But it is not all the truth: if it were, it would be almost sufficient to point out that he outgrew the first of these faults completely, the second almost completely; and that from _The Caxtons_ (1850) onward there is hardly any stain on his literary character in any such respect.

But other faults--or at least defects--remain.

They may be almost summed up in the charge of want of _consummateness_.
Bulwer could be romantic--but his romance had the touch of bad taste and insincerity referred to above.

He could, as in _The Caxtons_, be fairly true to ordinary life--but even then he seemed to feel a necessity of setting off and as it were apologising for the simplicity and veracity by touches--in fact by _douches_--of Sternian fantastry, and by other touches of what was a little later to be called sensationalism.

Even his handling of the supernatural, which was undoubtedly a strong point of his, was not wholly _de ban aloi_.