Volume 183302
England and the English / by Edward Lytton Bulwer.
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton
- Date:
- 1833
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: England and the English / by Edward Lytton Bulwer. Source: Wellcome Collection.
107/370 page 91
![THE CAUSE. 9] Venice; the eagerness with which it was read, and the disappointment which it occasioned. Had the dramatic form been the cause of its unpopularity, it would have occasioned for it at the first a cool and lukewarm reception: the welcome which greeted its announcement is a proof that the disappointment was occasioned by the materials of the play, and not because it was a play. Besides, Manfred, one of the most admired of all Byron’s works, was cast in the dramatic mould. One cause of the compa- rative unpopularity of the plays is, perhaps, that the style is less rich and musical than that of the poems; but the principal cause is in that very versatility, that very coming out from self, the want of which has been so superficially complained of. The characters were beauti- fully conceived ; but they represented not that character which we expected, and yearned to see. That mystic and idealized shape, in which we beheld ourselves, had receded from the scene —we missed that touching egotism which was the expression of the Universal Heart—across the enchanted mirror new shadows passed, but it was our own likeness that we desired— the likeness of those deep and cherished feel- ings with which the poet had identified himself ! True, that he still held the glass to human](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33029362_0002_0107.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
