Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton

“ It was a strange thing to see a man like Glanville, with costly tastes, luxurious habits, great talents, peculiarly calculated for display, courted by the highest members of the state, admired for his beauty and genius by half the women in London, yet living in the most ascetic seclusion from his kind, and indulging in the darkest and most morbid despondency. No female was ever seen to win even his momentary glance of admiration. ”

“ Vincent turned pale—"And how long," said he, "have you learnt 'the principles of legislation,' and this mighty affection for the 'benefit of the people?'"
"Ever since," said I, coldly, "I learnt any thing! The first piece of real knowledge I ever gained was, that my interest was incorporated with that of the beings with whom I had the chance of being cast: if I injure them, I injure myself: if I can do them any good, I receive the benefit in common with the rest. Now, as I have a great love for that personage who has now the honour of addressing you, I resolved to be honest for his sake. ”

“ All mankind is the field the novelist should cultivate—all truth, the moral he should strive to bring home. It is in occasional dialogue, in desultory maxims, in deductions from events, in analysis of character, that he should benefit and instruct. It is not enough—and I wish a certain novelist who has lately arisen would remember this—it is not enough for a writer to have a good heart, amiable sympathies, and what are termed high feelings, in order to shape out a moral, either true in itself, or beneficial in its inculcation. ”

“ For my vehicles of instruction or amusement, I would have people as they are—neither worse nor better—and the moral they should convey, should be rather through jest or irony, than gravity and seriousness. There never was an imperfection corrected by portraying perfection; and if levity or ridicule be said so easily to allure to sin, I do not see why they should not be used in defence of virtue. Of this we may be sure, that as laughter is a distinct indication of the human race, so there never was a brute mind or a savage heart that loved to indulge in it. ”

“ Dartmore, you are a gentleman. Hollo! you Liquorpond-street of a scoundrel—having nothing of liquor but the name, you narrow, nasty, pitiful alley of a fellow, with a kennel for a body, and a sink for a soul; give me my change and my gin, you scoundrel! Humph, is that all right, you Procrustes of the counter, chopping our lawful appetites down to your rascally standard of seven-pence half-penny? Why don't you take a motto, you Paynim dog? ”

“ As Thornton uttered that name, he looked hard at me, and then added, "By the by, I saw you with Sir Reginald Glanville the other day; you know him well, I presume?"
"Tolerably well," said I, with indifference.
"What a strange character he is," rejoined Thornton; "I also have known him for some years," and again Thornton looked pryingly into my countenance. Poor fool, it was not for a penetration like his to read the cor inscrutabile of a man born and bred like me, in the consummate dissimulation of bon ton.
"He is very rich, is he not?" said Thornton, after a brief silence. ”

“ My table is always laid for three, and you will, therefore, be sure of finding a dinner here every day you have no better engagement. What think you of my taste in furnishing?"
"I have only to say," answered I, "that since I am so often to dine with you, I hope your taste in wines will be one half as good."
"We are all," said Glanville, with a faint smile, "we are all, in the words of the true old proverb, 'children of a larger growth.'Our first toy is love—our second, display, according as our ambition prompts us to exert it. ”

“ We followed our strange friend through the crowd at the door, which he elbowed on either side with the most aristocratic disdain, perfectly regardless of their jokes at his dress and manner; he no sooner got through the throng, than he stopped short (though in the midst of the kennel) and offered us his arm. This was an honour of which we were by no means desirous; for, to say nothing of the shabbiness of Mr. Gordon's exterior, there was a certain odour in his garments which was possibly less displeasing to the wearer than to his acquaintance. ”

“ Meanwhile, it was my pleasure to wear in society the coxcombical and eccentric costume of character I had first adopted, and to cultivate the arts which won from women the smile which cheered and encouraged me in my graver contest with men. It was only to Ellen Glanville, that I laid aside an affectation, which I knew was little likely to attract a taste so refined and unadulterated as her's. ”

“ No one, (I say this with a safe conscience, for I never flattered my friend in my life, though I have often adulated my enemy) —no one has a greater admiration for your talents than myself; I desire eagerly to see you in the station most fit for their display; pause one moment before you link yourself, not only to a party, but to principles that cannot stand. You have only to exert yourself, and you may either lead the opposition, or be among the foremost in the administration. ”

“ As to Lesborough, he is a fool and a boaster—who is always puffing his own vanity with the windiest pair of oratorical bellows that ever were made by air and brass, for the purpose of sound and smoke, 'signifying nothing.' Go to!—I will have none of him either."
"You are right in your judgment of my confreres," answered Vincent; "but we must make use of bad tools for good purposes."
"No—no!" said I; "the commonest carpenter will tell you the reverse."
Vincent eyed me suspiciously. "Look you!" said he: "I know well that no man loves better than you place, power, and reputation. ”

“ If the mind can make one vigorous exertion, it can another: the same energy you put forth in acquiring knowledge, would also enable you to baffle misfortune. Determine not to think upon what is painful; resolutely turn away from every thing that recals it; bend all your attention to some new and engrossing object; do this, and you defeat the past. You smile, as if this were impossible; yet it is not an iota more so, than to tear one's self from a favourite pursuit, and addict one's self to an object unwelcome to one at first. ”

“ Ah! the most beloved man in society is that deaf and dumb person, comment s'appelle-t-il?"
"Yes," said Lady Roseville, "Popularity is a goddess best worshipped by negatives; and the fewer claims one has to be admired, the more pretensions one has to be beloved."
"Perfectly true, in general," said I—"for instance, I make the rule, and you the exception. I, a perfect paragon, am hated because I am one; you, a perfect paragon, are idolized in spite of it. ”

“ Gordon subsided into a low, interrupted, internal muttering of strange oaths, which rolled and grumbled, and rattled in his throat, like distant thunder.
At length he cheered up a little—"Sir," said he, addressing Dartmore, "it is a sad thing to be dependant on these low persons; the wise among the ancients were never so wrong as when they panegyrized poverty: it is the wicked man's tempter, the good man's perdition, the proud man's curse, the melancholy man's halter." ”

“ We stood by the counter while our proteges were served, in silent observation. In low vice, to me, there is always something too gloomy, almost too fearful for light mirth; the contortions of the madman are stranger than those of the fool, but one does not laugh at them; the sympathy is for the cause—not the effect.
Leaning against the counter at one corner, and fixing his eyes deliberately and unmovingly upon us, was a man about the age of fifty, dressed in a costume of singular fashion, apparently pretending to an antiquity of taste, correspondent with that of the material. ”

“ I see, now, by the dim light of retrospection, a vision of an old woman in the kennel, and a pewter pot of mysterious ingredients precipitated into a greengrocer's shop, "te virides inter lauros," as Vincent would have said. On we went, faster and faster, as the rattle rung in our ears, and the tramp of the enemy echoed after us in hot pursuit.
"The devil take the hindmost," said Dartmore, breathlessly (as he kept up with me) .
"The watchman has saved his majesty the trouble," answered I, looking back and seeing one of our friends in the clutch of the pursuers. ”

“ So far had affairs gone, when I was honoured with Vincent's proposal. I found Lord Dawton in his library, with the Marquess of Clandonald, (Lord Dartmore's father, and, from his rank and property, classed among the highest, as, from his vanity and restlessness, he was among the most active members of the Opposition.) Clandonald left the room when I entered. Few men in office are wise enough to trust the young; as if the greater zeal and sincerity of youth did not more than compensate for its appetite for the gay, or its thoughtlessness of the serious. ”

“ If an author could combine the various excellencies of Scott and Le Sage, with a greater and more metaphysical knowledge of morals than either, we might expect from him the perfection we have not yet discovered since the days of Apuleius."
"Speaking of morals," said Lady Roseville, "do you not think every novel should have its distinct but, and inculcate, throughout, some one peculiar moral, such as many of Marmontel's and Miss Edgeworth's?"
"No!" answered Vincent, "every good novel has one great end—the same in all—viz. the increasing our knowledge of the heart. ”

“ Figure to yourself a fitter companion for the hero and writer of these adventures! The table was covered with boxing gloves, single sticks, two ponderous pair of dumb bells, a large pewter pot of porter, and four foils; one snapped in the middle.
"Well," cried Dartmore, to two strapping youths, with their coats off, "which was the conqueror?"
"Oh, it is not yet decided," was the answer; and forthwith the bigger one hit the lesser a blow, with his boxing glove, heavy enough to have felled Ulysses, who, if I recollect aright, was rather 'a game blood' in such encounters. ”

“ Could the humour, the persons, the knowledge of character, and of the world, come home to us, in a national, not an exotic garb, it would be a more popular, as it is certainly a more gifted work, than even the exquisite novel of Gil Blas. But it is a great misfortune for Hope that—
"'To learning he narrowed his mind,
And gave up to the East what was meant for mankind.'
"One often loses, in admiration at the knowledge of peculiar costume, the deference one would have paid to the masterly grasp of universal character." ”

“ That veritable philosophe took it with the same air as a dog receives the first caress from the hand which has just chastised him; and feeling the purse between his short, hard fingers, as if to ascertain the soundness of its condition, quietly slid it into his breeches pocket, which he then buttoned with care, and pulling his waistcoat down, as if for further protection to the deposit, he turned towards Glanville, and said, in his usual quaint style of vulgarity—"Least said, Sir Reginald, the soonest mended. Gold is a good plaister for bad bruises. ”

“ We came to a dead halt in Arlington-street, which, as it was the quietest spot in the neighbourhood, we deemed a fitting place for the arrangement of our forces. Dartmore, Staunton, (a tall, thin, well formed, silly youth,) and myself, marched first, and the remaining three followed. We gave each other the most judicious admonitions as to propriety of conduct, and then, with a shout that alarmed the whole street, we renewed our way. ”

“ If his knowledge is not deep and clear, his love of the good may only lead him into error; and he may pass off the prejudices of a susceptible heart for the precepts of virtue. Would to God that people would think it necessary to be instructed before they attempt to instruct. 'Dire simplement que la vertu est vertu parce qu'elle est bonne en son fonds, et le vice tout au contraire, ce n'est pas les faire connoitre.' For me, if I was to write a novel, I would first make myself an acute, active, and vigilant observer of men and manners. ”

“ Seeing that—, who was esteemed, among his friends, the handsomest man of the day, had risen from his seat, next to Lady Roseville, in order to make room for me, I negligently and quietly dropped into it, and answered his grave and angry stare at my presumption, with my very sweetest and most condescending smile. Heaven be praised, the handsomest man of the day is never the chief object in the room, when Henry Pelham and his guardian angel, termed by his enemies, his self-esteem, once enter it. ”

“ Do you imagine that I can taste one of the possessions which fortune has heaped upon me, that I have one healthful faculty, one sense of enjoyment, among the hundred which other men are 'heirs to?' When did you ever see me for a moment happy? I live, as it were, on a rock, barren, and herbless, and sapless, and cut off from all human fellowship and intercourse. I had only a single object left to live for, when you saw me at Paris ”

“ He mentioned her with enthusiasm. "Beautiful as Ellen is," he said, "her face is the very faintest reflection of her mind. Her habits of thought are so pure, that every impulse is a virtue. Never was there a person to whom goodness was so easy. Vice seems something so opposite to her nature, that I cannot imagine it possible for her to sin."
"Will you not call with me at your mother's?" said I. "I am going there to-day."
Glanville replied in the affirmative, and we went at once to Lady Glanville's, in Berkeley-square. ”