other plays of the century have had. He was always returning to verse,
though never with real poetical success; the exceptions which may be
urged most forcibly being his translations from Schiller, a congenial
original. He was at one time editor of the _New Monthly Magazine_. He
translated freely, he wrote much criticism,--which is often in isolated
passages, if not so often in general drift and grasp, extremely
good,--and he was a constant essayist in very various kinds. It is
probable that if his entire works were ever collected, which is not
likely, few, if any, authors of the nineteenth century, though it be one
of unbridled writing and printing, could equal him in volume; while it
is certain that very few indeed could produce more numerous testimonials
of the kind given by the immediate, and not merely immediate, success of
separate works.

Yet it has been sometimes complained, sometimes boasted, that "with the
critics Bulwer is dead"; and it is not very certain that with the
faithful herd of uncritical readers the first Lord Lytton keeps any
great place. Even many years ago he had ceased to be, if he ever was, a
general favourite with those who specially loved literature; and it is
rather doubtful whether he will ever regain even a considerable vogue of
esteem. Perhaps this may be unjust, for he certainly possessed ability
in bulk, and perhaps here and there in detail, far surpassing that of
all but the very greatest of his contemporaries. Even the things which
were most urged against him by contemporary satirists, and which it is
to be feared are remembered at second-hand when the first-hand knowledge
of his work has declined, need not be fatal. A man may write such things
as "There is an eloquence in Memory because it is the nurse of Hope"
without its being necessary to cast up his capital letters against him
in perpetuity, or to inquire without ceasing whether eloquence is an
inseparable property of nurses. But he had two great faults--want of
concentration and want of reality; and the very keenness, the very
delicacy of his appreciation of the shiftings of popular taste may seem
without unfairness to argue a certain shallowness of individual soil, a
literary compost wherein things spring up rapidly because they have no
depth of earth, but also because they have no depth of earth, rapidly
vanish and wither away. The novel and the magazine have beyond all doubt
given us much admirable work which without them we s