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East Anglia had not long to wait. In the valley of the Stour, a mile or two from Sudbury, where the stream serves as the boundary between Suffolk and Essex, the ancestors of Lord Walsingham had two manors in the township of Little Cornard the one was called Caxtons, the other was the Manor of Cornard Parva.
Then their author, recognising the public taste, as he always did, or perhaps exemplifying it with an almost unexampled quickness, turned to the domestic kind, which was at last, more than thirty years after Miss Austen's death, forcing its way, and wrote The Caxtons, My Novel, and What will he do with it? books which to some have seemed his greatest triumphs.
"Lucretia; or, The Children of Night," was begun simultaneously with "The Caxtons: a Family Picture." The two fictions were intended as pendants; both serving, amongst other collateral aims and objects, to show the influence of home education, of early circumstance and example, upon after character and conduct. "Lucretia" was completed and published before "The Caxtons."
Other characteristic novels of his are 'The Last Days of Pompeii, 'Ernest Maltravers, 'Zanoni, 'The Caxtons, 'My Novel, 'What Will He Do with It? 'A Strange Story, 'The Coming Race, and 'Kenelm Chillingly, the last of which appeared in the year of the author's death, 1873. The student who has read these books will know all that is worth knowing of Bulwer's work.
In the skirmish for the Caxtons, which began the serious work in the great conflict of the Roxburghe sale, it was satisfactory to find, as I have already stated, on the authority of the great historian of the war, that Earl Spencer, the victor, "put each volume under his coat, and walked home with them in all the flush of victory and consciousness of triumph."
'The Last Days of Pompeii' shall be mouthed out grandiloquently; the incredibilities of 'The Coming Race' shall wear the guise of naïve and artless narrative; the humors of 'The Caxtons' and 'What Will He Do with It? shall reflect the mood of the sagacious, affable man of the world, gossiping over the nuts and wine; the marvels of 'Zanoni' and 'A Strange Story' must be portrayed with a resonance and exaltation of diction fitted to their transcendental claims.
To talk about mine affections, meaning my affections, is Veal; and mine bonnie love was decided Veal, though it was written by Charlotte Bronté. Wife mine is Veal, though it stands in "The Caxtons." I should rather like to see the man who in actual life is accustomed to address his spouse in that fashion. To say Not, oh, never shall we do so and so is outrageous Veal.
A collector of Caxtons, a collector of large printed or illustrated editions, a collector of first editions of famous books, a collector of those editions that are so much prized because an author has made in them some blunder which he afterwards corrected; a collector of those unique books which have survived as rarities because no one thought it worth while to reprint them or because they are distinguished by some obsolete absurdity, will probably not derive more pleasure, though he will spend vastly more money, than the mere literary man who, being interested in some particular period or topic, loves to hunt up in old bookshops the obscure and forgotten literature relating to it.
But the man of genius is rarer, perhaps, in the ranks of authorship than anywhere: you are far more likely to find him on the exchange. They are as scarce as Caxtons: London possesses hardly half-a-dozen examples. Narcissus enjoyed the delight of calling one of these his friend, 'a certain aristocratic poet who loved all kinds of superiorities, again to borrow from Mr. Pater.
She felt it was a frightful extravagance as she paid away two of Miss Cobb's shillings for Bulwer's 'Caxtons; but she felt also that to live through those three tedious hours without such aid would be a step on the road to a lunatic asylum.
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