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Bulwer, who knew better, would quite revel in a stagey bombast; Dickens, with his pathos and his humour, was capable of sinking into a theatrical mannerism and cockney vulgarities of wretched taste; Disraeli, with all his wit and savoir faire, has printed some rank fustian, and much slip-slop gossip; and George Meredith at times can be as jerky and mysterious as a prose Browning.
The audience could not follow the speaker and so lost interest. Sir Henry told me a delightful story about Disraeli. A young relative of Irving's took orders and became a clergyman in the Established Church. At the request of Irving, Disraeli appointed this young man one of the curates at Windsor. One day the clergyman came to Irving in great distress and said: "The unexpected has happened.
The refreshments thus provided are open to all, and in this qualified sense I may say that I have lunched with Disraeli, Lord John Russell, and Lord Palmerston. But the hour has nearly come for opening the debate; members are rapidly arriving and taking their seats, and we shall do well to decide upon the best mode of gaining admission to the House.
But he had a great deal of it and a varied assortment. He knew everybody on both sides of the Atlantic, his friends ranging from the Prince of Wales, afterward Edward VII, Gladstone and Disraeli, Gambetta and Thiers, to the bucks of the jockey clubs. There were two of Tom Tom the noisy on exhibition, and Tom the courtier in society.
Did any one suppose for a moment that Rhoda Chester would be content to remain among the rank and file? Did they think that she could continue to be ignored, and live! Ten thousand times no! "A day would come!" as Disraeli had said. They thought just now that she was nobody, but in time to come the school would know her name, would be proud of it, would boast of it to other schools.
He had a commanding presence, indeed a colossal form, and a voice which was marvellous alike for the strength and the music of its varied intonations. Such men as Disraeli and Bulwer Lytton have borne enthusiastic tribute to the magic of that voice, and have declared it to be unrivalled in the political eloquence of the time.
Had it been written in prose or in the inventory style of poetry, it would have been forgotten long ago, like so much else of that kind. Not far hence is Beaconsfield, which gave a home to Burke and a title to the wife of Disraeli, the nearest approach to a peerage that the haughty Israelite, soured by a life of struggle against peers and their prejudices, would deign to accept.
Disraeli used to complain of what he called 'Dutch finance, which consists in 'mortgaging the industry of the future to protect property in the present. Pitt paid for the great war of a hundred years ago in this manner; after a century we are still groaning under the burden of his loans.
The best feature of the book, and probably the saving feature, is that the central figure in the plot is Disraeli, himself, and upon his own head the author plays his shafts of wit and ridicule.
Disraeli was a born politician who was also a very considerable man of letters: Bulwer was a born man of letters who was a by no means inconsiderable politician. He never exactly copied anybody: and in all his various attempts he went extremely near to the construction of masterpieces.
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