If the saying generally attributed to Buffon[71] that “the style is the man,” is correct, an examination of Disraeli’s style ought to give a true insight into his character.  There can be no question of the readiness of his wit or of his superabundant power of sarcasm.  Besides the classic instances which have almost passed into proverbs, others, less well known, are recorded in these pages.  The statement that “from the Chancellor of the Exchequer to an Undersecretary of State is a descent from the sublime to the ridiculous” is very witty.  The well-known description of Lord Derby as “the Rupert of debate” is both witty and felicitous, whilst the sarcasm in the context, which is less well known, is both witty and biting.  The noble lord, Disraeli said, was like Prince Rupert, because “his charge was resistless, but when he returned from the pursuit he always found his camp in the possession of the enemy.”

A favourite subject of Disraeli’s sarcasm in his campaign against Peel was that the latter habitually borrowed the ideas of others.  “His (Peel’s) life,” he said, “has been a great appropriation clause.  He is a burglar of others’ intellect....  From the days of the Conqueror to the termination of the last reign there is no statesman who has committed political petty larceny on so great a scale.”

In a happy and inimitable metaphor he likened Sir Robert Peel’s action in throwing over Protection to that of the Sultan’s admiral who, during the campaign against Mehemet Ali, after preparing a vast armament which left the Dardanelles hallowed by the blessings of “all the muftis of the Empire,” discovered when he got to sea that he had “an objection to war,” steered at once into the enemy’s port, and then explained that “the only reason he had for accepting the command was that he might terminate the contest by betraying his master.”

Other utterances of a similar nature abound, as, for instance, when he spoke of Lord Melbourne as “sauntering over the destinies of a nation, and lounging away the glories of an Empire,” or when he likened those Tories who followed Sir Robert Peel to the Saxons converted by Charlemagne.  “The old chronicler informs us they were converted in battalions and baptized in platoons.”

Warned by the fiasco of his first speech in the House of Commons, Disraeli for some while afterwards exercised a wise parsimony in the display of his wit.  He discovered that “the House will not allow a man to be a wit and an orator unless they have the credit of finding it out.”  But when he had once established his position and gained the ear of the House, he gave a free rein to his prodigious powers of satire, which he used to the full in his attacks on Peel.  In point of fact, vituperation and sarcasm were his chief weapons of offence.  He spoke of Mr. Roebuck as a “meagre-minded rebel,” and called Campbell, who was afterwards Lord Chancellor, “a shrewd, coarse, manoeuvring Pict,” a “base-born Scotchman,” and a “booing,