he wrote in varied manners, making in his earlier works, such as
Pelham and Ernest Maltravers, pictures of a fictitious life, and
afterwards pictures of life as he believed it to be, as in My Novel
and The Caxtons. But from all of them there comes the same flavour
of an effort to produce effect. The effects are produced, but it
would have been better if the flavour had not been there.
I cannot say of Bulwer as I have of the other novelists whom I have
named that he lived with his characters. He lived with his work,
with the doctrines which at the time he wished to preach, thinking
always of the effects which he wished to produce; but I do not
think he ever knew his own personages,--and therefore neither do
we know them. Even Pelham and Eugene Aram are not human beings to
us, as are Pickwick, and Colonel Newcombe, and Mrs. Poyser.
In his plots Bulwer has generally been simple, facile, and successful.
The reader never feels with him, as he does with Wilkie Collins,
that it is all plot, or, as with George Eliot, that there is no plot.
The story comes naturally without calling for too much attention,
and is thus proof of the completeness of the man's intellect. His
language is clear, good, intelligible English, but it is defaced
by mannerism. In all that he did, affectation was his fault.
How shall I speak of my dear old friend Charles Lever, and
his rattling, jolly, joyous, swearing Irishmen. Surely never did
a sense of vitality come so constantly from a man's pen, nor from
man's voice, as from his! I knew him well for many years, and
whether in sickness or in health, I have never come across him
without finding him to be running over with wit and fun. Of all the
men I have encountered, he was the surest fund of drollery. I have
known many witty men, many who could say good things, many who
would sometimes be ready to say them when wanted, though they would
sometimes fail;--but he never failed. Rouse him in the middle of
the night, and wit would come from him before he was half awake.
And yet he never monopolised the talk, was never a bore. He would
take no more than his own share of the words spoken, and would yet
seem to brighten all that was said during the night. His earlier
novels--the later I have not read--are just like his conversation.
The fun never flags, and to me, when I read them, they were never
tedious. As to character he can hardly be said to have produced
it. Corney Delaney, the old manservant, may perhaps be named as an
exception.
Lever's novels will not live long,--even if they may be said to
be alive now,--because it is so. What was his manner of working I
do not know, but I should think it must have been very quick, and
that he never troubled himself on the subject, except when he was
seated with a pen in his hand.
Charlotte Bronte was surely a marvellous woman. If it could be
right to judge the work of a novelist from one small portion of
one novel, and to say of an author that he is to be accounted as
strong as he shows himself to be in his strongest morsel of work,
I should be inclined to put Miss Bronte very high indeed. I know
no interest more thrilling than that which she has been able to
throw into the characters of Rochester and the governess, in the
second volume of Jane Eyre. She lived with those characters, and
felt every fibre of the heart, the longings of the one and the
sufferings of the other. And therefore, though the end of the book
is weak, and the beginning not very good, I venture to predict that
Jane Eyre will be read among English novels when many whose names
are now better known shall have been forgotten. Jane Eyre, and
Esmond, and Adam Bede will be in the hands of our grandchildren,
when Pickwick, and Pelham, and Harry Lorrequer are forgotten;
because the men and women depicted are human in their aspirations,
human in their sympathies, and human in their actions.
In Vilette, too, and in Shirley, there is to be found human life as
natural and as real, though in circumstances not so full of interest
as those told in Jane Eyre. The character of Paul in the former of
the two is a wonderful study. She must herself have been in love
with some Paul when she wrote the book, and have been determined to
prove to herself that she was capable of loving one whose exterior
circumstances were mean and in every way unprepossessing.
There is no writer of the present day who has so much puzzled
me by his eccentricities, impracticabilities, and capabilities as
Charles Reade. I look upon him as endowed almost with genius, but
as one who has not been gifted by nature with ordinary powers of
reasoning. He can see what is grandly noble and admire it with
all his heart. He can see, too, what is foully vicious and hate
it with equal ardour. But in the common affairs of life he cannot
see what is right or wrong; and as he is altogether unwilling to be
guided by the opinion of others, he is constantly making mistakes
in his literary career, and subjecting himself to reproach which he
hardly deserves. He means to be honest. He means to be especially
honest,--more honest than other people. He has written a book
called The Eighth Commandment on behalf of honesty in literary
transactions,--a wonderful work, which has I believe been read by
a very few. I never saw a copy except that in my own library, or
heard of any one who knew the book. Nevertheless it is a volume
that must have taken very great labour, and have been written,--as
indeed he declares that it was written,--without the hope of
pecuniary reward. He makes an appeal to the British Parliament and
British people on behalf of literary honesty, declaring that should
he fail--"I shall have to go on blushing for the people I was born
among." And yet of all the writers of my day he has seemed to me
to understand literary honesty the least. On one occasion, as he
tells us in this book, he bought for a certain sum from a French
author the right of using a plot taken from a play,--which he
probably might have used without such purchase, and also without
infringing any international copyright act. The French author not
unnaturally praises him for the transaction, telling him that he
is "un vrai gentleman." The plot was used by Reade in a novel; and
a critic discovering the adaptation, made known his discovery to
the public. Whereupon the novelist became angry, called his critic
a pseudonymuncle, and defended himself by stating the fact of his
own purchase. In all this he seems to me to ignore what we all mean
when we talk of literary plagiarism and literary honesty. The sin
of which the author is accused is not that of taking another man's
property, but of passing off as his own creation that which he
does not himself create. When an author puts his name to a book he
claims to have written all that there is therein, unless he makes
direct signification to the contrary. Some years subsequently there
arose another similar question, in which Mr. Reade's opinion was
declared even more plainly, and certainly very much more publicly.
In a tale which he wrote he inserted a dialogue which he took from
Swift, and took without any acknowledgment. As might have been
expected, one of the critics of the day fell foul of him for this
barefaced plagiarism. The author, however, defended himself, with