From this abortive renaissance there remain one reputation and three plays. The three plays are _The Lady of Lyons_, _Richelieu_, and _Money_; the reputation is that of Bulwer, the first Lord Lytton. Bulwer passed himself off as a _grand seigneur_ and a genius; he was really but a clever man and a dandy, who exploited literature for his social advancement. He affected a lofty originality, but his talents were mostly imitative. His chief gift, almost entirely wanting in his books, but very notable in his life, was what we call _finesse_. He took from the Byronian Satanism as much as England would put up with in 1840. He copied Victor Hugo secretly and discreetly. A sort of Gothic democrat, he managed at the same time to charm romantic youths and flatter the proletariat by pretending to hurl down that society in whose front rank he aspired to take his place. His novels were terribly long-winded, but there are generations which find such a quality to their taste. When at last it was discovered that his sublimity was a spurious sublimity, that his history was false history, his "middle-ages" bric-a-brac, his poetry mere rhetoric, his democracy a farce, his human heart a heart that had never beat in a man's breast, his books mere windy bladders,--why, it was too late! The game had been played successfully and was over--the squireen of Knebworth, the self-styled descendant of the Vikings, had founded a family and hooked a peerage.
He had an eye for all the popular causes which were to be served--and were likely to be of service. When there was talk of reforming the drama, he at once came to the front and took the lead. He was the heart and soul of the Commission of 1832. He was one of those who came to the support of Macready in 1838. It was to this end he wrote _The Lady of Lyons_ (without putting his name to it at first).
This is a literary melodrama; a detestable combination, for melodrama, considered either as a variation from drama proper or as a separate type, is not to be raised to the dignity of literature by the veneering of it with a thin layer of poetry. This operation does but produce wild and violent incongruities. In the first act of _The Lady of Lyons_, Madame Deschappelles is a Palais Royal _Maman_. Only a Palais Royal _Maman_, and only one of the most pronounced of them at that, could imagine she would become a dowager princess by marrying her daughter to a prince. Pauline belongs to the same repertory. What are one's feelings, then, on hearing tragic verses from her lips in the third act and seeing her compete with Imogene and Griselda in the sublimity (and absurdity) of her self-sacrifice! In the fourth act she has resumed something of her natural temperament--the temperament of a prim and tedious governess.