This is Bulwer's most successful attempt at writing an historical novel, but with all its merits, it is still rather an attempt than a performance. Considered as a history of the Norman invasion, it contains many more facts than can be found in Thierry, at least in that portion of his work devoted to Harold and William. Bulwer seems to have obtained his knowledge at the original sources, and the novel is certainly creditable to his scholarship. But he has not managed his materials in an imaginative way, and fact and fiction are tied rather than fused together. The consequence is that the work is not homogeneous. At times it appears like history, but after the mind of the reader has settled down to a historical mood, the impression is broken by a violent intrusion of fable, or an introduction of modern sentiment and thought. It has therefore neither the interest of Thierry's exquisite narrative of the same events, nor the interest which might have been derived from a complete amalgamation of the materials into a consistent work of imagination. Considered also as a reproduction of ancient men and manners it is strikingly defective. With many fine strokes of the pencil, where the author confines himself to the literal fact, his portraits, as a whole, are overcharged with _Bulwerism_. His imagination is not a mirror. It can reflect nothing without vitiating it. He does not possess the power of passing a character through his mind and preserving its individuality. It goes in as Harold, or Duke William, or Lafranc, but it comes out as Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, Bart. The novel contains much of that seductive sentiment, half romantic, half misanthropic, which is the characteristic of Bulwer's works, and it is expressed with his usual beauty and brilliancy of style. Here and there we perceive allusions to his own domestic affairs, which none but Lady Bulwer can fully appreciate. Every reader of the novel must be struck with its attempt at the moral tone. Edith, the heroine, is the bride of Harold's soul, and Platonism appears in all its splendor of self-denial and noble sentiments in a Saxon thane and his maiden. History pronounces this lady to be his mistress, and it certainly is a great stretch of the reader's charity to be compelled to view her in the capacity of saint. Not only, however, in the loves of Harold and Edith, but all over the novel, there is a constant intrusion of ethical reflections, which will doubtless much edify all young ladies of a tender age. These would be well enough if they appeared to have any base in solid moral principle, but they are somewhat offensive as the mere sentimentality of conscience and religion, introduced for the purposes of fine writing. Suspicion, also, always attaches to the morality which exhibits itself on rhetorical stilts, and the refinement which is always proclaiming itself refined. Since the time of Joseph Surface there has been a great decline in the market price of noble sentiments.