ed.

The vivacity of these small birds is only equaled by their courage, or
rather their audacity. Sometimes they may be seen chasing furiously
birds twenty times their size, fastening upon their bodies, letting
themselves be carried along in their flight, while they peck them
fiercely until their tiny rage is satisfied. Sometimes they fight each
other vigorously. Impatience seems their very essence. If they approach
a blossom and find it faded, they mark their spite by hasty rending of
the petals. Their only voice is a weak cry, "_screp, screp_," frequent
and repeated, which they utter in the woods from dawn, until at the
first rays of the sun they all take flight and scatter over the country.

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

(1803-1873)

BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE

The patrician in literature is always an interesting spectacle. We are
prone to regard his performance as a test of the worth of long descent
and high breeding. If he does well, he vindicates the claims of his
caste; if ill, we infer that inherited estates and blue blood are but
surface advantages, leaving the effective brain unimproved, or even
causing deterioration. But the argument is still open; and whether
genius be the creature of circumstance or divinely independent, is a
question which prejudice rather than evidence commonly decides.

Certainly literature tries men's souls. The charlatan must betray
himself. Genius shines through all cerements. On the other hand, genius
may be nourished, and the charlatan permeates all classes. The truth
probably is that an aristocrat is quite as apt as a plebeian to be a
good writer. Only since there are fewer of the former than of the
latter, and since, unlike the last, the first are seldom forced to live
by their brains, there are more plebeian than aristocratic names on the
literary roll of honor. Admitting this, the instance of the writer known
as "Bulwer" proves nothing one way or the other. At all events, not, Was
he a genius because he was a, patrician? but, Was he a genius at all? is
the inquiry most germane to our present purpose.

An aristocrat of aristocrats undoubtedly he was, though it concerns us
not to determine whether the blood of Plantagenet kings and Norman
conquerors really flowed in his veins. On both father's and mother's
side he was thoroughly well connected. Heydon Hall in Norfolk was the
hereditary home of the Norman Bulwers; the Saxon Lyttons had since the
Conquest lived at Knebworth in Derbysh