’During my performance I watched Disraeli narrowly.  I could not see his face, but I noticed that whenever I became in any way disagreeable—­in short, whenever my words really bit—­they were invariably followed by one movement.  Sitting as he always did with his right knee over his left, whenever the words touched him he moved the pendant leg twice or three times, then curved his foot upwards.  I could observe no other sign of emotion, but this was distinct.  Some years afterwards, on a somewhat more important occasion at the Conference at Berlin, a great German philosopher, Herr ——­, went to Berlin on purpose to study Disraeli’s character.  He said afterwards that he was most struck by the more than Indian stoicism which Disraeli showed.  To this there was one exception.  “Like all men of his race, he has one sign of emotion which never fails to show itself—­the movement of the leg that is crossed over the other, and of the foot!” The person who told me this had never heard me hint, nor had anyone, that I had observed this peculiar symptom on the earlier occasion to which I have referred.’

Statesmen of Jewish descent, with a reputation for stoicism to preserve, would do well to learn from this story not to swing their crossed leg when tired.  The great want about Mr. Disraeli is something to hang the countless anecdotes about him upon.  Most remarkable men have some predominant feature of character round which you can build your general conception of them, or, at all events, there has been some great incident in their lives for ever connected with their names, and your imagination mixes the man and the event together.  Who can think of Peel without remembering the Corn Laws and the reverberating sentence:  ’I shall leave a name execrated by every monopolist who, for less honourable motives, clamours for Protection because it conduces to his own individual benefit; but it may be that I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of good-will in the abode of those whose lot it is to labour and to earn their daily bread with the sweat of their brow, when they shall recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened with a sense of injustice.’  But round what are our memories of Disraeli to cluster?  Sir William Fraser speaks rapturously of his wondrous mind and of his intellect, but where is posterity to look for evidences of either?  Certainly not in Sir William’s book, which shows us a wearied wit and nothing more.  Carlyle once asked, ’How long will John Bull permit this absurd monkey’—­meaning Mr. Disraeli—­’to dance upon his stomach?’ The question was coarsely put, but there is nothing in Sir William’s book to make one wonder it should have been asked.  Mr. Disraeli lived to offer Carlyle the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, and that, in Sir William’s opinion, is enough to dispose of Carlyle’s vituperation; but, after all, the Grand Cross is no answer to anything except an application for it.