Cobbett, a writer
with whom we should not expect to find Bulwer-Lytton in sympathy. It is
probable that the author of it never saw himself nor those who
surrounded him in precisely their true relation. There was something
radically twisted in his image of life, which always seems to have
passed through a refracting surface on its way to his vision. No doubt
this is more or less true of all experience; no power has given us the
gift "to see ourselves as others see us." But in the case of
Bulwer-Lytton this refractive habit of his imagination produced a
greater swerving aside from positive truth than is usual. The result is
that an air of the fabulous, of the incredible, is given to his
narratives, and often most unfairly.

A close examination, in fact, of the Autobiography results in confirming
the historic truth of it. What is surprising is not, when we come to
consider them, the incidents themselves, but Bulwer-Lytton's odd way of
narrating them. Lord Lytton, without any comment, provides us with
curious material for the verification of his grandfather's narrative. He
prints, here and there, letters from entirely prosaic persons which
tally, often to a surprising degree, with the extravagant statements of
Bulwer-Lytton. To quote a single instance, of a very remarkable
character, Bulwer-Lytton describes the effect his scholarship produced,
at the age of seventeen, upon sober, elderly people, who were dazzled
with his accomplishments and regarded him as a youthful prodigy. It is
the sort of confession, rather full-blooded and lyrical, which we might
easily set down to that phenomenon of refraction. But Lord Lytton prints
a letter from Dr. Samuel Parr (whom, by the way, he calls "a man of
sixty-four," but Parr, born in 1747, was seventy-four in 1821), which
confirms the autobiographer's account in every particular. The aged Whig
churchman, who boasted a wider knowledge of Greek literature than any
other scholar of his day, and whose peremptory temper was matter of
legend, could write to this Tory boy a long letter of enthusiastic
criticism, and while assuring Bulwer-Lytton that he kept "all the
letters with which you have honoured me," could add: "I am proud of
such a correspondent; and, if we lived nearer to each other, I should
expect to be very happy indeed in such a friend." Letters of this kind,
judiciously printed by Lord Lytton in his notes, serve to call us back
from the nebulous witchcraft in which Bulwer-Lytton