Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger
THE LAST OF THE BARONS
By Edward Bulwer Lytton
DEDICATORY EPISTLE.
I dedicate to you, my indulgent Critic and long-tried Friend, the workwhich owes its origin to your suggestion. Long since, you urged meto attempt a fiction which might borrow its characters from our ownRecords, and serve to illustrate some of those truths which History istoo often compelled to leave to the Tale-teller, the Dramatist, and thePoet. Unquestionably, Fiction, when aspiring to something higher thanmere romance, does not pervert, but elucidate Facts. He who employs itworthily must, like a biographer, study the time and the charactershe selects, with a minute and earnest diligence which the generalhistorian, whose range extends over centuries, can scarcely beexpected to bestow upon the things and the men of a single epoch. Hisdescriptions should fill up with colour and detail the cold outlinesof the rapid chronicler; and in spite of all that has been argued bypseudo-critics, the very fancy which urged and animated his themeshould necessarily tend to increase the reader's practical and familiaracquaintance with the habits, the motives, and the modes of thoughtwhich constitute the true idiosyncrasy of an age. More than all, toFiction is permitted that liberal use of Analogical Hypothesis which isdenied to History, and which, if sobered by research, and enlightenedby that knowledge of mankind (without which Fiction can neither harmnor profit, for it becomes unreadable), tends to clear up much thatwere otherwise obscure, and to solve the disputes and difficulties ofcontradictory evidence by the philosophy of the human heart.
My own impression of the greatness of the labour to which you invited memade me the more diffident of success, inasmuch as the field of Englishhistorical fiction had been so amply cultivated, not only by the mostbrilliant of our many glorious Novelists, but by later writers of highand merited reputation. But however the annals of our History have beenexhausted by the industry of romance, the subject you finally pressedon my choice is unquestionably one which, whether in the delineation ofcharacter, the expression of passion, or the suggestion of historicaltruths, can hardly fail to direct the Novelist to paths wholly untroddenby his predecessors in the Land of Fiction.
Encouraged by you, I commenced my task; encouraged by you, I venture,on concluding it, to believe that, despite the partial adoption of thatestablished compromise between the modern and the elder diction,which Sir Walter Scott so artistically improved from the more ruggedphraseology employed by Strutt, and which later writers have perhapssomewhat overhackneyed, I may yet have avoided all material trespassupon ground which others have already redeemed from the waste. Whateverthe produce of the soil I have selected, I claim, at least, to havecleared it with my own labour, and ploughed it with my own heifer.
The reign of Edward IV. is in itself suggestive of new considerationsand unexhausted interest to those who accurately regard it. Thencommenced the policy consummated by Henry VII.; then were broken up thegreat elements of the old feudal order; a new Nobility was calledinto power, to aid the growing Middle Class in its struggles with theancient; and in the fate of the hero of the age, Richard Nevile, Earl ofWarwick, popularly called the King-maker, "the greatest as well as thelast of those mighty Barons who formerly overawed the Crown," [Humeadds, "and rendered the people incapable of civil government,"--asentence which, perhaps, judges too hastily the whole question at issuein our earlier history, between the jealousy of the barons and theauthority of the king.] was involved the very principle of our existingcivilization. It adds to the wide scope of Fiction, which ever lovesto explore the twilight, that, as Hume has truly observed, "No partof English history since the Conquest is so obscure, so uncertain, solittle authentic or consistent, as that of the Wars between the twoRoses." It adds also to the importance of that conjectural researchin which Fiction may be made so interesting and so useful, that "thisprofound darkness falls upon us just on the eve of the restoration ofletters;" [Hume] while amidst the gloom, we perceive the movement ofthose great and heroic passions in which Fiction finds delineationseverlastingly new, and are brought in contact with characterssufficiently familiar for interest, sufficiently remote for adaptationto romance, and above all, so frequently obscured by contradictoryevidence, that we lend ourselves willingly to any one who seeks to helpour judgment of the individual by tests taken from the general knowledgeof mankind.
Round the great image of the "Last of the Barons" group Edward theFourth, at once frank and false; the brilliant but ominous boyhood ofRichard the Third; the accomplished Hastings, "a good knight and gentle,but somewhat dissolute of living;" [Chronicle of Edward V., in Stowe]the vehement and fiery Margaret of Anjou; the meek image of her "holyHenry," and the pale shadow of their son. There may we see, also, thegorgeous Prelate, refining in policy and wile, as the enthusiasm andenergy which had formerly upheld the Ancient Church pass into thestern and persecuted votaries of the New; we behold, in that socialtransition, the sober Trader--outgrowing the prejudices of the ruderetainer or rustic franklin, from whom he is sprung--recognizingsagaciously, and supporting sturdily, the sectarian interests of hisorder, and preparing the way for the mighty Middle Class, in which ourModern Civilization, with its faults and its merits, has established itsstronghold; while, in contrast to the measured and thoughtful notionsof liberty which prudent Commerce entertains, we are reminded of thepolitical fanaticism of the secret Lollard,--of the jacquerie of theturbulent mob-leader; and perceive, amidst the various tyrannies of thetime, and often partially allied with the warlike seignorie, [For itis noticeable that in nearly all the popular risings--that of Cade, ofRobin of Redesdale, and afterwards of that which Perkin Warbeck madesubservient to his extraordinary enterprise--the proclamations of therebels always announced, among their popular grievances, the depressionof the ancient nobles and the elevation of new men.]--ever jealousagainst all kingly despotism,--the restless and ignorant movement of ademocratic principle, ultimately suppressed, though not destroyed, underthe Tudors, by the strong union of a Middle Class, anxious for securityand order, with an Executive Authority determined upon absolute sway.
Nor should we obtain a complete and comprehensive view of that mostinteresting Period of Transition, unless we saw something of theinfluence which the sombre and sinister wisdom of Italian policybegan to exercise over the councils of the great,--a policy of refinedstratagem, of complicated intrigue, of systematic falsehood, ofruthless, but secret violence; a policy which actuated the fellstatecraft of Louis XI.; which darkened, whenever he paused to think andto scheme, the gaudy and jovial character of Edward IV.; which appearedin its fullest combination of profound guile and resolute will inRichard III.; and, softened down into more plausible and speciouspurpose by the unimpassioned sagacity of Henry VII., finally attainedthe object which justified all its villanies to the princes of itsnative land,--namely, the tranquillity of a settled State, and theestablishment of a civilized but imperious despotism.
Again, in that twilight time, upon which was dawning the great inventionthat gave to Letters and to Science the precision and durability of theprinted page, it is interesting to conjecture what would have beenthe fate of any scientific achievement for which the world was lessprepared. The reception of printing into England chanced just at thehappy period when Scholarship and Literature were favoured by the great.The princes of York, with the exception of Edward IV. himself, who had,however, the grace to lament his own want of learning, and the tasteto appreciate it in others, were highly educated. The Lords Rivers andHastings [The erudite Lord Worcester had been one of Caxton's warmestpatrons, but that nobleman was no more at the time in which printing issaid to have been actually introduced into England.] were accomplishedin all the "witte and lere"
of their age. Princes and peers vied witheach other in their patronage of Caxton, and Richard III., during hisbrief reign, spared no pains to circulate to the utmost the inventiondestined to transmit his own memory to the hatred and the horror of allsucceeding time. But when we look around us, we see, in contrast to thegracious and fostering reception of the mere mechanism by whichscience is made manifest, the utmost intolerance to science itself. Themathematics in especial are deemed the very cabala of the black art.Accusations of witchcraft were never more abundant; and yet, strangeto say, those who openly professed to practise the unhallowed science,[Nigromancy, or Sorcery, even took its place amongst the regularcallings. Thus, "Thomas Vandyke, late of Cambridge," is styled (RollsParl. 6, p. 273) Nigromancer as his profession.--Sharon Turner, "Historyof England," vol iv. p. 6. Burke, "History of Richard III."] andcontrived to make their deceptions profitable to some unworthy politicalpurpose, appear to have enjoyed safety, and sometimes even honour, whilethose who, occupied with some practical, useful, and noble pursuitsuncomprehended by prince or people, denied their sorcery were despatchedwithout mercy. The mathematician and astronomer Bolingbroke (thegreatest clerk of his age) is hanged and quartered as a wizard, whilenot only impunity but reverence seems to have awaited a certain FriarBungey, for having raised mists and vapours, which greatly befriendedEdward IV. at the battle of Barnet.
Our knowledge of the intellectual spirit of the age, therefore, onlybecomes perfect when we contrast the success of the Impostor with thefate of the true Genius. And as the prejudices of the populace ran highagainst all mechanical contrivances for altering the settled conditionsof labour, [Even in the article of bonnets and hats, it appears thatcertain wicked falling mills were deemed worthy of a special anathema inthe reign of Edward IV. These engines are accused of having sought, "bysubtle imagination," the destruction of the original makers of hats andbonnets by man's strength,--that is, with hands and feet; and an act ofparliament was passed (22d of Edward IV.) to put down the fabricationof the said hats and bonnets by mechanical contrivance.] so probably,in the very instinct and destiny of Genius which ever drive it to a warwith popular prejudice, it would be towards such contrivances that aman of great ingenuity and intellect, if studying the physical sciences,would direct his ambition.
Whether the author, in the invention he has assigned to his philosopher(Adam Warner), has too boldly assumed the possibility of a conception somuch in advance of the time, they who have examined such of the worksof Roger Bacon as are yet given to the world can best decide; butthe assumption in itself belongs strictly to the most acknowledgedprerogatives of Fiction; and the true and important question willobviously be, not whether Adam Warner could have constructed his model,but whether, having so constructed it, the fate that befell him wasprobable and natural.
Such characters as I have here alluded to seemed, then, to me, inmeditating the treatment of the high and brilliant subject which youreloquence animated me to attempt, the proper Representatives of themultiform Truths which the time of Warwick the King-maker affords to ourinterests and suggests for our instruction; and I can only wish that thepowers of the author were worthier of the theme.
It is necessary that I now state briefly the foundation of theHistorical portions of this narrative. The charming and popular "Historyof Hume," which, however, in its treatment of the reign of Edward IV. ismore than ordinarily incorrect, has probably left upon the minds of manyof my readers, who may not have directed their attention to morerecent and accurate researches into that obscure period, an erroneousimpression of the causes which led to the breach between Edward IV. andhis great kinsman and subject, the Earl of Warwick. The general notionis probably still strong that it was the marriage of the young king toElizabeth Gray, during Warwick's negotiations in France for the allianceof Bona of Savoy (sister-in-law to Louis XI.), which exasperated thefiery earl, and induced his union with the House of Lancaster. All ourmore recent historians have justly rejected this groundless fable,which even Hume (his extreme penetration supplying the defects of hissuperficial research) admits with reserve. ["There may even some doubtarise with regard to the proposal of marriage made to Bona of Savoy,"etc.--HUME, note to p. 222, vol. iii. edit. 1825.] A short summary ofthe reasons for this rejection is given by Dr. Lingard, and annexedbelow. ["Many writers tell us that the enmity of Warwick arose from hisdisappointment caused by Edward's clandestine marriage with Elizabeth.If we may believe them, the earl was at the very time in Francenegotiating on the part of the king a marriage with Bona of Savoy,sister to the Queen of France; and having succeeded in his mission,brought back with him the Count of Dampmartin as ambassador from Louis.To me the whole story appears a fiction. 1. It is not to be found in themore ancient historians. 2. Warwick was not at the time in France. Onthe 20th of April, ten days before the marriage, he was employed innegotiating a truce with the French envoys in London (Rym. xi. 521), andon the 26th of May, about three weeks after it, was appointed to treatof another truce with the King of Scots (Rym. xi. 424). 3. Nor could hebring Dampmartin with him to England; for that nobleman was committed aprisoner to the Bastile in September, 1463, and remained there tillMay, 1465 (Monstrel. iii. 97, 109). Three contemporary and well-informedwriters, the two continuators of the History of Croyland and Wyrcester,attribute his discontent to the marriages and honours granted to theWydeviles, and the marriage of the princess Margaret with the Duke ofBurgundy."--LINGARD, vol. iii. c. 24, pp. 5, 19, 4to ed.] And, indeed,it is a matter of wonder that so many of our chroniclers could havegravely admitted a legend contradicted by all the subsequent conductof Warwick himself; for we find the earl specially doing honour to thepublication of Edward's marriage, standing godfather to his first-born(the Princess Elizabeth), employed as ambassador or acting as minister,and fighting for Edward, and against the Lancastrians, during the fiveyears that elapsed between the coronation of Elizabeth and Warwick'srebellion.
The real causes of this memorable quarrel, in which Warwick acquired histitle of King-maker, appear to have been these.
It is probable enough, as Sharon Turner suggests, [Sharon Turner:History of England, vol. iii. p. 269.] that Warwick was disappointedthat, since Edward chose a subject for his wife, he neglected the moresuitable marriage he might have formed with the earl's eldest daughter;and it is impossible but that the earl should have been greatly chafed,in common with all his order, by the promotion of the queen's relations,[W. Wyr. 506, 7. Croyl. 542.] new men and apostate Lancastrians. But itis clear that these causes for discontent never weakened his zeal forEdward till the year 1467, when we chance upon the true origin of theromance concerning Bona of Savoy, and the first open dissension betweenEdward and the earl.
In that year Warwick went to France, to conclude an alliance with LouisXI., and to secure the hand of one of the French princes [Which of theprinces this was does not appear, and can scarcely be conjectured. The"Pictorial History of England" (Book v. 102) in a tone of easy decisionsays "it was one of the sons of Louis XI." But Louis had no livingsons at all at the time. The Dauphin was not born till three yearsafterwards. The most probable person was the Duke of Guienne, Louis'sbrother.] for Margaret, sister to Edward IV.; during this period, Edwardreceived the bastard brother of Charles, Count of Charolois, afterwardsDuke of Burgundy, and arranged a marriage between Margaret and thecount.
Warwick's embassy was thus dishonoured, and the dishonour was aggravatedby personal enmity to the bridegroom Edward had preferred. [The CroylandHistorian, who, as far as his brief and meagre record extends, is thebest authority for the time of Edward IV., very decidedly states theBurgundian alliance to be the original cause of Warwick's displeasure,rather than the king's marriage with Elizabeth: "Upon which (themarriage of Margaret with Charolois) Richard Nevile, Earl of Warwick,who had for so many years taken party with the French against theBurgundians, conceived great indignation; and I hold this to be thetruer cause of his resentment than the king's marriage with Elizabeth,for he had rather have procured a husband for the aforesaid princessMargaret in t
he kingdom of France." The Croyland Historian also speaksemphatically of the strong animosity existing between Charolois andWarwick.--Cont. Croyl. 551.] The earl retired in disgust to his castle.But Warwick's nature, which Hume has happily described as one of"undesigning frankness and openness," [Hume, "Henry VI.," vol. iii. p.172, edit. 1825.] does not seem to have long harboured thisresentment. By the intercession of the Archbishop of York and others,a reconciliation was effected, and the next year, 1468, we find Warwickagain in favour, and even so far forgetting his own former causeof complaint as to accompany the procession in honour of Margaret'snuptials with his private foe. [Lingard.] In the following year,however, arose the second dissension between the king and hisminister,--namely, in the king's refusal to sanction the marriage of hisbrother Clarence with the earl's daughter Isabel,--a refusal which wasattended with a resolute opposition that must greatly have galled thepride of the earl, since Edward even went so far as to solicit the Popeto refuse his sanction, on the ground of relationship. [Carte. Wm. Wyr.]The Pope, nevertheless, grants the dispensation, and the marriage takesplace at Calais. A popular rebellion then breaks out in England. Some ofWarwick's kinsmen--those, however, belonging to the branch of the Nevilefamily that had always been Lancastrians, and at variance with theearl's party--are found at its head. The king, who is in imminentdanger, writes a supplicating letter to Warwick to come to his aid.["Paston Letters," cxcviii. vol. ii., Knight's ed. See Lingard, c. 24,for the true date of Edward's letters to Warwick, Clarence, andthe Archbishop of York.] The earl again forgets former causes forresentment, hastens from Calais, rescues the king, and quells therebellion by the influence of his popular name.
We next find Edward at Warwick's castle of Middleham, where, accordingto some historians, he is forcibly detained,--an assertion treated byothers as a contemptible invention. This question will be examinedin the course of this work; [See Note II.] but whatever the trueconstruction of the story, we find that Warwick and the king are stillon such friendly terms, that the earl marches in person against arebellion on the borders, obtains a signal victory, and that the rebelleader (the earl's own kinsman) is beheaded by Edward at York. Wefind that, immediately after this supposed detention, Edward speaks ofWarwick and his brothers "as his best friends;" ["Paston Letters," cciv.vol. ii., Knight's ed. The date of this letter, which puzzled the worthyannotator, is clearly to be referred to Edward's return from York,after his visit to Middleham in 1469. No mention is therein made bythe gossiping contemporary of any rumour that Edward had sufferedimprisonment. He enters the city in state, as having returned safe andvictorious from a formidable rebellion. The letter goes on to say: "Theking himself hath (that is, holds) good language of the Lords Clarence,of Warwick, etc., saying 'they be his best friends.'" Would he saythis if just escaped from a prison? Sir John Paston, the writer ofthe letter, adds, it is true, "But his household men have (hold) otherlanguage." very probably, for the household men were the court creaturesalways at variance with Warwick, and held, no doubt, the same languagethey had been in the habit of holding before.] that he betroths hiseldest daughter to Warwick's nephew, the male heir of the family. Andthen suddenly, only three months afterwards (in February, 1470), andwithout any clear and apparent cause, we find Warwick in open rebellion,animated by a deadly hatred to the king, refusing, from first to last,all overtures of conciliation; and so determined is his vengeance,that he bows a pride, hitherto morbidly susceptible, to the vehementinsolence of Margaret of Anjou, and forms the closest alliance withthe Lancastrian party, in the destruction of which his whole life hadpreviously been employed.
Here, then, where History leaves us in the dark, where our curiosityis the most excited, Fiction gropes amidst the ancient chronicles, andseeks to detect and to guess the truth. And then Fiction, accustomedto deal with the human heart, seizes upon the paramount importance ofa Fact which the modern historian has been contented to place amongstdubious and collateral causes of dissension. We find it broadly andstrongly stated by Hall and others, that Edward had coarsely attemptedthe virtue of one of the earl's female relations. "And farther it errethnot from the truth," says Hall, "that the king did attempt a thing oncein the earl's house, which was much against the earl's honesty; butwhether it was the daughter or the niece," adds the chronicler, "wasnot, for both their honours, openly known; but surely such a thing WASattempted by King Edward," etc.
Any one at all familiar with Hall (and, indeed, with all our principalchroniclers, except Fabyan), will not expect any accurate precision asto the date he assigns for the outrage. He awards to it, therefore, thesame date he erroneously gives to Warwick's other grudges (namely, aperiod brought some years lower by all judicious historians) a date atwhich Warwick was still Edward's fastest friend.
Once grant the probability of this insult to the earl (the probabilityis conceded at once by the more recent historians, and received withoutscruple as a fact by Rapia, Habington, and Carte), and the wholeobscurity which involves this memorable quarrel vanishes at once.Here was, indeed, a wrong never to be forgiven, and yet never to beproclaimed. As Hall implies, the honour of the earl was implicated inhushing the scandal, and the honour of Edward in concealing the offence.That if ever the insult were attempted, it must have been just previousto the earl's declared hostility is clear. Offences of that kindhurry men to immediate action at the first, or else, if they stoop todissimulation the more effectually to avenge afterwards, the outbreakbides its seasonable time. But the time selected by the earl for hisoutbreak was the very worst he could have chosen, and attests theinfluence of a sudden passion,--a new and uncalculated cause ofresentment. He had no forces collected; he had not even sounded his ownbrother-in-law, Lord Stanley (since he was uncertain of his intentions);while, but a few months before, had he felt any desire to dethrone theking, he could either have suffered him to be crushed by the popularrebellion the earl himself had quelled, or have disposed of his personas he pleased when a guest at his own castle of Middleham. His evidentwant of all preparation and forethought--a want which drove into rapidand compulsory flight from England the baron to whose banner, a fewmonths afterwards, flocked sixty thousand men--proves that the cause ofhis alienation was fresh and recent.
If, then, the cause we have referred to, as mentioned by Hall andothers, seems the most probable we can find (no other cause for suchabrupt hostility being discernible), the date for it must be placedwhere it is in this work,--namely, just prior to the earl's revolt. Thenext question is, who could have been the lady thus offended, whethera niece or daughter. Scarcely a niece, for Warwick had one marriedbrother, Lord Montagu, and several sisters; but the sisters were marriedto lords who remained friendly to Edward, [Except the sisters married toLord Fitzhugh and Lord Oxford. But though Fitzhugh, or rather his son,broke into rebellion, it was for some cause in which Warwick did notsympathize, for by Warwick himself was that rebellion put down; norcould the aggrieved lady have been a daughter of Lord Oxford, for he wasa stanch, though not avowed, Lancastrian, and seems to have carefullykept aloof from the court.] and Montagu seems to have had no daughterout of childhood, [Montagu's wife could have been little more thanthirty at the time of his death. She married again, and had a family byher second husband.] while that nobleman himself did not share Warwick'srebellion at the first, but continued to enjoy the confidence of Edward.We cannot reasonably, then, conceive the uncle to have been so much morerevengeful than the parents,--the legitimate guardians of the honourof a daughter. It is, therefore, more probable that the insulted maidenshould have been one of Lord Warwick's daughters; and this is thegeneral belief. Carte plainly declares it was Isabel. But Isabel itcould hardly have been. She was then married to Edward's brother, theDuke of Clarence, and within a month of her confinement. The earl hadonly one other daughter, Anne, then in the flower of her youth; andthough Isabel appears to have possessed a more striking character ofbeauty, Anne must have had no inconsiderable charms to have won thelove of the Lancastrian Prince Edward, and to have inspired a tender andhuman affection in Ri
chard Duke of Gloucester. [Not only does Majerus,the Flemish annalist, speak of Richard's early affection to Anne, butRichard's pertinacity in marrying her, at a time when her family wascrushed and fallen, seems to sanction the assertion. True, that Richardreceived with her a considerable portion of the estates of her parents.But both Anne herself and her parents were attainted, and the wholeproperty at the disposal of the Crown. Richard at that time hadconferred the most important services on Edward. He had remainedfaithful to him during the rebellion of Clarence; he had been thehero of the day both at Barnet and Tewksbury. His reputation was thenexceedingly high, and if he had demanded, as a legitimate reward,the lands of Middleham, without the bride, Edward could not well haverefused them. He certainly had a much better claim than the only othercompetitor for the confiscated estates,--namely, the perjured anddespicable Clarence. For Anne's reluctance to marry Richard, and thedisguise she assumed, see Miss Strickland's "Life of Anne of Warwick."For the honour of Anne, rather than of Richard, to whose memory onecrime more or less matters but little, it may here be observed thatso far from there being any ground to suppose that Gloucester was anaccomplice in the assassination of the young prince Edward of Lancaster,there is some ground to believe that that prince was not assassinated atall, but died (as we would fain hope the grandson of Henry V. diddie) fighting manfully in the field.--"Harleian Manuscripts;" Stowe,"Chronicle of Tewksbury;" Sharon Turner, vol. iii. p. 335.] It is alsonoticeable, that when, not as Shakspeare represents, but after longsolicitation, and apparently by positive coercion, Anne formed hersecond marriage, she seems to have been kept carefully by Richard fromhis gay brother's court, and rarely, if ever, to have appeared in Londontill Edward was no more.
That considerable obscurity should always rest upon the facts connectedwith Edward's meditated crime,--that they should never be publishedamongst the grievances of the haughty rebel is natural from the verydignity of the parties, and the character of the offence; that in suchobscurity sober History should not venture too far on the hypothesissuggested by the chronicler, is right and laudable. But probably it willbe conceded by all, that here Fiction finds its lawful province, andthat it may reasonably help, by no improbable nor groundless conjecture,to render connected and clear the most broken and the darkest fragmentsof our annals.
I have judged it better partially to forestall the interest of thereader in my narrative, by stating thus openly what he may expect, thanto encounter the far less favourable impression (if he had been hithertoa believer in the old romance of Bona of Savoy), [I say the old romanceof Bona of Savoy, so far as Edward's rejection of her hand for thatof Elizabeth Gray is stated to have made the cause of his quarrel withWarwick. But I do not deny the possibility that such a marriage hadbeen contemplated and advised by Warwick, though he neither soughtto negotiate it, nor was wronged by Edward's preference of his fairsubject.] that the author was taking an unwarrantable liberty with thereal facts, when, in truth, it is upon the real facts, as far as theycan be ascertained, that the author has built his tale, and his boldestinventions are but deductions from the amplest evidence he couldcollect. Nay, he even ventures to believe, that whoever hereafter shallwrite the history of Edward IV. will not disdain to avail himself ofsome suggestions scattered throughout these volumes, and tending tothrow new light upon the events of that intricate but important period.
It is probable that this work will prove more popular in its naturethan my last fiction of "Zanoni," which could only be relished by thoseinterested in the examinations of the various problems in human lifewhich it attempts to solve. But both fictions, however different anddistinct their treatment, are constructed on those principles of artto which, in all my later works, however imperfect my success, I havesought at least steadily to adhere.
To my mind, a writer should sit down to compose a fiction as a painterprepares to compose a picture. His first care should be the conceptionof a whole as lofty as his intellect can grasp, as harmonious andcomplete as his art can accomplish; his second care, the character ofthe interest which the details are intended to sustain.
It is when we compare works of imagination in writing with works ofimagination on the canvas, that we can best form a critical idea of thedifferent schools which exist in each; for common both to the authorand the painter are those styles which we call the Familiar, thePicturesque, and the Intellectual. By recurring to this comparison wecan, without much difficulty, classify works of Fiction in theirproper order, and estimate the rank they should severally hold. TheIntellectual will probably never be the most widely popular for themoment. He who prefers to study in this school must be prepared for muchdepreciation, for its greatest excellences, even if he achieve them, arenot the most obvious to the many. In discussing, for instance, a modernwork, we hear it praised, perhaps, for some striking passage, someprominent character; but when do we ever hear any comment on its harmonyof construction, on its fulness of design, on its ideal character,--onits essentials, in short, as a work of art? What we hear most valued inthe picture, we often find the most neglected in the book,--namely, thecomposition; and this, simply because in England painting is recognizedas an art, and estimated according to definite theories; but inliterature we judge from a taste never formed, from a thousandprejudices and ignorant predilections. We do not yet comprehend that theauthor is an artist, and that the true rules of art by which he shouldbe tested are precise and immutable. Hence the singular and fantasticcaprices of the popular opinion,--its exaggerations of praise orcensure, its passion and reaction. At one while, its solemn contempt forWordsworth; at another, its absurd idolatry. At one while we are stunnedby the noisy celebrity of Byron, at another we are calmly told that hecan scarcely be called a poet. Each of these variations in the public isimplicitly followed by the vulgar criticism; and as a few years back ourjournals vied with each other in ridiculing Wordsworth for the faultswhich he did not possess, they vie now with each other in eulogiums uponthe merits which he has never displayed.
These violent fluctuations betray both a public and a criticism utterlyunschooled in the elementary principles of literary art, and entitle thehumblest author to dispute the censure of the hour, while they ought torender the greatest suspicious of its praise.
It is, then, in conformity, not with any presumptuous conviction of hisown superiority, but with his common experience and common-sense, thatevery author who addresses an English audience in serious earnest ispermitted to feel that his final sentence rests not with the jury beforewhich he is first heard. The literary history of the day consists of aseries of judgments set aside.
But this uncertainty must more essentially betide every student, howeverlowly, in the school I have called the Intellectual, which must everbe more or less at variance with the popular canons. It is its hardnecessity to vex and disturb the lazy quietude of vulgar taste; forunless it did so, it could neither elevate nor move. He who resigns theDutch art for the Italian must continue through the dark to explorethe principles upon which he founds his design, to which he adapts hisexecution; in hope or in despondence still faithful to the theory whichcares less for the amount of interest created than for the sources fromwhich the interest is to be drawn; seeking in action the movement of thegrander passions or the subtler springs of conduct, seeking in reposethe colouring of intellectual beauty.
The Low and the High of Art are not very readily comprehended. Theydepend not upon the worldly degree or the physical condition of thecharacters delineated; they depend entirely upon the quality of theemotion which the characters are intended to excite,--namely, whether ofsympathy for something low, or of admiration for something high. Thereis nothing high in a boor's head by Teniers, there is nothing low ina boor's head by Guido. What makes the difference between the two? Theabsence or presence of the Ideal! But every one can judge of themerit of the first, for it is of the Familiar school; it requires aconnoisseur to see the merit of the last, for it is of the Intellectual.
I have the less scrupled to leave these remarks to cavil or to sarc
asm,because this fiction is probably the last with which I shall trespassupon the Public, and I am desirous that it shall contain, at least, myavowal of the principles upon which it and its later predecessors havebeen composed. You know well, however others may dispute the fact,the earnestness with which those principles have been meditated andpursued,--with high desire, if but with poor results.
It is a pleasure to feel that the aim, which I value more than thesuccess, is comprehended by one whose exquisite taste as a criticis only impaired by that far rarer quality,--the disposition toover-estimate the person you profess to esteem! Adieu, my sincere andvalued friend; and accept, as a mute token of gratitude and regard,these flowers gathered in the Garden where we have so often rovedtogether. E. L. B.
LONDON, January, 1843.
The Last of the Barons — Complete Page 1
