Views and Reviews | Page 8

He hawks at every sort
of game, and rarely does he make a false cast. It is but a step from the
wilds of Lancashire to the Arabian Desert, from the cook's first floor to
the Home of the Bellamonts; for he has the Seven-League-Boots of the
legend, and more than the genius of adventure of him that wore them.
His castles may be of cardboard, his cataracts of tinfoil, the sun of his
adjurations the veriest figment; but he never lets his readers see that he
knows it. His irony, sudden and reckless and insidious though it be, yet

never extends to his properties. There may be a sneer beneath that mask
which, with an egotism baffling as imperturbable, he delights in
intruding among his creations; but you cannot see it. You suspect its
presence, because he is a born mocker. But you remember that one of
his most obvious idiosyncrasies is an inordinate love of all that is
sumptuous, glittering, radiant, magnificent; and you incline to suspect
that he keeps his sneering for the world of men, and admires his scenes
and decorations too cordially to visit them with anything so merciless.

His Men and Women.
But dashing and brilliant as are his sketches of places and things, they
are after all the merest accessories. It was as a student of Men and
Women that he loved to excel, and it is as their painter that I praise him
now. Himself a worshipper of intellect, it was intellectually that he
mastered and developed them. Like Sidonia he moves among them not
to feel with them but to understand and learn from them. Such
sympathy as he had was either purely sensuous, as for youth and beauty
and all kinds of comeliness; or purely intellectual, as for intelligence,
artificiality, servility, meanness. And as his essence was satirical, as he
was naturally irreverent and contemptuous, it follows that he is best and
strongest in the act of punishment not of reward. His passion for youth
was beautiful, but it did not make him strong. His scorn for things
contemptible, his hate for things hateful, are at times too bitter even for
those who think with him; but in these lay his force--they filled his
brain with light, and they touched his lips with fire. The wretched
Rigby is far more vigorous and life-like than the amiable Coningsby;
Tom Cogit--a sketch, but a sketch of genius--is infinitely more
interesting than May Dacre or even the Young Duke; Tancred is a good
fellow, and very real and true in his goodness, but contrast him with
Fakredeen! And after his knaves, his fools, his tricksters, the most
striking figures in his gallery are those whom he has considered from a
purely intellectual point of view: either kindly, as Sidonia, or coolly, as
Lord Monmouth, but always calmly and with no point of passion in his
regard: the Eskdales, Villebecques, Ormsbys, Bessos, Marneys,
Meltons, and Mirabels, the Bohuns and St. Aldegondes and Grandisons,

the Tadpoles and the Tapers, the dominant and subaltern humanity of
the world. All these are drawn with peculiar boldness of line, precision
of touch, and clearness of intention. And as with his men so is it with
his women: the finest are not those he likes best but those who
interested him most. Male and female, his eccentrics surpass his
commonplaces. He had a great regard for girls, and his attitude towards
them, or such of them as he elected heroines, was mostly one of
adoration--magnificent yet a little awkward and strained. With women,
married women, he had vastly more in common: he could admire,
study, divine, without having to feign a warmer feeling; and while his
girls are poor albeit splendid young persons, his matrons are usually
delightful. Edith Millbank is not a very striking figure in Coningsby;
but her appearance in Tancred--well, you have only to compare it to the
resurrection of Laura Bell, as Mrs. Pendennis to see how good it is.

His Style.
Now and then the writing is bad, and the thought is stale. Disraeli had
many mannerisms, innate and acquired. His English was frequently
loose and inexpressive; he was apt to trip in his grammar, to stumble
over 'and which,' and to be careless about the connection between his
nominatives and his verbs. Again, he could scarce ever refrain from the
use of gorgeous commonplaces of sentiment and diction. His taste was
sometimes ornately and barbarically conventional; he wrote as an
orator, and his phrases often read as if he had used them for the sake of
their associations rather than themselves. His works are a casket of
such stage jewels of expression as 'Palladian structure,' 'Tusculan
repose,' 'Gothic pile,' 'pellucid brow,' 'mossy cell,' and 'dew-bespangled
meads.' He delighted in 'hyacinthine curls' and 'lustrous