drama of action and passion will always prove, when employed beyond due limits, a source of embarrassment to the narrator, and it can afford him, at best, nothing which he does not already possess in full force. We have spoken upon this head much at length ; for we remember that, in some preface to one of his previous novels (some preface in which he endeavoured to pre-reason and pre-coax us into admiration of what was to follow—a bad practice), Mr. Bulwer was at great pains to insist upon the peculiar merits of what he even then termed the dramatic conduct of his story. The simple truth was that, then, as now, he had merely concentrated into his book all the necessary evils of the stage.
Giving up his attention to the one point upon which we have commented, our novelist has failed to do himself justice in others. The overstrained effort at perfection of plot has seduced him into absurd sacrifices of verisimilitude, as regards the connexion of his dramatis personæ each with each and each with the main events. However incidental be the appearance of any personage upon the stage, this personage is sure to be linked in, will I nill I, with the matters in hand. Philip, on the stage coach, for example, converses with but one individual, William Gawtrey; yet this man's fate (not subsequently but previously) is interwoven into that of Philip himself, through the latter's relationship to Lilburne. The hero goes to his mother's grave, and there comes into contact with this Gawtrey's father. He meets Fanny, and Fanny happens to be also involved in his destiny (a pet word, conveying a pet idea of the author's) through her relationship to Lilburne. The witness in the case of his mother's
