PLEASURES PALL, IF LONG ENJOYED THEY BE."-LORD LYTTON.

LORD LYTTON.

269

For so many wicked years!
Cry, no law could longer smother
In the lawless, lifeless past!

By what strange revenge of chance

Didst thou thus ascend so high?
From what depths of woe up-cast,
As to smite the heart of a mother,
Heard in the unwilling ears
Of a listening Queen of France,

From a Dauphin's lips at last?

[From "Chronicles and Characters."-The young Dauphin's fate was
very pitiful.
"He was taken from his mother while she yet lived, and
given to one Simon, by trade a cordwainer, on service then about the
Temple-Prison, to bring him up in principles of Sansculottism. Simon
taught him to drink, to swear, to sing the Carmagnole [a revolutionary
song]. Simon is now gone to the Municipality; and the poor boy, hidden
in a tower of the Temple, from which in his fright and bewilderment, and
early decrepitude, he wishes not to stir out, lies perishing, 'his shirt not
changed for six months;' amid squalor and darkness, lamentably,-
-so as
none but poor factory children and the like are wont to perish, and not be
lamented!"-CARLYLE, French Revolution, ii. 330.]

"NOW LIFE, WITH EVERY MOMENT, SEEMS TO START IN AIR, IN WAVE, ON EARTH, ABOVE, BELOW."-LYTTON.

"LOVE WARMS WHERE DEATH WITHERS, DEATH BLIGHTS WHERE LOVE BLOOMS."-LORD LYTTON.

Lord Lytton.

[EDWARD GEORGE EARLE LYTTON BULWER is the third son of the late General Bulwer, and of his wife Elizabeth, the only daughter and heiress of Richard Warburton Lytton, of Knebworth, Herts. He was born in May 1805; educated by his mother, a woman of great gifts, and afterwards in private schools; and removed to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1822, where he won the prize medal for the best English poem, graduated as B.A. in 1826, and as M. A. in 1835. He essayed authorship at an early age, but his first work which attracted attention was his "Pelham, or the Adventures of a Gentleman," published in 1827. This brilliant novel has been followed by a series of tales and romances, all more or less successful, all exhibiting great gifts of invention and fancy, considerable learning, an intimate acquaintance with certain phases of society, and the later breathing a very pure and genial spirit. Our space precludes us from quoting their titles or discussing their merits, but we may refer to "The Last Days of Pompeii," "Zanoni," "The Caxtons," and "My Novel," as worthy of

"MAN, SAY THE SAGES, HATH A FICKLE MIND."-LORD LYTTON.

66

OUT ON THIS choice of unrewarded toil,-(Lord LYTTON)

ranking with the best works of fiction in the English language, and as likely
to hand down their author's fame to our latest posterity."

Mr. Bulwer entered Parliament in 1831, and acquired distinction as a
brilliant and effective debater. On the death of his mother in 1843, he
succeeded to the Knebworth estates, and assumed her maiden name of
Lytton. He had previously been honoured with a baronetcy (1838). In
1858 he joined Lord Derby's ministry as Secretary of State for the Colonies;
and in July 1866 was raised to the peerage as Baron Lytton.

His poetical works, which have been revised and collected in one volume, are-" Milton," "Eva," "The Ill-Omened Marriage," "The New Timon," the epic of "King Arthur" (in twelve books), and numerous minor pieces. In 1866 he published a collection of legends, in imitation of the classic metres, entitled "The Lost Tales of Miletus." He has also translated the "Poems and Ballads of Schiller" (1844); and is the author of several dramas-"The Lady of Lyons" (1838); "Richelieu" (1839); "The SeaCaptain" (1839); "Money" (1840); and "Not so Bad as We Seem" (1851). Respecting his merits as a poet, critics are hopelessly divided. We suspect he will be allowed a higher rank among "the sons of song" by posterity than his contemporaries are willing to allow him.]

"FOR WHAT FALSE GOLD, LIKE ALCHEMISTS, WE YEARN, WASTING THE WEALTH WE NEVER CAN RECALL:

JOY AND LIFE'S LAVISH PRIME, AND OUR RETURN?-ASHES, COLD ASHES, ALL!"-LORD LYTTON.

THE OLD AGE OF MILTON.

[Milton's last years were spent in a house in Artillery Walk, leading to Bunhill Fields,-then an open and pleasant part of London.]

ITS gay farewell to hospitable eaves,

The swallow twittered in the autumn heaven;
Dumb on the crisp earth fell the yellowing leaves,
Or, in small eddies, fitfully were driven
Down the bleak waste of the remorseless air.
Out, from the widening gaps in dreary boughs,
Alone the laurel smiled-as freshly fair
As its own chaplet on immortal brows,
When Fame, indifferent to the changeful sun,
Sees waning races wither, and lives on.—
An old man sat before that deathless tree
Which bloomed his humble dwelling-place beside;
The last pale rose which lured the lingering bee
To the low porch it scantly blossomed o'er,
Nipped by the frost-air, had that morning died.

THIS UPWARD PATH INTO THE REALM OF SNOW."-LORD LYTION.

COULD YOUTH BUT DREAM WHAT NARROW BURIAL URNS-(LORD LYTTON)

THE OLD AGE OF MILTON.

The clock, faint-heard beyond the gaping door,
Low as a death-watch, clicked the moments' knell;
And through the narrow opening you might see

Uncertain footprints on the sanded floor
(Uncertain footprints which of blindness tell);
The rude oak-board, the morn's untasted fare;
The scattered volumes and the pillowed chair,
In which, worn out with toil and travel past,
Life, the poor wanderer, finds repose at last.

271

"LOOK BACK, HOW ALL THE BEAUTIFUL IDEAL, SPORTING IN DOUBTFUL MOONLIGHT, ONE BY ONE

FADES FROM THE RISING OF THE HARD-EYED REAL, LIKE FAIRIES FROM THE SUN!"-LORD LYTTON.

The old man felt the fresh air o'er him blowing,
Waving thin locks from musing temples pale;
Felt the quick sun through cloud and azure going,
And the light dance of leaves upon the gale,
In that mysterious symbol-change of earth
Which looks like death, though but restoring birth.
Seasons return; for him shall not return
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn."
Whatever garb the mighty mother wore,
Nature to him was changeless evermore.-

* "Thus with the year

Seasons return, but not to me returns

Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn.

*

Paradise Lost, Book iii.

HOPES THAT WENT FORTH TO CONQUER WORLDS SHOULD HOLD!""-LYTTON.

List; not a sigh!-though fall'n on evil days,
With darkness compassed round *—those sightless eyes
Need not the sun; nightly he sees the rays,

Nightly he walks the bowers of Paradise.
High, pale, still, voiceless, motionless, alone,
Death-like in calm as monumental stone,
Lifting his looks into the farthest skies,
He sat and as when some tempestuous day
Dies in the hush of the majestic eve,

So on his brow-where grief has passed away—
Reigns that dread stillness grief alone can give.

[From "Milton," Part iv.-"We regard this poem as one of great beauty. Difficult as was the subject, the author's treatment of it has been eminently successful, while the melody and exquisite construction of the verse are in accordance with the sentiments it conveys."-(Blackwood's Magazine.) "Neither in the fancy nor the form of this 'graceful poem,'" says The Quarterly Review, "is there aught for the ripeness of age, with all its gathered cultivation, refinement, and experience, to blush at or disown. The central figure, one of the grandest in our literary annals, is sketched with a loving reverence; the thread of romance is justifiably amplified, but not strained beyond the limits of the probable, whilst the accessories are all in perfect keeping and subordination. The result of the whole is a noble picture of the bard of Comus, in his youth, manhood, and age."]

"THE GRAND DESIRE WHICH EVER FOR THE DISTANT SIGHS AND MUST PERFORCE ASPIRE."-LYTTON.

THE DESIRE OF FAME.

Written at the age of Thirty.

DO confess that I have wished to give
My land the gift of no ignoble name,
And in that holier air have sought to live,
Sunned with the hope of Fame.

* "Though fall'n on evil days,

In darkness, and with danger compassed round."

Paradise Lost, Book viii.

AS MAY LEAVES TO THE BREEZE."-LORD LYTTON.

"THAT GRAND AMBITION, WHEN BOYHOOD'S HEART SWELLS UP TO THE sublime."-LORD LYTTON.

"FOR IF THOU LOV'ST TRULY THOU CANST NOT DISSEVEr the grave from the alTAR, THE NOW AND THE EVER;

"

OH, STRONG AS THE EAGLE, OH, MILD AS THE DOVE,-(LORD LYTTON)

Do I lament that I have seen the bays

Denied my own, not worthier brows above,--
Foes quick to scoff, and friends afraid to praise, —
More active hate than love?

Do I lament that roseate youth had flown

In the hard labour grudged its niggard meed,
And cull from far and juster lands alone

Few flowers from many a seed?

No! for whoever with an earnest soul,
Strives for some end from this low world afar,
Still upward travels, though he miss the goal,
And strays-but towards a star.

Better than Fame is still the wish for Fame,
The constant training for a glorious strife:
The athlete nurtured for the Olympian game
Gains strength at least for life.

The wish for Fame is faith in holy things
That soothe the life, and shall outlive the tomb,-
A reverent listening for some angel wings
That cower above the gloom.

To gladden the earth with beauty, or men's lives
To serve with action, or their souls with truth,-
These are the ends for which the hope survives
The ignobler bursts of youth.

No, I lament not, though these leaves may fall
From the seared branches on the desert plain,
Mocked by the idle winds that waft; and all
Life's bloom, its last, is vain!

HOW LIKE AND HOW UNLIKE, O DEATH AND O LOVE!"-LORD LYTTON.

AND IF, NOTHING HOPING, THOU GAZEST ABOVE, IN DEATH THOU BEHOLDEST THE ASPECT OF LOVE."-LORD LYTTON.