swallow. Vivian Grey is a lump of impudence; The Young Duke is a lump of affectation; Alroy is ambitious balderdash.  They all have passages and epigrams of curious brilliancy and trenchant observation; they have wit, fancy, and life scattered up and down their pages.  But they are no longer read, nor do they deserve to be read. Contarini Fleming, Henrietta Temple, Venetia, are full of sentiment, and occasionally touch a poetic vein.  They had ardent admirers once, even amongst competent judges.  They may still be read, and they have scenes, descriptions, and detached thoughts of real charm, and almost of true beauty.  They are not, in any sense, works of art; they are ill constructed, full of the mawkish gush of the Byronic fever, and never were really sincere and genuine products of heart and brain.  They were show exercises in the Byronic mode.  And, though we may still take them up for an hour for the occasional flashes of genius and wit they retain, no one believes that they can add much permanent glory to the name of Benjamin Disraeli.

Apart from the three early burlesques of which we have spoken—­trifles indeed and crude enough, but trifles that sparkle with penetration and wit—­the books on which Disraeli’s reputation alone can be founded are Coningsby, Sybil, and Lothair.  These all contain many striking epigrams, ingenious theories, original suggestions, vivacious caricatures, and even creative reflections, mixed, it must be admitted, with not a little transparent nonsense.  But they are all so charged with bright invention, keen criticism, quaint paradox, they are so entirely unlike anything else in our recent literature, and they pierce, in a Voltairean way, so deeply to the roots of our social and political fabric, that they may long continue to be read.  In the various prefaces, and especially in the general preface to Lothair (of October 1870), Disraeli has fully explained the origin and aim of these and his other works.  It is written, as usual, with his tongue in his cheek, in that vein of semi-bombastic paradox which was designed to mystify the simple and to amuse the acuter reader.  But there is an inner seriousness in it all; and, as it has a certain correspondence with his public career and achievements, it must be taken as substantially true. Coningsby (1844) and Sybil (1845) were written in the vigour of manhood and the early days of his political ambition, with an avowed purpose of founding a new party in Parliament.  It must be admitted that they did to some extent effect their purpose—­not immediately or directly, and only as part of their author’s schemes.  But the Primrose League and the New Tory Democracy of our day bear witness to the vitality of the movement which, fifty years ago, Disraeli propounded to a puzzled world. Lothair (1870) came twenty-five years later—­when he had outlived his illusions; and in more artistic and more mellow tones he painted the weaknesses of a society that he had failed to inspire, but which it gratified his pride to command.