Born, in London, 21 Dec. 1804. Educated at school at Blackheath. Articled to solicitor 18 Nov. 1821. Entered at Lincoln’s Inn, 1824. Visit to Spain, Italy, and Levant, 1828–31. Worked at literature for five years. M.P. for Maidstone, July 1837. Married Mrs. Wyndham Lewis, 23 Aug. 1839. M.P. for Shrewsbury, 1841. Visit to Germany and France, autumn of 1845. Leader of Opposition in House of Commons, Sept. 1848. Chancellor of Exchequer, Feb. 1852. Contrib. to “The Press” newspaper, 1853–58. Chancellor of Exchequer second time, 1865. Prime Minister, March to Nov. 1868. Active political life. Wife died, 15 Dec. 1872. Prime Minister second time, Jan. 1874 to March 1880. Last speech in House of Commons, 11 Aug. 1876. Created Earl of Beaconsfield, 12 Aug. 1876. Died, 19 April 1881. Buried at Hughenden. Works: “Vivian Grey” (anon.), pt. i., 1826; pt. ii., 1827; “The Star Chamber” (anon.; suppressed), 1826; “The Voyage of Captain Popanilla” (anon.), 1828; “The Young Duke” (anon.), 1831; “Contarini Fleming” (anon.), 1832; “England and France” (anon.), 1832; “What is he?” (anon.), 1833; “The Wondrous Tale of Alroy” (anon.), 1833; “The Present Crisis Examined,” 1834; “The Rise of Iskander,” 1834; “The Revolutionary Epic,” 1834; “Vindication of the British Constitution,” 1835; “Letters of Runnymede” (anon.), 1836; “The Spirit of Whigism,” 1836; “Venetia” (anon.), 1837; “Henrietta Temple” (anon.), 1837; “The Tragedy of Count Alarcos” (anon.), 1839; “Coningsby,” 1844; “Sybil,” 1845; “Tancred,” 1847; “Mr. Gladstone’s Finance,” 1862; “Lothair,” 1870; “Novels and Tales” (collected), 1870–71; “Endymion” (anon.), 1880. Posthumous: “Home Letters,” 1885; “Correspondence with his Sister,” 1886. He edited the following editions of works by his father: “Curiosities of Literature,” 1849; “Charles I.,” 1851; “Works,” 1858–59; “Amenities of Literature,” 1881; “Literary Character,” 1881; “Calamities of Authors,” 1881. Life: by Kebbel, 1888; by Froude, 1890.

Personal

  He possesses just the qualities of the impenitent thief, whose name, I verily believe, must have been Disraeli. For aught I know, the present Disraeli is descended from him; and with the impression that he is, I now forgive the heir-at-law of the blasphemous thief who died upon the cross.

  Disraeli had arrived before me, and sat in the deep window, looking out upon Hyde Park, with the last rays of daylight reflected from the gorgeous gold flowers of a splendidly embroidered waistcoat. Patent leathers pumps, a white stick, with a black cord and tassel, and a quantity of chains about his neck and pockets, served to make him, even in the dim light, rather a conspicuous object…. Disraeli has one of the most remarkable faces I ever saw. He is lividly pale, and but for the energy of his action and the strength of his lungs, would seem to be a victim to consumption. His eye is as black as Erebus, and has the most mocking, lying-in-wait sort of expression conceivable. His mouth is alive with a kind of working and impatient nervousness, and when he has burst forth, as he does constantly, with a particularly successful cataract of expression, it assumes a curl of triumphant scorn that would be worthy of a Mephistopheles. His hair is as extraordinary as his taste in waistcoats. A thick heavy mass of jet-black ringlets falls over his left cheek almost to his collarless stock, while on the right temple it is parted and put away with the smooth carefulness of a girl’s, and shines most unctuously—

  He has a strongly marked Hebrew face, with brilliant eyes, and intensely black hair.

  Though in general society he was habitually silent and reserved, he was closely observant. It required generally a subject of more than common interest to produce a fitting degree of enthusiasm to animate and to stimulate him into the exercise of his marvelous powers of conversation. When duly excited, however, his command of language was truly wonderful, his sarcasm unsurpassed; the readiness of his wit, the quickness of his perception, the grasp of mind that enabled him to seize on all the parts of any subject under discussion, those only would venture to call in question who had never been in his company at the period I refer to [1831].

  By and by came a rather tall, slender person, in a black frock-coat, buttoned up, and black pantaloons, taking long steps, but I thought rather feebly or listlessly. His shoulders were round, or else he had a habitual stoop in them. He had a prominent nose, a thin face, and a sallow, very sallow complexion;… and had I seen him in America I should have taken him for a hard-worked editor of a newspaper, weary and worn with night-labor and want of exercise,—aged before his time. It was Disraeli, and I never saw any other Englishman look in the least like him; though, in America, his appearance would not attract notice as being unusual.

  Lady Dufferin made herself very agreeable all dinner-time. I told her I had just heard Disraeli speak. She said she had always known him and liked him in spite of his tergiversations and absurdities. When he was very young and had made his first appearance in London society as the author of “Vivian Grey,” there was something almost incredible in his aspect. She assured me that she did not exaggerate in the slightest degree in describing to me his dress when she first met him at a dinner party. He wore a black velvet coat lined with satin, purple trousers with a gold band running down the outside seam, a scarlet waistcoat, long lace ruffles falling down to the tips of his fingers, white gloves with several brilliant rings outside them, and long black ringlets rippling down upon his shoulders. It seemed impossible that such a Guy Fawkes could have been tolerated in any society. His audacity, which has proved more perennial than brass, was always the solid foundation of his character. She told him, however, that he made a fool of himself by appearing in such fantastic shape, and he afterwards modified his costume, but he was never to be put down.

  If Mr. Disraeli had, as he once said, the “best of wives,” he, on his part, proved the best of husbands. Till the last day of her life he paid to his wife those attentions which are too often associated rather with the romance of youthful intercourse than with the routine of married life. When he rose to the highest point of his ambition, the only favor he would accept of the Queen was a coronet for his wife. He was scarcely ever absent from her side until the dark day when the fast friends were to be parted. She knew that she was dying, but refrained from telling him so, in order that he might be spared the pain of bidding her farewell. He also knew that her last hour was at hand but kept silence lest he should distress her. Thus they parted, each anxious to avoid striking a blow at the other’s heart. The domestic lives of public men are properly held to be beyond the range of public comment; but in an age when marriage is the theme of ridicule from “leaders of progress” it may be that this passage in Mr. Disraeli’s career may be pondered with some profit by the young.

  The enclosed letter and copy of my answer ought to go to you as a family curiosity and secret. Nobody whatever knows of it beyond our two selves here, except Lady Derby, whom I believe to have been the contriver of the whole affair. You would have been surprised, all of you, to have found unexpectedly your poor old brother converted into Sir Tom; but alas! there was no danger at any moment of such a catastrophe. I do, however, truly admire the magnanimity of Dizzy in regard to me. He is the only man I almost never spoke of except with contempt; and if there is anything of scurrility anywhere chargeable against me, he is the subject of it; and yet see, here he comes with a pan of hot coals for my guilty head. I am, on the whole, gratified a little within my own dark heart at this mark of the good-will of high people—Dizzy by no means the chief of them—which has come to me now at the very end, when I can have the additional pleasure of answering, “Alas, friends! it is of no use to me, and I will not have it.” Enough, enough! Return me the official letter, and say nothing about it beyond the walls of your own house.

  His portrait is everywhere, and even caricature can add little to the oddity of this strange face, with the piercing eyes, the long, Semitic nose, the lips compressed in a sad smile, the chin adorned with a Mephistophelic thin and pointed beard. I hardly ever spoke to my English friends of Disraeli in old times without hearing him abused, and I have never found myself in contact with him without finding great charm in his quiet manners, in his well-measured and pointed phrases. It always seemed to me that there was nothing ordinary or vulgar in the man; he was different from the common type. I have heard him attacked even for his excessive politeness. Somebody once told me that the author of “Lothair” was a snob and took a real delight in choosing heroes and heroines in the upper classes. He was the leader of the aristocratic party, and the aristocrats were never tired of saying that he only represented them politically, that he did not speak or move or act like the “chosen few.” So it may be, but the man who has contrived, with all his disabilities, to impose his leadership on the proudest aristocracy of the world cannot be an ordinary man.

  With Lord Beaconsfield everything is in keeping; the novelist is part of the man, and the Prime Minister of the novelist. I can never read his books or see him at work on the world’s stage without recalling the Mr. Disraeli of fifty years ago, as a contemporary depicts him, dressed in velvet and satin, his wrists encircled by ruffles, his hair cunningly curled, his fingers loaded with rings, an ivory cane in his hand; with all the exterior of a dandy—a dandy of genius; a bundle of contradictions, ambition allied to scepticism, determination hiding itself under sallies and paradoxes. So much for his person: his life has followed suit. A foreigner, a Jew, he raised himself from an attorney’s office to the peerage of England, and the headship of his country’s government. The character of his policy—full of theatrical strokes, of new departures, whimsical or bold as the case may be—is well known. In everything that he has done, you feel the Oriental’s taste for the brilliant, the adventurer’s taste for the turns of Fortune’s wheel, the parvenu’s taste for pomp. But it is in his writings more than anywhere else that he shows himself as he is: because Lord Beaconsfield is at bottom an artist first of all. His old dandyism was already literary; and his modern policy is still romantic.

  In his private character it seems to be generally admitted that he was not only irreproachable, but graced with some ennobling qualities. His exemplary devotion to his wife has been referred to already. And that devotion derives additional merit from the fact that it was lavished on a wife much older than himself, not strikingly attractive, and not wedded chiefly in love. Few men occupying such a position as Lord Beaconsfield’s would have bestowed on such a wife, during their long years of married life, all the attention and gallantry of a youthful lover.

  We knew Mrs. Wyndham Lewis long before she became Lady Beaconsfield. Her education must have been sound and good; her mind was of a high order; and it may be regarded as certain that by her constant companionship—nay, by her frequent counsel and her wise advice—she aided largely in directing the after-conduct of her statesman husband, and so claims a share of the gratitude due to the illustrious man, who in often consulting her, derogated in no whit from the dignity of manhood, as First Minister of the Queen and of the kingdom. It is enough to say of Lady Beaconsfield, that she was worthy to be the friend, companion, and counselor of Lord Beaconsfield, as well as his wife. She must have been a generous woman. Her splendid diamonds were always at the command of her friends—such of them as had to attend court or any state-balls; and I know her to have given a diamond ring to Letitia Landon—when she had known that the poetess was in immediate need of money—with a well-understood hint that there was no necessity for her keeping it. She was not only a handsome but a charming woman, well born and nurtured, with manners easy and self-possessed, generous and sympathetic; and if her second husband had been born in the purple she would in no way have discredited the position to which he raised her. That when she became his wife she was dearly and devotedly loved by her great statesman-husband there is no doubt; yet the world might not have known it—perhaps would not have believed it—for she was his elder by fifteen years, and he had long passed the verge of manhood. It was in March, 1838, that Wyndham Lewis died. In August, 1839, Disraeli married his widow.

  In private life he is said to have been kind and constant in his friendships, liberal in his charities, and prompt to recognise and assist struggling merit wherever his attention was directed to it. In general society he was not a great talker, and few of his witticisms have been preserved which were not uttered on some public occasion. He usually had rather a preoccupied air, and though he was a great admirer of gaiety and good spirits in those who surrounded him, he was incapable of abandoning himself to the pleasures of the moment, whatever they might be, like Lord Derby or Lord Palmerston. He was no sportsman; and though he records in his letter to his sister that he once rode to hounds, and rode well, he seems to have been satisfied with that experience of the chase. Though a naturalist and a lover of nature in all her forms, he had neither game nor gamekeepers at home. He preferred peacocks to pheasants, and left it to his tenants to supply his table as they chose.

  It will be noted that if his autobiographical sketches err on the side of exaggerated approval that is not a failing to be traced in the critical remarks of his contemporaries. In truth an adequate appreciation of the force of Disraeli’s character, can be reached only after due appreciation of the difficulties by which his pathway was surrounded…. Those familiar with Mr. Disraeli only in the closing years will find much to marvel at in the disclosures made of his earlier life and manner. In the days when he wore the black velvet coat lined with satin, the purple trousers, the scarlet waistcoat, and the long lace ruffles, he appears to have been a youth of even dazzling personal beauty. Handsome youths not infrequently develop into comely old men. But Lord Beaconsfield’s face in old age could certainly not be called handsome. Of his once luxurious curling locks there remained a carefully-nurtured residue singularly black in hue. To the last he wore the single curl drooping over his forehead. He had abandoned all foppery of dress, though on fine spring days, as already noted, he liked to wear lavender kid gloves. Unlike Mr. Gladstone, who regularly greets the summer array in a white hat, a light tweed suit, and a blue necktie, Lord Beaconsfield was ever soberly attired, the cut of his clothes suggesting rather the efforts of Hughenden art than the triumphs of Bond Street. He always wore a frock coat, and in the House of Commons had a curious little habit, when he sat down, of carefully arranging the skirt over his legs. Then he crossed his knees, folded his arms, and, with head hung down, sat for hours apparently immobile, but, as was shown when occasion arose, watchful and wary. Of his good looks there were left a pair of eyes remarkably luminous for one of his age, and plump, small, well-shaped white hands, of which he was pardonably proud.

  The professed creed of Disraeli was that of a “complete Jew,” that is to say, he believed in “Him that had come;” and “did not look for another.” To use his own words, he “believed in Calvary, as well as Sinai.”

  There was not an English drop of blood in his veins, nor an English taste or sentiment or feeling in his nature. He was foreign, not only in race and religion, but in character and intellect and feature and manner, to the great people whom he ruled. Mazarin himself was not a parallel, for though he rose from an obscurer origin and, though an Italian, came to govern France, he at least was one in creed with the nation he controlled. But no one imagined that Disraeli believed, although he conformed. He was initiated into the Jewish communion in the ordinary way when he was eight days old, and through life he constantly avowed, in speech and writing, his sympathy for the people from whom he sprang and the faith in which he was born. He was baptized with his father’s family in his youth, but he remained a circumcised Jew to the last, as alien to Christianity as to England. More even than this, his personal peculiarities were those most offensive to the English of every grade. The flashy Brummagem Hebrew had nothing in common with the solid, substantial Briton. In his youth he was gaudy in dress, pert in language, forward and conceited in manner; he always loved display and parade, and was showy in politics and meretricious in everything. Worse still, he was false to his early friends; he turned on his first political leader; he deserted the party that had brought him into public life, and betrayed the principles of the other to which he turned. Yet he remained the idol of those whom he duped; he brought the aristocracy that he satirized to his feet; the despised plebeian forced Cecils and Stanleys to do his bidding, and, long an object of aversion to the queen, he finally compelled her to become his disciple and then conferred on her a newer title and what she thought a grander crown.

  What a wonder, then, that to Disraeli, a romanticist in statecraft, an idealist in politics, and a Provençal in sentiment, his chivalrous regard for the sex should have taken a deeper complexion when the personage was not only a woman but a queen? In trifles Disraeli never forgot the sex of the sovereign. In great affairs he never appeared to remember it. To this extent the charge of flattery brought against him may be true. He approached the Queen with the supreme tact of a man of the world, than which no form of flattery can be more affective and more dangerous. So far the indictment against him may be upheld. The word “subservience” is the translation of this simple fact into the language of political malice.

  Yet after a great defeat, after a year of rayless seclusion, and fourteen years of absence altogether from this changing world, Lord Beaconsfield retains a hold upon the popular mind which has scarcely relaxed since its unsuspected strength was revealed at his death. To some that may appear an exaggerated statement, but I believe it would bear any test that could be applied to it. Test is difficult—the dead do not return; but let us imagine a pageant in the Queen’s honour—20th June of this royal year—in which the greater of her old departed servants should rise and take part with these others of to-day—all in their robes of State. It is not pretended that Lord Beaconsfield would make the first figure in that noble procession—(the Great Duke! what in these days would the sight be worth of that “good grey head” moving with the rest under the dome of St. Paul’s!)—but who believes that he would pass with less acclaim or less regret than attended his last days with us?

  Those who had observed his course from the beginning gave him no credit for settled convictions upon any subject, except the honour and interest of the race from which he had sprung; and his books, in which there was much glitter and tinsel, but little solid or genuine matter, confirmed that impression. He seemed to be an actor, in a mask which he never took off. He had courage, audacity, temper, patience, and an indomitable will; and by these qualities, and a study of men, too cynical to be deep, but useful for party management, he established his position. He had also a certain magnanimity, which made him generally impassive and unruffled, even when successfully attacked, and free from all appearance of ill-will or resentment against those who attacked him; a hard hitter himself whenever it suited his purpose, he could take hard blows, as nothing more than the regular practice of the game. He seems to have drawn his own portrait, when he said of Sidonia: “It was impossible to penetrate him. Though unreserved in his manner, his frankness was strictly limited to the surface. He observed everything, thought ever, but avoided serious discussion. If you pressed him for an opinion, he took refuge in raillery, or threw out some grave paradox, with which it was not easy to cope.” Lord Beaconsfield was a man of genius, certainly; those of his writings which have most the appearance of seriousness leave the impression that he was more Radical than Conservative, with a strong sense of the hollowness of the politics of his time. As an orator, he was greatest when least serious; no man excelled him in the satirical vein. But his graver efforts were turgid and artificial; wrapping up the absence of much definite meaning in ponderous words. Even in private he did not seem (to observers like myself, who seldom met him) to talk naturally. The one really great work of his life was to raise his own race to a footing of fuller social and political equality in this country with their fellow-citizens; obliterating the last remnants of a state of feeling towards them, which had formerly been productive of much wrong.

  Gracious is the only word which I can apply to his manner to those around him, and it had a fascination over them which I could perfectly understand, and I could easily comprehend that he should have a surrounding of devotees. The serene, absolute self-confidence he evidently felt was of a nature to inspire a corresponding confidence in his followers. It was an interesting display of the power of a magnetic nature, and gave me a higher idea of the man than all his writings had given or could give. For his intellectual powers and their printed results I never had a high opinion, but his was one of the most interesting and remarkable personalities I ever encountered.

  History will not leave him without a meed of admiration. When all possible explanations of his success have been given, what a wonderful career! An adventurer foreign in race, in ideas, in temper, without money or family connections, climbs, by patient and unaided efforts, to lead a great party, master a powerful aristocracy, sway a vast empire, and make himself one of the four or five greatest personal forces in the world. His head is not turned by his elevation. He never becomes a demagogue; he never stoops to beguile the multitude by appealing to sordid instincts. He retains through life a certain amplitude of view, a due sense of the dignity of his position, a due regard for the traditions of the ancient assembly which he leads, and when at last the destinies of England fall into his hands, he feels the grandeur of the charge and seeks to secure what he believes to be her imperial place in the world. Whatever judgment history may ultimately pass upon him, she will find in the long annals of the English Parliament no more striking figure.

Oratory and Speeches

  Mr. D’Israeli’s appearance and manner, were very singular. His dress also was peculiar: it had much of a theatrical aspect. His black hair was long and flowing, and he had a most ample crop of it. His gestures were abundant: he often appeared as if trying with what celerity he could move his body from one side to another, and throw his hands out and draw them in again. At other times he flourished one hand before his face, and then the other. His voice, too, is of a very unusual kind: it is powerful, and had every justice done to it in the way of exercise; but there is something peculiar in it which I am at a loss to characterise. His utterance is rapid, and he never seems at a loss for words. On the whole, and notwithstanding the result of his first attempt, I am convinced he is a man who possesses many of the requisites of a good debater. That he is a man of great literary talent, few will dispute.

  D’Israeli made a beautiful speech last night on moving certain resolutions declaratory of the unequal burthens on land. Nothing could be more eloquent, and, what is more rare in his speeches, more temperate and conciliatory. It consequently produced more solid effect than his more jeering and smart effusions.

  D’Israeli is not a very eloquent or graceful speaker. There seems such an affluence of thought, he hesitates in the choice of words.

  That Mr. Disraeli is a great orator few will deny. It is perhaps premature to assign him place with any of our most renowned classical speakers; and indeed this would be a difficult task, since his style both of thought and delivery are quite original, and partake so much of the idiosyncrasy of the man, that there are few like him in our great mass of English statesmen who are deservedly regarded as models in the forensic art.

  It was curious to see the immediate change from a negligent, impatient posture in the House, to one of great eagerness at the first sound of Bright’s voice; an eagerness which only Disraeli’s impenetrable face was wholly free from. No man ever succeeded better than he does in the assumption of utter insensibility. While Bright flung his taunts at him not a muscle moved; there he sat with his lower jaw dropped, and his eyes glassy and stiff; maintaining the same listless look when he was described as “issuing flash political notes which would not pass at the bank, however they imposed upon the inexperienced;” and when he was pointed at by Bright’s finger, directing the attention of the House to his attitude, “Look at the right honourable gentleman, the Chancellor of the Exchequer—look at him! Is he not a marvel of cleverness to have led that party so long and to mislead it at last, as he is doing now?” All eyes following this, with a great deal of laughing, had no effect in stirring the Sphinx outwardly, and I don’t think so much as an eyelash gave way. It is this dead calm which lashes Gladstone into such passionate vehemence when he attacks Dizzy. It is certain that Disraeli rose with the feeling of the House against him; but the wonderful dexterity, the wit, the exquisite pleasantry, and the excellent temper of his speech turned it quite round to him and saved the Ministry.

  It is difficult to determine whether Mr. Disraeli’s best work (looked at merely from a critical and literary point of view) is to be found in his speeches or in his books—whether he is a writer who has accidentally turned speaker or a speaker who has accidentally turned writer. I have never greatly admired the early Protectionist speeches in which he assailed Sir Robert: they are splendidly impertinent and audacious, and we know that Sir Robert did not like them; but the invective is laboured, and the irony is not incisive but simply savage. The picture altogether is as black as one of Rembrandt’s etchings; the delicate tints, the natural play of light and shadow having been omitted. There are many scenes and dialogues and characters in the novels that are vastly superior to this portrait of Sir Robert, much as it was applauded in its day; but I do not think there is anything, even in “Coningsby,” quite equal to the airy quizzing, the refined and brilliant chaff, the gentlemanly and good-humoured banter of Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Sir Charles Wood, and other House of Commons men whose names are passing away, which is to be found in Mr. Disraeli’s later speeches. Caricatures more or less, no doubt, but caricatures by a man who has a naturally fine eye for the nicest traits of character. They are wonderfully true, and yet to some extent ideal, like the cartoons that Richard Doyle used to contribute in the old days of Punch. Let any idle admirer of Mr. Disraeli collect the lightly-touched, wittily-conceived sketches which may be gleaned from the speeches delivered by the leader of the Opposition between 1848 and 1858, and he will bring together a striking gallery of historical portraits, far more true to the life than historical portraits commonly are.

  All the world is familiar with the sarcasms of Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield); his hits at Peel as one who had “caught the Whigs bathing, and run away with their clothes,”—as a politician who had always “traded on the ideas of others, whose life had been one huge appropriation clause,” etc. Wit is not merely the handmaid of the Premier’s genius; it is the right arm of his power. Much of its point is due to his by-play,—to the subtle modulations of his voice, his peculiar shrug, and the air of icy coolness and indifference with which he utters his sneers and sarcasms. Nothing can be more polished than his irony; it is the steeled hand in the silken glove. Yet, on account of its personality and vindictiveness, it cannot be commended for imitation. As it has been well said, the adder lurks under the rose-leaves of his rhetoric; the golden arrows are tipped with poison.

  Last of all Lord Beaconsfield came also…. The whole hall rises for him the applause is deafening; the greeting such as he is rightly proud of. It was a common remark that Lord Beaconsfield was looking uncommonly well. So he was; so long as he thought people were looking at him. The condition of this great man’s health is an affair of state, and is discussed very much as Louis XIV’s bodily welfare was discussed when he changed his shirts in public. Lord Beaconsfield does not change his shirts in public. He finds it less embarrassing to effect from time to time an exchange of what are sometimes called his principles. He has, however, his physical peculiarities, and one who sees him from time to time is able to guess near enough at his actual health. When he made his entry into the Library of the Guildhall, I stood near the door. I could see him pull together and compose the muscles of his face till the desired expression was attained. All resemblances, says a great physiognomist, lie in the eyes and mouth. Individual expression lies there too, and the brief space during which Lord Beaconsfield was advancing up the aisle was not too brief for a good look at these features. They quite confirmed the good reports from Hatfield which I recently mentioned. A strange fire burned in his eyes. The jaw and lips were set fast. For those two minutes no man’s face was more full of energy, no step firmer than his, septuagenarian as he is, with four years added to the seventy. He wore his Windsor uniform of dark blue with embroideries in gold, with pendent sword, and on his breast that matchless and priceless star of diamonds inclosing the ruby cross of the Garter which fills all meaner breasts with envy…. Later in the evening Lord Beaconsfield paid Sir Stafford Northcote the compliment of supposing that his speech on finance was occupying the attention of the audience. He leaned back in his chair, his mask slipped off for a moment, the light from the great chandelier above streamed full on his face, and you saw what he was like when not posing for the gallery. The cheeks grew hollow, the tint of his skin waxlike, the cavernous jaws fell slightly apart, the carefully trained curls on the left brow slid out of place, the fire sank low in his eyes, the whole face aged painfully in a minute. If ever a human countenance looked weary and bored and scornful, Lord Beaconsfield’s was that countenance at that moment.

  The secret of his political success is to be found in his gifts as House of Commons orator, and it is as severe a reflection upon the English system of Government as could be made that these gifts should have sufficed to enable their possessor to have a large share in the Government of an empire like England during the greater portion of his life. We do not mean at all to underrate his gifts. The author of the “Political Adventures” refers to his rhetorical faculty with contempt; but it is by no means a contemptible faculty. His serious phrases are open to reproach that they are not sincere. Not so, however, with his invective, his satire, his irony, his humour, and his wit. These are all genuine. These are the weapons which have made him the invaluable ally, and finally the leader, of the Conservative party in the House of Commons.

  His great triumphs were in his briefest speeches, spurts of twenty minutes’ length, full of point and sparkle. In order to make a speech of two hours in length, a man must needs have a certain proportion of facts to work upon. Mr. Disraeli never displayed a constitutional liking for facts, and when of occasional necessity he came to handle them, it was not with a master-hand. In proportion as he was permitted to disregard facts, or even to distort them, so was he successful in dealing with them. But if he could get away altogether from this hard ground, giving full run to his fancy and wit, he was at his happiest, and was the cause of the greatest happiness in others.

  As an orator Lord Beaconsfield did not greatly shine. Indeed, in the highest sense of the word, he was no orator. He lacked ease and fluency. He had no turn for the lucid exposition of complicated facts, nor for the conduct of a close and cogent argument. Sustained and fiery declamation was not in his way. And least of all had he that truest index of genuine eloquence, the power of touching the emotions. He could not make his hearers weep, but he could make them laugh; he could put them in good humour with themselves; he could dazzle them with brilliant rhetoric, and he could pour upon an opponent streams of ridicule and scorn more effective than the hottest indignation. When he sought to be profound or solemn, he was usually heavy and labored. For wealth of thought or splendor of language his speeches will not bear for a moment to be compared—I will not say with Burke’s, but with those of three or four of his own contemporaries. Even in his own party, Lord Derby, Lord Ellenborough, and Lord Cairns surpassed him…. What he wanted in eloquence he more than made up for by tactical adroitness. No more consummate parliamentary strategist has been seen in England. He had studied the House of Commons till he knew it as a player knows his instrument.

Statesman

  He was the best representative whom the “Republic of Letters” ever had in Parliament, for he made his way by talents—especially by a fascination of words—essentially literary. And on the other hand, though he charmed Parliament, he never did anything more: he had no influence with the country; such a vast power over Englishmen as has been possessed by Lord Palmerston and by Mr. Gladstone was out of his way altogether. Between Mr. Disraeli and common Englishmen there was too broad a gulf, too great a difference; he was simply unintelligible to them. “Ten miles from London,” to use the old phrase, there is scarcely any real conception of him. His mode of regarding parliamentary proceedings as a play and a game is incomprehensible to the simple and earnest English nature. Perhaps he has gained more than he has lost by the English not understanding him; at any rate, the fact remains that the special influence of this great gladiator never passed the walls of the amphitheater.

  His premiership, like his early public career, has been a political romance. Who else, in all the long row of British statesmanship, would have produced such startling surprises, such scenic effects, such audacious transformations? To purchase a controlling share in the Suez Canal, to hail the Queen as Empress of India, to send the fleet into the waters of Constantinople, to acquire Cyprus, were acts of daring, which only a courageous and self-confident spirit, fond of striking displays of power, could have successfully executed.

  That whole character is complete in its selfishness, that whole career is uniform in its dishonesty. Throughout his whole life I do not find even on a single occasion a generous emotion, one self-sacrificing act, a moment of sincere conviction—except that of the almighty perfection of himself. I find him uniform in all his dealings with his fellow man, and behind every word he utters I can only see the ever-vigilant custodian of his own interests. And it is this perfect uniformity in his character and career that most estranges me…. Lord Beaconsfield is the same from the beginning; as he is in old age, as he was in middle age, so he was in youth. His maturity without virtue is the natural sequel to his youth without generous illusions. There is throughout the same selfishness—calm, patient, unhasting, unresting. Such a man the myriads of this mighty Empire accept as chief ruler; for such a man millions of pure hearts beat with genuine emotion; to such a man it is given to sway by his single will your fortunes and mine, and even those of the countless generations yet to come. Which shall a near posterity most wonder at—the audacity of the impostor, or the blindness of the dupe?—the immensity of the worship, or the pettiness of the idol?

  Speaking generally, an imaginative man is a magnanimous man; for the larger vision of the poet is incompatible with parochial pettiness. This was eminently the case with Disraeli; his temper was sweet, and he was neither spiteful nor malignant. Yet, men who were too dense and stupid to meet him in fair fight were always harping, parrot-like, on his vindictiveness. The fine edge of his intellect scared them, and they ran away exclaiming that the blow which they could not turn was foul. But what candid friend, with the best intentions, has succeeded in producing any specific act of meanness or baseness? He hit hard; there were times when he asked no quarter and gave none; but still, upon the whole, he was a magnanimous foe, who fought above-board, who looked his enemy in the face, who was not treacherous. “He never feared the face of man;” and there are no traces in any part of his career of the tricks to which the coward resorts.

  On the 19th April, 1881, the mischievous and evil-minded fortune which had persecuted the Tories sent a crowning blow, and Lord Beaconsfield passed away. From that hour to this there has hardly been a Tory in or out of Parliament, high or low, rich or poor, who, observing at any particular moment the political situation, has not exclaimed, muttered, or thought, “Oh, if Lord Beaconsfield were alive!” This is really the proudest monument to the departed leader, more enduring than the bronze on Abbey Green. This is the truest testimony of his inestimable value to the party who for so long jeered, feared, flouted, followed, and following at the last greatly loved. This, too, is the criticism pointed and unanswerable at the conduct of affairs since his death, which no amount of memorials of confidence, no number of dinners in Pall Mall, no repetitions, however frequent, of gushing embraces between the lord and the commoner, can meet, modify, or gainsay.

  Keen must be the critical faculty which nicely discerns where the novelist ended and the statesman began in Benjamin Disraeli.

  Was he a great statesman? Not as I understand the term. There is only one measure of the first rank associated with his name, the Reform Act of 1867, and in passing this he committed the very offence he charged upon Sir Robert Peel, that is, he “found the Whigs bathing, and stole their clothes.” In matters of foreign policy he acquired a reputation for energy and brilliancy but acted more from haphazard than from deliberate method. He deified the lust of empire, and created the accursed spirit of Jingoism. It was as a party leader that he most shone, for he led the Tories through the wilderness and brought them out into the promised land. When he waxed grandiloquent about the constitution and the monarchy, it was not that these were really the apple of his eye, but they furnished opportunity for the use of sounding phrases and elaborate rhetoric. Probably no public man was ever guilty of so many subterfuges and tergiversations. When uttering his misrepresentations his coolness was superbly unique. Although he wielded an immense personal power over thousands of Englishmen, there never was a statesman who had less in himself of what was truly English.

  An aggregate of atoms is not a nation, which is rather an organic union and communion of individuals. Such, in brief, was also the political creed of Disraeli, who desired nothing more than the reconciliation of new ideas with ancient institutions through growth rather than through revolution, and the permanent defence of a constitution which is in fact the English character, expressed through the modulations of the national voice, and not by the shouts of numerical majorities. Faith, freedom, industry, and order: these are the great elements which make and keep a nation great, and these elements will be found always and eloquently present in the prophetic pronouncements of Disraeli.

Vivian Grey, 1826–27

  Murray was much pleased with the philip [sic] at young D’Israeli in the “Noctes” a month or two ago. This fellow has humbugged him most completely. After the tricks of which he has been guilty, he will scarcely dare show his face in London again for some time. You are aware, I dare say, that “Vivian Grey” was palmed off upon Colburn by Mrs. Austin, the wife of the Honourable Mr. Warde’s [sic] lawyer, as the production of the author of “Tremaine!” and upon this understanding Colburn gave three times as much as he would otherwise have done.

  We are reading the second part of “Vivian Grey,” which we like better than the first. There is a scene of gamesters and swindlers wonderfully well done. I know who wrote “Almack’s.” Lady de Ros tells me it is by Mrs. Purvis, sister to Lady Blessington; this accounts for both the knowledge of high, and the habits of low, life which appear in the book.

  This is a piquant and amusing novel, though its merits are not of a very high order…. The foundation of the story is extravagant. The powers, purposes, and influence of a mature man are attributed to a boy of twenty; and the work is rather a series of sketches than a regularly built story. The hero has no mistress but politics, and no adventures but political adventures. The other prominent characters are all fools or knaves, and all are more or less forced and unnatural. Their aggregate makes a strong picture, which dazzles, but does not satisfy. The style of writing is dashing and careless, occasionally rising into hasty extravagance, and at times sinking into mawkish sentimentality. The morality of the book is loose. It is, in fact, little more than a picture of the vices and follies of the great, with an active spirit in the midst of them, making their vices and follies the stepping-stones to his ambition.

  The work was read with great avidity. It contained so many and such direct references to public men and recent events—such sarcastic views of society and character in high life—and was at once so arrogant, egotistic, and clever, that it became the book of the season and the talk of the town. Passages of glowing sentiment and happy description gave evidence of poetic feeling and imagination.

  One day, suddenly, “Vivian Grey” burst upon astonished society, and took it by storm. It found its way at once to every drawing-room table. It was the town talk at ministerial soirées, in the lobbies of the House of Commons, at the Pall Mall clubs. Great ladies asked each other if they had read it; wondered who wrote it; guessed whom the author meant to represent by the Marquis of Carabas, and Lord Courtown, and Mr. Cleveland; and who was Vivian Grey himself.

  “Vivian Grey,” with all its youthful faults, gives one a greater impression of purely intellectual brilliance than anything else he ever wrote or spoke.

  “Vivian Grey” is crude, naturally; and although it is overflowing with high spirits it lacks form and is quite unrepresentative.

Contarini Fleming, 1832

  In the evening we took up Disraeli’s “Contarini Fleming,” and got very much interested in it. It is full of life; a fresh, young vigor of style, that bears one on like a steed.

  Although the spirit of poesy, in the form of a Childe Harold, stalks rampant through the romance, there is both feeling and fidelity to nature whenever he describes the Orient and its people. Then the bizarre, brilliant poseur forgets his rôle, and reveals his highest aspirations.

Alroy, 1833

  One of the finest of modern prose poems. There are, indeed, two objections which may be stated to it:—one, its form, which is too Frenchified, reminding you, in its short chapters, and abrupt transitions, and glancing hints of thought, of “Candide;” and the second (one which his biographer presses against him with all his might), the peculiar rhythm of the more ambitious passages, which makes parts of it seem hybrids between poetry and prose. But, after deducting these faults, the tale is one of uncommon interest. Some of the situations are thrilling to sublimity, and the language and imagery are intensely oriental, and in general as felicitous as they are bold.

  In “Alroy,” Mr. Disraeli has avoided all the errors which he fell into in the “Revolutionary Epic.” The style is perfectly original, the story wild and romantic, but glowing with the true oriental fire. In this work he has also laid hold of, and skilfully employed, the pre-existing supernatural machinery which was already familiar to the reader’s mind…. Alroy’s entrance into Jerusalem and his interview with the Grand Rabbi, are fine specimens of Mr. Disraeli’s method of portraying the peculiarities of the Jewish character. The scene in the synagogue is also well drawn.

Venetia, 1837

  It must, I fear, be admitted that “Venetia” is almost the weakest of Lord Beaconsfield’s novels as a work of fiction, and that such interest as it possesses is mainly biographical. It is so close a copy of reality that the structure seems loose and inartificial, and the sequence of events capricious. The really artistic novelist is an eclectic artist who chooses out of life the events susceptible of treatment in fiction, and imparts to them the logical concatenation which the ordinary littlenesses of life obstruct or obscure. Disraeli has simply copied, and except by the rather clumsy device of fixing a piece of Byron upon Shelley, has made hardly an endeavour to combine or diversify. The domestic bereavement of Lord Lyndhurst, to whom the book is dedicated, has, he says, restrained him from offering any account of “the principles which had guided me in its composition.” This must have been a meagre catalogue at best; but the biographer redeems the novelist, and he is right in claiming credit for the endeavour “to shadow forth, though but in a glass darkly, two of the most renowned and refined spirits that have adorned these our latter days.”

  “Venetia” is founded on the characters of Byron and Shelley, and is amusing reading. The high-flown language incrusted with the gems of rhetoric excites our risibilities, but it is not safe to laugh at Disraeli; in his most diverting aspects he has a deep sense of humor, and he who would mock at him is apt to get a whip across the face at an unguarded moment. Mr. Disraeli laughs in his sleeve at many things, but first of all at the reader.

Henrietta Temple, 1837

  It is difficult to characterize this work except by calling it a diagnosis of love à la Disraeli. Nothing is attempted except it be a display of the tender passion. The lovers sigh like furnaces, their hearts throb, and rend, and quiver, and no—not quite break. Their souls are in burning ethereal ecstacy or in the depth of darkness and despair. The hero prays, swears, mopes, and raves. And the ladies—their tender, bursting, pining hearts, are racked—bless them. It is impossible to go on. It is an admirable book.

  “Henrietta Temple,” a mere and sheer love story written in a dangerous style of sentimentalism, is one of the most effective things of its kind in English, and holds its ground despite all drawbacks of fashion in speech and manners, which never tell more heavily than in the case of a book of this kind.

Coningsby, 1844

  Ben Disraeli, the Jew scamp, has published a very blackguard novel, in which the Pusey and Young England doctrines are relieved by a full and malignant but clever enough detail of all the abominations of Lord Hertford, and Croker figures in full fig. I should not wonder if there were some row—the abuse of Crokey is so very horrid, ditto of Lord Lowther. Peel is flattered, but the Government lashed. Awful vanity of the Hebrew.

  Did you read “Coningsby,” that very able book, without character, story, or specific teaching? It is well worth reading, and worth wondering over. D’Israeli, who is a man of genius, has written, nevertheless, books which will live longer, and move deeper. But everybody should read “Coningsby.” It is a sign of the times.

  In “Coningsby,” the dramatic and didactic elements are not so closely interwoven with each other as not to admit of being separated, and it is perfectly possible to convey to the reader a clear idea of the chief positions which are maintained in it, without trenching on the province of the literary critic, or anticipating the remarks we have to make on the plot, the characters, and the language.

  As a tale, “Coningsby” is nothing; but it is put together with extreme skill to give opportunities for typical sketches of character, and for the expression of opinions on social and political subjects. We have pictures of fashionable society, gay and giddy, such as no writer ever described better; peers, young, middle-aged, and old, good, bad, and indifferent, the central figure a profligate old noble of immense fortune, whose person was equally recognised, and whose portrait was also preserved by Thackeray. Besides these, intriguing or fascinating ladies, political hacks, country gentlemen, mill-owners, and occasional wise outsiders, looking upon the chaos and delivering oracular interpretations or prophecies. Into the middle of such a world the hero is launched, being the grandson and possible heir of the wicked peer.

  On no subject is he more prone to give the reins to his imagination than that of the intellectual and artistic superiority of the Jewish race, as in “Coningsby,” his finest story.

  “Coningsby” is perhaps the best known of all his novels—by name. But for the neophyte it contains too much political dissertation.

  Much more than a novel; a political manifesto with a serious practical aim, to furnish a programme for a new Conservative party.

Sybil, 1845

  “Sybil” is not an improvement upon “Coningsby.” The former novel was received with marked approbation, from the apparent sympathy which it displayed with a suffering and neglected class. “Sybil” will meet with far inferior success; its pictures only show how strongly and coarsely the author can paint, and are obviously not the result of any genuine regard for the poor and afflicted. It is not as a mere work of fiction that we intend to criticise “Sybil, or the Two Nations,” though even in this point of view we think it very faulty,—abrupt in its transitions—incorrect in costume—extravagant in delineation—and fantastic, and sometimes absurd in its philosophy—and far from high-minded in its conception and its plot.

Tancred, 1847

  Writing himself much more detestable stuff than ever came from a French pen, can do nothing better to bamboozle the unfortunates who are seduced into reading his “Tancred” than speak superciliously of all other men and things—an expedient much more successful in some quarters than one would expect.

  “Tancred” cannot be esteemed a work of art, even if that term may be justly applied in the limited sense of mere construction. There is in it no great living idea which pervades, moulds, and severely limits the whole. If we consider the motive, we find a young nobleman so disgusted with the artificial and hollow life around him, that he sacrifices everything for a pilgrimage to what he believes the only legitimate source of faith and inspiration. We cannot, to be sure, expect much of a youth who is obliged to travel a thousand miles after inspiration; but we might reasonably demand something more than that he should merely fall in love, a consummation not less conveniently and cheaply attainable at home. If the whole story be intended for a satire, the disproportion of motive to result is not out of proper keeping. But Mr. D’Israeli’s satire is wholly of the epigrammatic kind, not of the epic, and deals always with individuals, never with representative ideas. An epigram in three volumes post octavo is out of the question. The catastrophe has no moral or æsthetic fitness. Indeed, there is no principle of cohesion about the book, if we except the covers. Nor could there be; for there is no one central thought around and toward which the rest may gravitate. All that binds the incidents together is the author’s will, a somewhat inadequate substitute for a law of nature.

  “Tancred” is unquestionably one of the most interesting and original of Lord Beaconsfield’s works. It is a serio-comic, ironically mystic book; on the first reading, it seems too absurd to be subjected to serious criticism, but one takes it up again, and, although it falls asunder into the two large fragments, its wit and brilliant Oriental scenes and conversations dwell in the memory. It comprises, moreover, Disraeli’s whole field of vision, and ranges between the veriest frivolities of high life, an amusing gastronomic disquisition, and the highest religious pathos of which the author is capable, as well as the most far-reaching of his poetical schemes.

  There remains a book that is rarely mentioned, but that should take rank immediately after “Esmond” if not side by side with that masterpiece—“Tancred.”

Lothair, 1870

  In all “Lothair” there is but one living figure, but one that leaves an impress of reality or even of ideal truth; and this figure is one of the subordinate personages. Lothair himself is a mere name; Theodora, a stereoscopic figure, salient and striking, but as dead as plaster-of-paris. The dukes and duchesses, cardinals and monsignor are a mere supernumerary procession of puppets that walk across Mr. Disraeli’s stage, uttering, as if it were no concern of theirs, his wit and sarcasm. But when St. Aldegonde appears, be it for only a moment, we see a living soul. And one proof of this firm, well-rounded individuality is that he can be looked at in a different light by different people. This is the case with Shakespeare’s personages, as it is with men and women in real life. Like them, St. Aldegonde can be misconceived, misapprehended, misunderstood; because like them he is alive; that like all living things he provokes liking and disliking, and brings into the problem of his personal relation with those whom he meets their feelings toward him.

  “Lothair” is certainly free from the prevailing vice of the present age of novels. It is in no degree tinted with sensationalism. It has as distinct a purpose as a Parliamentary Blue Book, and is about as exciting as one. Its object is to expose the arts and wiles of the Catholics, clergy and laity, to entice into the fold of Rome young noblemen and gentlemen of great estates. If our indistinct recollection of Mr. Disraeli’s former novels does not much mislead us, their fundamental errors as works of art, lay in their being virtually pamphlets in the disguise of stories, to prove this or that theory of politics or morals…. It is hard to see how a man capable of those caustic, bitter, cruel diatribes of twenty years since against Sir Robert Peel could be capable of the platitudinous dulness of “Lothair.” It shows at least how very absurd a novel a very clever man can write—which is consolatory to the average stupidity of mankind.

  “Lothair” is undoubtedly a really amusing and interesting book, but as a literary work it cannot be placed beside “Tancred” or “Sybil”—for two reasons. We detect, in the first place, the occasional infelicity and unfamiliarity of the pen which has been long laid aside. There have always been curiously immature passages in Mr. Disraeli’s books—passages of laboured and tawdry rhetoric, which were brought into unfortunate and undeserved prominence by the airy finish and eminent exactness of the work in which they were set. But in “Lothair” the dramatis personæ themselves are generally unsubstantial and unreal. They are, with a few admirable exceptions, lay-figures without distinct or urgent individuality of any sort, whereas the actors in the earlier books were obviously the productions of a man whose genius was not merely mimetic but finely dramatic…. “Lothair” is the “Arabian Nights” translated into modern romance.

  “Lothair” is not a mere novel, and its appearance is not simply a fact for Mr. Mudie. It is a political event. When a man whose life has been passed in Parliament, who for a generation has been the real head of a great party, sits down, as he approaches the age of seventy, to embody his view of modern life, it is a matter of interest to the politician, the historian, nay, almost the philosopher. The literary qualities of the book need detain no man. Premiers not uncommonly do write sad stuff; and we should be thankful if the stuff be amusing. But the mature thoughts on life of one who has governed an empire on which the sun never sets, have an inner meaning to the thoughtful mind. Marcus Aurelius, amidst his imperial eagles, thought right to give us his Reflections. The sayings of Napoleon at St. Helena have strange interest to all men. And Solomon in all his glory was induced to publish some amazing rhapsodies on human nature and the society of his own time.

  He [Librarian New York Mercantile Library] bought 500 copies of “Lothair,” and afterward sold about 150 of them, as the public interest in the work gradually died away. There are still, however 50 or 75 copies in use all the time. More of the surplus stock might be sold; but experience has shown that the popularity of a book is subject to unforseen revivals, and if Mr. Disraeli should die, or become prime minister, or do anything else to bring himself into prominent notice, there would be a sudden call for all the copies on hand.

  Of Mr. Disraeli’s “Lothair” 1500 copies were at first subscribed, but it was soon found necessary to increase the number to 3000. The demand was, however, as brief as it was eager, and the monumental pile of “remainders” in Mr. Mudie’s cellar is the largest that has ever been erected there to the hydra of ephemeral admiration.

  The weakest of all his novels.

  The novel bears the closest resemblance to the productions of his earlier days; as in them, passages of splendid diction alternate with passages of the most vapid inanity; and the book—strange to say—is characterised, too, by its admiring descriptions of the nobility—their mansions and their luxurious surroundings,—a form of mean adulation of which one would think Mr. Disraeli’s attainment of one of the highest positions in England might have cured him. There are some clever sketches of contemporary characters; there are here and there bright epigrams; but the book is dreary and prolix, and the bright passages are the exception,—the dull the rule. So far as the book could be said to have any purpose at all, it was a strong attack upon the Roman Catholic Church.

  What makes “Lothair” psychologically interesting arises from the same position of affairs that has made the style official, namely, that the author stands at the summit of his wishes, and has realized his schemes, so that he no longer needs to take various circumstances into consideration. “Lothair” is a more straightforward book than the “Trilogy,” so called, which preceded it. It is not only without false mysticism, but in a religious point of view, it is the most openly free-thinking work that Disraeli has written, so opposed to miracles that it might be taken for the work of a Rationalist if the fantastic author had not signed it with his fantastic doctrine, never renounced, of the sole victorious Semitic principle.

  “Lothair” came as a sort of successor to “Tancred,” and its surface faults are precisely those which spoiled the earlier novels, and exposed their author to a good deal of humorous, and perhaps not altogether undeserved, satire. “Coningsby” is a caricature, but there are things in “Lothair” which are almost as absurd as anything in Thackeray’s famous parody. The “ropes of pearls” which Lothair gives to Theodora; the crucifix of gold and emeralds, with its earth from the holy places covered in with “slit diamonds;” the tomb of alabaster, with its encircling railings of pure gold; Mr. Phœbus with his steam yacht “Pan,” and his Ægean Island, his colossal wealth, and stupendously beautiful womankind; the extremely gorgeous society of dukes and their daughters, marquises, and merchant princes—all these things are, we venture to think, faults of taste, and are rather out of place in matter-of-fact England in the nineteenth century. But though we may dislike these things, it is impossible to contend that they justify the torrent of abuse with which “Lothair” was received. Much of it may, of course, be traced to the violent prejudice which dogged every step of Lord Beaconsfield’s career—a prejudice by no means confined to his political opponents, but fully shared by many of the representatives of the old Conservative party.

  The Theodora of Disraeli’s “Lothair.” She is in truth one of the noblest creations of a modern novelist; she impersonates all the traits which Shelley specially valued in woman; she is a maturer Cythna, a Cythna of flesh and blood. What is equally to the point, she is her creator’s ideal also. Disraeli usually deals with his characters with easy familiarity, and, except when he is depicting a personal enemy, with amiable indulgence. He sees their foibles, nevertheless, and takes care that these shall not escape the reader. In Theodora alone there is nothing of this. She has captivated her creator, as Galatea captivated Pygmalion. There is not a single touch of satire in the portrait; it plainly represents the artist’s highest conception of woman, which proves to be essentially the same as Shelley’s.

Endymion, 1880

  A man’s talent—an orator’s, for instance—is not always in the exact ratio of his personal value; and in the same way the interest excited by a book may be out of proportion to its intrinsic merit. Lord Beaconsfield’s new novel is an instance of this. As a novel it is hardly distinguished from the run of those which the English press turns out every year. It permits itself to be, rather than insists on being, read. It amuses the reader without enthralling him. And yet it has been in everybody’s hand, and for the moment has been the theme of everybody’s talk. People were anxious to see the present state of the talent and the opinions of a man who has for so long a time both held the political stage and plied the pen of the novelist. They were curious once more to meet this puzzling personage on whose score public opinion has not yet made itself up. I venture to think that it is Lord Beaconsfield’s personality which gives the interest to his books, and even to his policy.

  There is, moreover, nothing about the career of Endymion which arouses our interest or sympathies. He is from the first fatally successful. The obstacles which arise in his path we know at the outset will not prove to be real obstacles, and vanish entirely at the touch of the author’s magical wand. There is no real struggle, and Endymion, whether he wants money, office, or a wife, is as certain to get what he longs for as we are to turn over the pages which advance him in his happy career. He finally marries Lady Montfort, and becomes Prime Minister of England. The plot is undeniably flat. In fact, there is no plot that deserves the name. The characters in Endymion are numerous, some of them being characters taken from contemporary politics, some the creations of the author’s fancy. Myra and Endymion of course belong to the latter class, and Myra is really an extraordinary character.

  This book is called a novel by way of advertisement that it is in prose and is fictitious; but it needed no such descriptive label. If the definition of a novel is a “prose fiction” and nothing more, “Endymion” fulfils the requisition. It has in effect no plot and no characters, but is simply a narrative of things which have happened, and which have not and never can happen, constituting the political adventures, to a limited extent, of a large number of people, some of whom Lord Beaconsfield liked and some of whom he did not like. The style is diffuse, but less extravagant than has been usual with its author. The difference between this and his earlier works is the difference between the garrulity of old age and the enthusiasm of youth. What is lost in dash is gained in temperance. Otherwise the style is about the same as that of its predecessors, and relieved in the same way by epigrammatic turns and pointed sayings.

  There will no doubt, be some reproach that this is a political novel without political principles, and a picture of success in life without ethical consideration; but the author may well say that that is his affair. He chooses to depict political life as he has found it, and he leaves it to others to invest it with graver forms, and to draw from it more solemn conclusions. He is the artist, not the political philosopher.

  There is nothing remarkable in “Endymion” except the intellectual vivacity, which shows no abatement.

General

  Mr. D’Israeli began his literary career as an amusing writer merely. He was no unmeet Homer for a dandy Achilles, whose sublime was impertinence. His “Vivian Grey,” no doubt, made some score of sophomores intolerable in the domestic circle; his “Young Duke” tempted as many freshmen to overrun their incomes. Nature is said to love a balance of qualities or properties, and to make up always for a deficiency in one place by an excess in some other. But our experience of mankind would incline us to doubt the possible existence of so large a number of modest men as would account for the intensity of Mr. Disraeli’s vicarious atonement. It is painful to conceive of an amount of bashfulness demanding such a counterpoise of assurance. It would seem that he must have borrowed brass, that he must be supporting his lavish expenditures aere alieno, when he assumes the philosopher, and undertakes to instruct.

  He has great powers of description, an admirable talent for all dialogue, and remarkable force, as well as truth, in the delineation of character. His novels are constructed, so far as the story goes, on the true dramatic principles, and the interest sustained with true dramatic effect. His mind is essentially of a reflecting character; his novels are, in a great degree, pictures of public men or parties in political life. He has many strong opinions—perhaps some singular prepossessions—and his imaginative works are, in a great degree, the vehicle for their transmission.

  Familiar with those scenes of life in which readers are the most interested, possessing a highly imaginative cast of mind and descriptive powers of no common order, it is no marvel that the author of “Vivian Grey” should be one of the most popular writers of his time.

  We pass to analyse, in a general way, Disraeli’s intellectual powers. These are exceedingly varied. He has one of the sharpest and clearest of intellects, not, perhaps, of the most philosophical order, but exceedingly penetrating and acute. He has a fine fancy, soaring up at intervals into high imagination, and marking him a genuine child of that nation from whom came forth the loftiest, richest and most impassioned song which earth has ever witnessed—the nation of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Solomon and Job. He has little humor, but a vast deal of diamond-pointed wit. The whole world knows his powers of sarcasm. They have never been surpassed in the combination of savage force, and, shall we say, Satanic coolness, of energy and of point, of the fiercest animus within, and the utmost elegance of outward expression. He wields for his weapon a polar icicle—gigantic as a club—glittering as a star—deadly as a scimitar—and cool as eternal frost. His style and language are the faithful index of these varied and brilliant powers. His sentences are almost always short, epigrammatic, conclusive—pointed with wit and starred with imagery—and so rapid in their bickering, sparkling progress! One, while reading the better parts of his novels, seems reading a record of the conversations of Napoleon.

  A fantastic kind of Eastern exaggeration—the unpruned luxuriance of a Judean vine whose branches run over the wall—characterizes both the plots and the style of Mr. Disraeli’s works.

  In descriptive power, he is hardly surpassed by any living writer, and in the exposition of politics, social theories, and the illustration of real public life by means of fictitious personages and incidents, he is without a rival.

  The accidents of his literary career appear to us much more interesting than those of his birth and station. It is true that his books often contain passages which reveal the force of his judgment and the excellence of his satirical abilities. But they also contain such a mass of gush, nonsense, and “talk,” such an unworldly carelessness of being thought a fool, and such an apparent ignorance of what the world thinks foolish, that it is hard for us to conceive that they are the work of one who has since proved himself to be, of all the eminent people of his time and country, perhaps the most consummate man of the world. In no books is there to be found less of that sneaking caution in expressing the mind just as it is, which a very little commerce with the world teaches. The gush, the nonsense, and the “talk” come straight to the surface. He is not in the least ashamed to express his admiration of the fine houses, fine dinners and fine manners of the great. And the nonsense and the “talk” are not alone the outcome of his youth. We find him, after having been premier, writing a book full of the same kind of things which he wrote as a boy. His talents have been so commanding, the force of his will has been such, that he has been able to “carry” these immaturities.

  I can even find an hour’s amusement in the absurdities of that extraordinary mountebank whose remarkable fortune it now is for the moment to misgovern England.

  He is, as we have endeavored to show, without any place in literature properly so called. The peculiarities of his style are chiefly defects, his characters generally libels or nonentities, his construction defective and his plot worthless, yet he has actually succeeded in making himself apparently the most popular novelist of the day. In intrinsic interest there is no sort of comparison between the novels of Lord Beaconsfield and those, we will not say of George Eliot but of Trollope. It is unsafe to predict, but in all probability Trollope’s books will be taken as pictures of English life of to-day when the very names of “Endymion” and “Lothair” are lost to the world…. He has never been or pretended to be a scrupulous person, and he has no real reason to like or admire the aristocracy which he has fought his way into with tongue and pen. They have helped him against their will to political power; there is no reason why they should not help him to other things, even at their own expense, and it is at this expense that this clever adventurer has been all his life living. People really read such novels as “Lothair” and “Endymion” for much the same reason that they read a “society journal.” If we can imagine a “society journal” edited by Lord Beaconsfield, the parallel would be complete.

  We have dilated at some length on the various aspects of Lord Beaconsfield’s humour, for it is to our minds far the most important feature of his writings, but after all it is for his daring and dazzling wit that he will universally be remembered. It is, as we have said, a rare quality, and it is also a gift that lives. Wit has wings. A happy phrase becomes a proverb, and the wittier half of a work, like the favourite melodies of a composition, survives the whole. The more will this be likely when the γνώμη is to repeat ourselves intellectually true, when fancy jumps with fact. This is we imagine, the secret of Lord Beaconsfield’s wit. It may seem paradoxical to assert of its popular paradoxes that they are just, but we do so. He, like his Sidonia, “said many things that were strange, yet they instantly appeared to be true.” Be this as it may, wit is certainly the most plentiful element of his later novels. They are confessedly novels of conversation…. It is in “Coningsby” and “Lothair” that perhaps the best of his apophthegms are found…. Whatever the divergencies of opinion on the literary merit of Lord Beaconsfield—and this rests with the best critic, posterity—it is at least unquestionable that in wit and humour he never flags.

  The talent of Disraeli’s novels, particularly the early ones, is that of a showy, romantic mind, which mistook flippancy for wit, which assumed cynicism for effect, and which was at all times defective in taste. They are cleverly rather than well written; are meretricious and tawdry, and they add nothing to our knowledge of life and character. If they are read twenty years hence, it will be out of curiosity respecting their writer, who will probably be said to have delineated the fashionable and political life of his time satirically, and not altogether unskilfully. Disraeli the novelist will be speedily forgotten, but Disraeli the man and the politician will be long remembered.

  Heaven forbid that we should look to the England of Lord Beaconsfield for our standard of morals and manners! He does not depict our mother country, for motherhood there is none in his portraiture.

  The characteristic note, both of his speeches and of his writings, is the combination of a few large ideas, clear, perhaps, to himself, but generally expressed in a vaguely grandiose way, and often quite out of relation to the facts as other people saw them, with a wonderfully acute discernment of small incidents of personal traits, which he used occasionally to support his ideas, but more frequently to conceal their weaknesses—that is, to make up for the absence of practical arguments, such as his hearers would understand.

  Lord Beaconsfield, even his most ardent admirers would admit, gave no evidence that he was possessed of the creative faculty in verse; an ardent imagination he undoubtedly had. He wrote, so far as I am aware, only two sonnets, one of which—that on Wellington—certainly deserves a place in any sonnet-anthology.

  The late Lord Beaconsfield, unrivalled at epigram and detached phrase, very frequently wrote and sometimes spoke below himself, and in particular committed the fault of substituting for a kind of English Voltairian style, which no one could have brought to greater perfection if he had given his mind to it, corrupt followings of the sensibility and philosophism of Diderot and the mere grandiloquence of Buffon.

  Mr. Disraeli, though eminent in literature, did not put his whole heart into it, as Sir Edward had done. As a way to distinction, when no other seemed open to him he was glad and proud to be an author; but his real love was to sway the listening senate; to be a leader of parties, and a ruler of men; the organizer of great schemes of policy, and to achieve not alone an English, but a European and cosmopolitan reputation. The consequence was that his literary career—bright though it seemed in the morning of his life—was a comparative failure as he advanced in years, and that he never achieved any greater success than the very moderate one which the French, when they wish to be good-natured, designate euphemistically as a “succés d’ estime.” As an author, he never ranked and never will rank, among the “immortal few,” but only as one of the crowd of mediocrities, not shining with any particular lustre during his own day, and destined to be extinguished in the blinding mists with which posterity covers the names and works of all who write for an age, or a portion of an age, and not “for all time.”

  These books abound in wit and daring, in originality and shrewdness, in knowledge of the world and in knowledge of men; they contain many vivid and striking studies of character, both portrait and caricature; they sparkle with speaking phrases and happy epithets; they are aglow with the passion of youth, the love of love, the worship of physical beauty, the admiration of whatever is costly and select and splendid—from a countess to a castle, from a duke to a diamond; they are radiant with delight in whatever is powerful or personal or attractive—from a cook to a cardinal, from an agitator to an emperor. They often remind you of Voltaire, often of Balzac, often of “The Arabian Nights.” You pass from an heroic drinking bout to a brilliant criticism of style; from rhapsodies on bands and ortolans that remind you of Heine to a gambling scene that for directness and intensity may vie with the bluntest and strongest work of Prosper Mérimée; from the extravagant impudence of “Popanilla” to the sentimental rodomontade of “Henrietta Temple;” from ranting romanticism in “Alroy” to vivid realism in “Sybil.” Their author gives you no time to weary of him, for he is worldly and passionate, fantastic and trenchant, cynical and ambitious, flippant and sentimental, ornately rhetorical and triumphantly simple in a breath. He is imperiously egoistic, but while constantly parading his own personality he is careful never to tell you anything about it. And withal he is imperturably good tempered: he brands and gibbets with a smile, and with a smile he adores and applauds.

  Disraeli was a phrase-maker by nature, and his fame in that direction was well deserved. He touched the height in his attacks upon Peel, when personal feeling aided native cleverness to its most epigrammatic expression…. Some of his epigrams have been forgotten; some will pass into history with the political circumstances which gave them birth; but no statesman of the century put so many clever things into such small compass, and Disraeli as a phrase-maker deserves study and remembrance.

  Disraeli, with all his wit and savoir faire, has printed some rank fustian, and much slip-slop gossip…. Belongs to that very small group of real political satirists of whom Swift is the type. He is not the equal of the terrible Dean; but it may be doubted if any Englishman since Swift has had the same power of presenting vivid pictures and decisive criticisms of the political and social organism of his times. It is this Aristophanic gift which Swift had. Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rabelais, Diderot, Heine, Beaumarchais had it. Carlyle had it for other ages and in a historic spirit. There have been far greater satirists, men like Fielding and Thackeray, who have drawn far more powerful pictures of particular characters, foibles, or social maladies. But since Swift we have had no Englishman who could give us a vivid and amusing picture of our political life, as laid bare to the eye of a consummate political genius.

  It is easy to detect faults, which stand out on the very surface of his work, and are, indeed, an essential part of the methods by which he produced his effect. The imagination is often fantastic, the ornament is unduly lavish, the gilding is sometimes tawdry and overdone, the sentiment often inflated. Mediocrity will satisfy itself by calling this vulgarity and pretentiousness. But in truth it was only the natural result of an imagination singularly luxuriant, combined with a far-reaching sarcasm, and an undercurrent of deep thought and brooding melancholy.

  As literature, Disraeli’s novels are not great, because, using the word in an artistic and not a moral sense, they are not pure. They are pretentious and unreal, and the rhetoric rings false. The impression of insincerity, conveyed to so many by his statesmanship, is conveyed also by his novels. But notwithstanding all defects, Disraeli’s novels have that interest which must belong to the works of a man who has played a great part in history. They throw light upon his character, they mark the development of his ambition, it may even be said that they have helped to make English history. It is worth remembering that “Tancred” foretells the occupation of Cyprus; and it is quite consistent with the character of Disraeli to believe that, when the opportunity came, the desire to make his own prophecy come to pass influenced him to add to the British crown one of its most worthless possessions, and to burden it with one of its most intolerable responsibilities, the care of Armenia. Indeed, the most remarkable feature in Disraeli’s novels is the way in which they reflect his life and interpret his statesmanship. The magniloquence, the flash and the glitter of the early novels seem of a piece with the tales current regarding the author’s manners and character, his dress designed to attract attention, and his opinions cut after the pattern of his dress. So in the “Coningsby” group we are struck with the forecast of the writer’s future political action.

  At the present day, Benjamin Disraeli, as a novelist, is only a name in the history of literature, and rightly so. No descriptive style could be less artistic than his. His language is that of an unliterary beginner, either high-flown as in the story of knights and robbers, or hackneyed as in the supplement of a provincial newspaper.