A Family Picture. BY EDWARD BULWER LYTTON (LORD LYTTON.) Every family is a history in itself, and even a poem to those who Dî, probos mores docili juventæ, Dî, senectuti placida quietem, Romulæ genti date remque, prolemque, Et decus omne. HORAT. Carmen Sæculare. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. NEW YORK THE ATHENAEUM SOCIETY INTRODUCTION. GREAT as are the ability and versatility manifested in Bulwer's previous works, it is by his descriptions of English life in modern times that he will be best remembered; and of all his novels, the Caxton series will undoubtedly live the longest and delight the largest circle of readers. In these stories, which mark an epoch in his literary career, he found a new field for the exhibition of all his varied powers, his acute observation, his vivid imagination, his hived wisdom of books, and especially his ripe charity and sympathy with the homebred feelings and simple sanctities of English domestic life. No works of the author have better stood the test of time than The Caxtons" and "My Novel." Although nearly half a century has passed since their first enthusiastic welcome by the public, they have lost none of their original charm. When the first of these works appeared anonymously in Blackwood's Magazine, few persons suspected the authorship. The great majority of readers and critics were confident that it could not have 258309 come from the same pen that had produced "Pelham," "Paul Clifford," and "Ernest Maltravers." The freshness, originality, and power of the story, and, above all, its utter freedom from sensationalism and sentimentality, were pointed to as triumphant proofs that it was the work of a new magician of the pen. Even to-day it is one of the enigmas of literature that the painful story of "Lucretia," so lacking in "those sweet and wholesome thoughts" which, in Bulwer's later romances, "nourish the human soul and refresh it when weary," should have preceded by so brief an interval this new and unexpected outburst of his genius. Did the consciousness of failure spur him to a nobler and more heroic effort; or was it by some flash of inspiration that he was led to discover and open up a richer vein of romance than he had hitherto worked? Whatever the cause, it is certain that all of the author's previous achievements, brilliant and unique as most of them were, were eclipsed by this later group of novels, the larger, mellower, and more finished pictures of an art which had purified itself of its native exaggeration. As a reviewer happily says: "Bulwer had been first among the magicians of a score of previous years; but now Bulwer was beaten by Lytton." What reader of "The Caxtons" can ever forget the delight with which he first hung over its pages? What a vivid picture of English life and manners, and especially of English domestic life, is here |