only to make him happy, and proposed to establish him in business at Bordeaux. He replied that he had written another poem against commerce, 'which was the corruption of man,' and that he meant to publish it. What was to be done with such a lad? With a home that ought to have been happy,' says Lord Beaconsfield, 'surrounded with more than comfort, with the most good-natured father in the world and an agreeable man, and with a mother whose strong intellect under ordinary circumstances might have been of great importance to him, my father, though himself of a very sweet disposition, was most unhappy.' To keep him at home was worse than useless. He was sent abroad again, but on his own terms. He went to Paris, made literary acquaintance, studied in libraries, and remained till the eve of the Revolution amidst the intellectual and social excitement which preceded the general convulsion. But his better sense rebelled against the Rousseau enthusiasm. Paris ceasing to be a safe residence, he came home once more, recovered from the dangerous form of his disorder, 'with some knowledge of the world and much of books.'

His aversion to the counting-house was, however, as pronounced as ever. Benjamin Disraeli resigned himself to the inevitable--wound up his affairs and retired, as has been said, upon the fortune which he had realised. Isaac, assured of independence, if not of great wealth, went his own way; published a satire, which the old man overlived. without a catastrophe, and entered the literary world of London. Before he was thirty he brought out his "Curiosities of Literature,' which stepped at once into popularity and gave him a name. He wrote verses which were pretty and graceful, verses which were read and

remembered by Sir Walter Scott, and were at least better than his son's. But he was too modest to overrate their value. He knew that poetry, unless it be the best of its kind, is better unproduced, and withdrew within the limits where he was conscious that he could excel. 'The poetical temperament was not thrown away upon him. Because he was a poet he was a popular writer, and made belles-lettres charming to the multitude. . . . His destiny was to give his country a series of works illustrative of its literary and political history, full of new information and new views which time has ratified as just.'

CHAPTER II

Family of Isaac Disraeli-Life in London-Birth of his Children— Abandons Judaism and joins the Church of England-Education of Benjamin Disraeli-School Days-Picture of them in Vivian Grey' and 'Contarini Fleming'-Self-education at Home-Early Ambition.

ISAAC DISRAELI, having the advantage of a good fortune, escaped the embarrassments which attend a struggling literary career. His circumstances were easy. He became intimate with distinguished men ; and his experiences in Paris had widened and liberalised his mind. His creed sate light upon him, but as long as his father lived he remained nominally in the communion in which he was born. He married happily a Jewish lady, Maria, daughter of Mr. George Basevi, of Brighton, a gentle, sweet-tempered, affectionate woman. To her he relinquished the management of his worldly affairs, and divided his time between his own splendid library, the shops of book collectors or the British Museum, and the brilliant society of politicians and men of letters. His domestic life was unruffled by the storms which had disturbed his boyhood; a household more affectionately united was scarcely to be found within the four seas. Four children were born to him-the eldest a daughter, Sarah, whose gifts and accomplishments would have raised her, had she been a man, into fame; Benjamin, the Prime Minister

that was to be, and two other boys, Ralph and James. The Disraelis lived in London, but changed their residence more than once. At the outset of their married life they had chambers in the Adelphi. From thence they removed to the King's Road, Gray's Inn, and there, on December 21, 1804, Benjamin was born. He was received into the Jewish Church with the usual rites, the record of the initiation being preserved in the register of the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue Bevis Marks. No soothsayer having foretold his future eminence, he was left to grow up much like other children. He was his mother's darling, and was naturally spoilt. He was unruly, and a noisy boy at home perhaps disturbed his father's serenity. At an early age it was decided that he must go to school, but where it was not easy to decide. English boys were rough and prejudiced, and a Jewish lad would be likely to have a hard time among them. No friend of Isaac Disraeli, who knew what English public schools were then like, would have recommended him to commit his lad to the rude treatment which he would encounter at Eton or Winchester. A private establishment of a smaller kind had to be tried as preliminary.

Disraeli's first introduction to life was at a Mr. Poticary's, at Blackheath, where he remained for several years-till he was too old to be left there, and till a very considerable change took place in the circumstances of the family. In 1817 the grandfather died. Isaac Disraeli succeeded to his fortune, removed from Gray's Inn Road, and took a larger house-No. 6 Bloomsbury Square, then a favourite situation for leading lawyers and men of business. A more important step was his formal withdrawal from the Jewish congregation. The reasons for it, as given by himself in his 'Genius of Judaism,' were the narrowness of the system, the

insistence that the Law was of perpetual obligation, while circumstances changed and laws failed of their objects. The inventions,' he says, 'of the Talmudical doctors, incorporated in their ceremonies, have bound them hand and foot, and cast them into the caverns of the lone and sullen genius of rabbinical Judaism, cutting them off from the great family of mankind and perpetuating their sorrow and their shame.' The explanation is sufficient, but the resolution was probably of older date. The coincidence between the date of his father's death and his own secession points to a connection between the two events. His mother's impatience of her Jewish fetters must naturally have left a mark on his mind, and having no belief himself in the system, he must have wished to relieve his children of the disabilities and inconveniences which attached to them as members of the synagogue. At all events at this period he followed the example of his Spanish ancestors in merging himself and them in the general population of his adopted country. The entire household became members of the Church of England. The children read their Prayer Books and learned their catechisms. On July 31 in that year Benjamin Disraeli was baptised at St. Andrew's Church, Holborn, having for his godfather his father's intimate friend the distinguished Sharon Turner.

The education problem was thus simplified, but not entirely solved. The instruction at Mr. Poticary's was indifferent. Ben' had learnt little there. The Latin and Greek were all behindhand, and of grammar, which in those days was taught tolerably effectively in good English schools, he had brought away next to nothing. But he was quick, clever, impetuous. At home he was surrounded with books, and had read for himself with miscellaneous voracity. In