t, with his
universal geniality, read _Pelham_ in 1828 and "found it very
interesting: the light is easy and gentlemanlike, the dark very grand
and sombrous." He asked who was the author, and he tried to interest his
son-in-law in the novel. But Lockhart was implacable: "_Pelham_," he
replied, "is writ by a Mr. Bulwer, a Norfolk squire, and horrid puppy. I
have not read the book, from disliking the author." Lockhart, however,
did read _Devereux_, and three years afterwards, when reviewing some
other novel, he said of the historical characters in that romance: "It
seems hard to disquiet so many bright spirits for the sole purpose of
showing that they _could_ be dull." That was the attitude of the higher
criticism to Bulwer-Lytton from, let us say, 1830 to 1860; he was "a
horrid puppy" and he was also "dull."

But this was far from being the opinion of the reading public. We have
seen that he never failed, and sometimes he soared into the very
empyrean of popularity. In 1834, when he published _The Last Days of
Pompeii_, again in 1837 when he published _Ernest Maltravers_, the
ecstasy of his adorers discovered their favourite in a moment under the
mask of anonymity which he chose to assume. This was just before the
outburst of the great school of Victorian novelists; Bulwer had as yet
practically no one but Disraeli to compete with. These two, the author
of _Pelham_ and the author of _Vivian Grey_, raced neck and neck at the
head of the vast horde of "fashionable" novel-writers; now all but them
forgotten. In Bulwer-Lytton's romances the reader moved among exalted
personages, alternately flippant and sinister; a "mournful enthusiasm"
was claimed for the writer by the readers of his day. It was the latest
and most powerful development of that Byronic spirit which had been so
shortlived in verse, but which was to survive in prose until
Bulwer-Lytton adopted his _Caxtons_ manner in the middle of the century.
As always in Byronic periods, the portrait of the author himself was
searched for among his most fatal conceptions. To the young library
subscriber the stoical, solitary figure of Mordaunt, in _The Disowned_,
was exactly what was wanted as a representation of the mysterious
novelist himself. Pelham was the apotheosis of the man of fashion, and
it is amusing to read how, when the Bulwer-Lyttons travelled, they were
gazed at in reverence as the Pelham and the Pelhamess.

It would be difficult to improve upon the language