In brief, while the drama of colloquy, vivacious and breathing of life, is well adopted into narration, the 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 endeavored 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 in 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 marriage is missing, and this individual turns up at last in the brother of that very Charles De Burgh Smith with whom so perfectly accidental an intimacy has already been established. The wronged heir proceeds at random to look for a lawyer, and stumbles at once upon the precise one who had figured before in the story, and who knows all about previous investigations. Setting out in search of Liancourt, the first person he sees is that gentleman himself. Entering a horse-bazaar in a remote portion of the country, the steed up for sale at the exact moment of his entrance is recognised as the pet of his better days. Now our quarrel with these coincidences is not that they sometimes, but that they everlastingly occur, and that nothing occurs besides. We find no fault with Philip for chancing, at the identically proper moment, upon the identical men, women, and horses necessary for his own ends and the ends of the story—but we do think it excessively hard that he should _never happen upon anything else_.