Part 39

'Pelham,' written at twenty-five years of age, is a creditable boy's book; it aims to portray character as well as to develop incidents, and in spite of the dreadful silliness of its melodramatic passages it has merit. Conventionally it is more nearly a work of art than that other famous boy's book, Disraeli's 'Vivian Grey,' though the latter is alive and blooming with the original literary charm which is denied to the other. Other characteristic novels of his are 'The Last Days of Pompeii,' 'Ernest Maltravers,' 'Zanoni,' 'The Caxtons,' 'My Novel,' 'What Will He Do with It?' 'A Strange Story,' 'The Coming Race,' and 'Kenelm Chillingly,' the last of which appeared in the year of the author's death, 1873. The student who has read these books will know all that is worth knowing of Bulwer's work. He wrote upwards of fifty substantial volumes, and left a mass of posthumous material besides. Of all that he did, the most nearly satisfactory thing is one of the last, 'Kenelm Chillingly.' In style, persons, and incidents it is alike charming: it subsides somewhat into the inevitable Bulwer sentimentality towards the end--a silk purse cannot be made out of a sow's ear; but the miracle was never nearer being accomplished than in this instance. Here we see the thoroughly equipped man of letters doing with apparent ease what scarce five of his contemporaries could have done at all. The book is lightsome and graceful, yet it touches serious thoughts: most remarkable of all, it shows a suppleness of mind and freshness of feeling more to be expected in a youth of thirty than in a veteran of threescore and ten. Bulwer never ceased to grow; and what is better still, to grow away from his faults and towards improvement.

But in comparing him with others, we must admit that he had better opportunities than most. His social station brought him in contact with the best people and most pregnant events of his time; and the driving poverty of youth having established him in the novel-writing habit, he thereafter had leisure to polish and expand his faculty to the utmost. No talent of his was folded up in a napkin: he did his best and utmost with all he had. Whereas the path of genius is commonly tortuous and hard-beset: and while we are always saying of Shakespeare, or Thackeray, or Shelley, or Keats, or Poe, "What wonders they would have done had life been longer or fate kinder to them!"--of Bulwer we say, "No help was wanting to him, and he profited by all; he got out of the egg more than we had believed was in it!" Instead of a great faculty hobbled by circumstance, we have a small faculty magnified by occasion and enriched by time.

Certainly, as men of letters go, Bulwer must be accounted fortunate. The long inflamed row of his domestic life apart, all things went his way. He received large sums for his books; at the age of forty, his mother dying, he succeeded to the Knebworth estate; three-and-twenty years later his old age (if such a man could be called old) was consoled by the title of Lord Lytton. His health was never robust, and occasionally failed; but he seems to have been able to accomplish after a fashion everything that he undertook; he was "thorough," as the English say. He lived in the midst of events; he was a friend of the men who made the age, and saw them make it, lending a hand himself too when and where he could. He lived long enough to see the hostility which had opposed him in youth die away, and honor and kindness take its place. Let it be repeated, his aims were good. He would have been candid and un-selfconscious had that been possible for him; and perhaps the failure was one of manner rather than of heart.--Yes, he was a fortunate man.

His most conspicuous success was as a play-writer. In view of his essentially dramatic and historic temperament, it is surprising that he did not altogether devote himself to this branch of art; but all his dramas were produced between his thirty-third and his thirty-eighth years. The first--'La Duchesse de la Valliere' was not to the public liking; but 'The Lady of Lyons,' written in two weeks, is in undiminished favor after near sixty years; and so are 'Richelieu' and 'Money.' There is no apparent reason why Bulwer should not have been as prolific a stage-author as Molière or even Lope de Vega. But we often value our best faculties least.

'The Coming Race,' published anonymously and never acknowledged during his life, was an unexpected product of his mind, but is useful to mark his limitations. It is a forecast of the future, and proves, as nothing else could so well do, the utter absence in Bulwer of the creative imagination. It is an invention, cleverly conceived, mechanically and rather tediously worked out, and written in a style astonishingly commonplace. The man who wrote that book (one would say) had no heaven in his soul, nor any pinions whereon to soar heavenward. Yet it is full of thought and ingenuity, and the central conception of "vrii" has been much commended. But the whole concoction is tainted with the deadness of stark materialism, and we should be unjust, after all, to deny Bulwer something loftier and broader than is discoverable here. In inventing the narrative he depended upon the weakest element in his mental make-up, and the result could not but be dismal. We like to believe that there was better stuff in him than he himself ever found; and that when he left this world for the next, he had sloughed off more dross than most men have time to accumulate.

[Illustration: Signature:]

THE AMPHITHEATRE

From 'The Last Days of Pompeii'

On the upper tier (but apart from the male spectators) sat the women, their gay dresses resembling some gaudy flowerbed; it is needless to add that they were the most talkative part of the assembly; and many were the looks directed up to them, especially from the benches appropriated to the young and the unmarried men. On the lower seats round the arena sat the more high-born and wealthy visitors--the magistrates and those of senatorial or equestrian dignity: the passages which, by corridors at the right and left, gave access to these seats, at either end of the oval arena, were also the entrances for the combatants. Strong palings at these passages prevented any unwelcome eccentricity in the movements of the beasts, and confined them to their appointed prey. Around the parapet which was raised above the arena, and from which the seats gradually rose, were gladiatorial inscriptions, and paintings wrought in fresco, typical of the entertainments for which the place was designed. Throughout the whole building wound invisible pipes, from which, as the day advanced, cooling and fragrant showers were to be sprinkled over the spectators. The officers of the amphitheatre were still employed in the task of fixing the vast awning (or _velaria_) which covered the whole, and which luxurious invention the Campanians arrogated to themselves: it was woven of the whitest Apulian wool, and variegated with broad stripes of crimson. Owing either to some inexperience on the part of the workmen or to some defect in the machinery, the awning, however, was not arranged that day so happily as usual; indeed, from the immense space of the circumference, the task was always one of great difficulty and art--so much so that it could seldom be adventured in rough or windy weather. But the present day was so remarkably still that there seemed to the spectators no excuse for the awkwardness of the artificers; and when a large gap in the back of the awning was still visible, from the obstinate refusal of one part of the velaria to ally itself with the rest, the murmurs of discontent were loud and general.

The sedile Pansa, at whose expense the exhibition was given, looked

## particularly annoyed at the defect, and vowed bitter vengeance on the

head of the chief officer of the show, who, fretting, puffing, perspiring, busied himself in idle orders and unavailing threats.

The hubbub ceased suddenly--the operators desisted--the crowd were stilled--the gap was forgotten--for now, with a loud and warlike flourish of trumpets, the gladiators, marshaled in ceremonious procession, entered the arena. They swept round the oval space very slowly and deliberately, in order to give the spectators full leisure to admire their stern serenity of feature--their brawny limbs and various arms, as well as to form such wagers as the excitement of the moment might suggest.

"Oh!" cried the widow Fulvia to the wife of Pansa, as they leaned down from their lofty bench, "do you see that gigantic gladiator? how drolly he is dressed!"

"Yes," said the aedile's wife with complacent importance, for she knew all the names and qualities of each combatant: "he is a retiarius or netter; he is armed only, you see, with a three-pronged spear like a trident, and a net; he wears no armor, only the fillet and the tunic. He is a mighty man, and is to fight with Sporus, yon thick-set gladiator, with the round shield and drawn sword but without body armor; he has not his helmet on now, in order that you may see his face--how fearless it is! By-and-by he will fight with his visor down."

"But surely a net and a spear are poor arms against a shield and sword?"

"That shows how innocent you are, my dear Fulvia: the retiarius has generally the best of it."

"But who is yon handsome gladiator, nearly naked--is it not quite improper? By Venus! but his limbs are beautifully shaped!"

"It is Lydon, a young untried man! he has the rashness to fight yon other gladiator similarly dressed, or rather undressed--Tetraides. They fight first in the Greek fashion, with the cestus; afterward they put on armor, and try sword and shield."

"He is a proper man, this Lydon; and the women, I am sure, are on his side."

"So are not the experienced bettors: Clodius offers three to one against him."

"Oh, Jove! how beautiful!" exclaimed the widow, as two gladiators, armed _cap-à-pie,_ rode round the arena on light and prancing steeds. Resembling much the combatants in the tilts of the middle age, they bore lances and round shields beautifully inlaid; their armor was woven intricately with bands of iron, but it covered only the thighs and the right arms; short cloaks extending to the seat gave a picturesque and graceful air to their costume; their legs were naked with the exception of sandals, which were fastened a little above the ankle. "Oh, beautiful! Who are these?" asked the widow.

"The one is named Berbix: he has conquered twelve times. The other assumes the arrogant Nobilior. They are both Gauls."

While thus conversing, the first formalities of the show were over. To these succeeded a feigned combat with wooden swords between the various gladiators matched against each other. Among these the skill of two Roman gladiators, hired for the occasion, was the most admired; and next to them the most graceful combatant was Lydon. This sham contest did not last above an hour, nor did it attract any very lively interest except among those connoisseurs of the arena to whom art was preferable to more coarse excitement; the body of the spectators were rejoiced when it was over, and when the sympathy rose to terror. The combatants were now arranged in pairs, as agreed beforehand; their weapons examined; and the grave sports of the day commenced amid the deepest silence--broken only by an exciting and preliminary blast of warlike music.

It was often customary to begin the sports by the most cruel of all; and some bestiarius, or gladiator appointed to the beasts, was slain first as an initiatory sacrifice. But in the present instance the experienced Pansa thought better that the sanguinary drama should advance, not decrease, in interest; and accordingly the execution of Olinthus and Glaucus was reserved for the last. It was arranged that the two horsemen should first occupy the arena; that the foot gladiators, paired off, should then be loosed indiscriminately on the stage; that Glaucus and the lion should next perform their part in the bloody spectacle; and the tiger and the Nazarene be the grand finale. And in the spectacles of Pompeii, the reader of Roman history must limit his imagination, nor expect to find those vast and wholesale exhibitions of magnificent slaughter with which a Nero or a Caligula regaled the inhabitants of the Imperial City. The Roman shows, which absorbed the more celebrated gladiators and the chief proportion of foreign beasts, were indeed the very reason why in the lesser towns of the empire the sports of the amphitheatre were comparatively humane and rare; and in this as in other respects, Pompeii was the miniature, the microcosm of Rome. Still, it was an awful and imposing spectacle, with which modern times have, happily, nothing to compare; a vast theatre, rising row upon row, and swarming with human beings, from fifteen to eighteen thousand in number, intent upon no fictitious representation--no tragedy of the stage--but the actual victory or defeat, the exultant life or the bloody death, of each and all who entered the arena!

The two horsemen were now at either extremity of the lists (if so they might be called), and at a given signal from Pansa the combatants started simultaneously as in full collision, each advancing his round buckler, each poising on high his sturdy javelin; but just when within three paces of his opponent, the steed of Berbix suddenly halted, wheeled round, and, as Nobilior was borne rapidly by, his antagonist spurred upon him. The buckler of Nobilior, quickly and skillfully extended, received a blow which otherwise would have been fatal.

"Well done, Nobilior!" cried the prætor, giving the first vent to the popular excitement.

"Bravely struck, my Berbix!" answered Clodius from his seat.

And the wild murmur, swelled by many a shout, echoed from side to side.

The visors of both the horsemen were completely closed (like those of the knights in after times), but the head was nevertheless the great point of assault; and Nobilior, now wheeling his charger with no less adroitness than his opponent, directed his spear full on the helmet of his foe. Berbix raised his buckler to shield himself, and his quick-eyed antagonist, suddenly lowering his weapon, pierced him through the breast. Berbix reeled and fell.

"Nobilior! Nobilior!" shouted the populace.

"I have lost ten sestertia," said Clodius, between his teeth.

"_Habet_!" (He has it) said Pansa deliberately.

The populace, not yet hardened into cruelty, made the signal of mercy: but as the attendants of the arena approached, they found the kindness came too late; the heart of the Gaul had been pierced, and his eyes were set in death. It was his life's blood that flowed so darkly over the sand and sawdust of the arena.

"It is a pity it was so soon over--there was little enough for one's trouble," said the widow Fulvia.

"Yes--I have no compassion for Berbix. Any one might have seen that Nobilior did but feint. Mark, they fix the fatal hook to the body--they drag him away to the spoliarium--they scatter new sand over the stage! Pansa regrets nothing more than that he is not rich enough to strew the arena with borax and cinnabar, as Nero used to do."

"Well, if it has been a brief battle, it is quickly succeeded. See my handsome Lydon on the arena--ay, and the net-bearer too, and the swordsmen! Oh, charming!"

There were now on the arena six combatants: Niger and his net, matched against Sporus with his shield and his short broad-sword; Lydon and Tetraides, naked save by a cincture round the waist, each armed only with a heavy Greek cestus; and two gladiators from Rome, clad in complete steel, and evenly matched with immense bucklers and pointed swords.

The initiatory contest between Lydon and Tetraides being less deadly than that between the other combatants, no sooner had they advanced to the middle of the arena than as by common consent the rest held back, to see how that contest should be decided, and wait till fiercer weapons might replace the cestus ere they themselves commenced hostilities. They stood leaning on their arms and apart from each other, gazing on the show, which, if not bloody enough thoroughly to please the populace, they were still inclined to admire because its origin was of their ancestral Greece.

No persons could at first glance have seemed less evenly matched than the two antagonists. Tetraides, though no taller than Lydon, weighed considerably more; the natural size of his muscles was increased, to the eyes of the vulgar, by masses of solid flesh; for, as it was a notion that the contest of the cestus fared easiest with him who was plumpest, Tetraides had encouraged to the utmost his hereditary predisposition to the portly. His shoulders were vast, and his lower limbs thick-set, double-jointed, and slightly curved outward, in that formation which takes so much from beauty to give so largely to strength. But Lydon, except that he was slender even almost to meagreness, was beautifully and delicately proportioned; and the skillful might have perceived that with much less compass of muscle than his foe, that which he had was more seasoned--iron and compact. In proportion, too, as he wanted flesh, he was likely to possess activity; and a haughty smile on his resolute face, which strongly contrasted with the solid heaviness of his enemy's, gave assurance to those who beheld it and united their hope to their pity; so that despite the disparity of their seeming strength, the cry of the multitude was nearly as loud for Lydon as for Tetraides.

Whoever is acquainted with the modern prize-ring--whoever has witnessed the heavy and disabling strokes which the human fist, skillfully directed, hath the power to bestow--may easily understand how much that happy facility would be increased by a band carried by thongs of leather round the arm as high as the elbow, and terribly strengthened about the knuckles by a plate of iron, and sometimes a plummet of lead. Yet this, which was meant to increase, perhaps rather diminished, the interest of the fray; for it necessarily shortened its duration. A very few blows, successfully and scientifically planted, might suffice to bring the contest to a close; and the battle did not, therefore, often allow full scope for the energy, fortitude, and dogged perseverance that we technically style _pluck_, which not unusually wins the day against superior science, and which heightens to so painful a delight the interest in the battle and the sympathy for the brave.

"Guard thyself!" growled Tetraides, moving nearer and nearer to his foe, who rather shifted round him than receded.

Lydon did not answer, save by a scornful glance of his quick, vigilant eye. Tetraides struck--it was as the blow of a smith on a vise; Lydon sank suddenly on one knee--the blow passed over his head. Not so harmless was Lydon's retaliation; he quickly sprang to his feet, and aimed his cestus full on the broad chest of his antagonist. Tetraides reeled--the populace shouted.

"You are unlucky to-day," said Lepidus to Clodius: "you have lost one bet; you will lose another."

"By the gods! my bronzes go to the auctioneer if that is the case. I have no less than a hundred sestertia upon Tetraides. Ha, ha! see how he rallies! That was a home stroke: he has cut open Lydon's shoulder.--A Tetraides!--a Tetraides!"

"But Lydon is not disheartened. By Pollux! how well he keeps his temper! See how dextrously he avoids those hammer-like hands!--dodging now here, now there--circling round and round. Ah, poor Lydon! he has it again."

"Three to one still on Tetraides! What say you, Lepidus?"

"Well--nine sestertia to three--be it so! What! again Lydon. He stops--he gasps for breath. By the gods, he is down! No--he is again on his legs. Brave Lydon! Tetraides is encouraged--he laughs loud--he rushes on him."

"Fool--success blinds him--he should be cautious. Lydon's eye is like a lynx's!" said Clodius, between his teeth.

"Ha, Clodius! saw you that? Your man totters! Another blow--he falls--he falls!"

"Earth revives him then. He is once more up; but the blood rolls down his face."

"By the Thunderer! Lydon wins it. See how he presses on him! That blow on the temple would have crushed an ox! it _has_ crushed Tetraides. He falls again--he cannot move--_habet_!--_habet_!"

"_Habet_!" repeated Pansa. "Take them out and give them the armor and swords." ...

While the contest in the amphitheatre had thus commenced, there was one in the loftier benches for whom it had assumed indeed a poignant, a stifling interest. The aged father of Lydon, despite his Christian horror of the spectacle, in his agonized anxiety for his son had not been able to resist being the spectator of his fate. Once amid a fierce crowd of strangers, the lowest rabble of the populace, the old man saw, felt nothing but the form, the presence of his brave son! Not a sound had escaped his lips when twice he had seen him fall to the earth; only he had turned paler, and his limbs trembled. But he had uttered one low cry when he saw him victorious; unconscious, alas! of the more fearful battle to which that victory was but a prelude.

"My gallant boy!" said he, and wiped his eyes.

"Is he thy son?" said a brawny fellow to the right of the Nazarene: "he has fought well; let us see how he does by-and-by. Hark! he is to fight the first victor. Now, old boy, pray the gods that that victor be neither of the Romans! nor, next to them, the giant Niger."

The old man sat down again and covered his face. The fray for the moment was indifferent to him--Lydon was not one of the combatants. Yet, yet, the thought flashed across him--the fray was indeed of deadly interest--the first who fell was to make way for Lydon! He started, and bent down, with straining eyes and clasped hands, to view the encounter.

The first interest was attracted toward the combat of Niger with Sporus; for this spectacle of contest, from the fatal result which usually attended it, and from the great science it required in either antagonist, was always peculiarly inviting to the spectators.

They stood at a considerable distance from each other. The singular helmet which Sporus wore (the visor of which was down) concealed his face; but the features of Niger attracted a fearful and universal interest from their compressed and vigilant ferocity. Thus they stood for some moments, each eying each, until Sporus began slowly and with great caution to advance, holding his sword pointed, like a modern fencer's, at the breast of his foe. Niger retreated as his antagonist advanced, gathering up his net with his right hand and never taking his small, glittering eye from the movements of the swordsman. Suddenly, when Sporus had approached nearly at arm's length, the retiarius threw himself forward and cast his net. A quick inflection of body saved the gladiator from the deadly snare; he uttered a sharp cry of joy and rage and rushed upon Niger; but Niger had already drawn in his net, thrown it across his shoulders, and now fled around the lists with a swiftness which the _secutor_[6] in vain endeavored to equal. The people laughed and shouted aloud to see the ineffectual efforts of the broad-shouldered gladiator to overtake the flying giant; when at that moment their attention was turned from these to the two Roman combatants.