1 him the poverty and privation to which the father, innumerable people just as puzzling; one cannot see what could be made out of them at this stage of the business. After all, there were some hundreds of thousands killed in the late war; perhaps some of them, too, had other capabilities than that universal one of serving as food for powder. Vivian, even if Sir E. B. Lytton could have done more with him, is but one fresh item on a very, very long list of "might-have-beens." And therein, too, a faithful leaf out of the book of society. There we have said our say about the "virtuous villain" question, and heartily glad we are that it is over. Now for The Caxtons as a whole. Surely this is a noble step towards solving the problem with which Sir E. B. Lytton has been so To our astonishment, as well as that of Mrs. long tormenting himself and Mrs. Grundy. True, Grundy, it is, in one word, healthy. Healthy he has been a very long time getting so far, while from the first page to the last. There is still his Bible and prayer-book would have brought him little of the old leaven, pedantry and philosophasthither years ago. But Mrs. Grundy is in no contry. But it is a charming book, in spite of that; dition to throw stones at him for not understanding and Mrs. Grundy ought to rise up at the end of the his prayer-book. She has had it in her hands all third volume a wiser, if not a sadder woman. her life at least, the footman has carried it to Sadder, indeed, by the bye, she cannot be than she church behind her twice a Sunday; and yet is already; for what with "pernicious innovawhat with her old poor-law, new poor-law, con- tions,' 99.66 decay of national bulwarks," "6 spread of dition-of-the-laboring-classes question, sanitary un- Popery, Carlyleism,' Pantheism,' reform, evangelical and Puseyite fisty-cuffings, theism," "Chartism,' 99.66 Communism," and a host of free-will versus necessity" question only set- other dreadful imps of "isms," who haunt her tling itself by the young generation escaping from dreams, the good lady has been in weeping hysterthe tumult into Pantheism, Pot-theism, and Athe-ics for the last dozen years, and expects the end of ism, leaving their parents to fight out the old squabbles of Orthodoxy-oh, Mrs. Grundy, what have you, too, been about, that the prayer-book could teach you no better? Not that Sir E. B. Lytton even now has triumphed altogether. He is not yet at the root of the matter. If he had been, he would have raised poor Vivian at last to something higher than the mere feeling of family honor and military ambition. He points, indeed, to a higher path for him, but cannot take his man along the road. Perhaps, though, he was right. As for the fact that men do reform sometimes without religion, a fact it is, however disagreeable to Mrs. Grundy; and, perhaps, Sir E. B. Lytton was as right in keeping such a character as Vivian's clear of religion, as he was in bringing his far larger-minded and more human-hearted father under its consoling and strengthening influence. What scope for even the higher capabilities of such a soul as Vivian's is there in the present vulgar form, or rather deformity, of Christianity, according to Mrs. Grundyeffeminate-commercial, selfish as it is, holding in horror and dread anything like daring self-sacrifice, passionate enthusiasm, (except in pulpit-rant,) anything, in short, which shames its own respectable, lukewarm use and wont? Vivian's passionate repentance—his harsh spirit, recoiling on itself in self-punishment, might have made him a Puseyite, perhaps a Romanist-a superstitious, ferocious ascetic;-at best it might have made him a daring missionary. But where was the gentleness, the all-embracing sympathy, which the missionary should have? After all, could Sir E. B. Lytton have done better than to send him to India, and get him killed like a valiant soldier? One meets 99.66 99.66 ""Pusey the world-always the day after to-morrow. Courage, Mrs. Grundy! dry your eyes, and take a lesson from darling, delicious little Mrs. Caxton, one of the sweetest women we have seen-in print, that is, for this " month of Sundays." And, thank God! there are dozens like her in real flesh and blood, though Mrs. Grundy does think society is all going to the devil. Certainly, whatever Sir E. B. Lytton cannot do, he can draw women. Alice ("Wah!" shrieks Mrs. Grundy)—yes, madam, Alice in Ernest Maltravers is, as we were going to say, as exquisite a woman as any man has drawn since Shakspeare a ziua iç de in English fiction. Lucretia Clavering, too, let Mrs. Grundy shriek again as she will, is true woman still-nature, just as the boa and the volcano are nature, and possibly might be turned to some use-if one but knew how. Mrs. Caxton's perfection, at least, Grundy herself will not dare to deny; will not be able to avoid, any more than we ourselves were, suspicious flourishes of a dampish pocket handkerchief, alternating with unseemly explosions of cachinnation, several times during the first fifty pages. One does hope there is a good cry and a good laugh left in her still, in spite of all her sins. Hear a little, my dear madam-though this passage, by the bye, is rather didactic than comic. Pisistratus, the young hero, has pushed his mother's favorite flower-pot out of the window in mischief, and told the truth about it : From that time I first date the hour when I felt that I loved my father, and knew that he loved me; from that time, too, he began to converse with He would no longer, if he met me in the garden, pass by with a smile and nod; he would stop, put his book in his pocket, and though his me. On entering the town, we stopped again at a china-warehouse. talk was often above my comprehension, still somehow I felt happier and better, and less of an infant, when I thought over it, and tried to puzzle out the "Have you a flower-pot like that I bought some meaning; for he had a way of suggesting, not months ago? Ah, here is one marked 3s. 6d. Yes, teaching; putting things into my head, and then that is the price. Well, when your mamma's birthleaving them to work out their own problems. I day comes again, we must buy her another. That remember a special instance with respect to that is some months to wait. And we can wait, Master same flower-pot and geranium. Mr. Squills, who Sisty. For truth, that blooms all the year round, was a bachelor, and well to do in the world, often is better than a poor geranium; and a word that is made me little presents. Not long after the event never broken is better than a piece of delf." I have narrated, he gave me one far exceeding in My head, which had drooped before, rose again; value those usually bestowed on children; it was but the rush of joy at my heart almost stifled me. a beautiful large domino-box in cut ivory, painted "I have called to pay your little bill," said my and gilt. This domino-box, was my delight. I father, entering the shop of one of those fancy stawas never weary of playing at dominoes with Mrs. tioners common in country towns, and who sell all Primmins, and I slept with the box under my pil-kinds of pretty toys and nicknacks; "and, by the low. "Ah," said my father, one day when he found me ranging the ivory parallelograms in the parlor "ah, you like that better than all your playthings, eh?" "Oh, yes, papa." "You would be very sorry if your mamma was to throw that box out of the window, and break it for fun?" I looked beseechingly at my father and made no answer. 66 But, perhaps, you would be very glad," he resumed, "if suddenly one of those good fairies you read of could change the domino-box into a beautiful geranium, in a beautiful blue-and-white flower-pot, and that you could have all the pleasure of putting it on your mamma's window-sill?" "Indeed I would!" said I, half crying. "My dear boy, I believe you; but good wishes don't mend bad actions; good actions mend bad actions." So saying, he shut the door and went out. I cannot tell you how puzzled I was to make out what my father meant by his aphorism. But I know that I played at dominoes no more that day. The next morning my father found me seated by myself, under a tree in the garden; he paused and looked at me with his grave bright eyes very steadily. My boy," said he, "I am going to walk to (a town about two miles off,) will you come? and, by the bye, fetch your domino-box; I should like to show it to a person there." I ran in for the box, and, not a little proud of walking with my father upon the high-road, we My father stopped at a nursery gardener's, and, after looking over the flowers, paused before a large double geranium. Ah, this is finer than that which your mamma was so fond of. What is the cost, sir?" "Only 7s. 6d.," said the gardener. My father buttoned up his pocket. way," he added, as the smiling shopman looked over his books for the entry, "I think my little boy here can show you a much handsomer specimen of French workmanship than that workbox which you enticed Mrs. Caxton into raffling for last winter. Show your domino-box, my dear." I produced my treasure, and the shopman was liberal in his commendations. "It is always well, my boy, to know what a thing is worth, in case one wishes to part with it. If my young gentleman gets tired of his plaything, what will you give him for it?" 66 Why, sir," said the shopman, "I fear we could not afford to give more than eighteen shillings for it, unless the young gentleman took some of these pretty things in exchange." "Eighteen shillings!" said my father. "You would give that? Well, my boy, whenever you do grow tired of your box, you have my leave to sell it." My father paid his bill and went out. I lingered behind a few moments, and joined him at the end of the street. "Papa, papa!" I cried, clapping my hands, "we can buy the geranium-we can buy the flowerpot," and I pulled a handful of silver from my pockets. "Did I not say right?" said my father, passing his handkerchief over his eyes. "You have found the two fairies!" Oh, how proud, how overjoyed I was when, after placing vase and flower on the window-sill, I plucked my mother by the gown, and made her follow me to the spot! "It is his doing and his money!" said my father; "good actions have mended the bad." "What!" cried my mother, when she had learned all," and your poor domino-box that you were so fond of! We will go back to-morrow and buy it back, if it costs us double." "Shall we buy it back, Pisistratus?" asked my father. "Oh, no, no, no! it would spoil all!" I cried, burying my face on my father's breast. "My wife," said my father, solemnly, "this is my first lesson to our child, the sanctity and the happiness of self-sacrifice; undo not what it should teach to his dying day." And this is the history of the broken flower-pot. "Ah!" says Mrs. Grundy, "so that's the part A barefaced imitation of Sterne, you admire? with a dash of Rousseau's Emile!" (It is wonderful, by the bye, how the old lady, when she "I can't afford it to-day," said he, gently, and gets vituperative, confesses to having read all we walked out. manner of objectionable books, which she usually proscribes throughout Christendom.) "I read all that; and it's Tristram Shandy over again. Mr. Caxton is Mr. Shandy; Uncle Roland, Uncle Toby; Squills is Slop; Primmins is Susanna; the story of Pisistratus' naming copied all but word for word. I really got quite frightened, and thought we were going to have the window-scene So you had, my dear madam. You seem to recollect Sterne's. We had just given you Sir E. B. Lytton's, or the outcome of it-rather an improvement, as we take it, even according to Grundean canons. next." was the German's pis aller in youth, his idol in old age. We in England have no notion what a learned man is. It was but the other day, in three little tracts on Ethnology, read before the British Association, we found evidences of research and thought, such as we would challenge any dozen Englishmen to equal, on subjects of which we English know next to nothing and of these three little gems of wisdom, one was writ ten by the Prussian ambassador, with the cares of Europe on his shoulders; and the other two, if we understand rightly, by men under thirty years of age. We felt " very small" after the perusal of that pamphlet; and we recommend it to Sir E. B. Lytton, if he wishes to produce on himself the same wholesome sensation. Not that we Besides, madam, do you suppose that Sir E. B. Lytton did not know that he was imitating; and that you, or at least your father-confessors, the reviewers, would know it too? And do you suppose he meant nothing by imitating Sterne? | Englishmen need be so unspeakably learned; we What he meant we cannot tell, and do not greatly have to do, rather than to read. Our best scholars, care, having several other more important matters such as they are, vanish into the bar, the senate, to get settled. But we do think that an imitation or the ministry; and from amid the turmoil of is justifiable, exactly in proportion as it is bare- active life look back on "the crooked letters" as faced. Who complains of "The Doctor" for bor- the preludia of their callow youth, to be classed in rowing from Rabelais? He takes care to let you the same category with pocket-money and boatknow his lender, and so does Sir E. B. L. If he races. The only thing on which Englishmen ever had stolen from Sterne, as Sterne is said to have become pedants is physical science; and we will stolen from Montaigne-as everybody who dared | venture to say, that if Mr. Caxton had possessed a for three hundred years has been stealing from shell of substantial English flesh and blood, he Rabelais, just because the poor dear physician would have been bothering his head, not with was "under a cloud" for loose conduct, and Procopius and Polyænus, but with Cuvier and therefore they fancied that they should not be Lyell, Owen and Faraday; he would have blown found out why, then he would have been a rogue, himself up twice a week with his own retorts; as Sterne and others are. But when, for instance, driven Primmins dyspeptic with fiendish smells; he was writing that pretty scene between Pisistra- carried galvanic wires through his bedroom, like tus and the Savoyard among the graves, he in- Mr. Crosse, to the perpetual terror of Mrs. Caxton; tended you to see that he could out-write the known the taste of every inch of soil for miles Sentimental Journey, as he has done. Surely, if round, like the Dean of Westminster; and earned a man may write ludicrous parodies, which are the reputation of a wizard from the country-people. worse than their antitypes, why not serious ones, As he stands, he is an exotic-a clothes-horse, which are better? we are afraid, whereon Sir E. B. L. may display certain rags of his own learning. We don't deny that we have our own private protest to put in against this imitation of Sterne ; but, as we said at the beginning of our review, if we grumble, Mrs. Grundy shan't. We ourselves cannot help thinking, that while Sir E. B. L. was copying Sterne, he should not have copied him in the character of Mr. Caxton. Whether there were such men in Sterne's time or not, there are none such now in England. Mr. C. is certainly a far higher type of man than Mr. Shandy—a wise, noble-hearted gentleman, quiet and strong, lovable and admirable, profitable for these or any times. But-but-" Non extat”- "Non est istwentus," as Mr. Lively says, in somewhat Bulwerean Latin. If ever he inhabited England, he has become extinct, and retreated, like the spoonbill, to the interior of Germany. We do not breed pedants, or scholars either. Mr. Caxton is bona fide a German ideal, even to his contemplative placidity-not an English one at all. Such men, we hear, do exist, and very noble specimens of them too, across the Rhine. They have time to become book-eaters-they were forced to become such. Till the last year Germany offered no field in political or practical life. Learning Rags ? That is a hard word. But it was not used merely for the sake of carrying out the figure. In the first place, we hope, and are bound to believe, that the learning of The Caxtons are only the rags of Sir E. B. Lytton's reading-mere shreds and tatters, road-sides and waste-corners, compared with the vast continuous fields of science and history which lie still behind in his intellectual manors :-that is complimentary enough, we hope! In the next place, there is something ragged, in a less complimentary sense, about The Carton quotations. "He has been at the feast of learning, and brought away the scraps." Doubtless Sir E. B. L. has read extensively, and digested more or less; of which latter process there are more hopeful symptoms in the present novel than in any former one, though Night and Morning certainly showed signs of greater eupepsia. But in Harold, on the contrary, one of the very latest, the indigestion was truly piteous. The author had, by his own confession 66 *Three Linguistic Dissertations. By Chevalier Bunsen, Dr. C. Meyer, and Dr. Max. Müller. 1848. Taylor, Fleet street. in the preface, been overgorging himself with Anglo-Saxon at some hospitable country-house; and then, without giving the crude elements time to get eliminated, or assimilated, or anything else, but mechanically bolted down, Harold was forthwith written off, and the Anglo-Saxon "egested," just as it had been swallowed, wighs, and thegns, and weregelds, and mancuses, and all, very much as the bird of Minerva casts sparrows' bones and field-mice, fur. There is one comfort-Sir E. B. L. must have felt "so much better after it!"' And yet the Anglo-Saxon scholars say the book is full of mistakes! So many hard wordsand yet not right after all! Was it remorse for that frightful intellectual crapula which first inspired Sir E. B. L. with the notion of making The Caxtons' moral turn on the dangers of impatience? Yet of Harold, now that we are on it, we will say, that it was thoroughly worth reading. With more thought and less haste, it might have been made a very valuable historical novel. Even in its present crude state, it gives a better account of the causes which led to the Norman conquest than any book we know a brilliant dramatic picture of the way in which the sluggish propertyworshipping Anglo-Saxon race was gradually exploité by the crafty and (strange as the assertion may appear) more democratic Norseman. We recommend the book honestly to all light readers, as a pleasant and lively page out of the philosophy of history, warning them, at the same time, that we consider it just the nastiest of all Sir E. B. L.'s books. But we must return to learning and The Caxtons, especially as the Grundean taste by no means sympathizes in our disgust. There is no doubt, as we said before, that Sir E. B. Lytton is an extensive reader, and a vigo rous and comprehensive thinker. But yet we do not like the general style of his quotations: they are dragged in ostentatiously, in great lumps and patches-too like the quotations in The Doctor; and what was allowable in a serio-comic cento like that book, is by no means so in a regularly plotted novel like The Caxtons. The erudition of the true scholar is assimilated to himself; it saturates, as it were, all his utterances, not merely running through them here and there as veins of ore through rock, but like some chemically combined element, omnipresent yet invisible, only to be detected by analysis. The most learned man will, after all, be the simplest writer. He will make his reader feel the power, not see the glitter, of his treasures. How different the learning of Richter!-in many of whose works, page after page, you shall hardly find a sentence which does not give proof of his enormous information, coloring every thought at the bidding of a fancy unequalled, perhaps, in analogic and suggestive fertility, except by Shakspeare and Rabelais. Why any man should imitate Sterne's method of quoting, while Rabelais and Jean Paul exist, we cannot conceive: it is deliberately to give up the higher model for the lower one. We But it is still more puzzling-and really the author, if he be guiltless, should justify himself in a fresh edition-to find, if not misquotations, still misspellings manifold of classic words. We take the correctness of his quotations for granted. really have no time to verify extracts from Dummkopfius de Caudis Porcorum; we never saw Cardan, or wish to do so. But in the matter of spelling, if a man quotes Latin and Greek, let him quote it right, in the name of all reason. The benighted printer may be at fault-we have a hope that such is the case, because we found It is painful to have to say it, but we do not altogether share in that lady's admiration of Mr. Caxton's erudition. In the first place, he quotes suspiciously often from the same books as Mr. Shandy, and suspiciously often, too, from the same books as the author of The Anatomy of Melancholy." Ceprinidians" spelt rightly in another place, No doubt Sir E. B. L. has as good a right to the said books as either of those worthies; and no doubt, also, he has read a great many books beside Sterne and Burton, and meditated on them also, not altogether carelessly. We see traces of Jean Paul among other writers in The Caxtons; one passage especially, in the first volume, was quite worthy of a place among the lighter fancies of Levana. "Cyprinidians;" but the word is Cyprinidæ ; and how "idians" can be got out of "ide," we do not see- idæans,' we should have written "in the schools;" but that was a long time ago, and we may be wrong. Surely, too, the correction of proofs is a thing not impossible for Sir E. B. L. Why, then, does Mr. Caxton commit two barbarisms in one unnecessary scrap of Greek? —όσε και ανθροποφάγειν ! Who ever heard of But, alas! as his school increased in numbers, he do? We actually, unable to believe that an had proportionately recanted these honorable and absolute barbarism could have been committed, anti-birchen ideas. He had reluctantly, perhapshonestly, no doubt, but with full determination hunted Liddell and Scott, in hopes of finding the -come to the conclusion, that there are secret word after all; but no, non est ibi, as Sir E. B. L springs which can only be detected by the twigs might say, for 't is n't there. And again ia of the divining rod; and having discovered with Lucretia, Maxima reverentia, debet (debetur, we what comparative ease the whole mechanism of his opine) liberis! A misprint? Why, a scholar little government could be carried on by admission ought to have seen such a monster a mile off, of the birch-regulator, so, as he grew richer, and through the back of the page, as he ought also to lazier, and fatter, the Philhellenic Institute spun along as glibly as a top kept in vivacious move- have seen a certain abomination which we found ment by the perpetual application of the lash.-in Lucretia (if we recollect rightly) the other day, Vol. i., p. 49. omphalos gaice!"-gaia? gaias, gas, gees, geese, if you will, Sir E. B. L., but never that bar- things?" Oh, carnal-minded Grundy! the quesbar>us Greek-Latin hybrid! Why, too, are wetion is not what he would have said then, but what to hear that Vivian had "of imagination not a he would say now. He did what seemed right to scintilla?" "A spark of imagination," is good him according to those times; you, if you wish novel-English enough. Is scintilla to mean any-really to honor him, must imitate, not his actions, thing but that? If so, we ought to have had but his spirit. In filial obedience, like everything news thereof; as it is, the reader is left to sup- else, "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." pose that the metaphor is one originally borrowed Who really honors his Norman ancestors bestfrom the Latin-which it is not. "A spark of our Carlisles, and Fortescues, and Ellesmeres; or rebellion," wrath," and such-like, is a classic the gentleman who resolutely plants himself waistexpression, the root-idea of something which will deep in the mud, and, refusing to move on, shrieks kindle a fire being carefully preserved; but con- about "ancestral rights" and "time-honored inceive Cicero indulging in such slip-slop as "a stitutions ?" The oldest was new once. Your spark of imagination !" William the Conquerors, Anselms, Magna Charta Barons, Crusaders, Franciscans—what were they but reformers?-creators? Read history and see. The true spiritual children of the old Norsemen― are they the Sir Miles St. Johns, the Sedley BeauDeserts, even the Roland Caxtons?—the men who consider that their ancestors having done something, is the very reason for their doing nothing? Not they, but rather the Trevanions, the Pisistratus Caxtons, who keep up the good old name, not by sitting at home and Coningsbyizing, or weeping over the bier of unreturning abuses, but by emigrating to Australia in search of capital, and bringing it home to drain and till the old ancestral moors in the light and the spirit of the great New Time. They are the men in whom the Norse blood comes out, and they only. Take your pedigrees away, lord duke! If you are a son of the vikings, prove it by daring, thrift, endurance, chivalry like And all this ostentation of questionable classics and second-hand Shandeeism is utterly unnecessary. The book gains nothing by it. The second and third volumes, as Sir E. B. L. condescends to become himself once more, and write as he only can | write, are excellent. Here and there still linger classical analogies and similes, generally hackneyed, often far-fetched, dragged in where Thackeray or Dickens would have had a dozen better ones drawn from modern sources. Why will men try to be what they are not? Why will not Sir E. B. L. content himself with weaving the most charming plots in the most charming English; rather too surgary now and then, but still charming, with a perpetual variety of incident, motive, character, knowledge of society and men, which never allows the attention to flag a moment? Why will he not be content to do that, instead of trying to be what | he never will be, a great scholar, much less a theirs. "Replenish the earth and subdue it!" great philosopher? Oh, wad some power the gift but gie us For the children of Woden The Mover, the only watchword is, "Forwards!" EarAnd Uncle Jack-glorious Uncle Jack! nest, frivolous, practical, visionary, clever, insane Uncle Jack, never truly benevolent till you become thoroughly selfish, honest-hearted as a chrisom child, and yet an abominable rogue—truly you are a man of the time!" Where have we seen such a character in print since Smollett and Fielding? Trouver son métier is the arch-problem, after You are living, personal, ideal. We have met And yet we live in glass-houses, Mrs. Grundy; we must throw no stones. What more common than to see men throwing away the powers they have in the vain attempt to shine where they were never meant to shine? all. you in the streets a hundred times—not all of you, but scraps and bits of you, parcelled out into souls for fifty different human bodies. Like all true ideals, the parts of you may be met anywhere, the whole of you nowhere. As somebody drew the Venus of somewhere from the combined beauties of five maidens, so Sir E. B. Lytton has drawn you from the combined beauties of fifty and five English speculators. Uncle Roland is a noble character; the impersonation of the old idea of family honor. The same idea is the ruling one of Sir Miles St. John in Lucretia, and a wonderful living sketch he is. But Roland rises higher than Sir Miles. He is not the mere conservatist; he is willing to go ahead; to earn, as well as to preserve, honor for his race, though he sees no higher means of doing it than the sword. He is, as he should be, a man But, alas! there is too little of you-you are, of the last generation; Pisistratus, a man of the "like angels' visits, few and far between." Had present. The age of the sword is not past, let such a hack-writer as Boz is become stumbled on Mr. Cobden say what he will. But men are you, he would have turned you into a stock charlearning that the triumphs of the producer are no-acter, made play with you through a dozen chapters bler than those of the destroyer, or even the con- of Dutch painting; as it is, you are soon found, servator. So it should be. We honor the true and soon, soon lost." But still, little of you as pride of family, the sense of a debt owed to "the we see, you are consistent, self-developing, through good old name, as much as Mrs. Grundy herself. one glorious bubble after another, from the first We will say, "Woe to the man who is not ashamed apple-orchard El Dorado down to the last exquisite to be less than his ancestors!" But we will not scene in Australia, which we must quote-for it make our canon of all right and wrong, "What is, as it were, your moral as well as pecuniary would my poor dear grandfather have said to such apotheosis:— |