ind a keen relish in certain of his writings; and it is hardly a
paradox to augur that in a few generations more the former chief of the
new Tory Democracy may have become a tradition, whilst certain of his
social satires may continue to be widely read. Bolingbroke, Swift,
Sheridan, and Macaulay live in English literature, but are little
remembered as politicians; and Burke, the philosopher, grows larger in
power over our thoughts, as Burke, the party orator, becomes less and
less by time. We do not talk of Viscount St. Albans, the learned
Chancellor: we speak only of Bacon, the brilliant writer, the potent
thinker. And so perhaps in the next century, we shall hear less of
Lord Beaconsfield, the Imperial Prime Minister: but Benjamin Disraeli's
pictures of English society and the British Parliament may still amuse
and instruct our descendants.

It is true that the permanent parts of his twenty works may prove to be
small. Pictures, vignettes, sketches, epigrams will survive rather
than elaborate works of art; these gems of wit and fancy will have to
be picked out of a mass of rubbish; and they will be enjoyed for their
vivacious originality and Voltairean pungency, not as masterpieces or
complete creations. That Disraeli wrote much stuff is true enough.
But so did Fielding, so did Swift, and Defoe, and Goldsmith. Writers
are to be judged by their best; and it does not matter so very much if
that best is little in bulk. Disraeli's social and political satires
have a peculiar and rare flavour of their own, charged with an insight
and a vein of wit such as no other man perhaps in this century has
touched--so that, even though they be thrown off in sketches and
sometimes in mere _jeux d'esprit_, they bring him into the company of
Swift, Voltaire, and Montesquieu. He is certainly inferior to all
these mighty satirists both in wit and passion, and also in definite
purpose. But he has touches of their lightning-flash irradiating
contemporary society. And it seems a pity that the famous _Men of
Letters_ series which admits (and rightly admits) Hawthorne and De
Quincey, could find no room for the author of _Ixion in Heaven_, _The
Infernal Marriage_, _Coningsby_, and _Lothair_.

Disraeli's literary reputation has suffered much in England by the
unfortunate circumstance of his having been the leader of a political
party. As the chief of a powerful party which he transformed with
amazing audacity, as the victorious destr