, and that ideal of Pelham was more the slang of the one circle "manly" than the Satanic is but an easy paraphrase Mania. To us it appears that of the cant of the other." Pelham was approaching nearly At the mere thought of it to the namby-pamby, and that Bulwer shone with a glow of the Satanicism of Byron was satisfaction. "When the ignorat once healthier and more ant or malicious are decrying amusing than the desire of its moral," said he, "I consoled moral improvement which took myself that its truths had its place. stricken deep, that many, whom formal essays might not reach, were enlisted by the picture and the popular force of fiction into the service of that large and Catholic Humanity which frankly examines the causes of crime." It seems a vast deal of pother about nothing, when you recall the admirable wisdom of the celebrated Augustus Tomlinson. But it was the habit of the age to allege always a lofty motive, and Bulwer fell into the habit without the smallest difficulty. In his own Ernest Maltravers he saw & man "never wantonly rejecting those great principles by which alone we can work at the science of Life-a desire for the Good, a passion for the Honest, a yearning after the True." Indeed the True and the Beautiful, whatever they be that these two meaningless words denote, are never far from the aspiration of Bulwer. Bitterly and rightly incensed by the reception of 'Lucretia,' he defended even that excellent He And in nothing did Bulwer conform more closely to the spirit of his age than in his loudly expressed determination to "do good." Whenever he discusses his own works, he gives you the impression that he writes with no other object than to elevate the race. is consumed by a fierce flame of sentimentality. The zeal of righteousness eats him up. Not only himself, but the heroes of his creation, seem to wear a halo about their heads. 'Paul Clifford,' for instance, is an amusing romance to wile away a vacant hour. It is not a masterpiece like 'Jonathan Wild,' for, in place of Fielding's splendid irony, sentiment runs riot through its pages. But in Bulwer's own eyes it was a vehicle of the higher morality. It 66 was an appeal from Humanity to Law," "a foresign of a coming change"; it was written with two stern objects: "first to draw attention to two errors in our penal institutions, viz., viz., a vicious |