Literature.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 6 January 1911, Page 4

Literature.

DISRAELI. The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfiold. By William Flarello Mony.peiiny." Vol. 1, 1804-1837. (Murray, 12s net). REVIEWED BY VISCOUNT MORLEY. Tlio following extracts are taken from the review of the Life of Di.s racli:— For forty years or more the aw me of Disraeli was a standing target for all the slings and arrows of ingenious affront, gibe, fable, contumely, gossip, scorn—partly provoked in liis early stages at least by what the candid "biographer admits to be bis own truculence. He figures in a hundred different lights, whether we turn to French, German, or English writers who have tried their hands at painting him, including Fronde, that consummate master of narrative style. If scarification has done its work, so latterly has deification. It is a comfort, then, at last to come an sight of a compact supply of standard and authentic material, honestly provided, so far as an outsider can judge, by an undeniably competent craftsman.

Mr Monypenny had one or two obvious disad? antages to encounter. He ks never sat in Parliament, and the House of Commons was his

HERO'S THEATRE. He , J™ s not personally acquainted with the famous man, and therefore missed both suibtle and direct impressions that come of face aaiswering to face. He has not -been a votary in the gilded saloons that Disraeli frequented so systematically and found so adorable, on the principle that in spite of Reform Bills, «™' newspapers, C est 'tonjours le beau monde qui gouverne le monde." Again, the author, no doubt for good reasons, has found it convenient to publish' his book in instalments. Most readers would probably 'have been better pleased to wait a little longer m order to have the tale all told, the sitter's portraits complete, the fifth act of the drama in its place, ft as tantalizing to leavo the great political commander just wihen he has ■got his subaltern's commission. Still, the author is a practised 'hand; he shows skill in using his material; his judgment in the architectonics of the great three-decker biography is evidently careful. So we must take it that (lie knows best and must content ourselves with what is, in view of the prolonged, vigorous, exciting, and t EFFECTIVE POLITICAL career, only its Prologue. As a prologue largely handled, it will be generally pronounced, as I anticipate, excellently well done. On the whole the now material does not seem likely, to change men's estim?i - ; ~ at t]ie - 7 were inclined to •I? ™' nim I}efore ' *hey will thankstilly Tlie generation .that has grown up. since he died some thirty years «go will find in this wologw-all they need to test the tradition, to mark his course before the stingrno-' attacks on Peel that'made tihe turning porart of his'public career, to measure, has elemental traate, to detect

tho foundations of 'his ehamctor—the threo prime driving qualities of courage, energy, ambition. In this literary stage there was no place for narrative of important action, tout the author makes an animated story out of such" circumstance, as his material allowed. He quotes delightful vignettes of Bracteuvhkim and Isaac D'Jsracli. His hero, like other beginners of the literary career, underwent the ordeal of Bohemia. In his case it was not Fleet street and the Temple, hut the flash Bohemia of Kensington-gore. Of all this the 'biographer tells us as much as we weed care to know. The important thing is that a man should extricate himself from Bohemia ; and this Disraeli achieved in M A GNIFICENT STYLE. His oddities of manner and apparel amazed men. His friend -Meredith tells of Disraeli coming to dine with ihiim:— Ho came up Regent street, when it was crowded, in his blue surtout, a pair of military light blue trousers, black stockings with red stripes, and shoes! "Tiro people," he said, "quite made way for mo as I passed. Tt was like the opening of the Wed: Sea, which I now perfectly believe from experience. 'Even'welldressed iwoplo stopped to took at me." I should think so! Ho was in cxcellont spirits, full of schemes for the /projected journey to Stamboul and Jerusalem; full, as usual, also of capital stories, but lie could make a story out of nothing. Some of our greatest, from Bacon to Scott, have fallen into dire scrapes in the highly critical chapter of money. -Mr' Monypenny is liberal in vivid pictures of the financial mire through; which his hero had to plod what, would to most men, Jew or Christian, have boon a weary way. The dun, the lawyer's letter, the writ, the sheriff's officer, the bailiff, the sponging-house, are

AN OLD STORY

in the annals of authors by trade. There is a Spanish proverb, ".Let him that sleeps too sound borrow the debtor's pillow." In Disraeli's case resolute ambition and a born satirist's disdain for the irony of'ffiiman things carried him through it all, and squalor that might have broken down a. weaker genius was to him no worse than a vexatious incident outside, not reaching what is the quick of us all—tho man himself. Johnson was right in declaring that there is no pleasure in narrating the annals of beggary. The most illustrious of his friends, Burke, avoided all mention of the shabby straits of his early days, and in respect of his financial :oase he still remains a dark horse. _ Disraeli on the. contrary made little secret and much of a jest of money plagues. Hero he is, just before his destiny brought him from a dingy greenroom into the bewildering glare of the Parliamentary proscenium:—

Our county Conservative dinner, which will be the most important assembly of the kind yet held, takes ■place on Friday, the 9th in.st. I have been requested to move tho principal toast, "The House of Lords." I trust there is no danger of my being nabbed, as this would be a fatal contretemps, inasmuch as, in all .probability, I am addressing MY FUTURE CONSTITUENTS.

He was for half the time in distraction sore enough to quench for good the ironic spark. "For the last three years," he tells a friend in 1830, "life has not afforded me a moment's,ease." Distracted affairs, harrowing in tresis, the practising of usurers upon inexperienced youth—such is the dolorous picture. His confidence remained indomitable. He assures a friend who had some money claims upon him:— The first step I take, when the power is mine, shall be in your favour, and, sooner or later, the power will be mine; and, soino day or other, we may look back to these early adventures rather as matter of philosophical simulation than individual sorrow, I confidently believe. For there is something within me which, in spite of all 'the dicta of the faculty, and in the face of the prostrate state in which T lie, whispers to me T shall yet weather this fearful storm, and that a more prosperous career may yet open to me. Standing for Maidstonc, he writes to a friend beseeching him to prevent a shower of writs while "the election was proceeding:—"l was glad to find

THE SHERIFF'S OFFICERS here among my staunch' supporters : T suppose gratitude."

■It is a curious thing that the adoration of political England should all this time have been divided, though' not in equal proportions, between two illustrious men, and governed first by one and then the other of them, neither of whom she more than half understood or even pretended to understand. Palmerston, for instance, wa sone of the most plain-ilieaded men that ever became Prime 'Minister. In -his two successors political fortune brought extraordinary paradox. Mr Gladstone, from the day when he resigned about Mayiiooth, offered to his most ardent friends endless pudzles. He would have scorned to call 'himself by any name but 'Catholic, and amid all his vicissitudes was ever the most devoted son of the Chiurch of England. Yet he was the idol of Protestant ultras, the political hero of Scotch Presbyterians and English Independents, not to name the small but ardent band of Rationalists, some of whom were his stoutest -henchmen to the end. Disraeli's apotheosis was just as strange. Mr Gladstone used to tell how, one day sitting on tlie bench while Disraeli was making a. strenuous speech for the removal of

JEWISH DISABILITIES. Lord John Russell whispered, "Look at the fellow! how manfully he sticks to it, though the knows that every word he says as gall and wormwood to every man who sits around! him and behind him I" It took him a generation to drive the Ghetto out of the minds of the country gentlemen. He' was regaled ■with a host of nicknames from every quarter indicative of mystery and legerdemain. Yet after some five-and-thirty years of it, a huge ma--jority of English voters at last hailed him for First- Minister. The strange riddle stands over. Meanwhile we do. not forget that one who began ihis career by so much literary extravagance as the present volume recalls, yet when ihe came to the great business of his life, the creation and working of a powerful political party, showed himself cool, shrewd, patient, far-sighted, practical, full of tactical resource a consummate master of the fatiguing art of managing men, and those, too, the kind of men to whom he. was not by race only, but by temperament and the deepest habits of his mind, a chartered alien. He grew larger, and not less, as time went on, even down to the days of disaster and overthrow in 1880. juiose who were in confidential relations with him at ifliat .baleful hour have recorded, as the present writer lias said elsewhere, how the fallen Minister, who had counted on a very different result, faced the'

RUTN OF HIS GOVERNMENT the end of his career, and thfe overwhelming triumph of his antagonist with an ■unclouded serenity and a grea.tness of mind worthy of a man who ihad known Jrigh fortunes and filled to the full the measure of his gifts and his ambitions. Well, we wish the author a prosperous journey through all the drudgeries and! perplexing passages tu i ie before him,, in an enterprise that has been so excellently begun.