When I first saw Mr. Disraeli, as he then was, all these follies were matters of ancient history.  They had played their part, and were discarded.  He was dressed much like other gentlemen of the ’Sixties—­in a black frock coat, gray or drab trousers, a waistcoat cut rather low, and a black cravat which went once round the neck and was tied in a loose bow.  In the country his costume was a little more adventurous.  A black velveteen jacket, a white waistcoat, a Tyrolese hat, lent picturesque incident and variety to his appearance.  But the brilliant colours were reserved for public occasions.  I never saw him look better than in his peer’s robes of scarlet and ermine when he took his seat in the House of Lords, or more amazing than when, tightly buttoned up in the Privy Councillor’s uniform of blue and gold, he stood in the “general circle” at the Drawing-room or Levee.  In his second Administration he looked extraordinarily old.  His form was shrunk, and his face of a death-like pallor.  Ever since an illness in early manhood he had always dyed his hair, and the contrast between the artificial blackness and the natural paleness was extremely startling.  The one sign of vitality which his appearance presented was the brilliancy of his dark eyes, which still flashed with penetrating lustre.

The immense powers of conversation of which we read so much in his early days, when he “talked like a racehorse approaching the winning post,” and held the whole company spellbound by his tropical eloquence, had utterly vanished.  He seemed, as he was, habitually oppressed by illness or discomfort.  He sat for hours together in moody silence.  When he opened his lips it was to pay an elaborate (and sometimes misplaced) compliment to a lady, or to utter an epigrammatic judgment on men or books, which recalled the conversational triumphs of his prime.  Skill in phrase-making was perhaps the literary gift which he most admired.  In a conversation with Mr. Matthew Arnold shortly before his death he said, with a touch of pathos, “You are a fortunate man.  The young men read you; they no longer read me.  And you have invented phrases which every one quotes—­such as ‘Philistinism’ and ‘Sweetness and Light.’” It was a characteristic compliment, for he dearly loved a good phrase.  From the necessities of his position as a fighting politician, his own best performances in that line were sarcasms; and indeed sarcasm was the gift in which from first to last, in public and in private, in writing and in speaking, he peculiarly excelled.  To recall the instances would be to rewrite his political novels and to transcribe those attacks on Sir Robert Peel which made his fame and fortune.