Now this is in fact one grand explanation of Bulwer-Lytton's rank in English literature. He has the self-reliance, the patience, the courage so rare among literary men, by which one is enabled to extract their full and utter value from whatsoever intellectual endowments he may possess. Bulwer-Lytton alone among all famous English authors of our days has apparently done all that he could possibly do--obtained from his faculties their entire tribute. Readers of the letters of poor Charlotte Brontë may remember the impatience with which she occasionally complained that her idol Thackeray would not put forth his whole strength. No such fault could possibly be found with Bulwer-Lytton. Sooner or later he always put forth his whole strength. He had many failures, but, as in the case of his political discomfiture, he had always the art of learning from failure the way how to succeed, and accordingly succeeding. When he wrote his wretched "Sea Captain," the critics all told him he could not produce a successful drama. Bulwer thought he could. He thought the very failure of that attempt would show him how to succeed another time. He was determined not to give in until he had satisfied himself as to his fitness, one way or the other, and so he persevered. Now observe the character of the man, and see how much superior he himself is to his works, and how much of their success the works owe to the man's peculiar temper. We all know what authors usually are, and how they receive criticism. In ordinary cases, when the critics declare some piece of work a failure, the author either is crushed for the time by the fiat, or he insists that the critics are idiots, hired assassins, personal enemies, and so forth; he defiantly adheres to his own notions and his own method--and he probably fails. Bulwer-Lytton looked at the matter in quite a different light. He said, apparently, to himself: "The critics only know what I have done; I know what I can do. From their point of view they are quite right--this thing is a failure. But I know that it is a failure only because I went to work the wrong way. I _can_ do something infinitely better. Their experience and their comments have given me some valuable hints; I will forthwith go to work on a better principle." So Bulwer-Lytton wrote "Richelieu," "Money," and the "Lady of Lyons"--the last probably the most successful acting drama produced in England since the days of Shakespeare, and the first hardly below it in stage success. Of course I am not claiming for either of these plays a high and genuine dramatic value. They probably bear the same resemblance to the true drama that their author's Parliamentary speech-making does to true eloquence. But of their popularity and their transcendent technical success there cannot be the slightest doubt. Bulwer-Lytton proved to his critics that he could do better than any other living man the very thing they said he could never do--write a