‘Venetia’ is founded on the characters of Byron and Shelley, and is amusing reading.  The high-flown language incrusted with the gems of rhetoric excites our risibilities, but it is not safe to laugh at Disraeli; in his most diverting aspects he has a deep sense of humor, and he who would mock at him is apt to get a whip across the face at an unguarded moment.  Mr. Disraeli laughs in his sleeve at many things, but first of all at the reader.

He failed in his canvass for his seat at High Wycombe, but he turned his failure to good account, and established a reputation for pluck and influence.  “A mighty independent personage,” observed Charles Greville, and his famous quarrel with O’Connell did him so little harm that in 1837 he was returned for Maidstone.  His first speech was a failure.  The word had gone out that he was to be put down.  At last, finding it useless to persist, he said he was not surprised at the reception he had experienced.  He had begun several things many times and had succeeded at last.  Then pausing, and looking indignantly across the house, he exclaimed in a loud and remarkable tone, “I will sit down now, but the time will come when you will hear me.”

He married the widow of his patron, Wyndham Lewis, in 1838.  This put him in possession of a fortune, and gave him the power to continue his political career.  His radicalism was a thing of the past.  He had drifted from Conservatism, with Peel for a leader, to aristocratic socialism; and in 1844, 1845, and 1847 appeared the Trilogy, as he styled the novels ‘Coningsby,’ ‘Tancred,’ and ‘Sibyl.’  Of the three, ‘Coningsby’ will prove the most entertaining to the modern reader.  The hero is a gentleman, and in this respect is an improvement on Vivian Grey, for his audacity is tempered by good breeding.  The plot is slight, but the scenes are entertaining.  The famous Sidonia, the Jew financier, is a favorite with the author, and betrays his affection and respect for race.  Lord Monmouth, the wild peer, is a rival of the “Marquis of Steyne” and worthy of a place in ‘Vanity Fair’; the political intriguers are photographed from life, the pictures of fashionable London tickle both the vanity and the fancy of the reader.

‘Sibyl’ is too clearly a novel with a motive to give so much pleasure.  It is a study of the contrasts between the lives of the very rich and the hopelessly poor, and an attempt to show the superior condition of the latter when the Catholic Church was all-powerful in England and the king an absolute monarch.

‘Tancred’ was composed when Disraeli was under “the illusion of a possibly regenerated aristocracy.”  He sends Tancred, the hero, the heir of a ducal house, to Palestine to find the inspiration to a true religious belief, and details his adventures with a power of sarcasm that is seldom equaled.  In certain scenes in this novel the author rises from a mere mocker to a genuine satirist.  Tancred’s interview with the bishop, in which