We feel some doubts as to his being a poet at all. He has indeed that
amazing vitality with which Disraeli endows all his favourite heroes,
and in which we may recognise the effervescence of youthful genius. But
his genius is so versatile that we doubt its true destination. His
first literary performance is to write a version of 'Vivian Grey,' a
reckless and successful satire; his most remarkable escapade is to put
himself at the head of a band of students, apparently inspired by
Schiller's Robbers to emulate the career of Moor; his greatest feat is a
sudden stroke of diplomacy which enables him to defeat the plans of more
veteran statesmen. And when he has gone through his initiation, wooed
and won his marvellous beauty, and lost her in an ideal island, the
final shape of his aspirations is curiously characteristic. Having
become rich quite unexpectedly--for he did not know that he was to be
the hero of one of Disraeli's novels--he resolved to 'create a
paradise.' He bought a Palladian pile, with a large estate and beautiful
gardens. In this beautiful scene he intends to erect a Saracenic palace
full of the finest works of modern and ancient art; and in time he hopes
to 'create a scene which may rival in beauty and variety, though not in
extent, the villa of Hadrian, whom I have always considered the most
accomplished and sumptuous character of antiquity.' He has already laid
the foundation of a tower which is to rise to a height of at least a
hundred and fifty feet, and is to equal in solidity and design the most
celebrated works of antiquity. Certainly the scheme is magnificent; but
it is scarcely the ambition which one might have expected from a poet.
Rather it is the design of a man endowed with a genuine artistic
temperament, but with a strange desire to leave some showy and tangible
memorial of his labours. His ambition is not to stir men's souls with
profound thought, or to soften by some new harmonies the weary
complaints of suffering humanity, but to startle the world by the
splendid embodiment in solid marble of the most sumptuous dreams of a
cultivated imagination. Contarini Fleming, indeed, as he shows by a
series of brilliant travellers' sketches, is no mean master of what may
be called poetical prose. His pictures of life and scenery are
vivacious, rapid, and decisive. In later years, the habit of
parliamentary oratory seems to have injured Disraeli's style. In
'Lothair' there is a good deal of slipshod ver