Page:Imperialdictiona03eadi Brandeis Vol3a.pdf/280

the results of the ensuing general election. Lord Melbourne on resuming power offered the author of the "Crisis" a place in his government, which was declined. Some three years later, however, he accepted one of the two baronetcies with which on the occasion of the coronation Lord Melbourne advised her Majesty to recognize the claims of literature and science, and to our list of baronets were added the names of Bulwer and Herschel. In 1836 the successful novelist had sought dramatic laurels with "The Duchess de la Vallière," withdrawn after a run of thirteen nights; had published not only one of the most careful and elaborate of his fictions, "Ernest Maltravers," followed by its sequel, "Alice, or the Mysteries," but an instalment of a historical work planned at Cambridge, "Athens, its rise and decline." With 1838 he became the editor of a new periodical, the Monthly Chronicle— intended to unite scientific information with literary criticism—to which he contributed, among other things, a series of papers on the theory and practice of his own art, "Prose fiction;" and in connection with criticism it may be added, that he has written occasionally in the Edinburgh, the Quarterly, the Westminster, and the Foreign Quarterly Review. To this period belong his two chief dramatic triumphs, the "Lady of Lyons," and "Richelieu," eliciting two of the greatest histrionic triumphs of his friend, Mr. Macready, to aid whom in his management of Covent Garden, both were partly written. In "Money" he has also attempted pure comedy with success; we note the appearance of "Night and Morning," 1841; the reconstruction, 1842, from the Monthly Chronicle, of the mystical romance "Zanoni;" and the publication of his historical novel, "The Last of the Barons," 1843. He had now resolved on the completion of "Athens," and the preparation of a great work on English history, "The Lives and Times of the Plantagenet Kings," when the death of his mother, 1843, left him possessor of Knebworth and large estates. It was in conformity with the conditions in her will that in 1844, and by royal license, he assumed her name of Lytton. In the meantime he contributed to Blackwood's Magazine, and anonymously the translation, with elucidations, of the Poems of Schiller, published in 1844, with an interesting and original biography of the great German. In 1845 the publication of the "Confessions of a Water Patient," testified to shattered health, of which he was advised to seek the restoration in foreign travel, or in tranquillity at home. But wherever he was, varied literary activity seems to have been indispensable to him. The year of his "Confessions" of ill health and its attempted cure by hydropathy, was that of his kindly editorship of the remains of a bumble brother man of letters, Laman Blanchard, to which he prefixed a biographical sketch of their author; and preceded that of the anonymous publication of his poem, the "New Timon," 1846. "Lucretia, or the Children of Night," a novel of 1847, was so sharply criticised for its accumulated horrors as to elicit from its author an expository and expostulatory "Word to the Public." Curiously enough, along with "Lucretia," was begun the tranquil and genial "Caxtons," the first of a series which have perhaps secured the favour, if not of a wider or a higher, at least of a more fastidious public than any which had previously admired his fictions. "Harold, the last of the Saxon Kings," 1848, preceded, however, the publication of the "Caxtons," which first appeared anonymously in Blackwood's Magazine, 1848; and was followed similarly in the same periodical by "My Novel," 1850; and by "What will he do with it?" 1857. In 1849 he began the publication of "King Arthur," a romantic epic, and his own favourite work, published anonymously to secure an impartial criticism. In 1850 the formation of the Guild of Literature and Art was first broached at Knebworth, when Lord Lytton offered to present to it the ground for the erection of a building to shelter the decayed veterans of pen and pencil. For the same institution he wrote the drama of "Not so bad as we seem," performed for the first time at Devonshire-house in the presence of her majesty and Prince Albert, and all the parts in which were played by gentlemen of high standing in literature and art. Lord Lytton's poem, "St. Stephens," was published in Blackwood's Magazine, in 1860; and his latest fiction, "A Strange Story," was contributed to All the Year Round in 1861. From this literary career, the mere industry of which would do honour to a professional man of letters, we revert to his political biography. Not enough of a free-trader for the advanced liberals, and not enough of a protectionist for the agriculturists. Lord Lytton lost his election for Lincoln after the return of Sir Robert Peel to power in 1841, and during a decade he was absent from parliament. In 1851 he reappeared in the literature of politics by the publication of his "Letters to John Bull on the management of his landed estates," an argument for the adjustment of the corn-law question on the basis of a fixed duty. The following year he re-entered the house of commons as member for Hertfordshire, the county in which his estate of Knebworth is situated. Supporting the general policy of Lord Derby by his speeches and votes, he took at once a prominent position in the conservative ranks. After Lord Derby's second summons to the premiership he was appointed in May, 1858, secretary of state for the colonies, during his tenure of that office creating and organizing our youngest colonies, British Columbia and Queensland. In 1853 he received from the university of Oxford the honorary degree of D.C.L., and in 1854, being elected president of the Associated Societies of the University of Edinburgh, he visited the Modern Athens, and delivered an elaborate inaugural address. In 1856, and again in 1858, he was elected lord-rector of the university of Glasgow. Lord Lytton married, in 1827, Rosina, daughter of the late Francis Massey Wheeler, Esq., of Lizzard Connell, county of Limerick. His only son by this marriage, Mr. Robert Edward Bulwer Lytton, has served in the diplomatic profession at the court of Vienna, at Washington, Florence, and the Hague. Under the pseudonym of "Owen Meredith," he has published several volumes of successful verse, and has been credited with a share in the authorship of the striking poem of Tannhaûser, 1861.—F. E.