simply to make the world talk about him, and he hardly
cared what the world might say; and he not seldom wrote rank bombast in
open contempt for his reader, apparently as if he had made a bet to
ascertain how much stuff the British public would swallow. _Vivian
Grey_ is a lump of impudence; _The Young Duke_ is a lump of
affectation; _Alroy_ is ambitious balderdash. They all have passages
and epigrams of curious brilliancy and trenchant observation; they have
wit, fancy, and life scattered up and down their pages. But they are
no longer read, nor do they deserve to be read. _Contarini Fleming_,
_Henrietta Temple_, _Venetia_, are full of sentiment, and occasionally
touch a poetic vein. They had ardent admirers once, even amongst
competent judges. They may still be read, and they have scenes,
descriptions, and detached thoughts of real charm, and almost of true
beauty. They are not, in any sense, works of art; they are ill
constructed, full of the mawkish gush of the Byronic fever, and never
were really sincere and genuine products of heart and brain. They were
show exercises in the Byronic mode. And, though we may still take them
up for an hour for the occasional flashes of genius and wit they
retain, no one believes that they can add much permanent glory to the
name of Benjamin Disraeli.

Apart from the three early burlesques of which we have spoken--trifles
indeed and crude enough, but trifles that sparkle with penetration and
wit--the books on which Disraeli's reputation alone can be founded are
_Coningsby_, _Sybil_, and _Lothair_. These all contain many striking
epigrams, ingenious theories, original suggestions, vivacious
caricatures, and even creative reflections, mixed, it must be admitted,
with not a little transparent nonsense. But they are all so charged
with bright invention, keen criticism, quaint paradox, they are so
entirely unlike anything else in our recent literature, and they
pierce, in a Voltairean way, so deeply to the roots of our social and
political fabric, that they may long continue to be read. In the
various prefaces, and especially in the general preface to _Lothair_
(of October 1870), Disraeli has fully explained the origin and aim of
these and his other works. It is written, as usual, with his tongue in
his cheek, in that vein of semi-bombastic paradox which was designed to
mystify the simple and to amuse the acuter reader. But there is an
inner seriousness in it all; and, as it