are the output of a mind and temper of
singular originality. To the honest Tory, sworn to admire and unable to
comprehend, they must seem inexplicable as abnormal. To the professional
Radical they are so many proofs of innate inferiority: for they are full
of pretentiousness and affectation; they teem with examples of all manner
of vices, from false English to an immoral delight in dukes; they prove
their maker a trickster and a charlatan in every page. To them, however,
whose first care is for rare work, the series of novels that began with
_Vivian Grey_ and ended with _Endymion_ is one of the pleasant facts in
modern letters. These books abound in wit and daring, in originality and
shrewdness, in knowledge of the world and in knowledge of men; they
contain many vivid and striking studies of character, both portrait and
caricature; they sparkle with speaking phrases and happy epithets; they
are aglow with the passion of youth, the love of love, the worship of
physical beauty, the admiration of whatever is costly and select and
splendid--from a countess to a castle, from a duke to a diamond; they are
radiant with delight in whatever is powerful or personal or
attractive--from a cook to a cardinal, from an agitator to an emperor.
They often remind you of Voltaire, often of Balzac, often of _The Arabian
Nights_. You pass from an heroic drinking bout to a brilliant criticism
of style; from rhapsodies on bands and ortolans that remind you of Heine
to a gambling scene that for directness and intensity may vie with the
bluntest and strongest work of Prosper Merimee; from the extravagant
impudence of _Popanilla_ to the sentimental rodomontade of _Henrietta
Temple_; from ranting romanticism in _Alroy_ to vivid realism in _Sybil_.
Their author gives you no time to weary of him, for he is worldly and
passionate, fantastic and trenchant, cynical and ambitious, flippant and
sentimental, ornately rhetorical and triumphantly simple in a breath. He
is imperiously egoistic, but while constantly parading his own
personality he is careful never to tell you anything about it. And
withal he is imperturbably good-tempered: he brands and gibbets with a
smile, and with a smile he adores and applauds. Intellectually he is in
sympathy with character of every sort; he writes as becomes an artist who
has recognised that 'the conduct of men depends upon the temperament, not
upon a bunch of musty maxims,' and that 'there is a great deal of vic