LORD BROUGHAM'S NOVEL*
IT has for many years been known that Lord Brougham added a novel to his long list of writings, in order, as may have been suggested, that he should verify one-half of the famous sentence in Johnson's epitaph on Goldsmith. Certainly, if this was the object with which Albert Lunel,—from which we quoted years ago a characteristic passage illustrative of Brougham's character upon the occasion of his death,—was composed, it would enable us to say of his lordship nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit," though the novel itself unfortunately prevents us from repeating the more hackneyed words which are required to finish the quotation. In a literary sense, the book before us is by no means successful. Some interest attaches to the recital of the adventures of the nominal hero, and there are one or two scenes in his life which surprise us in their unwonted feeling. But the bulk of the book oscillates between didactic discourse and per- sonal caricature ; the characters are either taken too directly from life, or are wholly fantastic, while the want of a real link of connection between the autobiography of Albert Lunel and the- events which make up the rest of the story has a disastrous effect on our attention. 'We lose the thread of one part of the narrative, and we do not always succeed in catching the thread of the other ; we are drawn away from the hero's adventures just when they become interesting, and from our intercourse with the other characters just as we are beginning to know them by name. It is- true that but for the history of Albert Lunel himself, the story would not have gained even the success of a scandal from the name of the author and the portraits of some of his contemporaries. A very slight acquaintance with the colourless Marquis and his benevolent wile, with the Countess who is engrossed in politics, but forgets them for a while when she is in the company of a fascinating Baron, with the Baron's niece of whom we bear so much and see so little, with the many other characters who are merely brought in to espouse a cause or utter a sentence, would suffice for all save the most patient reader. Yet when * Albert Land: a Novel. By the late Lord Brougham. 3 Cola. London: O. H. Clarke.
once we have been beguiled into turning over a certain number of pages, and have felt our curiosity excited by the picture of the Solitary, we are encouraged to persevere, and it is then that we regret the numerous obstacles which the author opposes to our enjoyment. If we could have followed Albert Lunel through his various disguises in France and Switzerland, his perils among the secret societies in Germany, his experiences of slavery in the Southern States and the West Indies, without having to listen to the political dronings of French nobles dating from the years which preceded the outbreak of the French Revolution, we might have read this book with interest, and have looked back on it with pleasure.
The plot of the novel, if plot there be, may be told in a few sentences. A party, consisting of some French nobles, one or two lawyers, and some travellers, meets at a château in the South of France, and talks the language of Lord Brougham. One of the party, an intriguing, curious countess, observes the lady of the house taking frequent walks with a basket of provi- sions, and hopes to detect her in something scandalous. With this view the Countess sets her husband to watch, but all her good intentions are frustrated by the Count's discovery that the provi- sions are taken to an unfortunate fugitive. This is Albert Lunel, formerly et Benedictine monk at Avignon, but now hiding from- the officers of justice. Grateful to the Count for his sympathy, Albert Lunel tells the whole history of his life, beginning with the moment of blind passion and mistake in which he sacrificed the life of his dearest friend ; going on with his flight from the monastery, his escape into Switzerland, his stay at Gottingen, where he supported himself as a bookseller's hack, and became member of a secret society, which punished not only treason to itself, but even lukewarmneas, with death ; narrating then the difficulty with which he made his way from Germany to Holland, his service in an American ship-of-war, and his visits to Charles- ton, St. Domingo, and Havana, in all which places he was most impressed by the horrors of negro slavery; and ending with his return to France, his meeting with her whom he had loved throughout these wanderings, his recognition by his enemies, and his escape to his present hiding-place. While this history is being told to the Count, the people at the château are coming and going, talking and hearing talk ; there have been one or two love affairs, and a fall from a carriage, and now the great Revolution is at hand. Having completed the autobiography of the fugitive, the author has only to wind up the other threads of the story, and to dispose of the various characters. It is not necessary for the reviewer to follow him in this task, or to point out the unsatisfactory manner in which it is done. We have already said that the story does not call for criticism, and we need not ask what becomes of persons who have never excited our interest. When we know that Lord Brougham's object in writing Albert Lunel was to raise a kind of monument to one who was lost to him, by making her the heroine of a philosophical romance, we cannot but feel that this very character is the most conspicuous failure in the book. We are told at the end that "if ever an angel visited this earth, it was Emmeline Moulin," and in the course of the story we have many similar expressions. But this much-praised heroine does nothing, and says very little ; her uncle, the Baron, is charmed with her character, and regrets her loss so much that he commits suicide ; yet even on the principle laid down by Leasing in his criticism on Homer's treatment of Helen, this is wholly inadequate to bring out Emmeline's character.
Older men than the present reviewer will no doubt take great pleasure in giving the real names to many of the guests at the chateau, and will explain some of the personal allusions. With- out such help, indeed, we can detect much that is characteristic of Lord Brougham. The dedication to Rogers, with the affected humility of its address, and its boast that the authorship is a mystery which it will be impossible to pierce, is a fitting intro- duction to a book which its writer was probably ready to avow or disavow, as it suited his convenience. Lord Brougham speaks of himself in the dedication as possessing no name at all, and sug- gests that "sagacity may from internal evidence serve to point a conjecture towards France and her colonies as his country,— 'her language as that in which his book may have been 'written." As the book was written some time after Lord Brougham had built his house at Cannes, and a few years before he submitted his famous request to be enrolled among the -citizens of the Second Republic, this sign of a growing love for France is perfectly natural. If the allusion in a note to "our Canning'" and "their shallow wit" seems unworthy of one who bad defied Canning as Prime Minister in the House of Commons, the portrait of Lord Lyndhurst is a manly tribute to the merits of
a rival. The name of M. de Chapeley is a thin disguise for Copley, just as Baron Bayley, the senior puisne judge in the Exchequer when Lord Lyndhurst was Chief Baron, can easily be
recognised under the style of M. de Balaye. But the singular fact connected with this introduction of some of Lord Brougham's former companions is that, in spite of the boasted French origin of the book, he has imported into France the-English system of
judicial appointments. He must have known that French judges are chosen not from the ranks of the Bar, but from those of the magistracy, yet he speaks of M. de Chapeley as having been a most skilful and dexterous advocate, and having been often opposed to M. de Balaye, when both were at the Bar. It may, however, be worth while quoting the sketch of Lord Lyndhurst at greater length :—
"There have been few men more eminent at our Bar; nor would he discredit the most exalted station in the profession he adorns. His father was one of our most eminent artists, and the son has from college upwards been always the most distinguished of his contemporaries. At Montpellier he carried away the highest honours as a profound and elegant mathematician, his taste ever keeping pace with his solid sub- stantial acquirements. In manly vigour of mind, in a sagacity that never fails him, be it applied to great purposes or to smaller objects, in a happy power of throwing away the husk of any subject he has to master and reaching at once the kernel, he stands unequalled in the law. He was, as an advocate, skilful, dexterous, learned, ready, undaunted ; as a judge, his calm impartiality, his universal courtesy, his unwearied patience, can only be exceeded by his unexampled clearness and conciseness of statement, the soundness of his views, and the cogency of his reasoning. But if in most things he excels others, in one he seems to exceed him- self. I would go any distance to enjoy again a treat I lately had the relish of, when he displayed to its utmost perfection his great faculty of clear, connected, interesting narrative, without a single remark, or any attempt to apply his facts to his purpose, yet so completly effecting that purpose by painting to his auditory a lively picture of the whole case, that the most elaborate reasoning could not have more perfectly secured the adoption of his conclusions. They tell me that he, Vother day, equally astonished the court in which he presides, by a clear and vigorous statement of above twenty ordinances and edicts, giving the dates and the substance of each, without omitting even one figure, though without a single note to help his recollection. They say it was like a code of penal law (for penalties were the subject), from the edict of Moulins to the present time.'"
it is not so easy to recognise John Wilson Croker in the character of M. la Croasse, for though we hear of his polemical writings, and of his short service in the Naval Administration, he is drawn with such mild and amiable lines as to efface his real
character, and suggest that Lord Brougham wanted to have his novel favourably reviewed in the Quarterly. Time has perhaps blotted out the memory of Sir Andrew Agnew, the former
champion of the Sabbath, yet the picture drawn of him in this book, where he goes by the name of the Chevalier Andre Agneau, is vivid enough to bring his figure and his habits of mind before those of a newer generation. We do not profess to have identified the originals of these portraits without assistance, for the present writer is not ashamed to own that he was
at his first school when this book WAS written. But the source from which we have derived our information is the beat of all sources, a volume of Lord Brougham's letters which has been privately printed by one of his friends, though it has attained more than a
private circulation. As one of our contemporaries has thrown some doubt on an authorship of which there is so much internal evidence, it may be right to say that those letters contain the most explicit avowal. Perhaps to those who are familiar with Lord Brougham's style and habits, such an admission may seem superfluous. Yet the world at large will gladly be spared a new literary controversy, and would prefer tacitly to accept this novel as an addition to those curiosities catalogued by the elder Disraeli than to enter upon a critical examination, sure to be weary and almost as sure to be unprofitable.
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