To talk of _Ernest Maltravers_ now, is to rake up a dead man's ashes.
The poor creature came into the world almost still-born, and, though he
has hardly been before the public for a month, is forgotten as much as
_Rienzi_ or the _Disowned_. What a pity that Mr. Bulwer will not learn
wisdom with age, and confine his attention to subjects at once more
grateful to the public and more suitable to his own powers! He excels in
the _genre_ of Paul de Kock, and is always striving after the style of
Plato; he has a keen perception of the ridiculous and, like Liston or
Cruikshank, and other comic artists, persists that his real vein is the
sublime. What a number of sparkling magazine-papers, what an outpouring
of fun and satire, might we have had from Neddy Bulwer, had he not
thought fit to turn moralist, metaphysician, politician, poet, and be
Edward Lytton, Heaven--knows--what Bulwer, Esquire and M.P., a dandy, a
philosopher, a spouter at Radical meetings. We speak feelingly, for we
knew the youth at Trinity Hall, and have a tenderness even for his
tomfooleries. He has thrown away the better part of himself--his great
inclination for the LOW, namely; if he would but leave off scents for
his handkerchief, and oil for his hair; if he would but confine himself
to three clean shirts a week, a couple of coats in a year, a beefsteak
and onions for dinner, his beaker a pewter-pot, his carpet a sanded
floor, how much might be made of him even yet! An occasional pot of
porter too much--a black eye, in a tap-room fight with a carman--a night
in the watch-house--or a surfeit produced by Welsh-rabbit and gin and
beer, might, perhaps, redden his fair face and swell his slim waist; but
the _mental_ improvement which he would acquire under such treatment--
the intellectual pluck and vigour which he would attain by the stout
diet--the manly sports and conversation in which he would join at the
Coal-Hole, or the Widow's, are far better for him than the feeble
fribble of the Reform Club (not inaptly called "The Hole in the Wall");
the windy French dinners, which, as we take it, are his usual fare; and,
above all, the unwholesome Radical garbage which form the political food
of himself and his clique in the House of Commons.
For here is the evil of his present artificial courses--the humbug
required to keep up his position as dandy, politician, and philosopher
(in neither of which latter characters the man is in earnest), must get
into _his heart_ at last; and then his trade is ruined. A little more
politics and Plato, and the natural disappears altogether from Mr.
Bulwer's writings: the individual man becomes as undistinguishable
amidst the farrago of philosophy in which he has chosen to envelope
himself, as a cutlet in the sauces of a French cook. The idiosyncracy of
the mutton perishes under the effects of the adjuncts: even so the
moralising, which may be compared to the mushrooms, of Mr. Bulwer's
style; the poetising, which may be likened unto the flatulent turnips
and carrots; and the politics, which are as the gravy, reeking of filthy
garlic, greasy with rancid oil;--even so, we say, pursuing this savoury
simile to its fullest extent, the natural qualities of young Pelham--the
wholesome and juicy _mutton of the mind_, is shrunk and stewed away.
Or, to continue in this charming vein of parable, the author of _Pelham_
may be likened to Beau Tibbs. Tibbs, as we all remember, would pass for
a pink of fashion, and had a wife whom he presented to the world as a
paragon of virtue and _ton_, and who was but the cast-off mistress of a
lord. Mr. Bulwer's philosophy is his Mrs. Tibbs; he thrusts her forward
into the company of her betters, as if her rank and reputation never
admitted of a question. To all his literary undertakings this goddess of
his accompanies him; what a cracked, battered truly she is! with a
person and morals that would suit Vinegar yard, and a chastity that
would be hooted in Drury Lane.
The morality which Mr. Bulwer has acquired in his researches, political
and metaphysical, is of the most extraordinary nature. For one who is
always preaching of Truth of Beauty, the dulness of his moral sense is
perfectly ludicrous. He cannot see that the hero into whose mouth he
places his favourite metaphysical gabble--his dissertations about the
stars, the passions, the Greek plays, and what not--his eternal whine
about what he calls the good and the beautiful--is a fellow as mean and
paltry as can be well imagined; a man of rant, and not of action;
foolishly infirm of purpose, and strong only in desire; whose beautiful
is a tawdry strumpet, and whose good would be crime in the eyes of an
honest man. So much for the portrait of Ernest Maltravers: as for the
artist, we cannot conceive a man to have failed more completely. He
wishes to paint an amiable man, and he succeeds in drawing a scoundrel:
he says he will give us the likeness of a genius, and it is only the
picture of a _humbug_.
Ernest Maltravers is an eccentric and enthusiastic young man, to whom we
are introduced upon his return from a German university. Fond of wild
adventure and solitary rambles, we find him upon a heath, wandering
alone, tired, and benighted. The two first chapters of the book are in
Mr. Bulwer's very best manner; the description of the lone hut to which
the lad comes--the ruffian who inhabits it--the designs which he has
upon the life of his new guest, and the manner in which his daughter
defeats them, are told with admirable liveliness and effect. The young
man escapes, and with him the girl who had prevented his murder. Both
are young, interesting, and tender hearted; she loves but him, and would
die of starvation without him. Ernest Maltravers cannot resist the claim
of so unprotected a creature; he hires a cottage for her, and a
writing-master. He is a young man of genius, and generous dispositions; he
is a Christian, and instructs the ignorant Alice in the awful truth of his
religion; moreover he is deep in poetry, philosophy, and the German
metaphysics. How should such a Christian instruct an innocent and
beautiful child, his pupil? What should such a philosopher do? Why
seduce her, to be sure! After a deal of namby-pamby Platonism, the girl,
as Mr. Bulwer says, "goes to the deuce." The expression is as charming
as the morality, and appears amidst a quantity of the very finest
writing about the good and the beautiful, youth, love, passion, nature
and so forth. It is curious how rapidly one turns from good to bad in
this book. How clever the descriptions are! how neatly some of the minor
events and personalities are hit off! and yet, how astonishingly vile
and contemptible the chief part of it is!--that part, we mean, which
contains the adventures of the hero, and, of course, the choice
reflections of the author.
The declamations about virtue are endless, as soon as Maltravers appears
upon the scene; and yet we find him committing the agreeable little
_faux pas_ of which we have just spoken. In one place, we have him
making violent love to another man's wife; in another place, raging for
blood like a tiger and swearing for revenge....
It is curious and painful to read Mr. Bulwer's [philosophy], and to mark
the easy vanity with which virtue is assumed here, self-knowledge
arrogated, and a number of windy sentences, which really possess no
meaning, are gravely delivered with all the emphasis of truth and the
air of profound conviction.
"I have learned," cries our precious philosopher, "to lean on my own
soul, and not look eleswhere [Transcriber's note: sic] for the reeds
that a wind can break!" And what has he learned by leaning on his own
soul? Is it to be happier than others? or to be better? Not he!--he is
as wretched and wicked a dog as any unhung. He "leans on his own soul,"
and makes love to the Countess and seduces Alice Darvell. A ploughboy is
a better philosopher and moralist than this mouthing Maltravers, with
his boasted love of mankind (which reduces itself to a very coarse love
of _woman_kind), and his scorn of "the false gods and miserable creeds"
of the world, and his soul "lifting its crest to heaven!" A Catholic
whipping himself before a stone-image, a Brahmin dangling on a hook, or
standing on one leg for a year, has a higher notion of God than this
ranting fool, who is always prating about his own perfections and his
divine nature; the one is humble, at least, though blind; the other is
proud of his very imperfections and glories in his folly. What does this
creature know of virtue, who finds it _by leaning on his own soul_,
forsooth? What does he know of God, who, in looking for him, can see but
himself, steeped in sin, bloated and swollen with monstrous pride, and
strutting before the world and the creator as a maker of systems, a
layer down of morals, and a preacher of beauty and truth?...
[Some of the] characters are excellently drawn; how much better than
"_their lips spake of sentiment, and their eyes applied it_!" How soon
these philosophers begin ogling! how charmingly their unceasing gabble
about beauty and virtue is exemplified in their actions! Mr. Bulwer's
philosophy is like a French palace--it is tawdry, shady, splendid; but,
_gare aux nez sensibles_! one is always reminded of the sewer. "Their
lips spoke sentiment, and their eyes applied it." O you naughty, naughty
Mr. Bulwer!