ure whenever he describes the Orient and its people. Then
the bizarre, brilliant _poseur_ forgets his role, and reveals his
highest aspirations.

When Disraeli returned to London he became the fashion. Everybody, from
the prime minister to Count D'Orsay, had read his clever novels. The
poets praised them, Lady Blessington invited him to dine, Sir Robert
Peel was "most gracious."

But literary success could never satisfy Disraeli's ambition: a seat in
Parliament was at the end of his rainbow. He professed himself a
radical, but he was a radical in his own sense of the term; and like his
own Sidonia, half foreigner, half looker-on, he felt himself endowed
with an insight only possible to, an outsider, an observer without
inherited prepossessions.

Several contemporary sketches of Disraeli at this time have been
preserved. His dress was purposed affectation; it led the beholder to
look for folly only: and when the brilliant flash came, it was the more
startling as unexpected from such a figure. Lady Dufferin told Mr.
Motley that when she met Disraeli at dinner, he wore a black-velvet coat
lined with satin, purple trousers with a gold band running down the
outside seam, a scarlet waistcoat, long lace ruffles falling down to the
tips of his fingers, white gloves with several rings outside, and long
black ringlets rippling down his shoulders. She told him he had made a
fool of himself by appearing in such a dress, but she did not guess why
it had been adopted. Another contemporary says of him, "When duly
excited, his command of language was wonderful, his power of sarcasm
unsurpassed."

He was busy making speeches and writing political squibs for the next
two years; for Parliament was before his eyes. "He knew," says Froude,
"he had a devil of a tongue, and was unincumbered by the foolish form of
vanity called modesty." 'Ixion in Heaven,' 'The Infernal Marriage,' and
'Popanilla' were attempts to rival both Lucian and Swift on their own
ground. It is doubtful, however, whether he would have risked writing
'Henrietta Temple' (1837) and 'Venetia' (1837), two ardent love stories,
had he not been in debt; for notoriety as a novelist is not always a
recommendation to a constituency.

In 'Henrietta' he found an opportunity to write the biography of a lover
oppressed by duns. It is a most entertaining novel even to a reader who
does not read for a new light on the great statesman, and is remarkable
as the beginning of what is n