At page 194, vol. 1, we have this—“I am not what you seem to suppose—exactly a swindler, certainly not a robber.” Here, to make himself intelligible, the speaker should have repeated the words “I am not,” before “exactly.” As it stands, the sentence does not imply that “I am not exactly a swindler, &c.” but (if anything) that the person addressed, imagined me to be certainly not a robber but exactly a swindler—an implication which it was not intended to convey. Such awkwardness in a practised writer would be inconceivable, did we not refer in memory to that moral bias of which we have just spoken. Our readers will of course examine the English of “Night and Morning” for themselves. From the evidence of one or two sentences we cannot expect them to form a judgment in the premises. Dreading indeed the suspicion of unfairness, we had pencilled item after item for comment—but we have abandoned the task in despair. It would be an endless labor to proceed with examples. In fact it is folly to particularize where the blunders would be the rule, and the grammar the exception.
Sir Lytton has one desperate mannerism of which we would be glad to see him well rid—a fashion of beginning short sentences, after very long ones, with the phrase “So there,” or something equivalent, and this too, when there is no sequence in the matter to warrant the use of the word “So.” Thus, at page 136, vol. I,—“So there they sat on the cold stone, these two orphans;” at page 179,—“So there by the calm banks of the placid lake, the youngest born of Catharine passed his tranquil days,”—and just below, on the same page,—“So thus was he severed from both his protectors, Arthur and Philip;” and at page 241, vol. II,—“So there sat the old man,” &c. &c.—and in innumerable other instances throughout the work.
Among the _niäiseries_ of his style we may mention the coxcombical use of little French sentences, without the shadow of an excuse for their employment. At page 22, vol. 2, in the scene at the counterfeiter’s cellar, what can be more nonsensical than Gawtrey’s “_C’est juste; buvez donc, cher ami_,”—“_C’est juste; buvez donc, vieux rénard_,”—and “_Ce n’est pas vrai; buvez donc Monsieur Favart?_” Why should these platitudes be alone given in French, when it is obvious that the entire conversation was carried on in that tongue? And, again, when, at page 49, Fanny exclaims—“_Méchant_, every one dies to Fanny!”—why could not this heroine have as well confined herself to one language? At page 38, the climax of absurdity, in this respect, is fairly capped; and it is difficult to keep one’s countenance, when we read of a Parisian cobbler breathing his last in a garret, and screaming out “_Je m’étouffe_—Air!”