for verse in 1825. After leaving the university his first published work was a volume of poems.

Soon after leaving the university, Bulwer contracted an imprudent marriage with an Irish beauty named Rosina Wheeler. His mother opposed the alliance and cut down his allowance to two hundred pounds a year-an income upon which he could not live even as a single man, his tastes and habits being very expensive. There was nothing to be done therefore but to take up literature as a calling, and he commenced writing with the utmost industry. His first novel and his first play were failures, but in his lexicon there was no such word as fail, and in 1828 "Pelham " appeared. It became the most popular novel of the day. A friend said to him: "I had no idea, Bulwer, that you had it in you to write such a book." To which he replied: "No man knows what he can do till he tries," a maxim that Bulwer made the corner stone of his success. He never knew what he could do till he tried, and he never was satisfied with a single trial. He kept at work until he achieved his ideal.

In that volume of essays, which he entitled "Caxtoniana," a most delightful volume, written somewhat late in life, in which he sums up his experiences in life, he sets down many of the rules

!

he seems to have followed, and they are worthy of quotation and imitation. In fact, the young man just setting out in life, who will practice Bulwer's maxims, will not fall far short of acconiplishing Bulwer's success. A few of them are

here given:

To find what you seek in the road of life, the best proverb of all is that which says, "Leave no stone unturned."

When you are engaged in any undertaking in which success depends partly on skill and partly on luck, always presuppose that the luck may go against you, for that presupposition redoubles all your efforts to obtain the advantages that belong to skill. Hope nothing from luck, and the probability is that you will be so prepared, forewarned, and forearmed, that all shallow observers will call you lucky. Before you commence anything, provide as if all hope were against you. When you set about it, act as if there were not such a thing as fear. When you have taken all the precautions as to skill in the circumstances against which you can provide, dismiss from consideration all circumstances dependent on luck which you cannot control. When you can't choose your ground it is "Forward and St. George! But look for no help from St. George unless you have taken the same pains he did in training his horse and his dogs before he fought with the dragon.

Consider within yourself what it is you really covet! What it is that constitutes such a want, whether in your intellectual or moral being, as you must more or less satisfy or your whole life will be one regret? Is it for something that must be won through competition with those who, in Academe, Forum, or Mart, do the business of this world, or

through a superior grace in the attitude you assume among its idlers? The one object necessitates labor, the other is best gained by ease. Take your choice-do not seek to unite life's business with life's holiday. Each may have place in turn; but remember that the business leads to distinction and the holiday away from it.

He is seldom overworked who can contrive to be in advance of his work. If you have three weeks before you to learn something which a man of average quickness could learn in a week, learn it the first week and not the third. Business dispatched is business well done, but business hurried is business ill done.

These are but a sample of the practical sayings on life and its objects that may be found scattered all through Bulwer's works, particularly in his essays and later novels.

"Pelham" was followed by "Devereux" and the "Disowned," both written before he was twenty-six. He also became the editor of Colburn's New Monthly, succeeding Tom Campbell in that position. His domestic life proved unhappy after love's young dream had passed. That story has long been before the world in his wife's book, which, though exaggerated, is substantially true. Her tongue exasperated him and he beat her. It is a sordid tale. They separated, but were never divorced. The late Earl Lytton (Owen. Meredith) was their only child.

Bulwer wrote many novels, and all had success,

but those which are known as the Caxton series are undoubtedly the best. "The Caxtons,"

My Novel; or, Varieties of English Life," and "What Will He Do With It" show his highest flight, and in respect to plot, artistic merit, and literary finish are unequaled in the language. The reader who cannot become absorbed in these is hard to please.

Two of his plays were equally successful, and "Richelieu" and "The Lady of Lyons " still hold the stage.

G. P. R. JAMES

(1801-1860.)

CONTEMPORARY with Bulwer-Lytton there was another writer almost as popular and still more prolific, whose novels may still be read with a considerable degree of pleasure by those interested in the literature of the past.

In these days when the annual output of novels -many of which are of a high degree of merit -is something tremendous, it is hard to understand the avidity with which our grandfathers, and particularly our grandmothers, looked forward to the publication of the next new novel. But there was a time when the production was not so plentiful, and when a novel by G. P. R. James was hailed with almost the same sort of acclaim as Scott had received in the earlier years of the past century. In fact, James was supposed to be the lineal successor of Sir Walter. He followed the great master in writing historical novels, and in 1822 he published "Richelieu," the first, as