BULWER AND HIS BOOK.* 



WE have all read of the frog in the fable, which, aspiring to be ac- 

 counted an ox, made a split of it, and was never afterwards in a situa- 

 tion to raise the wind towards a second experiment. This is precisely 

 the predicament of Mr. Bulwer at the present moment. From the 

 " indigesta moles" of his mind he created a little world of profit. He 

 wrote novels, " beautiful exceedingly;" he penned poems, delicate 

 Ariels, which the Calibans of criticism were loath to visit too roughly. 

 The former were, nay, we believe, are still, indispensable to maid, 

 milliner, plain twaddler, and complicated bore; the latter, we are 

 given to understand, were sucked in by the insatiate trunks of this 

 elephantine metropolis. 



The mental tadpole having thus become transformed into the lite- 

 rary frog, what more natural, reasonable, proper, than that he should 

 imagine himself capable of undergoing further and more extensive 

 changes ? The reform was never intended to be final why should 

 the fen circumscribe the frog ? wherefore not that internal power 

 which, gradually swelling and increasing, shall at length convert it 

 into the bival dimensions of a commensurate ox-lord ? But it was 

 not to be. 



When a man proposes to write a book upon a given subject (we do 

 not stop to inquire whether his subject was given to^Mr. Bulwer) he 

 usually takes the trouble of thinking a little before he commences his 

 work.f It is not an improbable supposition, also, that he examines 

 himself touching his competency to fulfil the task which has been as- 

 signed to him, or which he has proposed to himself. He will also 

 consider whether his subject do not involve a discussion of points upon 

 which men of equal capacity perhaps of equal capacity with himself, 

 are strongly and honestly at issue. That preliminary process having 

 been gone through, the course which the incipient author has to pur- 

 sue, becomes inevitably obvious. He is bound to state his opinions 

 strongly, forcibly, above all, plainly : and he feels himself under the 

 not unpleasing necessity of addressing his readers in a tone of equality, 

 indeed, but also with some show of respect. Mr. Bulwer has chosen 

 to do neither ; whence we not unfairly conclude that he has not only 

 not considered the manifold subjects he has presumed to handle, but 

 that he has altogether forgotten the readers whom he has deemed it 

 fitting so insolently to address. A more miserable tissue of puerile 

 contradictions, a more wretched mixture of foreign philosophy and 

 home-made ignorance, it was never before our fault to read a more 

 oracular and pedagogue arrogance in the expression of them, it was 



By Edward Lytton Bulwer, Esq . M. P. &c. 2 vols. 8vo. London, Bentley, 

 1833. 



f Mr. Bulwer, more experienced in book-making than ourselves, is of a con- 

 trary opinion. " It is astonishing," he says, " how few men deem it necessary to 

 think a little when they are writing much." The author of Pelham has almost 

 converted us to his opinion. 



