VII
In Coningsby he invented the Political Novel. That this partus masculus came so late to birth in our literature, as that it has begotten few successors, admits (as Sir Thomas Browne would say) no wide solution. Genius is rare, anyhow: the combination of political with literary genius necessarily rarer. Given the two combined, as they were in Burke, you still require, for superadding, the inventive faculty, the mode, and the leisure. Not one man of letters in ten thousand can match Disraeli’s close inner acquaintance with his subject. Statesmen, in short, have not the leisure to write. Alcibiades leaves no record of what Alcibiades did or suffered. By a glorious fluke, Peel gave this chance and Disraeli took it.