The Earl of Beaconsfield

Front matter

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EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS

BIOGRAPHY

Introduction

A CONTEMPORARY biography that opens with a Carlylean judgment on its subject, looks at politics across the screen of History, and ends on a proverbial note with '' What one desires in youth, one has enough of in one’s age,” is a book that sets out to be critical and alive to the larger issues. Froude wrote this Life of Beaconsfield towards the end of his own career, that is 1 890, when a long practice in narrative prose and his greater works in history and biography lay behind him. There is the ripeness and ease of a master hand about it. He touches on Disraeli’s religion and theory of Judaism completed by Christianity, — he writes of his politics, his tactics in parliament, his home and foreign policy, and the real temper of his mind, with a force of style and an acumen none the less telling because there is a suspicion here and there of a caustic in reserve, not unlike Disraeli’s own. In fact, the book shows us the contact of two very strong personalities, and it is fused in its hottest pages by that interaction of individuality which gives biography its livelier effect. It holds, moreover, its place midway between the partisan books for and against Disraeli, and was written just long enough after his death to catch the contemporary ripple, without being hurt by the side-winds of Tory and Liberal. James Anthony Froude was born at Dartington (Devon) in 1818, fourteen years Beaconsfield ’s junior, and lived to almost identically the same age, dying at Kingsbridge (Devon) in 1894. It may be added that Fronde’s feeling for the English country life and that portion of otium cum dignitate, which was his by inheritance so far as he cared to enjoy it, gives both to his literary criticism and his larger record of Disraeli a specific savour. It is so where he dilates on the old manor house at Bradenham, sketched in Endymion, to which the fallen statesman retires, or on the actual retreat of my Lord Beaconsfield at Hughenden. And the shadow of the sage of Chelsea, the “ Socrates ” of his time, does not fall amiss across the vistas of state and politics. E. R.

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The following is a list of the published works of J. A. Froude:

Life of St. Neot (Lives of the English Saints, edited by J. H. Newman), 1884; Shadows of the Clouds (Tales), by Zeta {pseud.), 1847; A Sermon (on 2 Cor. vii. 10) preached at St. Mary’s Church on the Death of the Rev. George May Coleridge, 1847; Article on Spinoza {Oxford and Cambridge Review), 1847; The Nemesis of Faith (Tale), 1849; England’s Forgotten Worthies {Westminster Review), 1852; Book of Job {Westminster Review), 1853; Poems of Matthew Arnold {Westminster Review), 1854; Suggestions on the Best Means of Teaching English History (Oxford Essays, etc.), 1855; History of England, 12 vols., 1856-70; The Influence of the Reformation on the Scottish Character, 1865; Inaugural Address delivered to the University of St. Andrews, March 19, 1869, 1869; Short Studies on Great Subjects, 1867, 2 vols., series 2-4, 1871-83 (articles from Fraser's Magazine, Westminster Review, etc.); new edition, Everyman’s Library, 1908; The Cat’s Pilgrimage, 1870; Calvinism: Address at St. An^ews, 1871; The English in Ireland, 3 vols., 1872-74; Bunyan (English Men of Letters), 1878; Cassar: a Sketch, 1879; Two, Lectures on South Africa, 1880; Thomas Carlyle (a history of the first forty years of his life, etc.), 2 vols., 1882; Luther: a Short Biography, 1883; Thomas Carlyle (a history of his life in London, 1834-81), 2 vols., 1884; Oceana, 1886; The English in the West Indies, 1888 ; Liberty and Property: an Address [1888]; The Two Chiefs of Dunboy, 1889; Lord Beaconsfield (a Biography), 1890; The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon, 1891; The Spanish Story of the Armada, 1892 ; Life and Letters* of Erasmus, 1894 ; English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century, I/895 ; Lectures on the Coimcil of Trent, 1896; My Relations with Caijlyle, 1903.

Edited: Carlyle’s Reminiscences, 1881 ; Mrs. Carlyle’s Letters, 1883.

Chapter I Pag£

v^Carlyle o;i Lord Beaconsfield— -Judgment of the House of Commons— Family histoiy — The Jews in Spain — Migration to Venice — Benjainiu DTsraeli the elder — Boyhood of Isaac Disraeli , , , , . . * . » . i

Chapter II

Family of Isaac Disraeli — Life in London -Birth of his children — Abandons Judaism and joins the Church of England Education of Benjamin Disraeli — School days— Picture of them in ‘ Vivian Grey ’ and ‘ Contarini Fleming ’ — Self-education at home — Early ambition . . , . , , ^ .12

Chapter III

The Austen family — Choice of a profession — Restlessness— Enters a solicitor’s office — ‘ Vivian Grey’ — Illness — Travels abroad— Migration of the Disraelis to Bradenham —Literary satires —

‘ Popanilla ’ — Tours in the East — Gibraltar — Cadiz —Seville — Mountain adventures — Improved health — Malta — James Clay — Greece — Yanina — Redshid Pasha — Athens — Constantinople Plains of Troy and Revolutionary epic — Jaffa — Jerusalem — Egypt — Home letters - Death of William Meredith—Return to England . . , » . . . . . . 20

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X

Chapter IV Page

‘ Contarini Fleming ’ — The poetical life — Paternal advice — A poet, or not a poet ? — ^ Revolutionary Epic * — Disraeli submits to an unfavourable verdict — Success of the novels— Disraeli a new star — London society — Political ambition — Mrs. Wyndham Lewis— Financial embarrassments — Portraits of Disraeli by N.

P. Willis — Lady Dufferin and others — Stands for High Wycombe — Speech at the Red Lion — Tory Radicalism — Fjiendship with Lord Lyndhurst — Self-confidence — Vindication of the British Constitution — Conservative reaction — Taunton election — Crosses swords with O’Connell— The Runnymede Letters — Admitted into the Carlton Club — ‘Henrietta Temple' and ‘ Venetia ’ • . 45

Chapter V

Returned to Parliament for Maidstone — Takes his place behind Sir R. Peel — Maiden speech — Silenced by violence — Peel’s opinion of it — Advice of Sheil — Second speech on Copyright — Completely successful state of politics — England in a state of change — Break-up of ancient institutions — Land and its duties — Political economy and Free Trade — Struggle on the Corn Laws 67 y CHAPTER VI

Dismeli’s beliefs^^Politicai^Biad^-j:^^ — Sympathy with the people — Defends the Chartists — The people, the middleclasses, and the aristocracy — Chartist Riots — Smart passage at arms in the House of Commons — Marriage — Mrs. Wyndham Lewis — Disraeli as a husband 83

Chapter VII

The enthusiasm of progress — Carlyle and Disraeli — Protection and Free Trade— Sir Robert Peel the Protectionist chanipion—

CONTENTS

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High Church movei^nj^at — The Church as a Conser-

vative power — Effect of the Reform Bill — Disraeli’s personal views — Impossible to realise — Election of 1841 — Sir Robert Peel’s Ministry — Drift towards Free Trade — Peel’s neglect of Disraeli — Tariff of 1842 — Young England —Symptoms of revolt "-First skirmish with Peel — Remarkable speech on Ireland • 91

Chapter VIII

Young England and the Oxford Tractarians — Disraeli a Hebrew^! heart—* Coningsby ’ — Sidonia — * Sybil ; or tEeTwoTSfations ’ —

The great towns under the new creed — Lords of the soil, as they were and as they are — Disraeli an aristocratic^ spciaUst — Practical working of Parliamentary institutions — Special importance of ‘Sybil* e • 107

Chapter IX

The New Gospel — Effect on English character — The Manchester School — Tendencies of Sir Robert Peel — The Corn Laws— Peel brought into office as a Protectionist — Disraeli and Peel — Protracted duel — Effect of Disraeli’s speeches — FinaTaeclaration cf Peel against the Corn Laws — Com Laws repealed— Lord George Bentinck — Irish Coercion Bill — The Canning episode — Defeat and fall of Peel —Disraeli succeeds to the Leadership ofjhe Conservative Party . . . . t .129

Chapter X

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Disraeli^as Leader of the Opposition— Effects of Free Trade- Scientific discoveries — Steam — Railroads— Commercial revolution— Unexampled prosperity — Twenty-five years of Liberal government — Disraeli’s opinions and general attitude — Party government anffTEe^'conffitions of it — Powe7™of an Opposition Leader — Never abused by Disraeli for party interests — Special instances — The coup d'etat — The Crimean War —

The Indian Mutiny — The Civil War in America— Remarkable warning against playing with the Constitution . . .149 xii

Chapter XI Pag?

Literary work — ‘ Tancred ; or, the New Crusade* — Modern philosophy— The ‘ Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation * — ‘ Life of Lord George Bentinck ’ — Disraeli’s religious views — Revelation as opposed to Science — Dislike and dread of Rationalisrn ---• Reli^dn arid statesmanship — The natibhal creed the supplement of the national law --Speech in the theatre at Oxford— Dhraeli on the side of the angels 165

Chapter XII

Indifference to money — Death of Isaac Disraeli — Purchase of Hughenden — Mrs. Brydges Willyams of Torquay — An assignation with unexpected results— Intimate acquaintance with Mrs. Willyams — Correspondence — Views on many subjects — The Crown of Greece— Louis Napoleon — Spanish pedigree of Mrs. Willyams 17^’

Chapter XIII

Fall of the Whigs in 1867 — Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer — Reform Bill why undertaken— Necessities, real or fancied, of a Party Leader — Alternatives — Split in the Cabinet — Disraeli carries his point — Niagara to be.shot — Retirement of Lord Derby — Disraeli Prime Minister^Various judgments of his Xcharacter — T^e House of Conainons respohslble lor His elevation -Increasing popularity with all classes • . • . 1S8

Chapter XIV

Reply of the Liberals to the Tory Reform Bill — State of Ireland — The Protestant Establishment — Resolutions proposed by Mr.

CONTENTS

Gladstone — Decay of Protestant feeling in England — Protestant character of the Irish Church — The Upas Tree — Mr. Gladstone’s Irish policy — General effect on Ireland of the Protestant Establishment — Voltaire’s opinion — Imperfect results — The character of the Protestant gentry — Nature of the proposed change — Sprung on England as a surprise — Mr. Gladstone’s resolutions carried — Fall of Disraeli’s Government . , » 79<J

Chapter XV

The calm of satisfied ambition — A new novel — ‘ Lothair’ — Survey of English society — The modern aristocracy — Forces working on the surface and below it — Worship of rank — Cardinal Grandison — Revolutionary Socialism — Romeward drift of the higher classes Lothair ’ by far the most remarkable of all Disraeli’s writings • , , • , , . .215

Chapter XVI

The exhausted volcanoes — Mr. Gladstone’s failure and unpopularity — Ireland worse than before — Loss of influence in Europe —

The Election of 1874 — Great Conservative majority — Disraeli again Prime Minister with^real power — His general position as a^olitic^^ waiting to be deafFwItH—The relations

( between the Colonies and the Empire — The restoration of the authority of the law in Ireland — Disraeli’s strength and Disraeli’s weakness — Prefers an ambitious foreign policy — Russia and Turkey — The Eastern question — Two possible policies and the ^effects of each — Disraeli’s choice — Threatened war with Russia I — The Berlin Conference — Peace with honour — ^Jingoism and I fall of the Conservative party — Other features of his adminis- I tration — Goes to the House of Lords as Earl of Beaconsfield and Ireceives the Garter — Public Worship Act — Admirable distrifbution of patronage — Disraeli and Carlyle — Judgment of a iconductor of an omnibus 232

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Chapter XVII Page

Retirement from office — Dignity in retreat — Hughenden— Lord Beaconsfield as a landlord — Fondness for country life^ — ‘ Endymion * — Illness and death — Attempted estimate of Lord Beaconsfield— a great man ? or not a great man ?— Those only V great who can forget themselves — Never completely an English- I man — Relatively great, not absolutely — Gulliver among Lilli- [ putians — Signs in ‘ Sybil ’ of a higher purpose, but a purpose I incapable of realisation — Simplicity and blamelessness in private I life — Indifference to fortune — Integrity as a statesman and

{administrator . » . . . . 254

Index 263

Chapter I

Carlyle on Lord Beaconsfield — Judgment of the House of Commons — Family History — The Jews in Spain — Migration to Venice — Benjamin DTsraeli the Elder — Boyhood of Isaac Disraeli.

Carlyle, speaking to me many years ago of parliamentary government as he had observed the working of it in this country, said that under this system not the fittest men were chosen to administer our affairs, but the ‘ unfittest.’ The subject of the present memoir was scornfully mentioned as an illustration ; yet Carlyle seldom passed a sweeping censure upon any man without pausing to correct himself. ‘ Well, well, poor fellow,^ he added, ‘ I dare say if we knew all about him we should have to think differently.’ I do not know that he ever did try to think differently. His disposition to a milder judgment, if he entertained such a disposition, was scattered by the Reform Bill of 1867, which Carlyle regarded as the suicide of the English nation. In his ‘ Shooting Niagara ’ he recorded his own verdict on that measure and the author of it.

For a generation past it has been growing more and more evident that there was only this issue ; but now the

B issue itself has become imminent, the distance of it to be guessed by years. Traitorous politicians grasping at votes, even votes from the rabble, have brought it on. One cannot but consider them traitorous ; and for one's own poor share would rather have been shot than have been concerned in it. And yet, after all my silent indignation and disgust, I cannot pretend to be clearly sorry that such a consummation is expedited. I say to myself. Well, perhaps the sooner such a mass of hypocrisies, universal mismanagements, and brutal platitudes and infidelities ends, if not in some improvement then in death and finis^ may it not be the better? The sum of our sins increasing steadily day by day will at least be less the sooner the settlement is. Nay, have I not a kind of secret satisfaction of the malicious or even of the judiciary kind {Schadenfreude^ “ mischief joy,” the Germans call it, but really it is “justice joy” withal) that he they call Dizzy is to do it ; that other jugglers of an unconscious and deeper type, having sold their poor mother's body for a mess of official pottage, this clever, conscious juggler steps in ? “ Soft, you, my honour-

able friends : /will weigh out the corpse of your mother — mother of mine she never was, but only step-mother and milch cow — and you shan't have the pottage — not yours you observe, but mine.” This really is a pleasing trait of its sort ; other traits there are abundantly ludicrous, but they are too lugubrious even to be momentarily pleasant. A superlative Hebrew conjuror spell-binding all the great lords, great parties, great interests of England to his hand in this manner, and leading them by the nose like helpless mesmerised somnambulist cattle to such issue ! Did the world ever see a flebile ludibrium of such magnitude before ? Lath-sword and scissors of Destiny, Pickle-

CARLYLE^S OPINION OF HIM herring and the three Parcse alike busy in it. This too I suppose we had deserved ; the end of our poor old England (such an England as we had at last made of it) to be not a fearful tragedy, but an ignominious farce as well.’

The consequences of the precipitation over the cataract not being immediate, and Government still continuing, over which a juggler of some kind must necessarily preside, Carlyle, though hope had forsaken him, retained his preference for the conscious over the unconscious. He had a faint pleasure in Disraeli’s accession to power in 1874. He was even anxious that I should myself accept a proposal of a seat in Parliament which had been made to me, as a quasi follower of Disraeli — not that he trusted him any better, but he thought him preferable to a worse alternative. He was touched with some compunction for what he had written when Disraeli acknowledged Carlyle’s supremacy as a man of letters — offered him rank and honours and money, and offered them in terms as flattering as his own proudest estimate of himself could have dictated. Accept such offers Carlyle could not ; but he was affected by the recognition that of all English ministers the Hebrew conjuror should have been the only one who had acknowledged his services to his country, and although he disapproved and denounced Disraeli’s policy in the East he did perceive that there might be qualities in the man to which he had not done perfect justice.

However that may be, Disraeli was a child of Parliament. It was Parliament and the confidence of Parliament which gave him his place in the State. For forty years he was in the front of all the battles which were fought in the House of Commons, in opposition or in office, in adversity or in success, in conflict and competition with the most famous debaters of the age. In the teeth of prejudice, without^ support save in his own force of character, without the . advantage of being the representative of any popular cause ^ which appealed to the imagination, he fought his way till the consent of Parliament and country raised him to the Premiership.

Extraordinary qualities of some kind he must have possessed. No horse could win in such a race who had not blood and bone and sinew. Whether he was fit or unfit to govern England, the House of Commons chose him as their best ; and if he was the charlatan which in some quarters he is supposed to have been, the Parliament which in so many years failed to detect his unworthiness is itself unfit to be trusted with the nation^s welfare. He was not borne into power on the tide of any outside movement. He was not the advocate of any favourite measure with which his I name was identified. He rose by his personal qualifications I alone, and in studying what those qualifications were we f are studying the character of Parliament itself. j

The prophets who spoke of the dispersion of the Jews I as a penalty for their sins described a phenomenon which | probably preceded the Captivity. Through Tyre the Hebrew | race had a road open through which they could spread along | the shores of the Mediterranean. There was a colony of them in Rome in the time of Cicero. In Carthage they | were among a people who spoke their own language. It is likely that they accompanied the Carthaginians in their conquests and commercial enterprises, and were thus introduced into Spain, where a Jewish community undoubtedly I existed in St. PauFs time, and where it survived through all changes in the fortunes of the Peninsula. Under the *

THE JEWS IN SPAIN

Arabs the Jews of Spain preserved undisturbed their peculiar characteristics. As the crescent waned before the cross they intermarried with Christian families, and conformed outwardly with the established faith while they retained in secret their own ceremonies.

’ The Jewish people, says Isaac Disraeli in his ‘Genius of Judaism,^ are not a nation, for they consist of many nations. They are Spanish or Portuguese, German or Polish, and, like the chameleon, they reflect the colours of the spot they rest on. The people of Israel are like water running through vast countries, tinged in their course with all varieties of the soil where they deposit themselves. Every native Jew as a political being becomes distinct from other Jews. The Hebrew adopts the hostilities and the alliances of the land where he was born. He calls himself by the name of his country. Under all these political varieties the Jew of the Middle Ages endeavoured to preserve his inward peculiarities. In England, in France, in Germany, in Italy, he enjoyed for the sake of his wealth a fitful toleration, with intervals of furious persecution. From England he was expelled at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and his property was confiscated to the State. In crusading Spain he had not ventured to practise his creed in the open day, and thus escaped more easily. He was unmolested as long as he professed a nominal Christianity. He was wealthy, he was ingenious, he was enterprising. In his half-transparent disguise he intermarried with the proudest Castilian breeds. He took service under the State, and rose to the highest positions, even in the Church itself. A Jew who had not ceased to be a Jew in secret became Primate of Spain, and when the crowns of Castile and Aragon became united it was reckoned that there was scarcely a noble family in the two realms pure from intermixture of Jewish blood. His prosperity was the cause of his ruin. The kingdom of Granada fell at last before Ferdinand and Isabella, and the Church of Spain addressed itself, in gratitude to Providence, to the purifying of the Peninsula from the unholy presence of the wealthy unbeliever.

The Jews who were willing to break completely with their religious associations remained undisturbed. The Inquisition undertook the clearance of the rest, and set to work with characteristic vigour. Rank was no protection. The highest nobles were among the first who were called for examination before Torquemada’s tribunal. Tens of thousands of the ‘ new Christians ’ who were convicted of having practised the rites of their own religion after outward conformity with Christianity, were burnt at the stake as ‘ relapsed.' Those who could escape fled to other countries where a less violent bigotry would allow them a home. Venice was the least intolerant. Venice lived upon its commerce, and the Jews there, as always, were the shrewdest traders in the world. The Venetian aristocrats might treat them as social pariahs, rate them on the Rialto, and spit upon their gabardines, but they had ducats, and their ducats secured them the protection of the law.

Among those who thus sought and found the hospitality of the Adriatic republic at the end of the fifteenth century was a family allied with the house of Lara, and perhaps entitled to bear its name. They preferred, however, to break entirely their connection with the country which had cast them off. They called themselves simply DTsraeli, or Sons of Israel, a name, says Lord Beaconsfield, never borne before or since by any other family, in order that their race might be for ever recognised. At Venice they lived and

THE DISRAELI FAMILY throve, and made money for two hundred years. Towards the middle of the last century, when Venice was losing her commercial pre-eminence, they began to turn their eyes elsewhere. Very many of their countrymen were already doing well in Holland. England was again open to them. Jews were still under some disabilities there, but they were in no danger of being torn by horses in the streets under charge of eating children at their Passover. They could follow their business and enjoy the fruits of it; and the head of the Venetian house decided that his second son, Benjamin, ‘the child of his right hand,’ should try his fortune in London. The Disraelis retained something of their Spanish pride, and did not like to be confounded with the lower grades of Hebrews whom they found already established there. The young Benjamin was but eighteen when he came over ; he took root and prospered, but he followed a line of his own and never cordially or intimately mix-ed with the Jewish community, and the tendency to alienation was increased by his marriage.

‘My grandfather,’ wrote Lord Beaconsfield, ‘was a man of ardent character, sanguine, courageous, speculative, and fortunate; with a temper which no disappointment could disturb and a brain full of resources.’ He made a fortune, he married a beautiful woman of the same religion as his own and whose family had suffered equally from persecution. The lady was ambitious of social distinction, and she resented upon her unfortunate race the slights and disappointments to which it exposed her. Her husband took it more easily. He was rich. He had a country house at Enfield, where he entertained his friends, played whist, and enjoyed himself, ‘notwithstanding a wife who never pardoned him his name.’ So successful he had been that he saw his way to founding a house which might have been a power in Europe. But the more splendid his position the more bitter would have been his wife’s feelings. He retired therefore early from the field, contented with the wealth which he had acquired. Perhaps his resolution was precipitated by the character of the son who was the only issue of his marriage. Isaac Disraeli was intended for the heir of business, and Isaac showed, from the first a determined disinclination for business of any sort or kind. * Nature had disqualified the child from his cradle for the busy pursuits of men.’ ‘He grew up beneath a roof of worldly energy and enjoyment, indicating that he was of a different order from those with whom he lived.’ Neither his father nor his mother understood him. To one he was ‘an enigma,’ to the other ‘a provocation.’ His dreamy, wandering eyes were hopelessly unpractical. His mother was irritated because she could not rouse him into energy. He grew on ‘ to the mournful period of boyhood, when eccentricities excite attention and command no sympathy.’ Mrs. Disraeli was exasperated when she ought to have been gentle. Her Isaac was the last drop in her cup of bitterness, and only served to swell the aggregate of many humiliating particulars.’ She grew so embittered over her grievances that Lord Beaconsfield says ‘ she lived till eighty without indulging a tender expression ; ’ and must have been an unpleasant figure in her grandson’s childish recollections. The father did his best to keep the peace, but had nothing to offer but good-natured commonplaces. Isaac at last ran away from home, and was brought back after being found lying on a tombstone in Hackney Churchyard. His father ‘ embraced him, gave him a pony,’ and sent him to a day school, where he had temporary peace. But the reproaches

ISAAC DISRAELI and upbraidings recommenced when he returned in the evenings To crown all, Isaac was delivered of a poem, and for the first time the head of the family was seriously alarmed. Hitherto he had supposed that boys would be boys, and their follies ought not to be too seriously noticed ; but a poem was a more dangerous symptom ; ‘ the loss of his argosies could not have filled him with a more blank dismay.’

The too imaginative youth was despatched to a counting-house in Holland. His father went occasionally to see him, but left him for several years to drudge over ledgers without once coming home, in the hope that in this way, if in no other, the evil spirit might be exorcised. Had it been necessary for Isaac Disraeli to earn his own bread the experiment might have succeeded. His nature was gentle and amiable, and though he could not be driven he might have been led. But he knew that he was the only child of a wealthy parent. Why should he do violence to his disposition and make himself unnecessarily miserable ? Instead of book-keeping he read Bayle and Voltaire. He was swept into Rousseauism and imagined himself another Emile. When recalled home at last the boy had become a young man. He had pictured to himself a passionate scene in which he was to fly into his mother’s arms, and their hearts were to rush together in tears of a recovered affection. ‘ When he entered, his strange appearance, his gaunt figure, his excited manner, his long hair, and his unfashionable costume only filled her with a sentiment of tender aversion. She broke into derisive laughter, and noticing his intolerable garments reluctantly lent him her cheek.’ The result, of course, was a renewal of household misery. His father assured him that his parents desired lO only to make him happy, and proposed to establish him in business at Bordeaux. He replied that he had written another poem against commerce, ‘which was the corruption of man,^ and that he meant to publish it. What was to be done with such a lad? ‘With a home that ought to have been happy,’ says Lord Beaconsfield, ‘ surrounded with more than comfort, with the most good-natured father in the world and an agreeable man, and with a mother whose strong intellect under ordinary circumstances might have been of great importance to him, my father, though himself of a very sweet disposition, was most unhappy.’ To keep him at home was worse than useless. He was sent abroad again, but on his own terms. He went to Paris, made literary acquaintance, studied in libraries, and remained till the eve of the Revolution amidst the intellectual and social excitement which preceded the general convulsion. But his better sense rebelled against the Rousseau enthusiasm. Paris ceasing to be a safe residence, he came home once more, recovered from the dangerous form of his disorder, ‘ with some knowledge of the world and much of books.’

His aversion to the counting-house was, however, as pronounced as ever. Benjamin Disraeli resigned himself to the inevitable — wound up his affairs and retired, as has been said, upon the fortune which he had realised. Isaac, assured of independence, if not of great wealth, went his own way ; published a satire, which the old man overlived without a catastrophe, and entered the literary world of London. Before he was thirty he brought out his ‘Curiosities of Literature,’ which stepped at once into popularity and gave him a name. He wrote verses which were pretty and graceful, verses which were read and