et his resentments could smoulder
long. In _Lothair_ he attacked, under a thin disguise, a distinguished
man of letters who had criticised his conduct years before. In
_Endymion_ he gratified what was evidently an ancient grudge by a
spiteful presentation of Thackeray, as he had indulged his more bitter
dislike of John Wilson Croker by portraying that politician in
_Coningsby_ under the name of Nicholas Rigby. For the greatest of his
adversaries he felt, there is reason to believe, genuine admiration,
mingled with inability to comprehend a nature so unlike his own. No
passage in the striking speech which that adversary pronounced, one
might almost say, over Lord Beaconsfield's grave--a speech which may
possibly go down to posterity with its subject--was more impressive
than the sentence in which he declared that he had the best reason to
believe that, in their constant warfare, Lord Beaconsfield had not
been actuated by any personal hostility. Brave men, if they can
respect, seldom dislike, a formidable antagonist.

His mental powers were singularly well suited to the rest of his
character--were, so to speak, all of a piece with it. One sometimes
sees intellects which are out of keeping with the active or emotional
parts of the man. One sees persons whose thought is vigorous, clear,
comprehensive, while their conduct is timid; or a comparatively
narrow intelligence joined to an enterprising spirit; or a sober,
reflective, sceptical turn of mind yoked to an ardent and impulsive
temperament. What we call the follies of the wise often spring from
some such source. Not so with him. His intelligence had the same
boldness, intensity, concentration, directness, which we discover in
the rest of the man. It was just the right instrument, not perhaps for
the normal career of a normal Englishman seeking political success,
but for the particular kind of work Disraeli had planned to do; and
this inner harmony was one of the chief causes of his success, as the
want of it has caused the failure of so many gifted natures.

The range of his mind was not wide. All its products were like one
another. No one of them gives the impression that Disraeli could, had
he so wished, have succeeded in a wholly diverse line. It was a
peculiar mind: there is even more variety in minds than in faces. It
was not logical or discursive, liking to mass and arrange stores of
knowledge, and draw inferences from them, nor was it judicial, with a
turn for w