of originality in a work so obviously constructed after the model of "Tristram Shandy." So he hastened to confute or convince all such persons by pointing out that in this very fact consisted the special claim of "The Caxtons" to absolute originality. The original genius of Lytton was proved by his producing so excellent a copy. Don't you see? You don't, perhaps. But then if you were intimate with Lord Lytton, and were liked by him, and were a performer in the private theatricals at Knebworth, his country seat, you would probably see it quite clearly, and agree with it, every word. There was one person indeed who had no toleration for Lord Lytton, or for his friendly critics. That was Lord Lytton's wife. There really is no scandal in alluding to a conjugal quarrel which was brought so persistently under public notice by one of the parties as that between Bulwer-Lytton and his wife. I do not know whether I ought to call it a quarrel. Can that be called a fight, piteously asks the man in Juvenal, where my enemy only beats and I am merely beaten? Can that be called a quarrel in which, so far as the public could judge, the wife did all the denunciation, and the husband made no reply? Lady Lytton wrote novels for the purpose of satirizing her husband and his friends--his parasites, she called them. Bulwer-Lytton she gracefully described as having "the head of a goat on the body of a grasshopper"--a description which has just enough of comical truthfulness in its savage ferocity to make it specially cruel to the victim of the satire, and amusing to the unconcerned public. Lady Lytton attributed to her husband the most odious meannesses, vices, and cruelties; but the public, with all its love of scandal, seems to have steadfastly refused to take her ladyship's word for these accusations. Dickens she denounced and vilified as a mere parasite and sycophant of her husband. At one time she poured out a gush of fulsome eulogy on Thackeray because he apparently was not one of Lytton's friends; afterwards, when the relationship between "Pelham" and "Pendennis" became friendly, she changed her tune and tried to bite the file, to satirize the great satirist. Disraeli she caricatured under the title of "Jericho Jabber." This sort of thing she kept always going on. Sometimes she issued pamphlets addressed to the women of England, calling on them to take up her quarrel--which somehow they did not seem inclined to do. Once when Lord Lytton, then only Sir Edward, was on the hustings, addressing his constituents at a county election, her ladyship suddenly mounted the platform and "went for" him. Sir Edward and his friends prudently and quietly withdrew. I do not know anything of the merits of the quarrel, and have always been disposed to think that something like insanity must have been the explanation of much of Lady Lytton's conduct. But it is beyond doubt that her husband's demeanor was remarkable for its quiet, indomitable patience and dignity.