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Title: Studies in Contemporary Biography

Author: James Bryce, Viscount Bryce

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STUDIES

IN

CONTEMPORARY BIOGRAPHY

STUDIES

IN

CONTEMPORARY

BIOGRAPHY

BY

JAMES BRYCE

AUTHOR OF

THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, THE AMERICAN COMMONWEALTH, ETC.

London

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1903

All rights reserved

Copyright in the United States of America 1903

TO

CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT

PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

IN COMMEMORATION OF A LONG AND

VALUED FRIENDSHIP

vii

PREFACE

The first and the last of these Studies relate topersons whose fame has gone out into all lands, andabout whom so much remains to be said that onewho has reflected on their careers need not offeran apology for saying something. Of the othereighteen sketches, some deal with eminent menwhose names are still familiar, but whose personalitieshave begun to fade from the minds of thepresent generation. The rest treat of personswho came less before the public, but whosebrilliant gifts and solid services to the worldmake them equally deserve to be rememberedwith honour. Having been privileged to enjoytheir friendship, I have felt it a duty to do whata friend can to present a faithful record of theirexcellence which may help to keep their memoryfresh and green.

These Studies are, however, not to be regardedviiias biographies, even in miniature. My aimhas rather been to analyse the character andpowers of each of the persons described, and,as far as possible, to convey the impressionwhich each made in the daily converse of life.All of them, except Lord Beaconsfield, werepersonally, and most of them intimately, knownto me.

In the six Studies which treat of politiciansI have sought to set aside political predilections,and have refrained from expressing politicalopinions, though it has now and then beennecessary to point out instances in which thesubsequent course of events has shown theaction of Lord Beaconsfield, Mr. Lowe, andMr. Gladstone to have been right or wrong (asthe case may be) in the action they respectivelytook.

The sketches of T. H. Green, E. A. Freeman,and J. R. Green were originally writtenfor English magazines, and most of the otherStudies have been published in the UnitedStates. All of those that had already appearedin print have been enlarged and revised, someindeed virtually rewritten. I have to thank theixproprietors of the English Historical Review,the Contemporary Review, and the New YorkNation, as also the Century Company of NewYork, for their permission to use so much ofthe matter of the volume as had appeared (inits original form) in the organs belonging tothem respectively.

March 6, 1903.

xi

CONTENTS

PAGEI.Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield1804-18811II.Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of Westminster1815-188169III.Thomas Hill Green1836-188285IV.Archibald Campbell Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury1811-1882100V.Anthony Trollope1815-1882116VI.John Richard Green1837-1883131VII.Sir George Jessel1824-1883170VIII.Hugh MCalmont Cairns, Earl Cairns1819-1885184IX.James Fraser, Bishop of Manchester1818-1885196X.Stafford Henry Northcote, Earl of Iddesleigh1818-1887211XI.Charles Stewart Parnell1846-1891227XII.Henry Edward Manning, Archbishop and Cardinal1808-1892250XIII.Edward Augustus Freeman1823-1892262XIV.Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke1811-1892293XV.William Robertson Smith1846-1894311XVI.Henry Sidgwick1838-1900327XVII.Edward Ernest Bowen1836-1901343XVIII.Edwin Lawrence Godkin1831-1902363XIX.John Emerich Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton1834-1902382XX.William Ewart Gladstone1809-1898400

1

BENJAMIN DISRAELI, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD[1]

When Lord Beaconsfield died in 1881 we allwondered what people would think of him fiftyyears thereafter. Divided as our own judgmentswere, we asked whether he would still seem aproblem. Would opposite views regarding hisaims, his ideas, the sources of his power, stilldivide the learned, and perplex the ordinaryreader? Would men complain that history cannotbe good for much when, with the abundantmaterials at her disposal, she had not framed aconsistent theory of one who played so great apart in so ample a theatre? People called hima riddle; and he certainly affected a sphinx-likeattitude. Would the riddle be easier then thanit was for us, from among whom the man hadeven now departed?

When he died, there were many in Englandwho revered him as a profound thinker and alofty character, animated by sincere patriotism.2Others, probably as numerous, held him for nobetter than a cynical charlatan, bent throughlife on his own advancement, who permitted nosense of public duty, and very little humancompassion, to stand in the way of his insatiateambition. The rest did not know what to think.They felt in him the presence of power; theyfelt also something repellent. They could notunderstand how a man who seemed hard andunscrupulous could win so much attachment andcommand so much obedience.

Since Disraeli departed nearly one-half ofthose fifty years has passed away. Few areliving who can claim to have been his personalfriends, none who were personal enemies. Noliving statesman professes to be his politicaldisciple. The time has come when one may discusshis character and estimate his career withoutbeing suspected of doing so with a party biasor from a party motive. Doubtless those whocondemn and those who defend or excuse somemomentous parts of his conduct, such as, forinstance, his policy in the East and in Afghanistanfrom 1876 to 1879, will differ in theirjudgment of his wisdom and foresight. If thisbe a difficulty, it is an unavoidable one, andmay never quite disappear. There were in thedays of Augustus some who blamed that sagaciousruler for seeking to check the expansion of theRoman Empire. There were in the days of King3Henry the Second some who censured and otherswho praised him for issuing the Constitutions ofClarendon. Both questions still remain open toargument; and the conclusion any one formsmust affect in some measure his judgment ofeach monarchs statesmanship. So differences ofopinion about particular parts of Disraelis longcareer need not prevent us from dispassionatelyinquiring what were the causes that enabled himto attain so striking a success, and what is theplace which posterity is likely to assign to himamong the rulers of England.

First, a few words about the salient events ofhis life, not by way of writing a biography, butto explain what follows.

He was born in London, in 1804. His father,Isaac Disraeli, was a literary man of cultivatedtaste and independent means, who wrote a goodmany books, the best known of which is hisCuriosities of Literature, a rambling work, fullof entertaining matter. He belonged to thatdivision of the Jewish race which is calledthe Sephardim, and traces itself to Spain andPortugal;[2] but he had ceased to frequent thesynagoguehad, in fact, broken with his co-religionists.Isaac had access to good society, sothat the boy saw eminent and polished men fromhis early years, and, before he had reached manhood,4began to make his way in drawing-roomswhere he met the wittiest and best-known peopleof the day. He was articled to a firm of attorneysin London in 1821, but after two or threeyears quitted a sphere for which his peculiar giftswere ill suited.[3] Samuel Rogers, the poet, tooka fancy to him, and had him baptized at the ageof thirteen. As he grew up, he was often to beseen with Count dOrsay and Lady Blessington,well-known figures who fluttered on the confinesof fashion and Bohemia. It is worth remarkingthat he never went either to a public school or toa university. In England it has become thefashion to assume that nearly all the persons whohave shone in public life have been educated in oneof the great public schools, and that they owe toits training their power of dealing with men andassemblies. Such a superstition is sufficientlyrefuted by the examples of men like Pitt,Macaulay, Bishop Wilberforce, Disraeli, Cobden,Bright, and Cecil Rhodes, not to add instancesdrawn from Ireland and Scotland, where till veryrecently there have been no public schools in thecurrent English sense.

Disraeli first appeared before the public in1826, when he published Vivian Grey, an amazing5book to be the production of a youth of twenty-two.Other novelsThe Young Duke, Venetia,Contarini Fleming, Henrietta Templemaintainedwithout greatly increasing his reputationbetween 1831 and 1837. Then came twopolitical stories, Coningsby and Sybil, in 1844and 1845, followed by Tancred in 1847, and theLife of Lord George Bentinck in 1852; with along interval of silence, till, in 1870, he producedLothair, in 1880 Endymion. Besides these hepublished in 1839 the tragedy of Alarcos, and in1835 the more ambitious Revolutionary Epick,neither of which had much success. In 1828-31he took a journey through the East, visitingConstantinople, Syria, and Egypt, and it wasthen, no doubt, in lands peculiarly interesting toa man of his race, that he conceived those ideasabout the East and its mysterious influenceswhich figure largely in some of his stories,notably in Tancred, and which in 1878 had nosmall share in shaping his policy and that ofEngland. Meanwhile, he had not forgotten thepolitical aspirations which we see in Vivian Grey.In 1832, just before the passing of the ReformBill, he appeared as candidate for the pettyborough of High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire,and was defeated by a majority of twenty-threeto twelve, so few were the voters in manyboroughs of those days. After the Bill hadenlarged the constituency, he tried his luck twice6again, in 1833 and 1835, both times unsuccessfully,and came before two other boroughs also,Taunton and Marylebone, though in the lattercase no contest took place. Such activity in ayouth with little backing from friends and comparativelyslender means marked him already asa man of spirit and ambition. His next attemptwas more lucky. At the general election of 1837he was returned for Maidstone.

His political professions during this periodhave been keenly canvassed; nor is it easy toform a fair judgment on them. In 1832 hehad sought and obtained recommendations fromJoseph Hume and Daniel OConnell, and peoplehad therefore set him down as a Radical. Although,however, his professions of politicalfaith included dogmas which, like triennial parliaments,the ballot, and the imposition of a newland-tax, were part of the so-called Radicalplatform, still there was a vague and fancifulnote in his utterances, and an aversion to theconventional Whig way of putting things, whichshowed that he was not a thorough-goingadherent of any of the then existing politicalparties, but was trying to strike out a new lineand attract men by the promise of somethingfresher and bolder than the recognised schoolsoffered. In 1834 his hostility to Whiggismwas becoming more pronounced, and a tendernessfor some Tory doctrines more discernible.7Finally, in 1835, he appeared as an avowedTory, accepting the regular creed of the party,and declaring himself a follower of Sir RobertPeel, but still putting forward a number ofviews peculiar to himself, which he thereafterdeveloped not only in his speeches but in hisnovels. Coningsby and Sybil were meant to bea kind of manifesto of the Young Englandpartya party which can hardly be said to haveexisted outside his own mind, though a small knotof aristocratic youths who caught up and repeatedhis phrases seemed to form a nucleus for it.

The fair conclusion from his deliverancesduring these early years is that he was at firstmuch more of a Liberal than a Tory, yet withideas distinctively his own which made him appearin a manner independent of both parties. Theold party lines might seem to have been almosteffaced by the struggle over the Reform Bill;and it was natural for a bold and inventive mindto imagine a new departure, and put forward aprogramme in which a sort of Radicalism wasmingled with doctrines of a different type. Butwhen it became clear after a time that the oldpolitical divisions still subsisted, and that such adistinctive position as he had conceived could notbe maintained, he then, having to choose betweenone or other of the two recognised parties, chosethe Tories, dropping some tenets he had previouslyadvocated which were inconsistent with their8creed, but retaining much of his peculiar wayof looking at political questions. How far thechange which passed over him was a naturaldevelopment, how far due to mere calculations ofinterest, there is little use discussing: perhaps hedid not quite know himself. Looking back, weof to-day might be inclined to think that he receivedmore blame for it than he deserved, butcontemporary observers generally set it down to awant of principle. In one thing, however, he wasconsistent then, and remained consistent ever afterhishearty hatred of the Whigs. There wassomething in the dryness and coldness of the greatWhig families, their stiff constitutionalism, theirbelief in political economy, perhaps also theiroccasional toyings with the Nonconformists(always an object of dislike to Disraeli), whichroused all the antagonisms of his nature, personaland Oriental.

When he entered the House of Commons hewas already well known to fashionable London,partly by his striking face and his powers of conversation,partly by the eccentricities of his dressheloved bright-coloured waistcoats, and deckedhimself with rings,partly by his novels, whosesatirical pungency had made a noise in society.He had also become, owing to his apparent changeof front, the object of angry criticism. A quarrelwith Daniel OConnell, in the course of which hechallenged the great Irishman to fight a duel, each9party having described the other with a freedomof language bordering on scurrility, made him, fora time, the talk of the political world. Thusthere was more curiosity evoked by his firstspeech than usually awaits a new member. Itwas unsuccessful, not from want of ability, butbecause its tone did not suit the temper ofthe House of Commons, and because a hostilesection of the audience sought to disconcert himby their laughter. Undeterred by this ridicule,he continued to speak, though in a lessambitious and less artificial vein, till after a fewyears he had become one of the most conspicuousunofficial members. At first no one had eulogisedPeel more warmly, but after a time heedged away from the minister, whether repelledby his coldness, which showed that in thatquarter no promotion was to be expected, orshrewdly perceiving that Peel was taking a linewhich would ultimately separate him from thebulk of the Conservative party. This happenedin 1846, when Peel, convinced that the importduties on corn were economically unsound, proposedtheir abolition. Disraeli, who, since 1843,had taken repeated opportunities of firing strayshots at the powerful Prime Minister, now bore aforemost part not only in attacking him, but inorganising the Protectionist party, and promptingits leader, Lord George Bentinck. In embracingfree trade, Peel carried with him his own personal10friends and disciples, men like Gladstone, SidneyHerbert, Lord Lincoln, Sir James Graham, Cardwell,and a good many others, the intellectual liteof the Tory party. The more numerous sectionwho clung to Protection had numbers, wealth,respectability, cohesion, but brains and tongueswere scarce. An adroit tactician and incisivespeaker was of priceless value to them. Sucha man they found in Disraeli, while he gained,sooner than he had expected, an opportunity ofplaying a leading part in the eyes of Parliamentand the country. In the end of 1848, LordGeorge Bentinck, who, though a man of naturalforce and capable of industry when he pleased,had been to some extent Disraelis mouthpiece,died, leaving his prompter indisputably the keenestintellect in the Tory-Protectionist party. In 1850,Peel, who might possibly have in time broughtthe bulk of that party back to its allegianceto him, was killed by a fall from his horse.The Peelites drifted more and more towardsLiberalism, so that when Lord Derby, who, in1851, had been commissioned as head of theTory party to form a ministry, invited them tojoin him, they refused to do so, imagining himto be still in favour of the corn duties, andresenting the behaviour of the Protectionistsection to their own master. Being thus unableto find one of them to lead his followers inthe House of Commons, Lord Derby turned in111852 to Disraeli, giving him, with the leadership,the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Theappointment was thought a strange one, becauseDisraeli brought to it absolutely no knowledgeof finance and no official experience. He hadnever been so much as an Under-Secretary.The Tories themselves murmured that one whomthey regarded as an adventurer should be raisedto so high a place. After a few months LordDerbys ministry fell, defeated on the Chancellorof the Exchequers Budget, which had beenvehemently attacked by Mr. Gladstone. Thiswas the beginning of that protracted duel betweenhim and Mr. Disraeli which lasted down till theend of the latters life.

For the following fourteen years Disraelisoccupation was that of a leader of Opposition,varied by one brief interval of office in 1858-59.His party was in a permanent minority, so thatnothing was left for its chief but to fight withskill, courage, and resolution a series of losingbattles. This he did with admirable tenacity ofpurpose. Once or twice in every session he usedto rally his forces for a general engagement, andthough always defeated, he never suffered himselfto be dispirited by defeat. During the rest of thetime he was keenly watchful, exposing all the mistakesin domestic affairs of the successive LiberalGovernments, and when complications arose inforeign politics, always professing, and generally12manifesting, a patriotic desire not to embarrassthe Executive, lest national interests should suffer.Through all these years he had to struggle, notonly with a hostile majority in office, but alsowith disaffection among his own followers. Manyof the landed aristocracy could not bring themselvesto acquiesce in the leadership of a newman, of foreign origin, whose career had beenerratic, and whose ideas they found it hard toassimilate. Ascribing their long exclusion frompower to his presence, they more than onceconspired to dethrone him. In 1861 these plotswere thickest, and Disraeli was for a time leftalmost alone. But as it happened, there neverarose in the House of Commons any one on theConservative side possessing gifts of speech andof strategy comparable to those which in himhad been matured and polished by long experience,while he had the address to acquirean ascendency over the mind of Lord Derby,still the titular head of the party, who, beinga man of straightforward character, high socialposition, and brilliant oratorical talent, was therewithalsomewhat lazy and superficial, and thereforedisposed to lean on his lieutenant in theLower House, and to borrow from him thoseastute schemes of policy which Disraeli was fertilein devising. Thus, through Lord Derbys support,and by his own imperturbable confidence, he frustratedall the plots of the malcontent Tories.13New men came up who had not witnessed hisearlier escapades, but knew him only as the boldand skilful leader of their party in the House ofCommons. He made himself personally agreeableto them, encouraged them in their firstefforts, diffused his ideas among them, stimulatedthe local organisation of the party, and held outhopes of great things to be done when fortuneshould at last revisit the Tory banner.

While Lord Palmerston lived, these exertionsseemed to bear little fruit. That minister had, inhis later years, settled down into a sort of practicalToryism, and both parties acquiesced in hisrule. But, on his death, the scene changed.Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone brought forwarda Reform Bill strong enough to evoke the latentConservative feeling of a House of Commonswhich, though showing a nominally Liberalmajority, had been chosen under Palmerstonianauspices. The defeat of the Bill, due to the defectionof the more timorous Whigs, was followedby the resignation of Lord Russells Ministry.Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli came into power,and, next year, carried a Reform Bill which, as itwas finally shaped in its passage through the House,really went further than Lord Russells had done,enfranchising a much larger number of the workingclasses in boroughs. To have carried this Billremains the greatest of Disraelis triumphs. Hehad to push it gently through a hostile House of14Commons by wheedling a section of the Liberalmajority, against the appeals of their legitimateleader. He had also to persuade his own followersto support a measure which they had all their livesbeen condemning, and which was, or in their viewought to have been, more dangerous to the Constitutionthan the one which they and the recalcitrantWhigs had thrown out in the precedingyear. He had, as he happily and audaciouslyexpressed it, to educate his party into doing thevery thing which they (though certainly not hehimself) had cordially and consistently denounced.

The process was scarcely complete when theretirement of Lord Derby, whose health had givenway, opened Disraelis path to the post of firstMinister of the Crown. He dissolved Parliament,expecting to receive a majority from the gratitudeof the working class whom his Act had admittedto the suffrage. To his own surprise, and to theboundless disgust of the Tories, a Liberal Houseof Commons was again returned, which drove himand his friends once more into the cold shade ofOpposition. He was now sixty-four years of age,had suffered an unexpected and mortifying discomfiture,and had no longer the great name ofLord Derby to cover him. Disaffected voiceswere again heard among his own party, while theLiberals, reinstalled in power, were led by therival whose unequalled popularity in the countrymade him for the time omnipotent. Still Mr.15Disraeli was not disheartened. He fought thebattle of apparently hopeless resistance with hisold tact, wariness, and tenacity, losing no occasionfor any criticism that could damage the measuresstrongand large measureswhich Mr. GladstonesGovernment brought forward.

Before long the tide turned. The Dissentersresented the Education Act of 1870. A reactionin favour of Conservatism set in, which grewso fast that, in 1874, the general election gave, forthe first time since 1846, a decided Conservativemajority. Mr. Disraeli became again PrimeMinister, and now a Prime Minister no longeron sufferance, but with the absolute command ofa dominant party, rising so much above the restof the Cabinet as to appear the sole author of itspolicy. In 1876, feeling the weight of age, hetransferred himself to the House of Lords asEarl of Beaconsfield. The policy he followed(from 1876 till 1880) in the troubles which arosein the Turkish East out of the insurrection inHerzegovina and the massacres in Bulgaria, aswell as that subsequently pursued in Afghanistanand in South Africa, while it received the enthusiasticapproval of the soldiers, the stockbrokers,and the richer classes generally, raised no lessvehement opposition in other sections of thenation, and especially in those two which, whenheartily united and excited, have usually beenmasters of Englandthe Protestant Nonconformists16and the upper part of the working class.An election fought with unusual heat left him inso decided a minority that he resigned office inApril 1880, without waiting for an adverse votein Parliament. When the result had becomeclear he observed, They, meaning his friends,will come in again, but I shall not. A yearlater he died.

Here is a wonderful career, not less wonderfulto those who live in the midst of Englishpolitics and society than it appears to observersin other countries. A man with few externaladvantages, not even that of education at auniversity, where useful friendships are formed,with grave positive disadvantages in his Jewishextraction and the vagaries of his first years ofpublic life, presses forward, step by step, throughslights and disappointments which retard but neverdishearten him, assumes as of right the leadershipof a partythe aristocratic party, the party in thosedays peculiarly suspicious of new men and poormen,wins a reputation for sagacity which makeshis early errors forgotten, becomes in old age thefavourite of a court, the master of a great country,one of the three or four arbiters of Europe.There is here more than one problem to solve,or, at least, a problem with more than one aspect.What was the true character of the man who hadsustained such a part? Did he hold any principles,or was he merely playing with them as counters?17By what gifts or arts did he win such a success?Was there really a mystery beneath the wizardsrobe which he delighted to wrap around him?And how, being so unlike the Englishmen amongwhom his lot was cast, did he so fascinate andrule them?

Imagine a man of strong will and brilliantintellectual powers, belonging to an ancient andpersecuted race, who finds himself born in aforeign country, amid a people for whose ideasand habits he has no sympathy and scantrespect. Suppose him proud, ambitious, self-confidenttooambitious to rest content in aprivate station, so self-confident as to believe thathe can win whatever he aspires to. To achievesuccess, he must bend his pride, must use thelanguage and humour the prejudices of those hehas to deal with; while his pride avenges itselfby silent scorn or thinly disguised irony. Accustomedto observe things from without, he discernsthe weak points of all political parties, the hollownessof institutions and watchwords, the instabilityof popular passion. If his imagination be moresusceptible than his emotions, his intellect moreactive than his conscience, the isolation in whichhe stands and the superior insight it affords himmay render him cold, calculating, self-centred.The sentiment of personal honour may remain,because his pride will support it; and he will betenacious of the ideas which he has struck out,18because they are his own. But for ordinaryprinciples of conduct he may have small regard,because he has not grown up under the conventionalmorality of the time and nation, but haslooked on it merely as a phenomenon to berecognised and reckoned with, because he hasnoted how much there is in it of unreality orpharisaismhow far it sometimes is from representingor expressing either the higher judgmentsof philosophy or the higher precepts of religion.Realising and perhaps exaggerating the powerof his own intelligence, he will secretly revolveschemes of ambition wherein genius, uncontrolledby fears or by conscience, makes allthings bend to its purposes, till the scruples andhesitations of common humanity seem to himonly parts of mens cowardice or stupidity. Whatsuccess he will win when he comes to carry outsuch schemes in practice will largely depend onthe circumstances in which he finds himself, aswell as on his gift for judging of them. He maybecome a Napoleon. He may fall in a prematurecollision with forces which want of sympathy hasprevented him from estimating.

In some of his novels, and most fully in thefirst of them, Mr. Disraeli sketched a characterand foreshadowed a career not altogether unlikethat which has just been indicated. It would beunfair to treat as autobiographical, though someof his critics have done so, the picture of Vivian19Grey. What that singular book shows is that,at an age when his contemporaries were lads atcollege, absorbed in cricket matches or Latinverse-making, Disraeli had already meditatedprofoundly on the conditions and methods ofworldly success, had rejected the allurements ofpleasure and the attractions of literature, as wellas the ideal life of philosophy, had conceived ofa character isolated, ambitious, intense, resolute,untrammelled by scruples, who moulds men tohis purposes by the sheer force of his intellect,humouring their foibles, using their weaknesses,and luring them into his chosen path by the baitof self-interest.

To lay stress on the fact that Mr. Disraeliwas of Hebrew birth is not, though some of hispolitical antagonists stooped so to use it, to castany reproach upon him: it is only to note a factof the utmost importance for a proper comprehensionof his position. The Jews were at thebeginning of the nineteenth century still foreignersin England, not only on account of their religion,with its mass of ancient rites and usages, but alsobecause they were filled with the memory ofcenturies of persecution, and perceived that insome parts of Europe the old spirit of hatred hadnot died out. The antiquity of their race, theirsense of its long-suffering and isolation, theirpride in the intellectual achievements of thoseancestors whose blood, not largely mixed with20that of any other race, flows in their veins, leadthe stronger or more reflective spirits to revengethemselves by a kind of scorn upon the upstartWestern peoples among whom their lot is cast.The mockery one finds in Heinrich Heine couldnot have come from a Teuton. Even while imitating,as the wealthier of them have latterly begunto imitate, the manners and luxury of thosenominal Christians among whom they live, theyretain their feeling of detachment, and are aptto regard with a coldly observant curiosity thebeliefs, prejudices, enthusiasms of the nations ofEurope. The same passionate intensity whichmakes the grandeur of the ancient Hebrewliterature still lives among them, though oftennarrowed by ages of oppression, and gives themthe peculiar effectiveness that comes from turningall the powers of the mind, imaginative as well asreasoning, into a single channel, be that channelwhat it may. They produce, in proportion totheir numbers, an unusually large number of ableand successful men, as any one may prove byrecounting the eminent Jews of the last seventyyears. This success has most often been won inpractical life, in commerce, or at the bar, or inthe press (which over the European continentthey so largely control); yet often also in thehigher walks of literature or science, less frequentlyin art, most frequently in music.

Mr. Disraeli had three of these characteristics21of his race in full measuredetachment, intensity,the passion for material success. Nature gavehim a resolute will, a keen and precociously activeintellect, a vehement individuality; that is tosay, a consciousness of his own powers, and adetermination to make them recognised by hisfellows. In some men, the passion to succeed isclogged by the fear of failure; in others, thesense of their greatness is self-sufficing andindisposes them to effort. But with him ambitionspurred self-confidence, and self-confidencejustified ambition. He grew up in a cultivatedhome, familiar not only with books but with thebrightest and most polished men and women ofthe day, whose conversation sharpened his witsalmost from childhood. No religious influencesworked upon him, for his father had ceased tobe a Jew in faith without becoming evennominally a Christian, and there is little in hiswritings to show that he had ever felt anythingmore than an imaginative, or what may be called anhistorical, interest in religion.[4] Thus his developmentwas purely intellectual. The society he movedin was a society of men and women of the worldwitty,superficial in its interests, without seriousness22or reverence. He felt himself no Englishman,and watched English life and politics as astudent of natural history might watch the habitsof bees or ants. English society was then, andperhaps is still, more complex, more full of inconsistencies,of contrasts between theory andpractice, between appearances and realities, thanthat of any other country. Nowhere so muchlimitation of view among the fashionable, so muchpharisaism among the respectable, so much vulgarityamong the rich, mixed with so much realearnestness, benevolence, and good sense; nowhere,therefore, so much to seem merely ridiculous toone who looked at it from without, wanting thesympathy which comes from the love of mankind,or even from the love of ones country. It wasnatural for a young man with Disraelis gifts tomock at what he saw. But he would not sitstill in mere contempt. The thirst for powerand fame gave him no rest. He must gain whathe saw every one around him struggling for.He must triumph over these people whose folliesamused him; and the sense that he perceivedand could use their follies would add zest tohis triumph. He might have been a greatsatirist; he resolved to become a great statesman.For such a career, his Hebrew detachment gavehim some eminent advantages. It enabled himto take a cooler and more scientific view of thesocial and political phenomena he had to deal23with. He was not led astray by party cries.He did not share vulgar prejudices. He calculatedthe forces at work as an engineer calculatesthe strength of his materials, the strain they haveto bear from the wind, and the weights theymust support. And what he had to plan wasnot the success of a cause, which might dependon a thousand things out of his ken, but his ownsuccess, a simpler matter.

A still greater source of strength lay in hisHebrew intensity. It would have pleased him,so full of pride in the pure blood of his race,[5]to attribute to that purity the singular powerof concentration which the Jews undoubtedlypossess. They have the faculty of throwing thewhole stress of their natures into the pursuit ofone object, fixing their eyes on it alone, sacrificingto it other desires, clinging to it even whenit seems unattainable. Disraeli was only twenty-eightwhen he made his first attempt to enterthe House of Commons. Four repulses didnot discourage him, though his means were butscanty to support such contests; and the fifth24time he succeeded. When his first speech inParliament had been received with laughter, andpoliticians were congratulating themselves thatthis adventurer had found his level, he calmlytold them that he had always ended by succeedingin whatever he attempted, and thathe would succeed in this too. He received nohelp from his own side, who regarded him withsuspicion, but forced himself into prominence,and at last to leadership, by his complete superiorityto rebuffs. Through the long years inwhich he had to make head against a majorityin the House of Commons, he never seemeddisheartened by his repeated defeats, never relaxedthe vigilance with which he watched hisadversaries, never indulged himself (though hewas physically indolent and often in poor health)by staying away from Parliament, even whenbusiness was slack; never missed an opportunityfor exposing a blunder of his adversaries, orcommending the good service of one of hisown followers. The same curious tenacity wasapparent in his ideas. Before he was twenty-twoyears of age he had, under the inspirationof Bolingbroke, excogitated a theory of theConstitution of England, of the way Englandshould be governed at home and her policydirected abroad, from which he hardly swervedthrough all his later life. Often as he wasaccused of inconsistency, he probably believed25himself to be, and in a sense he was, substantiallyfaithful, I will not say to the samedoctrines, but to the same notions or tendencies;and one could discover from the phrases he employedhow he fancied himself to be really followingout these old notions, even when his conductseemed opposed to the traditions of his party.[6]The weakness of intense minds is their tendencyto narrowness, and this weakness was in so farhis that, while always ready for new expedients,he was not accessible to new ideas. Indeed,the old ideas were too much a part of himself,stamped with his own individuality, to be forsakenor even varied. He did not love knowledge, norenjoy speculation for its own sake; he valuedviews as they pleased his imagination or as theycarried practical results with them; and havingframed his theory once for all and worked steadilyupon its lines, he was not the man to admit thatit had been defective, and to set himself in laterlife to repair it. His pride was involved inproving it correct by applying it.

With this resolute concentration of purposethere went an undaunted couragea quality lessrare among English statesmen, but eminently26laudable in him, because for great part of hiscareer he had no family or party connections toback him up, but was obliged to face the worldwith nothing but his own self-confidence. So farfrom seeking to conceal his Jewish origin, he displayedhis pride in it, and refused all support tothe efforts which the Tory party made to maintainthe exclusion of Jews from Parliament. Nobodyshowed more self-possession and (except on twoor three occasions) more perfect self-command inthe hot strife of Parliament than this suspectedstranger. His opponents learnt to fear one whonever feared for himself; his followers knew thattheir chief would not fail them in the hour ofdanger. His very face and bearing had in theman impassive calmness which magnetised thosewho watched him. He liked to surround himselfwith mystery, to pose as remote, majestic, self-centred,to appear above the need of a confidant.He would sit for hours on his bench in the Houseof Commons, listening with eyes half-shut to furiousassaults on himself and his policy, not showing bythe movement of a muscle that he had felt awound; and when he rose to reply would dischargehis sarcasms with an air of easy coolness. Thatthis indifference was sometimes simulated appearedby the resentment he showed afterwards.

Ambition such as his could not afford to bescrupulous, nor have his admirers ever claimedconscientiousness as one of his merits. One who27sets power and fame before him as the mainends to be pursued may no doubt be restrainedby pride from the use of such means as areobviously low and dishonourable. Other questionablemeans he may reject because he knowsthat the opinion of those whose good-will andgood word he must secure would condemn them.But he will not be likely to allow kindliness orcompassion to stand in his way; nor will he bevery regardful of truth. To a statesman, whomust necessarily have many facts in his knowledge,or many plans in his mind, which theinterests of his colleagues, or of his party, or ofthe nation, forbid him to reveal, the temptation toput questioners on a false scent, and to seem toagree where he really dissents, is at all times astrong one. An honest man may sometimes bebetrayed into yielding to it; and those who knowhow difficult are the cases of conscience that arisewill not deal harshly with a possibly misleadingsilence, or even with the evasion of an embarrassinginquiry, where a real public interest canbe pleaded, for the existence of such a publicinterest, if it does not justify, may palliate omissionsto make a full disclosure of the facts. Allthings considered, the standard of truthfulnessamong English public men has (of course withsome conspicuous exceptions) been a high one.Of that standard Disraeli fell short. People didnot take his word for a thing as they would have28taken the word of the Duke of Wellington, orLord Althorp, or Lord Derby, or Lord Russell,or even of that not very rigid moralist, LordPalmerston. Instances of his lapses were notwanting as late as 1877. His behaviour towardSir Robert Peel, whom he plied with every dartof sarcasm, after having shortly before lavishedpraises on him, and sought office under him, hasoften been commented on.[7] Disraeli was himself(as those who knew him have often stated) accustomedto justify it by observing that he wasthen an insignificant personage, to whom it wassupremely important to attract public notice andmake a political position; that the opportunityof attacking the powerful Prime Minister, at amoment when their altered attitude towards theCorn Laws had exposed the Ministry to the suspicionsof their own party, was too good to belost; and that he was therefore obliged to assailPeel, though he had himself no particular attachmentto the Corn Laws, and believed Peel to havebeen a bona-fide convert. It was therefore nopersonal resentment against one who had slightedhim, but merely the exigencies of his own career,that drove him to this course, whose fortunateresult proved the soundness of his calculations.

29

This defence will not surprise any one whois familiar with Disraelis earlier novels. Thesestories are as far as possible from being immoral;that is to say, there is nothing in them unbecomingor corrupting. Friendship, patriotism, love, areall recognised as powerful and worthy motives ofconduct. That which is wanting is the sense ofright and wrong. His personages have for certainpurposes the conventional sense of honour, thoughseldom a fine sense, but they do not ask whethersuch and such a course is conformable to principle.They move in a world which is polished, agreeable,dignified, averse to baseness and vulgarity,but in which conscience and religion scarcelyseem to exist. The men live for pleasure orfame, the women for pleasure or love.

Some allowance must, of course, be made forthe circumstances of Disraelis position and earlytraining. He was brought up neither a Jew nora Christian. The elder people who took himby the hand when he entered life, people likeSamuel Rogers and Lady Blessington, were notthe people to give lessons in morality. LordLyndhurst, the first of his powerful politicalfriends, and the man whose example most affectedhim, was, with all his splendid gifts, conspicuouslywanting in political principle. Add to this theisolation in which the young man found himself,standing outside the common stream of Englishlife, not sharing its sentiments, perceiving the30hollowness of much that passed for virtue andpatriotism, and it is easy to understand how heshould have been as perfect a cynic at twenty-fiveas their experience of the world makes manyat sixty. If he had loved truth or mankind, hemight have quickly worked through his youthfulcynicism. But pride and ambition, the pride ofrace and the pride of genius, left no room forthese sentiments. Nor was his cynicism the fruitmerely of a keen and sceptical intelligence. Itcame from a cold heart.

The pursuit of fame and power, to which hegave all his efforts, is presented in his writings asthe only alternative ideal to a life of pleasure; andhe probably regarded those who pursued someother as either fools or weaklings. Early in hispolitical life he said one night to Mr. Bright(from whom I heard the anecdote), as they tooktheir umbrellas in the cloak-room of the Houseof Commons: After all, what is it that bringsyou and me here? Fame! This is the truearena. I might have occupied a literary throne;but I have renounced it for this career. Theexternal pomps and trappings of life, titles, statelyhouses and far-spreading parks, all those gauds andvanities with which sumptuous wealth surroundsitself, had throughout his life a singular fascinationfor him. He liked to mock at them in his novels,but they fascinated him none the less. One canunderstand how they might fire the imagination31of an ambitious youth who saw them from adistancemight even retain their charm for onewho was just struggling into the society whichpossessed them, and who desired to feel himselfthe equal of the possessors. It is stranger that,when he had harnessed the English aristocracyto his chariot, and was driving them where hepleased, he should have continued to admire suchthings. So, however, it was. There was evenin him a vein of inordinate deference to rankand wealth which would in a less eminent personhave been called snobbishness. In his will hedirects that his estate of Hughenden Manor, inBuckinghamshire, shall pass under an entail asstrict as he could devise, that the person whosucceeds to it shall always bear the name ofDisraeli. His ambition is the common, not tosay vulgar, ambition of the English parvenu,to found a county family. In his story ofEndymion, published a few months before hisdeath, the hero, starting from small beginnings,ends by becoming prime minister: this is thecrown of his career, the noblest triumph anEnglishman can achieve. It might have beenthought that one who had been through it all,who had realised the dreams of his boyhood, whohad every opportunity of learning what powerand fame come to, would have liked to set forthsome other conception of the end of human life,or would not have told the world so naively of his32self-content at having attained the aim he hadworked for. With most men the flower they haveplucked withers. It might have been expectedthat one who was in other things an ironical cynicwould at least have sought to seem disillusionised.

To say that Disraelis heart was somewhatcold is by no means to say that he was heartless.He was one of those strong natures who permitneither persons nor principles to stand in theirway. His doctrine was that politics had nothingto do with sentiment; so those who appealed tohim on grounds of humanity appealed in vain.No act of his life ever so much offended Englishopinion as the airy fashion in which he tossed asidethe news of the Bulgarian massacre of 1876. Itincensed sections who were strong enough, whenthoroughly roused, to bring about his fall. Buthe was far from being unkindly. He knew howto attach men to him by friendly deeds as well asfriendly words. He seldom missed an opportunityof saying something pleasant and cheeringto a dbutant in Parliament, whether of his ownparty or the opposite. He was not selfish inlittle things; was always ready to consider thecomfort and convenience of those who surroundedhim. Age and success, so far from making himmorose or supercilious, softened the asperities ofhis character and developed the affectionate sideof it. His last novel, published a few monthsbefore his death, contains more human kindliness,33a fuller recognition of the worth of friendship andthe beauty of sisterly and conjugal love, than dothe writings of his earlier manhood. What itwants in intellectual power it makes up for in amellower and more tender tone. Of loyalty tohis political friends he was a model, and nothingdid more to secure his command of the partythan its sense that his professional honour, so tospeak, could be implicitly relied upon. To hiswife, a warm-hearted woman older than himself,and inferior to him in education, he was uniformlyaffectionate and indeed devoted. Thefirst use he made of his power as PrimeMinister was to procure for her the title ofviscountess. Being once asked point blank by alady what he thought of his life-long opponent,Mr. Gladstone answered that two things hadalways struck him as very admirable in LordBeaconsfields characterhis perfect loyalty tohis wife, and his perfect loyalty to his own race.A story used to be told how, in Disraelis earlierdays, when his political position was still far fromassured, he and his wife happened to be theguests of the chief of the party, and that chief sofar forgot good manners as to quiz Mrs. Disraeliat the dinner-table. Next morning Disraeli,whose visit was to have lasted for some dayslonger, announced that he must leave immediately.The host besought him to stay, and made allpossible apologies. But Disraeli was inexorable,34and carried off his wife forthwith. To literarymen, whatever their opinions, he was ready togive a helping hand, representing himself as oneof their profession. In paying compliments hewas singularly expert, and few used the art so wellto win friends and disarm enemies. He knew howto please Englishmen, and especially the young,by showing interest in their tastes and pleasures,and, without being what would be called genial,was never wanting in bonhomie. In society hewas a perfect man of the worldtold his anecdoteapropos, wound up a discussion by someepigrammatic phrase, talked to the guest nexthim, if he thought that guests position made himworth talking to, as he would to an old acquaintance.But he had few intimates; nor did hisapparent frankness unveil his real thoughts.

He was not of those who complicate politicalopposition with private hatreds. Looking onpolitics as a game, he liked, when he took offhis armour, to feel himself on friendly terms withhis antagonists, and often seemed surprised tofind that they remembered as personal affrontsthe blows which he had dealt in the tournament.Two or three years before his death, a friendasked him whether there was in London any onewith whom he would not shake hands. Reflectingfor a moment, he answered, Only one, andnamed Robert Lowe, who had said hard things ofhim, and to whom, when Lowe was on one occasion35in his power, he had behaved with cruelty. Yethis resentments could smoulder long. In Lothairhe attacked, under a thin disguise, a distinguishedman of letters who had criticised his conduct yearsbefore. In Endymion he gratified what was evidentlyan ancient grudge by a spiteful presentationof Thackeray, as he had indulged his more bitterdislike of John Wilson Croker by portrayingthat politician in Coningsby under the name ofNicholas Rigby. For the greatest of his adversarieshe felt, there is reason to believe,genuine admiration, mingled with inability tocomprehend a nature so unlike his own. Nopassage in the striking speech which that adversarypronounced, one might almost say, overLord Beaconsfields gravea speech which maypossibly go down to posterity with its subjectwasmore impressive than the sentence in whichhe declared that he had the best reason to believethat, in their constant warfare, Lord Beaconsfieldhad not been actuated by any personal hostility.Brave men, if they can respect, seldom dislike, aformidable antagonist.

His mental powers were singularly well suitedto the rest of his characterwere, so to speak,all of a piece with it. One sometimes sees intellectswhich are out of keeping with the activeor emotional parts of the man. One sees personswhose thought is vigorous, clear, comprehensive,while their conduct is timid; or a comparatively36narrow intelligence joined to an enterprisingspirit; or a sober, reflective, sceptical turn of mindyoked to an ardent and impulsive temperament.What we call the follies of the wise often springfrom some such source. Not so with him. Hisintelligence had the same boldness, intensity, concentration,directness, which we discover in therest of the man. It was just the right instrument,not perhaps for the normal career of anormal Englishman seeking political success, butfor the particular kind of work Disraeli hadplanned to do; and this inner harmony was oneof the chief causes of his success, as the want of ithas caused the failure of so many gifted natures.

The range of his mind was not wide. All itsproducts were like one another. No one of themgives the impression that Disraeli could, had he sowished, have succeeded in a wholly diverse line.It was a peculiar mind: there is even more varietyin minds than in faces. It was not logical or discursive,liking to mass and arrange stores of knowledge,and draw inferences from them, nor was itjudicial, with a turn for weighing reasons andreaching a decision which recognises all the factsand is not confused by their seeming contradictions.Neither was it analytically subtle. Itreached its conclusions by a process of intuitionor divination in which there was an imaginativeas well as a reflective element. It might almosthave been called an artists mind, capable of deep37meditation, but meditating in an imaginative way,not so much on facts as on its own views offacts, on the pictures which its own creativefaculty had called up. The meditation becamedreamy, but the dreaminess was corrected by anexceedingly keen and quick power of observation,not the scientific observation of the philosopher,but rather the enjoying observation of the artistwho sees how he can use the characteristicdetails which he notes, or the observation ofthe forensic advocate (an artist, too, in his way)who perceives how they can be fitted into the presentationof his case. There are, of course, otherqualities in Disraelis work. As a statesman hewas obliged to learn how to state facts, to argue,to dissect an opponents arguments. But thecharacteristic note, both of his speeches and ofhis writings, is the combination of a few largeideas, clear, perhaps, to himself, but generallyexpressed with grandiose vagueness, and oftenquite out of relation to the facts as other peoplesaw them, with a turn for acutely fasteningupon small incidents or personal traits. In hisspeeches he used his command of sonorousphrases and lively illustrations, sometimes tosupport the views he was advancing, but morefrequently to conceal the weakness of thoseviews; that is, to make up for the absence ofsuch solid arguments as were likely to move hishearers. Everybody is now and then conscious38of holding with assured conviction theories whichhe would find it hard to prove to a givenaudience, partly because it is too much troubleto trace out the process by which they werereached, partly because uninstructed listenerscould not be made to feel the full cogency ofthe considerations on which his own mindrelies. Disraeli was usually in this conditionwith regard to his political and social doctrines.He believed them, but as he had not reachedthem by logic, he was not prepared to uselogic to establish them; so he picked up someplausible illustration, or attacked the oppositedoctrine and its supporters with a fire of railleryor invective. This non-ratiocinative quality ofhis thinking was a source both of strength andof weaknessof weakness, because he couldnot prove his propositions; of strength, because,stated as he stated them, it was not less hardto disprove them. That mark of a superiormind, that it must have a theory, was neverwanting. Some one said of him that he wasthe ruins of a thinker. He could not restcontent, like many among his followers, with aprejudice, a dogma delivered by tradition, a stolidsuspicion unamenable to argument. He wouldnot acquiesce in negation. He must have atheory, a positive theory, to show not only thathis antagonists view was erroneous, but that hehad himself a more excellent way. These theories39generally had in them a measure of truth andvalue for any one who could analyse them; butas this was exactly what the rank and file of theparty could not do, they got into sad confusionwhen they tried to talk his language.

He could hardly be called a well-read man,nor were his intellectual interests numerous. Hiseducation had consisted mainly in promiscuousreading during boyhood and early youth. Thereare worse kinds of education for an active intelligencethan to let it have the run of a largelibrary. The wild browsings of youth, whencuriosity is strong as hunger, stir the mind andgive the memory some of the best food it evergets. The weak point of such a method is that itdoes not teach accuracy nor the art of systematicstudy. In middle life natural indolence and hispolitical occupations had kept Disraeli from fillingup the gaps in his knowledge, while, in conversation,what he liked best was persiflage. Hewas, however, tolerably familiar with the ancientclassics, and with modern English and Frenchliterature; enjoyed Quintilian and Lucian, preferredSophocles to schylus and (apparently) Horaceto Virgil, despised Browning, considered Tennysonthe best of contemporary poets, but not apoet of a high order.[8] Physical science seemsnever to have attracted him. Political economy40he hated and mocked at almost as heartily asdid Carlyle. People have measured his knowledgeof history and geography by observingthat he placed the Crucifixion in the lifetimeof Augustus, and thought, down till 1878, whenhe had to make a speech about Afghanistan, thatthe Andes were the highest mountains in theworld. But geography is a subject which a manof affairs does not think of reading up in laterlife: he is content if he can get informationwhen he needs it. There are some bits of metaphysicsand some historical allusions scatteredover his novels, but these are mostly slight orsuperficial. He amused himself and the publicby now and then propounding doctrines on agriculturalmatters, but would not appear to havemastered either husbandry or any other economicalor commercial subject. Such things were notin his way. He had been so little in office asnot to have been forced to apply himself to them,while the tide of pure intellectual curiosity hadlong since ebbed.

For so-called sports he had little taste. Heliked to go mooning in a meditative way round hisfields and copses, and he certainly enjoyed Nature;but there seems to be no solid evidence that theprimrose was his favourite flower. In his fondnessfor particular words and phrases therewas a touch of his artistic quality, and a touchalso of the cynical view that words are the41counters with which the wise play their game.There is a passage in Contarini Fleming (a storyinto which he has put a good deal of himself)where this is set out. Contarini tells his fatherthat he left college because they taught me onlywords, and I wished to learn ideas. His fatheranswers, Few ideas are correct ones, and whatare correct, no one can ascertain; but with wordswe govern men.

He went on acting on this belief in the powerof words till he became the victim of his ownphrases, just as people who talk cynically foreffect grow sometimes into real cynics. Whenhe had invented a phrase which happily expressedthe aspect he wished his view, or some part of hispolicy, to bear, he came to believe in the phrase,and to think that the facts were altered by thecolour the phrase put upon them. During thecontest for the extension of the parliamentaryfranchise, he declared himself in favour ofpopular privileges, but opposed to democraticrights. When he was accused of having assented,at the Congress of Berlin, to the dismembermentof the Turkish Empire, he saidthat what had been done was not dismemberment,but consolidation. No statesman of recenttimes has given currency to so many quasi-epigrammaticexpressions: organised hypocrisy,England dislikes coalitions, plundering andblundering, peace with honour, imperium42et libertas, a scientific frontier, I am onthe side of the angels, are a few, not perhapsthe best, though the best remembered, of themany which issued from his fertile mint. Thisturn for epigram, not common in England,sometimes led him into scrapes which wouldhave damaged a man of less imperturbablecoolness. No one else could have ventured tosay, when he had induced the Tories to passa Reform Bill stronger than the one they hadrejected from the Liberals in the precedingyear, that it had been his mission to educatehis party. Some of his opponents professedto be shocked by such audacity, and manyold Tories privily gnashed their teeth. But thecountry received the dictum in the spirit in whichit was spoken. It was Disraeli all over.

If his intellect was not of wide range, it waswithin its range a weapon of the finest flexibilityand temper. It was ingenious, ready, incisive.It detected in a moment the weak point, if not ofan argument, yet of an attitude or of a character.Its imaginative quality made it often picturesque,sometimes even impressive. Disraeli had theartists delight in a situation for its own sake, andwhat people censured as insincerity or frivolity wasfrequently only the zest which he felt in posing,not so much because there was anything to begained, as because he realised his aptitude forimprovising a new part in the drama which he43always felt himself to be playing. The humour ofthe situation was too good to be wasted. Perhapsthis love of merry mischief may have had somethingto do with his tendency to confer honourson those whom the world thought least deserving.

His books are not only a valuable revelationof his mind, but have more literary merit thancritics have commonly allowed to them, perhapsbecause we are apt, when a man excels in onewalk, to deem him to have failed in any otherwherein he does not reach the same level. Thenovels foam over with cleverness; indeed, VivianGrey, with all its youthful faults, gives as greatan impression of intellectual brilliance as doesanything Disraeli ever wrote or spoke. Theireasy fertility makes them seem to be only,so to speak, a few sketches out of a largeportfolio. There is some variety in the subjectsContariniFleming and Tancred aremore romantic than the others, Sybil and Coningsbymore politicalas well as in the meritsof the stories. The two latest, Lothair andEndymion, works of his old age, are markedlyinferior in spirit and invention; but the generalfeatures are the same in alla lively fancy, aknack of hitting characters off in a few lines andof catching the superficial aspects of society, abrisk narrative, a sprightly dialogue, a keen insightinto the selfishness of men and the vanities ofwomen, with flashes of wit lighting up the whole44stage. It is always a stage. The brillianceis never open-air sunshine. There is scarcely oneof the characters whom we feel we might havemet and known. Heroes and heroines aretheatrical figures; their pathos rings false, theirlove, though described as passionate, does notspring from the inner recesses of the soul. Thestudies of men of the world, and particularly ofheartless ones, are the most life-like; yet, evenhere, any one who wants to feel the differencebetween the great painter and the clever sketcherneed only compare Thackerays Marquis ofSteyne with Disraelis Marquis of Monmouth,both of them suggested by the same original.There is little intensity, little dramatic powerin these stories, as also in his play of Alarcos;and if we read them with pleasure it is notfor the sake either of plot or of character,but because they contain so many sparklingwitticisms and reflections, setting in a stronglight, yet not always an unkindly light, the seamyside of politics and human nature. The slovenlinessof their style, which is often pompous, butseldom pure, makes them appear to have beenwritten hastily. But Disraeli seems to havetaken the composition of them (except, perhaps,the two latest) quite seriously. When he wrotethe earlier tales, he meant to achieve literarygreatness; while the middle ones, especiallyConingsby and Sybil, were designed as political45manifestoes. The less they have a purpose orprofess to be serious, the better they are; andthe most vivacious of all are two classical burlesques,written at a time when that kind ofcomposition had not yet become commonIxionin Heaven and The Infernal Marriagelittlepieces of funning worthy of Thackeray,I had almost said of Voltaire. They recall,perhaps they were suggested by, similar piecesof Lucians. Is Semitic genius specially rich inthis mocking vein? Lucian was a Syrian fromSamosata, probably a Semite; Heinrich Heinewas a Semite; James Russell Lowell used toinsist, though he produced little evidence for hisbelief, that Voltaire was a Semite.

Whether Disraeli could ever have taken highrank as a novelist if he had thrown himself completelyinto the profession may be doubted, for hisdefects were such as pains and practice would hardlyhave lessened. That he had still less the imaginationneeded by a poet, his Revolutionary Epick, conceivedon the plains of Troy, and meant to makea fourth to the Iliad, the neid, and the DivinaCommedia, is enough to show. The literaryvocation he was best fitted for was that of ajournalist or pamphleteer; and in this he mighthave won unrivalled success. His dash, hisverve, his brilliancy of illustration, his scorchingsatire, would have made the fortune of any newspaper,and carried dismay into the enemys ranks.

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In inquiring how far the gifts I have sought todescribe qualified Disraeli for practical statesmanship,it is well to distinguish the different kindsof capacity which an English politician needs toattain the highest place. They may be said tobe four. He must be a debater. He must be aparliamentary tactician. He must understand thecountry. He must understand Europe. This lastis, indeed, not always necessary; there have beenmoments when England, leaving Europe to itself,may look to her own affairs only; but when thesky grows stormy over Europe, the want of knowledgewhich English statesmen sometimes evincemay bode disaster.

An orator, in the highest sense of the word,Disraeli never was. He lacked ease and fluency.He had not Pitts turn for the lucid exposition ofcomplicated facts, nor for the conduct of a closeargument. The sustained and fiery declamation ofFox was equally beyond his range. And least ofall had he that truest index of eloquence, the powerof touching the emotions. He could not make hishearers weep. But he could make them laugh;he could put them in good-humour with themselves;he could dazzle them with rhetoric;he could pour upon an opponent streams ofridicule more effective than the hottest indignation.When he sought to be profound or solemn,he was usually heavy and labouredthe sublimityoften false, the diction often stilted. For wealth47of thought or splendour of language his speecheswill not bear to be comparedI will not say withthose of Burke (on whom he sometimes tried tomodel himself), but with those of three or four ofhis own contemporaries. Even within his ownparty, Lord Derby, Lord Ellenborough, and LordCairns in their several ways surpassed him. Thereis not one of his longer and more finished harangueswhich can be read with interest from beginning toend. But there is hardly any among them whichdoes not contain some striking passage, someimage or epigram, or burst of sarcasm, whichmust have been exceedingly effective when delivered.It is partly upon these isolated passages,especially the sarcastic ones (though the witticismswere sometimes borrowed), and still more uponthe aptness of the speech to the circumstancesunder which it was made, that his parliamentaryfame rests. If he was not a great orator he wasa superb debater, who watched with the utmostcare the temper of the audience, and said justwhat was needed at the moment to disconcert anopponent or to put heart into his friends. Hisrepartees were often happy, and must sometimeshave been unpremeditated. As he had not theardent temperament of the born orator, so neitherhad he the external advantages which count formuch before large assemblies. His voice wasnot remarkable either for range or for quality.His manner was somewhat stiff, his gestures few,48his countenance inexpressive. Yet his deliverywas not wanting in skill, and often added point,by its cool unconcern, to a stinging epigram.

What he lacked in eloquence he made upfor by tactical adroitness. No more consummateparliamentary strategist has been seen inEngland. He had studied the House of Commonstill he knew it as a player knows his instrumentstudiedit collectively, for it has a collectivecharacter, and studied the men who composeit: their worse rather than their better side,their prejudices, their foibles, their vanities,their ambitions, their jealousies, above all, thatcurious corporate pride which they have, andwhich makes them resent any approach to dictation.He could play on every one of thesestrings, and yet so as to conceal his skill; and heso economised himself as to make them alwayswish to hear him. He knew how in a body ofmen obliged to listen to talk, and most of ittedious talk, about matters in themselves mostlyuninteresting, the desire for a little amusementbecomes almost a passion; and he humouredthis desire so far as occasionally to err byexcess of banter and flippancy. Almost alwaysrespectful to the House, he had a happyknack of appearing to follow rather than tolead, and when he made an official statementit was with the air of one who was takingthem into his confidence. Much of this he49may have learned from observing Lord Palmerston;but the art came more naturally to thatstatesman, who was an Englishman all through,than to a man of Mr. Disraelis origin, wholooked on Englishmen from outside, and neverfelt himself, so to speak, responsible for theirhabits or ideas.

As leader of his party in Opposition, he wasat once daring and cautious. He never fearedto give battle, even when he expected defeat,if he deemed it necessary, with a view to thefuture, that the judgment of his party shouldhave been pronounced in a formal way. Onthe other hand, he was wary of committing himselfto a policy of blind or obstinate resistance.When he perceived that the time had come toyield, he knew how to yield with a good grace,so as both to support a character for reasonablenessand to obtain valuable concessions asthe price of peace. If difficulties arose withforeign countries he claimed full liberty ofcriticising the conduct of the Ministry, butostentatiously abstained from obstructing orthwarting their acts, declaring that England mustalways present a united front to the foreigner,whatever penalties she might afterwards visiton those who had mismanaged her concerns.As regards the inner discipline of his party,he had enormous difficulties to surmount in thejealousy which many Tories felt for him as a50new man, a man whom they could not understandand only partially trusted.[9] Conspiracieswere repeatedly formed against him; malcontentsattacked him in the press, and sometimes even inParliament. These he seldom noticed, maintaininga cool and self-confident demeanour whichdisheartened the plotters, and discharging theduties of his post with steady assiduity. Hewas always on the look-out for young men ofpromise, drew them towards him, encouragedthem to help him in parliamentary sharp-shooting,and fostered in every way the spirit of party.The bad side of that spirit was seen when hecame into office, for then every post in thepublic service was bestowed either by merefavouritism or on party grounds; and men whohad been loyal to him were rewarded by placesor titles to which they had no other claim.But the unity and martial fervour of the Toryparty was raised to the highest point. Nor wasDisraeli himself personally unpopular with hisparliamentary opponents, even when he was mosthotly attacked on the platform and in the press.

To know England and watch the shifting51currents of its opinion is a very different matterfrom knowing the House of Commons. Indeed,the two kinds of knowledge are in a measureincompatible. Men who enter Parliament soonbegin to forget that it is not, in the last resort,Parliament that governs, but the people. Absorbedin the daily contests of their Chamber,they over-estimate the importance of those contests.They come to think that Parliament isin fact what it is in theory, a microcosm ofthe nation, and that opinion inside is sure toreflect the opinion outside. When they are in aminority they are depressed; when they are ina majority they fancy that all is well, forgettingtheir masters out-of-doors. This tendency isaggravated by the fact that the English Parliamentmeets in the capital, where the rich andluxurious congregate and give their tone tosociety. The House of Commons, though manyof its members belong to the middle class byorigin, belongs practically to the upper class bysympathy, and is prone to believe that what ithears every evening at dinners or receptions iswhat the country is thinking. A member of theHouse of Commons is, therefore, ill-placed forfeeling the pulse of the nation, and in order todo so must know what is being said over thecountry, and must frequently visit or communicatewith his constituents. If this difficulty isexperienced by an ordinary private member, it52is greater for a minister whose time is filledby official duties, or for a leader of Opposition,who has to be constantly thinking of his tacticsin the House. In Disraelis case there was akeenness of observation and discernment farbeyond the common. But he was under the disadvantagesof not being really an Englishman,and of having never lived among the people.[10]The detachment I have already referred to tendedto weaken his power of judging popular sentiment,and appraising at their true value the varioustendencies that sway and divide a nation socomplex as the English. Early in life he hadformed theories about the relations of the differentclasses of English societynobility, gentry,capitalists, workmen, peasantry, and the middleclassestheories which were far from containingthe whole truth; and he adhered to them evenwhen the changes of half a century had made themless true. He had a great aversion, not to say contempt,for Puritanism, and for the Dissenters amongwhom it chiefly holds its ground, and pleased himselfwith the notion that the extension of the suffragewhich he carried in 1867 had destroyed theirpolitical power. The Conservative victory at theelection of 1874 confirmed him in this belief, andmade him also think that the working classeswere ready to follow the lead of the rich. He53perceived that the Liberal ministry of 1868-74had offended certain influential sections by appearingtoo demiss or too unenterprising in foreignaffairs, and fancied that the bulk of the nationwould be dazzled by a warlike mien, and anactive, even aggressive, foreign policy. Such apolicy was congenial to his own ideas, and tothe society that surrounded him. It was applaudedby some largely circulated newspaperswhich had previously been unfriendly to theTory party. Thus he was more surprised thanany other man of similar experience to find thenation sending up a larger majority against himin 1880 than it had sent up for him in 1874.This was the most striking instance of his miscalculation.But he had all through his careeran imperfect comprehension of the Englishpeople. Individuals, or even an assembly, maybe understood by dint of close and long-continuedobservation; but to understand a whole nation,one must also have sympathy, and this his circumstances,not less than his character, had denied him.

It was partly the same defect that preventedhim from mastering the general politics of Europe.There is a sense in which no single man canpretend to understand Europe. Bismarck himselfdid not. The problem is too vast, the factsto be known too numerous, the undercurrentstoo varying. One can speak only of more orless. If Europe had been in his time what it54was a century before, Disraeli would have hada far better chance of being fit to become whatit was probably his dearest wish to becomeitsguide and arbiter. He would have taken themeasure of the princes and ministers with whomhe had to deal, would have seen and adroitlyplayed on their weaknesses. His novels showhow often he had revolved diplomatic situationsin his mind, and reflected on the way of handlingthem. Foreign diplomatists are agreed that atthe Congress of Berlin he played his part toadmiration, spoke seldom, but spoke always tothe point and with dignity, had a perfect conceptionof what he meant to secure, and of themeans he must employ to secure it, never haggledover details or betrayed any eagerness to winsupport, never wavered in his demands, even whenthey seemed to lead straight to war. Dealingwith individuals, who represented material forceswhich he had gauged, he was perfectly at home,and deserved the praise he obtained from Bismarck,who, comparing him with other eminentfigures at the Congress, is reported to have said,bluntly but heartily, Der alte Jude, das ist derMann.[11] But to know what the condition ofSouth-Eastern Europe really was, and understandhow best to settle its troubles, was a far more difficulttask, and Disraeli possessed neither the knowledgenor the insight required. In the Europe55of to-day, peoples count for more than the willsof individual rulers: one must comprehend thepassions and sympathies of peoples if one is toforecast the future. This he seldom cared todo. He did not realise the part and the powerof moral forces. Down to the outbreak of theAmerican Civil War he maintained that thequestion between the North and the South wasmainly a fiscal question between the Protectionistinterests of the one and the Free Trade interestsof the other. He always treated with contemptthe national movement in Italy. He made nosecret in the days before 1859 of his good-willto Austria and of his liking for Louis Napoleonaman inferior to him in ability and in courage,but to whose character his own had some affinities.In that elaborate study of Sir Robert Peels character,[12]which is one of Disraelis best literary performances,he observes that Peel was destituteof imagination, and wanting imagination he wantedprescience. True it is that imagination is necessaryfor prescience, but imagination is not enoughto give prescience. It may even be a snare.

Disraelis imagination, his fondness for theories,and disposition rather to cling to them than tostudy and interpret facts, made him the victimof his own preconceived ideas, as his indolencedeterred him from following the march of changeand noting how different things were in the56seventies from what they had been in thethirties. Mr. Gladstone said to me in 1876,Disraelis two leading ideas in foreign policyhave always been the maintenance of the temporalpower of the Pope, and the maintenance of thepower of the Sultan. Unable to save the one, heclung to the hope of saving the other. He waspossessed by the notion, seductive to a dreamymind, that all the disturbances of Europe arosefrom the action of secret societies; and when theEastern Question was in 1875 re-opened by theinsurrection in Herzegovina, followed by thewar of Servia against the Turks, he explainedthe event in a famous speech by saying, Thesecret societies of Europe have declared waragainst Turkeythe fact being that the societieswhich in Russia were promoting the Servian warwere public societies, openly collecting subscriptions,while those secret social democraticsocieties of which we have since heard so muchwere strongly opposed to the interference ofRussia, and those other secret societies in therest of Europe, wherein Poles and Italians haveplayed a leading part, were, if not hostile, at anyrate quite indifferent to the movement among theEastern Christians.

Against these errors there must be set severalcases in which he showed profound discernment.In 1843 and 1844 he delivered, in debates on thecondition of Ireland, speeches which then constituted57and long remained the most penetratingand concise diagnosis of the troubles of that countryever addressed to Parliament. Ireland has, hesaid, a starving peasantry, an alien church, and anabsentee aristocracy, and he went on to add thatthe function of statesmanship was to cure by peacefuland constitutional methods ills which in othercountries had usually induced, and been removedby, revolution. During the American Civil War of1861-65, Disraeli was the only leading statesmanon his own side of politics who did not embrace andapplaud the cause of the South. Whether thisarose from a caution that would not commit itselfwhere it recognised ignorance, or from a perceptionof the superior strength of the NorthernStates (a perception which whoever visits theSouth even to-day is astonished that so fewpeople in Europe should have had), it is not easyto decide; but whatever the cause, the fact is anevidence of his prudence or sagacity all the moreweighty because Lord Palmerston, Lord Russell,and Mr. Gladstone, as well as Lord Derby andSir Hugh Cairns, had each of them expressedmore or less sympathy with, or belief in, thesuccess of the Southern cause.

The most striking instance, however, of Disraelisinsight was his perception that an extensionof the suffrage would not necessarily injure,and might end by strengthening, the Tory party.The Act of 1867 was described at the time as58a leap in the dark. But Disraelis eyes hadpierced the darkness. For half a century politicianshad assumed that the masses of the peoplewere and would remain under the Liberal banner.Even as late as 1872 it was thought on Liberalplatforms a good joke to say of some opinion thatit might do for Conservative working men, if therewere any. Disraeli had, long before 1867, seendeeper, and though his youthful fancies that themonarchy might be revived as an effective force,and that the peasantry would follow withmedival reverence the lead of the landed gentry,proved illusory, he was right in discerning thatwealth and social influence would in parliamentaryelections count for more among the masses thanthe traditions of constitutional Whiggism or thedogmas of abstract Radicalism.

In estimating his statesmanship as a whole,one must give due weight to the fact that itimpressed many publicists abroad. No Englishminister had for a long time past so fascinatedobservers in Germany and Austria. Supposingthat under the long reign of Liberalism Englishmenhad ceased to care for foreign politics, theylooked on him as the man who had given back toBritain her old European position, and attributedto him a breadth of design, a grasp and a foresightsuch as men had revered in Lord Chatham,greatest in the short list of ministers who haveraised the fame of England abroad. I remember59seeing in a Conservative club, about 1880, alarge photograph of Lord Beaconsfield, wearingthe well-known look of mysterious fixity, underwhich is inscribed the line of Homer: He aloneis wise: the rest are fleeting shadows.[13] Itwas a happy idea to go for a motto to thefavourite poet of his rival, as it was an unhappychance to associate the wisdom ascribedto Disraeli with his policy in the Turkish Eastand in Afghanistan, a policy now universally admittedto have been unwise and unfortunate.[14]But whatever may be thought of the appropriatenessof the motto, the fact remains that this wasthe belief he succeeded in inspiring. He did itby virtue of those very gifts which sometimesbrought him into troublehis taste for large andimposing theories, his power of clothing them invague and solemn language, his persistent faith inthem. He came, by long posing, to impose uponhimself and to believe in his own profundity.Few people could judge whether his ideas ofimperial policy were sound and feasible; butevery one saw that he had theories, and manyfell under the spell which a grandiose imaginationcan exercise. It is chiefly this gift, coupled with60his indomitable tenacity, which lifts him out ofthe line of mere party leaders. If he failed to seehow much the English are sometimes moved bycompassion, he did see that it may be worth whileto play to their imagination.

We may now ask again the question asked atfirst: How did a man, whatever his natural gifts,who was weighted in his course by such disadvantagesas Disraelis, by his Jewish origin, by theescapades of his early career, by the want of confidencewhich his habitual cynicism inspired, by thevisionary nature of so many of his views,how didhe, in a conservative and aristocratic country likeEngland, triumph over so many prejudices andenmities, and raise himself to be the head of theConservative and aristocratic party, the trustedcounsellor of the Crown, the ruler, almost thedictator, of a free people?

However high be the estimate formed ofDisraelis gifts, secondary causes must have beenat work to enable him to overcome the obstaclesthat blocked his path. The ancients were notwrong in ascribing to Fortune a great share inhuman affairs. Now, among the secondary causesof success, that general minister and leader setover worldly splendours, as Dante calls her,[15]played no insignificant part. One of these causeslay in the nature of the party to which he belonged.The Tory party of the years between 1848 and611865 contained a comparatively small number ofable men. When J. S. Mill once called it thestupid party, it did not repudiate the name, butpointed to its cohesion and its resolution asshowing how many things besides mere talentgo to make political greatness. A man ofshining gifts had within its ranks few competitors;and this was signally the case immediatelyafter Peels defection. That statesmanhad carried off with him the intellectual flowerof the Conservatives. Those who were leftbehind to form the Protectionist Opposition inthe House of Commons were broad-acred squires,of solid character but slender capacity. Throughthis heavy atmosphere Mr. Disraeli rose like aballoon. Being practically the only member ofhis party in the Commons with either strategicalor debating power, he became indispensable, andsoon established a supremacy which years ofpatient labour might not have given him in arivalry with the distinguished band who surroundedPeel. During the twenty years thatfollowed the great Tory schism of 1846 noman arose in the Tory ranks capable of disputinghis throne. The conspiracies hatchedagainst him might well have prospered could acandidate for the leadership have been foundcapable of crossing swords with the chieftain inpossession. Fortune, true to her nursling, sufferednone such to appear.

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Another favouring influence not understoodoutside England was to be found in the characterof the party he led. In his day the Tories, beingthe party of the property-holders, and having notto advance but to stand still, not to proposechanges but to resist them, having bonds ofinterest as well as of sentiment to draw themclose together, possessed a cohesion, a loyaltyto their chiefs, a tenacious corporate spirit, farexceeding what was to be found among theiradversaries, who were usually divided into amoderate or Whig and an advanced or Radicalsection. He who established himself as the Toryleader was presently followed by the rank and filewith a devotion, an unquestioning submission andconfidence, which placed his character and doctrinesunder the gis of the party, and enforced loyaltyupon parliamentary malcontents. This corporatespirit was of infinite value to Disraeli. Thehistorical past of the great Tory party, its associations,the social consideration which it enjoys, allwent to ennoble his position and efface the remembranceof the less creditable parts of his career.And in the later days of his reign, when no onedisputed his supremacy, every Tory was, as amatter of course, his advocate and admirer, andresented assaults on him as insults to the party.When a man excites hatred by his words or deeds,attacks on his character are an inevitable relief toovercharged feelings. Technically regarded, they63are not good politics. Misrepresentation sometimessucceeds; vituperation seldom. Let a manbe personally untrustworthy or dangerous, still, itis only his own words that damage him, at least inEngland and America. Even his own words, howeverdiscrediting, even his acts, however culpable,may, if they belong to a past unfamiliar to the voterof to-day, tell little, perhaps too little, on the votersmind when they are brought up against him. Theaverage citizen has a short memory, and thinksthat the dead may be allowed to bury their dead.

Let it be further noted that Disraelis careercoincided with a significant change in Englishpolitics, a change partly in the temper of the nation,partly in the balance of voting power. For thirtyyears after the Reform Act of 1832, not only hadthe middle classes constituted the majority ofthe electors, but the social influence of the greatWhig families and the intellectual influence ofthe economic school of Cobden had been potentfactors. These forces were, in the later part ofDisraelis life, tending to decline. The working-classvote was vastly increased in 1867. Theold Whig light gradually paled, and many of theWhig magnates, obeying class sympathies ratherthan party traditions, drifted slowly into Toryism.A generation arose which had not seen the FreeTrade struggle, or had forgotten the Free Tradearguments, and which was attracted by ideals otherthan those which Cobden had preached. The64grievances which had made men reformers hadbeen largely removed. The battle of liberty andnationality in Continental Europe had been inthe main won, and Englishmen had lost theenthusiasm for freedom which had fired them inthe days when the memory of their own struggleagainst the Crown and the oligarchy was stillfresh. With none of these changes had Disraelispersonal action much to do, but they all enuredto the benefit of his party, they all swelled thetide which bore him into office in 1874.

Finally, he had the great advantage of livinglong. Many a statesman has died at fifty,and passed from the worlds memory, who mighthave become a figure in history with twenty yearsmore of life. Had Disraelis career closed in1854, he would have been remembered as aparliamentary gladiator, who had produced a fewincisive speeches, a crude Budget, and somebrilliant social and political sketches. Thestronger parts of his character might hav