Paul Clifford — CompleteLytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
General
Paul Clifford — Complete
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
Brigands and robbers -- Fiction
when once inflamed and elevated by a higher passion, were likely to
arouse his ambition from the level of his present pursuits, and reform
him, ere too late, into a useful, nay, even an honourable member of
society. We trust that the reader has already perceived that, despite
his early circumstances, his manner and address were not such as to
unfit him for a lady's love. The comparative refinement of his exterior
is easy of explanation, for he possessed a natural and inborn gentility,
a quick turn for observation, a ready sense both of the ridiculous and
the graceful; and these are materials which are soon and lightly wrought
from coarseness into polish. He had been thrown, too, among the leaders
and heroes of his band; many not absolutely low in birth, nor debased in
habit. He had associated with the Barringtons of the day,--gentlemen who
were admired at Ranelagh, and made speeches worthy of Cicero, when they
were summoned to trial. He had played his part in public places; and
as Tomlinson was wont to say after his classic fashion, “the triumphs
accomplished in the field had been planned in the ball-room.” In short,
he was one of those accomplished and elegant highwaymen of whom we yet
read wonders, and by whom it would have been delightful to have been
robbed: and the aptness of intellect which grew into wit with his
friends, softened into sentiment with his mistress. There is something,
too, in beauty (and Clifford's person, as we have before said, was
possessed of even uncommon attractions) which lifts a beggar into
nobility; and there was a distinction in his gait and look which
supplied the air of rank and the tone of courts. Men, indeed, skilled
like Mauleverer in the subtleties of manner, might perhaps have easily
detected in him the want of that indescribable essence possessed only
by persons reared in good society; but that want being shared by so
many persons of indisputable birth and fortune, conveyed no particular
reproach. To Lucy, indeed, brought up in seclusion, and seeing at
Warlock none calculated to refine her taste in the fashion of an air
or phrase to a very fastidious standard of perfection, this want
was perfectly imperceptible; she remarked in her lover only a figure
everywhere unequalled, an eye always eloquent with admiration, a step
from which grace could never be divorced, a voice that spoke in a silver
key, and uttered flatteries delicate in thought and poetical in word;
even a certain originality of mind, remark, and character, occasionally
approaching to the bizarre, yet sometimes also to the elevated,
possessed a charm for the imagination of a young and not unenthusiastic
female, and contrasted favourably, rather than the reverse, with the
dull insipidity of those she ordinarily saw. Nor are we sure that the
mystery thrown about him, irksome as it was to her, and discreditable as
it appeared to others, was altogether ineffectual in increasing her
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