Nearly a whole generation before the winning of that late success, Bulwer-Lytton had tried the House of Commons, and miserably, ludicrously failed. The young Tory members who vociferously cheered his great anti-reform speech of 1860, were in their cradles when Bulwer-Lytton first addressed the House of Commons, and having signally failed withdrew, as people supposed, altogether from Parliamentary life. His failure was even more complete than that of his friend Disraeli, and he took the failure more to heart. Rumor affirms that the first serious quarrel between Bulwer and his wife arose out of her vexation and disappointment at his break-down, and the bitter, provoking taunts with which she gave vent to her anger. I know no other instance of a rhetorical triumph so long delayed, and at length so completely effected. Nor can one learn that it was by any intervening practice or training that Bulwer in his declining years atoned for the failure of his youth. He was never that I know of a public speaker; he won his Parliamentary success in defiance of Charles James Fox's famous axiom, that a speaker can only improve himself at the expense of his audiences. Between his failure and his triumph Bulwer-Lytton may be said to have had no political audience. A statesman Bulwer-Lytton never became, although he held high office in a Tory Cabinet. He did little or nothing to distinguish himself, unless there be distinction in writing some high-flown, eloquent despatches, such as Ernest Maltravers might have penned, to the discontented islanders of Ionia; and it was he, if I remember rightly, who thought of sending out "Gladstone the Philhellene" on that mission of futile conciliation which only misled the Ionians and amused England. It always seemed to me that in his political career Bulwer acted just as one of the heroes of his own romances might have done. Having suffered defeat and humiliation, he vowed a vow to wrest from Fate a victory upon the very spot which had seen his discomfiture; and he kept his word, won his victory, and then calmly quitted the field forever. A more prosaic explanation might perhaps be found in the fact that weak physical health rendered it impossible for Bulwer to encounter the severe continuous labor which English political life exacts. But I prefer for myself the more romantic and less commonplace explanation, and I hope my readers will do likewise. I prefer to think of the great romancist retrieving after thirty years of silence his Parliamentary defeat, and then, having reconciled himself with Destiny, retiring from the scene contented, to struggle in that arena no more. In all seriousness, there must be some quality of greatness in the man who, after bearing such a defeat for so many years, can struggle with Fate again, and accomplish so conspicuous a success.