Again. That gentlemen and ladies, when called upon to give alms, or to defray some trifling incidental expense, are in the invariable habit of giving the whole contents of their purses without examination, and, moreover, of “throwing” the purse into the bargain, is an idea most erroneously entertained. At page 55, vol. 1, we are told that Philip, “as he spoke, _slid_ his purse into the woman’s hand.” At page 110, “a hint for money restored Beaufort to his recollection, and he _flung_ his purse into the nearest hand outstretched to receive it.” At page 87, “Lilburne _tossed_ his purse into the hands of his valet, whose face seems to lose its anxious embarrassment at the touch of the gold.” It is true that the “anxious embarrassment” of any valet out of a novel, would have been rather increased than diminished by having a purse of gold tossed at his head—but what we wish our readers to observe, is that magnificent contempt of filthy lucre with which the characters of Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer “fling,” “slide,” “toss,” and tumble whole purses of money about! But the predominant and most important failing of the author of “Devereux,” in point of style, is an absolute mania for metaphor—metaphor always running into allegory. Pure allegory is at all times an abomination—a remnant of antique barbarism—appealing only to our faculties of comparison, without even a remote interest for our reason, or for our fancy. Metaphor, its softened image, has indisputable force when sparingly and skilfully employed. Vigorous writers use it rarely indeed. Mr. Bulwer is all metaphor or all allegory—mixed metaphor and unsustained allegory—and nothing if neither. He cannot express a dozen consecutive sentences in an honest and manly manner. He is the king-coxcomb of figures-of-speech. His rage for personification is really ludicrous. The simplest noun becomes animate in his hands. Never, by any accident, does he write even so ordinary a word as time, or temper, or talent, without the capital T. Seldom, indeed, is he content with the dignity and mysticism thus imposed;—for the most part it is Time, Temper and Talent. Nor does the common-place character of anything which he wishes to personify exclude it from the prosopopeia. At page 256, volume 1, we have some profound rigmarole, seriously urged, about piemen crying “all hot! all hot!” “in the ear of Infant and Ragged Hunger,” thus written; and, at page 207, there is something positively transcendental all about LAW—a very little thing in itself, in some cases—but which Mr. Bulwer, in his book, has thought proper to make quite as big as we have printed it above. Who cannot fancy him, in the former instance, saying to himself, as he gnaws the top of his quill, “that is a fine thought!” and exclaiming in the latter, as he puts his finger to the side of his nose, “ah, how _very_ fine an idea that is!”