Viola, the impersonation of the purest love, unalloyed by any sensual feeling—Glyndon, the weak, vacillating, yet aspiring man—and Menjour, the embodiment of mere intellect, apart from any influence of the heart, good or bad, are well drawn characters—_of their kind_. Their fault is that they have no individuality. All Bulwer’s personages partake of this error. There is not, in his numerous novels, a single personage whom we can look back on as on a real individual. Falstaff and Nicol Jarvie are so life-like that it seems as if we had drunk canary with the one, at the Boar’s Head, and “had a crack” with the other, on the causeway of Glasgow. Bulwer’s characters have none of this personal identity—they are only embodiments of certain passions or peculiarities. His actors are like the knights of Spencer, mere stalking horses for particular vices or virtues—or, like a wigmaker’s block, the representative in turn of the heads of all his customers. Every personage in Zanoni, without, as we remember, a _single_ exception, is thus ticketed for a particular vice or virtue, like passengers in a railroad car. Now, we do not object to the introduction of these personages if they are necessary to the plot; but, for heaven’s sake, Mr. Bulwer, give us something more than mere automatons! Don’t ask us in to a second Mrs. Jarley’s wax-works! We have spoken, in terms of high praise, of the character of Zanoni. We have, however, said that the theme was more adapted for poetry than prose. Having chosen prose, the author has erred in calling his book A NOVEL. Let us be understood. Feeble as is the province of prose to do justice to so ideal a character as Zanoni, we do not base our present objection to the book on that ground. It is one of the inalienable rights of man to show his ignorance, to make a blunder, or in any other way to play the fool. This is not the question now. The work before us purports to be a novel, and nothing but a novel. It might have been named a romance, a mystery, or the Lord knows what! But it is put forth as a novel, under the _imprimatur_ of the writer of “Art in Fiction,” of the man who sets up to be the high priest of the synagogue! Is it such? A novel, in the true acceptation of the name, is a picture of real life. The plot may be involved, but it must not transcend probability. The agencies introduced must belong to real life. Such were Gil Blas and Tom Jones, confessedly the two best novels extant. Whether the title was properly applied, in the inception, is not the question. Usage and common sense have affixed a definite meaning to the word. When authors cease to paint real life they cease to write novels. The tales may be very good of their kind, but they are no more novels than a sirloin is a mutton chop, or than Bulwer is the artist he pretends to be. Judged by this standard, Zanoni is not a novel. There are pictures of real life in it; but to paint society, _as it is_, was only collateral to the chief aim of the work.