kind.-QUINCY, EDMUND, 1870, Lothair, The Nation, vol. 10, pp. 372, 373.

"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 persona themselves are generally unsubstantial and unreal. They are, with a few admirable exceptions, layfigures 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.-SKELTON, JOHN, 1870, Mr. Disraeli's Lothair, Fraser's Magazine, vol. 81, pp. 797, 799.

"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. -HARRISON, FREDERIC, 1870-86, The Choice of Books and Other Literary Pieces, p. 148.

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.-HASSARD, JNO. R. G., 1871, The New York Mercantile Library, Scribner's Monthly, vol. 1, p. 363.

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.-CURWEN, HENRY, 1873,A History of Booksellers, p. 428.

The weakest of all his novels.-CHAMBERS, ROBERT, 1876, Cyclopædia of English Literature, ed. Carruthers.

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.-O'CONNOR, THOMAS POWER, 1879, Lord Beaconsfield, A Biography, p. 599.

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.-BRANDES, GEORGE, 1880, Lord Beaconsfield, tr. Mrs. George Sturge, p. 347. "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.-HITCHMAN, FRANCIS, 1887, Lothair and Endymion, National Review, vol. 9, p. 383.

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.GARNETT, RICHARD, 1887-1901, Shelley and Lord Beaconsfield, Essays of an Ex-Librarian, p. 103.

ENDYMION

1880

It

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. 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.-SCHERER, EDMOND, 1880-91, Endymion, Essays on English Literature, tr. Saintsbury, p. 240.

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.-SEDGWICK, A. G., 1880, Beaconsfield's Endymion, Nation, vol. 31, p. 413.

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.-FULLER, MELVILLE W., 1881, Beaconsfield's Novel, The Dial, vol. 1, p. 188.

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.-MILNES, RICHARD MONCKTON (LORD HOUGHTON), 1881, Notes on Endymion, The Fortnightly Review, vol. 35, p. 76.

There is nothing remarkable in "Endymion" except the intellectual vivacity, which shows no abatement.-FROUDE, JAMES ANTHONY, 1890, Lord Beaconsfield (Prime Ministers of Queen Victoria), p. 256.

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 ex

istence 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.-LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL, 1847, Disraeli's Tancred, North American Review, vol. 65, p. 216.

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.-ALISON, SIR ARCHIBALD, 1853, History of Europe, 1815-1852, ch. V.

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.-ALLIBONE, S. AUSTIN, 1854-58, A Critical Dictionary of English Literature, vol. I, p. 505.

We pass to analyse, in a general way, Disraeli's intellectual These are expowers. ceedingly 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 clubglittering as a star-deadly as a scimitarand 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. - GILFILLAN, GEORGE, 1855, A Third Gallery of Portraits, p. 360.

A fantastic kind of Eastern exaggeration -the unpruned luxuriance of a Judean vine whose branches run over the wallcharacterizes both the plots and the style of Mr. Disraeli's works.-COLLIER, WILLIAM FRANCIS, 1861, A History of English Literature, p. 515.

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.-CATHCART, GEORGE R., 1874, ed., Literary Reader, p. 171.

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 immaturi

ties.-NADAL, E. S., 1877, Benjamin Disraeli, Scribner's Monthly, vol. 14, p. 191.

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.-ATKINSON, WILLIAM P., 1878, The Right Use of Books, p. 21.

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. - SEDGWICK, A. G., 1880, Beaconsfield's Endymion, The Nation, vol. 31, p. 414.

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 yvóun 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 . . 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 Beaconsfieldand this rests with the best critic, posterity— it is at least unquestionable that in wit and humour he never flags.-SICHEL, WALTER SYDNEY, 1881, The Wit and Humour of Lord Beaconsfield, Macmillan's Magazine, vol 44. pp. 145, 146, 148.

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. -STODDARD, RICHARD HENRY, 1881, The Earl of Beaconsfield, The Critic, vol. 1, p. 111.

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.-HOWE, JULIA WARD, 1881, English Society and "Endymion," The Critic, vol. 1, p. 31.

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.-BRYCE, JAMES, 1882, Lord Beaconsfield, Century Magazine, vol. 23, p. 738.

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.SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1886, Specimens of English Prose Style, p. 34.

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." MACKAY, CHARLES, 1887, Through the Long Day, vol. 1, p. 255.

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