THE second volume of Mr Monypenny's 'Life of Benjamin Disraeli' (London: John Murray) is of a deeper interest than the first. What it has lost in the high spirits of adventurous youth it has gained in a grave consistency of purpose. In 1837, in which year the book opens, Disraeli had sowed the wild oats of romance, and none knew more confidently than he that the seeds of a wanton extravagance were to bring forth a rich harvest of political achievement. He had gained by a brilliant and deliberate eccentricity the goal of social success. And henceforth, until the end of his life, his eyes were fixed firmly upon the House of Commons. As member for Maidstone, as the colleague of Mr Wyndham Lewis, he claimed and won a consideration which did not belong to the bold candidate still wavering between a reckless Radicalism and the philosophic Toryism of Bolingbroke. But though the years of romance were finished, Disraeli still cherished an inveterate habit of picturesque optimism. Though the battle was by no means over, he saw himself always in the centre of the field, an easy victor. The demon of doubt never whispered a paralysing syllable in his ear. His home-letters still burn with a fiery confidence. He is conscious that all eyes are upon

him. He knows that he is singled out for for particular favours. "The dinner to-day," says he, when as a member he is but a day old, "is merely a House dinner of 14-all our great men with the exception of Lord Ramsay and myself, the only two new members. It has occasioned some jealousy and surprise." If it was Disraeli's first Parliament, it was Queen Victoria's first Parliament also, and to the general surprise there was a division on the Address. took an hour, and Disraeli entered into it with all the zest of a novice. "I left the House at ten o'clock," thus he writes, "none of us having dined. The tumult and excitement great. I dined, or rather supped, at the Carlton with a large party off oysters, Guinness, and broiled bones, and got to bed at half-past twelve o'clock. Thus ended the most remarkable day hitherto of my life."

It

The enthusiasm is character

istio. He found every day remarkable, and the last the most remarkable of them all. He took up politics, as he took up society, with a light heart and an iron hand, and his triumph was ensured. It was not the least of his good fortune that his maiden speech, delivered on December 7, 1837, should have been received with an unparalleled demonstration

66

of hostility. The long ago claimed the place in history which it will never surrender. It was an Irish debate, and Disraeli deliberately elected to follow O'Connell, his ancient enemy. "We shall meet again at Philippi" -this had been his challenge, and at Philippi they stood face to face. He attacked his ancient enemy in the admirable phrases of which he was master. O'Connell's speech was a rhetorical medley." O'Connell's subscription was "a project of majestic mendicancy." If Disraeli's dandyism lost him the sympathy of many even in his own party, his spirited attack upon O'Connell roused a storm of fury among the Irish. "Hisses, groans, hoots, cat-calls, drumming with the feet, loud conversation, and imitation of animals," we are told, greeted every one of his sallies. Throughout it all he remained unperturbed. Not for one moment was his temper ruffled. Whenever there was an interlude of silence he spoke another period of his prepared speech in a cold, even, relentless voice. He twitted the noble Tityrus of the Treasury Bench and the learned Daphnis of Liskeard, and he painted a famous picture of Lord John Russell "from his pedestal of power wielding in one hand the keys of St Peter and waving with the other—_—____” The sentence was never completed, but Disraeli was not slow to inform his friends that had he been allowed to proceed he would have put in

VOL. CXCII.-NO. MCLXVI.

Henceforth Disraeli's place in the House was assured. A respectable speech, delivered and heard in silence, might have been his undoing. The hostility of the Irish had assured him a brilliant effect. Henceforth he was familiar to every gossip in the kingdom as the man who had been shouted down and had not winced at the punishment. For a moment, it is true, even his own serener confidence was shaken, but for a moment only. A breath of encouragement speedily blew away the cobwebs of his doubt. Chandos congratulated him in the lobby. "I replied," writes he to his sister, "that I thought there was no cause for congratulations, and muttered 'Failure!' 'No such thing,' said Chandos; 'you are quite wrong. I have just seen Peel, and I said to him, "Now, tell me exactly what you think of D." Peel replied, "Some of my party are disappointed and talk of failure. I say just the reverse. He did all that he could do under the oircumstances. I say anything but failure; he must make his way.

Where Peel led, the others followed. Lyndhurst made light of the bullying of the Radicals. He was sure that Disraeli "would have the courage to have at them again." 3 к

But the man whose eulogy most warmly gratified the orator was Shiel. "Now, gentlemen," said Shiel in Bulwer's hearing, "I have heard all you have to say, and, what is more, I heard this same speech of Mr Disraeli, and I tell you this if ever the spirit of oratory was in a man, it is in that man. Nothing can prevent him being one of the first speakers in the House of Commons [great confusion]. Ay! I know something about that place, I think, and I tell you what besides, that if there had not been this interruption, Mr Disraeli might have made a failure. I don't call this a failure, it is a crush. My début was a failure, because I was heard, but my reception was supercilious, his malignant. A début should be dull. The House will not allow a man to be a wit and an orator unless they have the credit of finding it out." It was a generous appreciation, which led to a friendship and much good counsel. Shiel, a master of Parliamentary tactics, not only praised Disraeli, he advised him: "Get rid of your genius for a session," said he.... . . "Speak often, for you must not show yourself cowed, but speak shortly. . . . Quote figures, dates, calculations. And in a short time the House will sigh for the wit and eloquence which they all know are in you." Never was better advice given, nor more wisely received. The next time Disraeli spoke in the House he was careful to be dull.

Among the many reproaches

hurled at Disraeli at the outset of his career was the charge of political inconsistency. He was denounced for a renegade on a hundred platforms. His early adventures in the cause of Radicalism were recalled to his mind with a pompous iteration. Yet Disraeli was more sternly consistent than any of his colleagues or rivals. He was from the beginning a disciple of Bolingbroke, and a disciple of Bolingbroke he remained unto the end. From the doctrine of Tory Democracy he never wavered. He was unalterable in his opposition to the Whiggish oligarchy. He fought the selfishness of the greedy middleclass with all the weapons of his forensic eloquence. "I look upon the Whigs as the antiNational party," he had said on the hustings at Taunton, and he repeated the phrase with variations again and again. In 1840 he assured Charles Attwood that he had worked for no other object and no other end than to aid the formation of a national party. "I entirely agree with you," he wrote, "that an union between the Conservative Party and the Radical masses offers the only means by which we can preserve the Empire.' And the consistency of Disraeli came from no desire to entrench himself against attack. He was consistent, because before all things he was a political philosopher. For him the division bell was not the one and only excuse of statesmanship. He accepted the House of Commons, with its rules of procedure and its passion of

parties, as a convenient method of government. None more loyally than he respected its traditions and guarded its privileges. But he was a statesman of fixed principles, which he would if he could persuade the House to carry out. The last lines of 'Sybil' have been quoted many times. They cannot be quoted too often, for they contain in a small space the essence of the Disraelian doctrine. "That we may live to see England once more possess a free Monarchy, and a privileged and prosperous People, is my prayer; that these great consequences can only be brought about by the energy and devotion of our Youth is my persuasion. We live in an age when to be young and to be indifferent can be no longer synonymous. We must prepare for the coming hour. The claims of the Future are represented by suffering millions; and the Youth of a Nation are the trustees of Posterity."

8

With this faith emblazoned on his banner Disraeli went forth to fight. It inspired him not only in the battle of Young England but in his fierce contest with Peel. Each of these episodes, admirably described by Mr Monypenny, was necessary step in Disraeli's progress. They won him the two things of which he stood urgently in need-Parliamentary fame and the support of the aristocracy. The good fortune which seldom deserts the adventurous spirit perched happily upon Disraeli's shoulder. The brief glory of Young

England, if it attained no definite object, was Disraeli's first real triumph in the House. It strengthened his position; it crystallised his views. That he should have taken the lead of the generous spirits who had come down from Cambridge, eager to reform the world, was natural. Disraeli always professed a keen sympathy with men younger than himself. He had a profound belief in the efficacy of youth. Before Young England could claim to be a party, he was already on terms of intimacy with Lord John Manners and George Smythe, the apostles of the new gospel. "I find myself without effort the leader of a party," he wrote to his wife as early as March 1842, "chiefly of the youth and new members. Lord John Manners came to me about a motion which he wanted me to bring forward, and he would second it like Claud Hamilton. Henry Baillie the same about Afghanistan. I find my position changed." Nor was it strange that Lord John and Smythe should willingly seek the guidance of Disraeli. He was a man of ardour, equal with their own, and of far wider experience. A yet stronger bond between them was a community of thought and interest. The doctrine of Tory Demooracy, which Disraeli expounded with so brilliant an effect, had been evolved by them at Eton and Cambridge, in complete independence and sincerity. And when, new to Parliament, they heard Disraeli pleading the cause of the People, they

hailed him with enthusiasm as the leader of their party.

Young England, as we discern it in retrospect, was a clear outcome of the Romantic Movement. Literary in its origin and inspiration, it made a valiant attempt to turn the light of imagination upon the dark places of politics. George Smythe and Lord John Manners, its only begetters, were poets by temperament, politicians by training and ambition. But above all they were true Romantics. For them the age of chivalry was not dead. The influences of their childhood and their youth were feudal and Byronic. To feudalism they were born; the lessons of Byronism they had learned at school and college, and had given to them the ampler interpretation of magnanimous youth. Moreover, they had read the Waverley Novels with passion, and rejoiced in the popular love of antiquities. They were fer vent legitimists both; they still cherished the sentiment of the Jacobites; and Lord John Manners had proved in Spain a practical sympathy with the Carlists. A meeting with F. W. Faber at the Lakes had inclined them both to the doetrines of the High Church party, and they were near enough to the Oxford Movement, another offshoot of Romance, to fall beneath the spell of Newman. Clearly for them a Whig alliance was impossible. They came forward as the champions of the monarchy and the people. "O for an hour of George Canning!" ex

claimed George Smythe on a famous occasion, and the admirers of Canning could not but be as hostile to Peel as to the Whigs themselves.

Mr Monypenny explains their political views with justice and lucidity. "They devised for the Church," says he, "a position of greater independence than the Erastian spirit of the eighteenth century had been willing to sanction, or that Peel himself, we may surmise, would have been disposed to concede. Like all true Romantics, they had an antipathy to the middle-class, which was Peel's political idol : they dreaded its growing influence, and hoped to provide a counterpoise by rewakening the sense of duty in the nobility and gentry, and restoring them to their rightful place as leaders and protectors of the people. With the people at large their sympathy was real and active. They had that faith in the lower orders which the Tory party had lost, and the courage to believe that it might be possible to redeem them from the misery and serfdom into which they had fallen. Their minds were fertile in ideas, some of them too picturesque, perhaps, to be practical, but all of them noble and disinterested, for bringing back joy to the sombre and monotonous lives of the labouring poor, and renewing the harmony between classes that had been one of the characteristics of the 'Merrie England' of the past." It was a lofty and a noble aspiration, and that Young England failed is the worst misfortune that