ing up at
intervals into high imagination, and making him a genuine child of
that nation from whom came forth the loftiest, richest, and most
impassioned songs the earth has ever witnessed--the nation of Isaiah,
Ezekiel, Solomon, and Job. He has little humor, but a vast deal of
diamond-pointed wit."[E]

_Disraeli's Wit: A Purely Jewish Product_

Disraeli's wit, which made him so many enemies, is a purely Jewish
product. It is satiric. Now satire was the form taken by Jewish wit in
the Middle Ages as a result of the hard conditions under which the
Jews lived. As one modern Jew has said, "The Jews seized the weapon of
wit, since they were interdicted the use of every other weapon." With
every door closed in hostility against them, there was little they
could do but laugh with bitter irony at their fate, and with savage
satire at their oppressors. With such an ancestry as this behind him,
it is not to be wondered at that Disraeli's wit is scornful, and that
he excelled in personal satire and invective. It was never, however,
unprovoked. Disraeli never indulged in personal satire or invective
except in his own defence. For example, his mockingly ironical reply
to the attack of a member of the House of Commons named Roebuck, which
was one of the most effective rejoinders Disraeli ever made, was in
answer to a most virulent arraignment of his political motives. "I
have always felt," he said, "that in this world you must bear a great
deal, and that even in this indulgent, though dignified, assembly,
where we endeavor so far as possible to carry on public affairs
without any unnecessary acerbity--still we must occasionally submit to
some things which the rules of this house do not permit. I could, no
doubt, have vindicated my character; but that would only have made the
honorable member from Bath speak once or twice more, and really I have
never any wish to hear him. I have had the most corrupt motives
imputed to me. But I know how true it is that a tree must produce its
fruit--that a crab-tree will bring forth crab apples, and that a man
of meagre and acid mind, who writes a pamphlet or makes a speech, must
make a meagre and acid pamphlet or a poor and sour speech. Let things,
then, take their course."

_Disraeli's Fondness for Allegory_

Another striking peculiarity of Disraeli was his fondness for veiled
allusion. Nearly all of his most popular novels--and this was _one_ of
the main reasons for their phenomenal popu