THE LAST OF THE BARONS
by Edward Bulwer Lytton
DEDICATORY EPISTLE.
I dedicate to you, my indulgent Critic and long-tried Friend, the work
which owes its origin to your suggestion. Long since, you urged me to
attempt a fiction which might borrow its characters from our own
Records, and serve to illustrate some of those truths which History is
too often compelled to leave to the Tale-teller, the Dramatist, and
the Poet. Unquestionably, Fiction, when aspiring to something higher
than mere romance, does not pervert, but elucidate Facts. He who
employs it worthily must, like a biographer, study the time and the
characters he selects, with a minute and earnest diligence which the
general historian, whose range extends over centuries, can scarcely be
expected to bestow upon the things and the men of a single epoch. His
descriptions should fill up with colour and detail the cold outlines
of the rapid chronicler; and in spite of all that has been argued by
pseudo-critics, the very fancy which urged and animated his theme
should necessarily tend to increase the reader's practical and
familiar acquaintance with the habits, the motives, and the modes of
thought which constitute the true idiosyncrasy of an age. More than
all, to Fiction is permitted that liberal use of Analogical Hypothesis
which is denied to History, and which, if sobered by research, and
enlightened by that knowledge of mankind (without which Fiction can
neither harm nor profit, for it becomes unreadable), tends to clear up
much that were otherwise obscure, and to solve the disputes and
difficulties of contradictory evidence by the philosophy of the human
heart.
My own impression of the greatness of the labour to which you invited
me made me the more diffident of success, inasmuch as the field of
English historical fiction had been so amply cultivated, not only by
the most brilliant of our many glorious Novelists, but by later
writers of high and merited reputation. But however the annals of our
History have been exhausted by the industry of romance, the subject
you finally pressed on my choice is unquestionably one which, whether
in the delineation of character, the expression of passion, or the
suggestion of historical truths, can hardly fail to direct the
Novelist to paths wholly untrodden by his predecessors in the Land of
Fiction.
Encouraged by you, I commenced my task; encouraged by you, I venture,
on concluding it, to believe that, despite the partial adoption of
that established compromise between the modern and the elder diction,
which Sir Walter Scott so artistically improved from the more rugged
phraseology employed by Strutt, and which later writers have perhaps
somewhat overhackneyed, I may yet have avoided all material trespass
upon ground which others have already redeemed from the waste.
Whatever the produce of the soil I have selected, I claim, at least,
to have cleared it with my own labour, and ploughed it with my own
heifer.
The reign of Edward IV. is in itself suggestive of new considerations
and unexhausted interest to those who accurately regard it. Then
commenced the policy consummated by Henry VII.; then were broken up
the great elements of the old feudal order; a new Nobility was called
into power, to aid the growing Middle Class in its struggles with the
ancient; and in the fate of the hero of the age, Richard Nevile, Earl
of Warwick, popularly called the King-maker, "the greatest as well as
the last of those mighty Barons who formerly overawed the Crown,"
[Hume adds, "and rendered the people incapable of civil government,"--
a sentence which, perhaps, judges too hastily the whole question at
issue in our earlier history, between the jealousy of the barons and
the authority of the king.] was involved the very principle of our
existing civilization. It adds to the wide scope of Fiction, which
ever loves to explore the twilight, that, as Hume has truly observed,
"No part of English history since the Conquest is so obscure, so
uncertain, so little authentic or consistent, as that of the Wars
between the two Roses." It adds also to the importance of that
conjectural research in which Fiction may be made so interesting and
so useful, that "this profound darkness falls upon us just on the eve
of the restoration of letters;" [Hume] while amidst the gloom, we
perceive the movement of those great and heroic passions in which
Fiction finds delineations everlastingly new, and are brought in
contact with characters sufficiently familiar for interest,
sufficiently remote for adaptation to romance, and above all, so
frequently obscured by contradictory evidence, that we lend ourselves
willingly to any one who seeks to help our judgment of the individual
by tests taken from the general knowledge of mankind.
Round the great image of the "Last of the Barons" group Edward the
Fourth, at once frank and false; the brilliant but ominous boyhood of
Richard the Third; the accomplished Hastings, "a good knight and
gentle, but somewhat dissolute of living;" [Chronicle of Edward V., in
Stowe] the vehement and fiery Margaret of Anjou; the meek image of her
"holy Henry," and the pale shadow of their son. There may we see,
also, the gorgeous Prelate, refining in policy and wile, as the
enthusiasm and energy which had formerly upheld the Ancient Church
pass into the stern and persecuted votaries of the New; we behold, in
that social transition, the sober Trader--outgrowing the prejudices of
the rude retainer or rustic franklin, from whom he is sprung--
recognizing sagaciously, and supporting sturdily, the sectarian
interests of his order, and preparing the way for the mighty Middle
Class, in which our Modern Civilization, with its faults and its
merits, has established its stronghold; while, in contrast to the
measured and thoughtful notions of liberty which prudent Commerce
entertains, we are reminded of the political fanaticism of the secret
Lollard,--of the jacquerie of the turbulent mob-leader; and perceive,
amidst the various tyrannies of the time, and often partially allied
with the warlike seignorie, [For it is noticeable that in nearly all
the popular risings--that of Cade, of Robin of Redesdale, and
afterwards of that which Perkin Warbeck made subservient to his
extraordinary enterprise--the proclamations of the rebels always
announced, among their popular grievances, the depression of the
ancient nobles and the elevation of new men.]--ever jealous against
all kingly despotism,--the restless and ignorant movement of a
democratic principle, ultimately suppressed, though not destroyed,
under the Tudors, by the strong union of a Middle Class, anxious for
security and order, with an Executive Authority determined upon
absolute sway.
Nor should we obtain a complete and comprehensive view of that most
interesting Period of Transition, unless we saw something of the
influence which the sombre and sinister wisdom of Italian policy began
to exercise over the councils of the great,--a policy of refined
stratagem, of complicated intrigue, of systematic falsehood, of
ruthless, but secret violence; a policy which actuated the fell
statecraft of Louis XI.; which darkened, whenever he paused to think
and to scheme, the gaudy and jovial character of Edward IV.; which
appeared in its fullest combination of profound guile and resolute
will in Richard III.; and, softened down into more plausible and
specious purpose by the unimpassioned sagacity of Henry VII., finally
attained the object which justified all its villanies to the princes
of its native land,--namely, the tranquillity of a settled State, and
the establishment of a civilized but imperious despotism.
Again, in that twilight time, upon which was dawning the great
invention that gave to Letters and to Science the precision and
durability of the printed page, it is interesting to conjecture what
would have been the fate of any scientific achievement for which the
world was less prepared. The reception of printing into England
chanced just at the happy period when Scholarship and Literature were
favoured by the great. The princes of York, with the exception of
Edward IV. himself, who had, however, the grace to lament his own want
of learning, and the taste to appreciate it in others, were highly
educated. The Lords Rivers and Hastings [The erudite Lord Worcester
had been one of Caxton's warmest patrons, but that nobleman was no
more at the time in which printing is said to have been actually
introduced into England.] were accomplished in all the "witte and
lere" of their age. Princes and peers vied with each other in their
patronage of Caxton, and Richard III., during his brief reign, spared
no pains to circulate to the utmost the invention destined to transmit
his own memory to the hatred and the horror of all succeeding time.
But when we look around us, we see, in contrast to the gracious and
fostering reception of the mere mechanism by which science is made
manifest, the utmost intolerance to science itself. The mathematics
in especial are deemed the very cabala of the black art. Accusations
of witchcraft were never more abundant; and yet, strange to say, those
who openly professed to practise the unhallowed science, [Nigromancy,
or Sorcery, even took its place amongst the regular callings. Thus,
"Thomas Vandyke, late of Cambridge," is styled (Rolls Parl. 6, p. 273)
Nigromancer as his profession.--Sharon Turner, "History of England,"
vol iv. p. 6. Burke, "History of Richard III."] and contrived to make
their deceptions profitable to some unworthy political purpose, appear
to have enjoyed safety, and sometimes even honour, while those who,
occupied with some practical, useful, and noble pursuits
uncomprehended by prince or people, denied their sorcery were
despatched without mercy. The mathematician and astronomer
Bolingbroke (the greatest clerk of his age) is hanged and quartered as
a wizard, while not only impunity but reverence seems to have awaited
a certain Friar Bungey, for having raised mists and vapours, which
greatly befriended Edward IV. at the battle of Barnet.
Our knowledge of the intellectual spirit of the age, therefore, only
becomes perfect when we contrast the success of the Impostor with the
fate of the true Genius. And as the prejudices of the populace ran
high against all mechanical contrivances for altering the settled
conditions of labour, [Even in the article of bonnets and hats, it
appears that certain wicked falling mills were deemed worthy of a
special anathema in the reign of Edward IV. These engines are accused
of having sought, "by subtle imagination," the destruction of the
original makers of hats and bonnets" by man's strength,--that is, with
hands and feet; "and an act of parliament was passed (22d of Edward
IV.) to put down the fabrication of the said hats and bonnets by
mechanical contrivance.] so probably, in the very instinct and destiny
of Genius which ever drive it to a war with popular prejudice, it
would be towards such contrivances that a man of great ingenuity and
intellect, if studying the physical sciences, would direct his
ambition.
Whether the author, in the invention he has assigned to his
philosopher (Adam Warner), has too boldly assumed the possibility of a
conception so much in advance of the time, they who have examined such
of the works of Roger Bacon as are yet given to the world can best
decide; but the assumption in itself belongs strictly to the most
acknowledged prerogatives of Fiction; and the true and important
question will obviously be, not whether Adam Warner could have
constructed his model, but whether, having so constructed it, the fate
that befell him was probable and natural.
Such characters as I have here alluded to seemed, then, to me, in
meditating the treatment of the high and brilliant subject which your
eloquence animated me to attempt, the proper Representatives of the
multiform Truths which the time of Warwick the King-maker affords to
our interests and suggests for our instruction; and I can only wish
that the powers of the author were worthier of the theme.
It is necessary that I now state briefly the foundation of the
Historical portions of this narrative. The charming and popular
"History of Hume," which, however, in its treatment of the reign of
Edward IV. is more than ordinarily incorrect, has probably left upon
the minds of many of my readers, who may not have directed their
attention to more recent and accurate researches into that obscure
period, an erroneous impression of the causes which led to the breach
between Edward IV. and his great kinsman and subject, the Earl of
Warwick. The general notion is probably still strong that it was the
marriage of the young king to Elizabeth Gray, during Warwick's
negotiations in France for the alliance of Bona of Savoy (sister-in-
law to Louis XI.), which exasperated the fiery earl, and induced his
union with the House of Lancaster. All our more recent historians
have justly rejected this groundless fable, which even Hume (his
extreme penetration supplying the defects of his superficial research)
admits with reserve. ["There may even some doubt arise with regard to
the proposal of marriage made to Bona of Savoy," etc.--HUME, note to
p. 222, vol. iii. edit. 1825.] A short summary of the reasons for
this rejection is given by Dr. Lingard, and annexed below. ["Many
writers tell us that the enmity of Warwick arose from his
disappointment caused by Edward's clandestine marriage with Elizabeth.
If we may believe them, the earl was at the very time in France
negotiating on the part of the king a marriage with Bona of Savoy,
sister to the Queen of France; and having succeeded in his mission,
brought back with him the Count of Dampmartin as ambassador from
Louis. To me the whole story appears a fiction. 1. It is not to be
found in the more ancient historians. 2. Warwick was not at the time
in France. On the 20th of April, ten days before the marriage, he was
employed in negotiating a truce with the French envoys in London (Rym.
xi. 521), and on the 26th of May, about three weeks after it, was
appointed to treat of another truce with the King of Scots (Rym. xi.
424). 3. Nor could he bring Dampmartin with him to England; for that
nobleman was committed a prisoner to the Bastile in September, 1463,
and remained there till May, 1465 (Monstrel. iii. 97, 109). Three
contemporary and well-informed writers, the two continuators of the
History of Croyland and Wyrcester, attribute his discontent to the
marriages and honours granted to the Wydeviles, and the marriage of
the princess Margaret with the Duke of Burgundy."--LINGARD, vol. iii.
c. 24, pp. 5, 19, 4to ed.] And, indeed, it is a matter of wonder that
so many of our chroniclers could have gravely admitted a legend
contradicted by all the subsequent conduct of Warwick himself; for we
find the earl specially doing honour to the publication of Edward's
marriage, standing godfather to his first-born (the Princess
Elizabeth), employed as ambassador or acting as minister, and fighting
for Edward, and against the Lancastrians, during the five years that
elapsed between the coronation of Elizabeth and Warwick's rebellion.
The real causes of this memorable quarrel, in which Warwick acquired
his title of King-maker, appear to have been these.
It is probable enough, as Sharon Turner suggests, [Sharon Turner:
History of England, vol. iii. p. 269.] that Warwick was disappointed
that, since Edward chose a subject for his wife, he neglected the more
suitable marriage he might have formed with the earl's eldest
daughter; and it is impossible but that the earl should have been
greatly chafed, in common with all his order, by the promotion of the
queen's relations, [W. Wyr. 506, 7. Croyl. 542.] new men and apostate
Lancastrians. But it is clear that these causes for discontent never
weakened his zeal for Edward till the year 1467, when we chance upon
the true origin of the romance concerning Bona of Savoy, and the first
open dissension between Edward and the earl.
In that year Warwick went to France, to conclude an alliance with
Louis XI., and to secure the hand of one of the French princes [Which
of the princes this was does not appear, and can scarcely be
conjectured. The "Pictorial History of England" (Book v. 102) in a
tone of easy decision says "it was one of the sons of Louis XI." But
Louis had no living sons at all at the time. The Dauphin was not born
till three years afterwards. The most probable person was the Duke of
Guienne, Louis's brother.] for Margaret, sister to Edward IV.; during
this period, Edward received the bastard brother of Charles, Count of
Charolois, afterwards Duke of Burgundy, and arranged a marriage
between Margaret and the count.
Warwick's embassy was thus dishonoured, and the dishonour was
aggravated by personal enmity to the bridegroom Edward had preferred.
[The Croyland Historian, who, as far as his brief and meagre record
extends, is the best authority for the time of Edward IV., very
decidedly states the Burgundian alliance to be the original cause of
Warwick's displeasure, rather than the king's marriage with Elizabeth:
"Upon which (the marriage of Margaret with Charolois) Richard Nevile,
Earl of Warwick, who had for so many years taken party with the French
against the Burgundians, conceived great indignation; and I hold this
to be the truer cause of his resentment than the king's marriage with
Elizabeth, for he had rather have procured a husband for the aforesaid
princess Margaret in the kingdom of France." The Croyland Historian
also speaks emphatically of the strong animosity existing between
Charolois and Warwick.--Cont. Croyl. 551.] The earl retired in
disgust to his castle. But Warwick's nature, which Hume has happily
described as one of "undesigning frankness and openness," [Hume,
"Henry VI.," vol. iii. p. 172, edit. 1825.] does not seem to have long
harboured this resentment. By the intercession of the Archbishop of
York and others, a reconciliation was effected, and the next year,
1468, we find Warwick again in favour, and even so far forgetting his
own former cause of complaint as to accompany the procession in honour
of Margaret's nuptials with his private foe. [Lingard.] In the
following year, however, arose the second dissension between the king
and his minister,--namely, in the king's refusal to sanction the
marriage of his brother Clarence with the earl's daughter Isabel,--a
refusal which was attended with a resolute opposition that must
greatly have galled the pride of the earl, since Edward even went so
far as to solicit the Pope to refuse his sanction, on the ground of
relationship. [Carte. Wm. Wyr.] The Pope, nevertheless, grants the
dispensation, and the marriage takes place at Calais. A popular
rebellion then breaks out in England. Some of Warwick's kinsmen--
those, however, belonging to the branch of the Nevile family that had
always been Lancastrians, and at variance with the earl's party--are
found at its head. The king, who is in imminent danger, writes a
supplicating letter to Warwick to come to his aid. ["Paston Letters,"
cxcviii. vol. ii., Knight's ed. See Lingard, c. 24, for the true date
of Edward's letters to Warwick, Clarence, and the Archbishop of York.]
The earl again forgets former causes for resentment, hastens from
Calais, rescues the king, and quells the rebellion by the influence of
his popular name.
We next find Edward at Warwick's castle of Middleham, where, according
to some historians, he is forcibly detained,--an assertion treated by
others as a contemptible invention. This question will be examined in
the course of this work; [See Note II.] but whatever the true
construction of the story, we find that Warwick and the king are still
on such friendly terms, that the earl marches in person against a
rebellion on the borders, obtains a signal victory, and that the rebel
leader (the earl's own kinsman) is beheaded by Edward at York. We
find that, immediately after this supposed detention, Edward speaks of
Warwick and his brothers "as his best friends;" ["Paston Letters,"
cciv. vol. ii., Knight's ed. The date of this letter, which puzzled
the worthy annotator, is clearly to be referred to Edward's return
from York, after his visit to Middleham in 1469. No mention is
therein made by the gossiping contemporary of any rumour that Edward
had suffered imprisonment. He enters the city in state, as having
returned safe and victorious from a formidable rebellion. The letter
goes on to say: "The king himself hath (that is, holds) good language
of the Lords Clarence, of Warwick, etc., saying 'they be his best
friends.'" Would he say this if just escaped from a prison? Sir John
Paston, the writer of the letter, adds, it is true, "But his household
men have (hold) other language." very probably, for the household men
were the court creatures always at variance with Warwick, and held, no
doubt, the same language they had been in the habit of holding
before.] that he betroths his eldest daughter to Warwick's nephew, the
male heir of the family. And then suddenly, only three months
afterwards (in February, 1470), and without any clear and apparent
cause, we find Warwick in open rebellion, animated by a deadly hatred
to the king, refusing, from first to last, all overtures of
conciliation; and so determined is his vengeance, that he bows a
pride, hitherto morbidly susceptible, to the vehement insolence of
Margaret of Anjou, and forms the closest alliance with the Lancastrian
party, in the destruction of which his whole life had previously been
employed.
Here, then, where History leaves us in the dark, where our curiosity
is the most excited, Fiction gropes amidst the ancient chronicles, and
seeks to detect and to guess the truth. And then Fiction, accustomed
to deal with the human heart, seizes upon the paramount importance of
a Fact which the modern historian has been contented to place amongst
dubious and collateral causes of dissension. We find it broadly and
strongly stated by Hall and others, that Edward had coarsely attempted
the virtue of one of the earl's female relations. "And farther it
erreth not from the truth," says Hall, "that the king did attempt a
thing once in the earl's house, which was much against the earl's
honesty; but whether it was the daughter or the niece," adds the
chronicler, "was not, for both their honours, openly known; but surely
such a thing WAS attempted by King Edward," etc.
Any one at all familiar with Hall (and, indeed, with all our principal
chroniclers, except Fabyan), will not expect any accurate precision as
to the date he assigns for the outrage. He awards to it, therefore,
the same date he erroneously gives to Warwick's other grudges (namely,
a period brought some years lower by all judicious historians) a date
at which Warwick was still Edward's fastest friend.
Once grant the probability of this insult to the earl (the probability
is conceded at once by the more recent historians, and received
without scruple as a fact by Rapia, Habington, and Carte), and the
whole obscurity which involves this memorable quarrel vanishes at
once. Here was, indeed, a wrong never to be forgiven, and yet never
to be proclaimed. As Hall implies, the honour of the earl was
implicated in hushing the scandal, and the honour of Edward in
concealing the offence. That if ever the insult were attempted, it
must have been just previous to the earl's declared hostility is
clear. Offences of that kind hurry men to immediate action at the
first, or else, if they stoop to dissimulation the more effectually to
avenge afterwards, the outbreak bides its seasonable time. But the
time selected by the earl for his outbreak was the very worst he could
have chosen, and attests the influence of a sudden passion,--a new and
uncalculated cause of resentment. He had no forces collected; he had
not even sounded his own brother-in-law, Lord Stanley (since he was
uncertain of his intentions); while, but a few months before, had he
felt any desire to dethrone the king, he could either have suffered
him to be crushed by the popular rebellion the earl himself had
quelled, or have disposed of his person as he pleased when a guest at
his own castle of Middleham. His evident want of all preparation and
forethought--a want which drove into rapid and compulsory flight from
England the baron to whose banner, a few months afterwards, flocked
sixty thousand men--proves that the cause of his alienation was fresh
and recent.
If, then, the cause we have referred to, as mentioned by Hall and
others, seems the most probable we can find (no other cause for such
abrupt hostility being discernible), the date for it must be placed
where it is in this work,--namely, just prior to the earl's revolt.
The next question is, who could have been the lady thus offended,
whether a niece or daughter. Scarcely a niece, for Warwick had one
married brother, Lord Montagu, and several sisters; but the sisters
were married to lords who remained friendly to Edward, [Except the
sisters married to Lord Fitzhugh and Lord Oxford. But though
Fitzhugh, or rather his son, broke into rebellion, it was for some
cause in which Warwick did not sympathize, for by Warwick himself was
that rebellion put down; nor could the aggrieved lady have been a
daughter of Lord Oxford, for he was a stanch, though not avowed,
Lancastrian, and seems to have carefully kept aloof from the court.]
and Montagu seems to have had no daughter out of childhood, [Montagu's
wife could have been little more than thirty at the time of his death.
She married again, and had a family by her second husband.] while that
nobleman himself did not share Warwick's rebellion at the first, but
continued to enjoy the confidence of Edward. We cannot reasonably,
then, conceive the uncle to have been so much more revengeful than the
parents,--the legitimate guardians of the honour of a daughter. It
is, therefore, more probable that the insulted maiden should have been
one of Lord Warwick's daughters; and this is the general belief.
Carte plainly declares it was Isabel. But Isabel it could hardly have
been. She was then married to Edward's brother, the Duke of Clarence,
and within a month of her confinement. The earl had only one other
daughter, Anne, then in the flower of her youth; and though Isabel
appears to have possessed a more striking character of beauty, Anne
must have had no inconsiderable charms to have won the love of the
Lancastrian Prince Edward, and to have inspired a tender and human
affection in Richard Duke of Gloucester. [Not only does Majerus, the
Flemish annalist, speak of Richard's early affection to Anne, but
Richard's pertinacity in marrying her, at a time when her family was
crushed and fallen, seems to sanction the assertion. True, that
Richard received with her a considerable portion of the estates of her
parents. But both Anne herself and her parents were attainted, and
the whole property at the disposal of the Crown. Richard at that time
had conferred the most important services on Edward. He had remained
faithful to him during the rebellion of Clarence; he had been the hero
of the day both at Barnet and Tewksbury. His reputation was then
exceedingly high, and if he had demanded, as a legitimate reward, the
lands of Middleham, without the bride, Edward could not well have
refused them. He certainly had a much better claim than the only
other competitor for the confiscated estates,--namely, the perjured
and despicable Clarence. For Anne's reluctance to marry Richard, and
the disguise she assumed, see Miss Strickland's "Life of Anne of
Warwick." For the honour of Anne, rather than of Richard, to whose
memory one crime more or less matters but little, it may here be
observed that so far from there being any ground to suppose that
Gloucester was an accomplice in the assassination of the young prince
Edward of Lancaster, there is some ground to believe that that prince
was not assassinated at all, but died (as we would fain hope the
grandson of Henry V. did die) fighting manfully in the field.--
"Harleian Manuscripts;" Stowe, "Chronicle of Tewksbury;" Sharon
Turner, vol. iii. p. 335.] It is also noticeable, that when, not as
Shakspeare represents, but after long solicitation, and apparently by
positive coercion, Anne formed her second marriage, she seems to have
been kept carefully by Richard from his gay brother's court, and
rarely, if ever, to have appeared in London till Edward was no more.
That considerable obscurity should always rest upon the facts
connected with Edward's meditated crime,--that they should never be
published amongst the grievances of the haughty rebel is natural from
the very dignity of the parties, and the character of the offence;
that in such obscurity sober History should not venture too far on the
hypothesis suggested by the chronicler, is right and laudable. But
probably it will be conceded by all, that here Fiction finds its
lawful province, and that it may reasonably help, by no improbable nor
groundless conjecture, to render connected and clear the most broken
and the darkest fragments of our annals.
I have judged it better partially to forestall the interest of the
reader in my narrative, by stating thus openly what he may expect,
than to encounter the far less favourable impression (if he had been
hitherto a believer in the old romance of Bona of Savoy), [I say the
old romance of Bona of Savoy, so far as Edward's rejection of her hand
for that of Elizabeth Gray is stated to have made the cause of his
quarrel with Warwick. But I do not deny the possibility that such a
marriage had been contemplated and advised by Warwick, though he
neither sought to negotiate it, nor was wronged by Edward's preference
of his fair subject.] that the author was taking an unwarrantable
liberty with the real facts, when, in truth, it is upon the real
facts, as far as they can be ascertained, that the author has built
his tale, and his boldest inventions are but deductions from the
amplest evidence he could collect. Nay, he even ventures to believe,
that whoever hereafter shall write the history of Edward IV. will not
disdain to avail himself of some suggestions scattered throughout
these volumes, and tending to throw new light upon the events of that
intricate but important period.
It is probable that this work will prove more popular in its nature
than my last fiction of "Zanoni," which could only be relished by
those interested in the examinations of the various problems in human
life which it attempts to solve. But both fictions, however different
and distinct their treatment, are constructed on those principles of
art to which, in all my later works, however imperfect my success, I
have sought at least steadily to adhere.
To my mind, a writer should sit down to compose a fiction as a painter
prepares to compose a picture. His first care should be the
conception of a whole as lofty as his intellect can grasp, as
harmonious and complete as his art can accomplish; his second care,
the character of the interest which the details are intended to
sustain.
It is when we compare works of imagination in writing with works of
imagination on the canvas, that we can best form a critical idea of
the different schools which exist in each; for common both to the
author and the painter are those styles which we call the Familiar,
the Picturesque, and the Intellectual. By recurring to this
comparison we can, without much difficulty, classify works of Fiction
in their proper order, and estimate the rank they should severally
hold. The Intellectual will probably never be the most widely popular
for the moment. He who prefers to study in this school must be
prepared for much depreciation, for its greatest excellences, even if
he achieve them, are not the most obvious to the many. In discussing,
for instance, a modern work, we hear it praised, perhaps, for some
striking passage, some prominent character; but when do we ever hear
any comment on its harmony of construction, on its fulness of design,
on its ideal character,--on its essentials, in short, as a work of
art? What we hear most valued in the picture, we often find the most
neglected in the book,--namely, the composition; and this, simply
because in England painting is recognized as an art, and estimated
according to definite theories; but in literature we judge from a
taste never formed, from a thousand prejudices and ignorant
predilections. We do not yet comprehend that the author is an artist,
and that the true rules of art by which he should be tested are
precise and immutable. Hence the singular and fantastic caprices of
the popular opinion,--its exaggerations of praise or censure, its
passion and reaction. At one while, its solemn contempt for
Wordsworth; at another, its absurd idolatry. At one while we are
stunned by the noisy celebrity of Byron, at another we are calmly told
that he can scarcely be called a poet. Each of these variations in
the public is implicitly followed by the vulgar criticism; and as a
few years back our journals vied with each other in ridiculing
Wordsworth for the faults which he did not possess, they vie now with
each other in eulogiums upon the merits which he has never displayed.
These violent fluctuations betray both a public and a criticism
utterly unschooled in the elementary principles of literary art, and
entitle the humblest author to dispute the censure of the hour, while
they ought to render the greatest suspicious of its praise.
It is, then, in conformity, not with any presumptuous conviction of
his own superiority, but with his common experience and common-sense,
that every author who addresses an English audience in serious earnest
is permitted to feel that his final sentence rests not with the jury
before which he is first heard. The literary history of the day
consists of a series of judgments set aside.
But this uncertainty must more essentially betide every student,
however lowly, in the school I have called the Intellectual, which
must ever be more or less at variance with the popular canons. It is
its hard necessity to vex and disturb the lazy quietude of vulgar
taste; for unless it did so, it could neither elevate nor move. He
who resigns the Dutch art for the Italian must continue through the
dark to explore the principles upon which he founds his design, to
which he adapts his execution; in hope or in despondence still
faithful to the theory which cares less for the amount of interest
created than for the sources from which the interest is to be drawn;
seeking in action the movement of the grander passions or the subtler
springs of conduct, seeking in repose the colouring of intellectual
beauty.
The Low and the High of Art are not very readily comprehended. They
depend not upon the worldly degree or the physical condition of the
characters delineated; they depend entirely upon the quality of the
emotion which the characters are intended to excite,--namely, whether
of sympathy for something low, or of admiration for something high.
There is nothing high in a boor's head by Teniers, there is nothing
low in a boor's head by Guido. What makes the difference between the
two? The absence or presence of the Ideal! But every one can judge
of the merit of the first, for it is of the Familiar school; it
requires a connoisseur to see the merit of the last, for it is of the
Intellectual.
I have the less scrupled to leave these remarks to cavil or to
sarcasm, because this fiction is probably the last with which I shall
trespass upon the Public, and I am desirous that it shall contain, at
least, my avowal of the principles upon which it and its later
predecessors have been composed. You know well, however others may
dispute the fact, the earnestness with which those principles have
been meditated and pursued,--with high desire, if but with poor
results.
It is a pleasure to feel that the aim, which I value more than the
success, is comprehended by one whose exquisite taste as a critic is
only impaired by that far rarer quality,--the disposition to over-
estimate the person you profess to esteem! Adieu, my sincere and
valued friend; and accept, as a mute token of gratitude and regard,
these flowers gathered in the Garden where we have so often roved
together. E. L. B.
LONDON, January, 1843.
PREFACE TO THE LAST OF THE BARONS
This was the first attempt of the author in Historical Romance upon
English ground. Nor would he have risked the disadvantage of
comparison with the genius of Sir Walter Scott, had he not believed
that that great writer and his numerous imitators had left altogether
unoccupied the peculiar field in Historical Romance which the Author
has here sought to bring into cultivation. In "The Last of the
Barons," as in "Harold," the aim has been to illustrate the actual
history of the period, and to bring into fuller display than general
History itself has done the characters of the principal personages of
the time, the motives by which they were probably actuated, the state
of parties, the condition of the people, and the great social
interests which were involved in what, regarded imperfectly, appear
but the feuds of rival factions.
"The Last of the Barons" has been by many esteemed the best of the
Author's romances; and perhaps in the portraiture of actual character,
and the grouping of the various interests and agencies of the time, it
may have produced effects which render it more vigorous and lifelike
than any of the other attempts in romance by the same hand.
It will be observed that the purely imaginary characters introduced
are very few; and, however prominent they may appear, still, in order
not to interfere with the genuine passions and events of history, they
are represented as the passive sufferers, not the active agents, of
the real events. Of these imaginary characters, the most successful
is Adam Warner, the philosopher in advance of his age; indeed, as an
ideal portrait, I look upon it as the most original in conception, and
the most finished in execution, of any to be found in my numerous
prose works, "Zanoni" alone excepted.
For the rest, I venture to think that the general reader will obtain
from these pages a better notion of the important age, characterized
by the decline of the feudal system, and immediately preceding that
great change in society which we usually date from the accession of
Henry VII., than he could otherwise gather, without wading through a
vast mass of neglected chronicles and antiquarian dissertations.
