“I admit fully that, if any man be entirely destitute of all claim to indulgence, it is the subject of this biography. Personality is his mighty weapon, which he has used like a gladiator whose only object is, at all events, to inflict a deadly wound upon his adversary, and not like a chivalrous knight, who will at any risk obey the laws of the tournament. Mr Disraeli has been a true political Ishmael. His hand has been raised against every one. He has even run amuck, like the wild Indian.
“Who can answer a political novel? Libels the most scandalous may be insinuated, the best and wisest men may be represented as odious, the purest intentions and most devoted patriotism may be maligned, under the outline of a fictitious character. The personal satirist is truly the pest of society, and any method might be considered justifiable by which he could be hunted down. It would, therefore, seem only a kind of justice to mete out to Mr Disraeli the same measure which he has meted out to others. As he has ever used the dagger and the bowl, why, it may be asked, should not the deadly chalice be presented back to him, and enforced by the same pointed weapon? This may be unanswerable; yet I hold that no generous man would encounter an ungenerous one with his own malice.”
Why not, Randal? If what you say regarding Mr Disraeli be true, you are perfectly entitled to encounter him with his own weapons. You complain of his having written political novels, in which certain characters, whom you regard as sublime and pure, are represented in a different light. Well, then, do you write a novel of the same kind, showing up Mr Disraeli under a fictitious name, and we shall review it with all the pleasure in the world. If it is clever, sparkling, and original, you shall not want laudation. But you know very well that you could as soon swim the Hellespont as compose two readable chapters of a novel—that you have not enough of invention to devise a plot, or of imagination to shadow forth a character; and, therefore, you are pleased to assume the magnanimous, and to drivel about the dagger and the bowl. No one who reads your book will believe that you would abstain from the use of any weapon which you could wield against Mr Disraeli—(how should he, when you glide before us as a masked assassin?)—but he will be at no loss to divine the reason why you decline an encounter of wit. We are perfectly sincere when we say that your intense dulness ought in some measure to be accepted as an extenuation for your malevolence, for you have not art enough to disguise or conceal the hatred which is rankling in your breast.
But let us examine a little more narrowly into the charge preferred against Mr Disraeli. It is said that personality is his weapon, which he has used like a gladiator; and we understand the averment to be that both his political speeches and his literary works display this tendency. In considering this matter, it will be proper to separate the two characters, and look first to the politician, and afterwards to the novelist.
We shall at once admit that, in the House of Commons, Mr Disraeli is feared as an antagonist. He possesses vast power of satire, a ready wit, and has a thorough confidence and reliance in his own resources. He has besides an intense contempt for that kind of cant in which it formerly was the fashion to indulge—for the solemn airs of pompous mediocrity, and for the official jargon and conventional hypocrisies of the Treasury bench. When, in 1846, the late Sir Robert Peel abandoned the cause of that party of which he was the accredited leader, he naturally became the object of unsparing criticism and attack. But his offence was a very grave one. It fully justified the taunt of Mr Disraeli, which this writer affects to consider as remarkably offensive, that, “like the Turkish admiral who, during the war in the Levant, had steered his fleet into the port of the enemy, Sir Robert Peel had undertaken to fight for this cause, and now assumed the right of following his own judgment.” The comparison was certainly not a flattering one to the Prime Minister; but it had this recommendation that it was strictly apposite, and that no man could gainsay it. It is the height of absurdity to maintain that personality could be, or ought to have been, excluded from the discussions and debates that followed. Why, it was Sir Robert Peel himself who, by his extraordinary change of policy, made this a personal question, and brought it to a direct issue between the betrayer and the betrayed. Are we really to be told at the present day that measures alone should be discussed in the Houses of Parliament, and that all commentary on the conduct and previous career of statesmen ought to be avoided? Are we to be allowed no latitude of reference to former speeches—no allusion to former protestations? Ought tergiversation to be permitted to pass without notice or censure—ought duplicity to escape exposure? If not, we boldly ask in what respect Mr Disraeli has sinned so grievously as to merit the reproach of this Tartuffe? It may be said, indeed, that he pushed his resentment of the unparalleled betrayal too far; and we daresay, now that years have intervened, he may himself regret the occasional acrimony of his remarks. That is the natural feeling of every generous-minded man who has been compelled to take an active share in public discussion; for it is impossible to restrain at all times the excited passions, and sometimes the hour for calm retrospection does not arrive, until the occasion of the original offence has passed into matter of history. Mr Macaulay, in the preface to the collected edition of his speeches, says with reference to this very point: “I should not willingly have revived, in the quiet times in which we are so happy as to live, the memory of those fierce contentions in which so many years of my public life were passed. Many expressions which, when society was convulsed by political dissension, and when the foundations of government were shaking, were heard by an excited audience with sympathy and applause, may, now that the passions of all parties have subsided, be thought intemperate and acrimonious. It was especially painful to me to find myself under the necessity of recalling to my own recollection, and to the recollection of others, the keen encounters which took place between the late Sir Robert Peel and myself.” So it will ever be with the generous and high-spirited; but it does not follow therefrom that the attacks were not deserved. Of course such cold toads as Mr Randal Leslie cannot be expected to understand or appreciate the feeling either of indignation or of regret. Having no sympathy but for self, and possessing no clear discernment of the difference between right and wrong, between candour and duplicity—having been trained from their boyhood upwards to believe that falsehood, trickery, and deceit, are component and necessary qualities of statesmanship—they, naturally enough, stand aghast at the audacity which tore the veil from organised hypocrisies, and hate the exposer with a hatred more enduring than the love of woman. Hence this cant about personality, which they talk of as if it were a new element in political discussion. Now, the fact is, that no political discussion ever was conducted, or ever will be conducted, without personality. You cannot separate the idea from the man, the argument from him who uses it. The first orator of antiquity, Demosthenes, was personal to a degree never yet paralleled, as every one who has read his Philippics must allow. In this he was imitated by Cicero, whose stinging invectives, as witness the speeches against Catiline and Verres, have commanded the admiration of the world. Chatham’s first speech in the House of Commons was a purely personal one, no doubt provoked by his antagonist, but almost witheringly severe. Canning and Brougham dealt largely both in satire and personality—indeed, it would hardly be possible to find a speech of the latter orator free from a strong infusion of that quality which the moral Randal deplores. In our own time no great question has been discussed without personality; and for this reason, that it would be impossible to discuss it otherwise. No doubt personality may sometimes be carried greatly too far. When Lord John Russell taunted Lord George Bentinck with his former addiction to the turf, intending to convey thereby an unworthy inuendo, he committed a serious fault, because he violated gentlemanly decorum. When the late Sir Robert Peel accused Mr Cobden of a desire to have him assassinated, he was not only ultra-personal, but outrageously and unpardonably unjust. When the same statesman could find no better answer to Mr Disraeli, than a charge that the latter had at one time been willing to hold office under him, he was, besides being directly personal, guilty of a breach of confidence. We are aware it is the fashion among the present Ministry to protest against personalities. Let us ask whether it was his administrative talent or his practice in personal warfare that elevated Mr Bernal Osborne to the post of Secretary to the Admiralty? Ministers are far from objecting to a Spartacus, when they know they may reckon on his assistance—it is only when a keen weapon is flashing on the other side that they think it necessary to make an outcry. Party warfare we cannot expect to see an end of; but, in the name of common sense, let us at least eschew humbug. The House of Commons is, even now, a queer assembly, and Lord John Russell may make it worse; still, let us believe that the members collectively entertain that ordinary sense of propriety that they will not permit anything to be uttered within the walls of St Stephens, which calls for direct reprobation, without immediate challenge, and without censure, if an apology is not made for the intemperance. One of the principal duties of the Speaker is to repress and check the use of unparliamentary language. If any accusation, not falling under that restriction, is preferred, the members of the House are the judges of its propriety, and may be expected, in the aggregate, to enforce the rules which govern the conduct of gentlemen. It is, therefore, most gross impertinence in Mr Randal Leslie to challenge what Parliament has not challenged. Mr Disraeli’s present position, as the leader of the largest independent, and most influential section of the House of Commons, is the best answer to the insinuations of this contemptible little snake, who, we apprehend, will not receive, from his political superiors, the meed of gratitude which he expected for his present unfortunate attempt. It is the misfortune of your Randal Leslies, that they never can, even by blundering, stumble on the right path. Set them to defend in writing some particular line of policy, and the first six pages of their lucubrations will convince the impartial reader that they are advocating something unsound or untrue, by dint of their unnecessary affectation of candour. Set them to attack an opponent, and they fail; because they cannot descry the points upon which he is really vulnerable, and because they think indiscriminate abuse is more effective than artistic criticism, of which latter branch of accomplishment they are wholly incapable. This lad has not even the talent to malign with plausibility. He calls Mr Disraeli “a true political Ishmael.” What does the blockhead mean? Does he not know that the individual whom he denominates Ishmael, is at this moment at the head of the most powerful separate party in the British House of Commons?
In justice to the leading members of the Coalition Cabinet, we shall state our opinion, (not altogether unfortified by certain rumours which have reached us), that they were unaware of this singularly silly attempt, on the part of one of their subordinates, to attack an eminent character in opposition, until the fool launched it from the press before a disgusted public. Ill-judging Randal Leslie conceived that his work would make a grand political sensation; so, after the manner of his kind, he kept his secret to himself, and worked like a perfect galley-slave, or like a thorough scavenger, at his vocation. Whatever Mr Disraeli had said or written on politics, or any subject trenching upon politics, from the period of his first publication down to his last parliamentary speech, Randal had read and noted; and the poor knave at last concluded that he had a good case to lay before the public. And what does his political case, by his own account, amount to? Simply this: That Mr Disraeli, from his very earliest years, has detested and denounced the tenets of the Whig party; and that he has always supported the cause of the people—not in the democratic, but in the real and truthful sense of the word—against the villanies of organised oppression, and the rapacity of manufacturing domination. But these things belong rather to his literary than to his political character. Randal thought he had made a great hit in bringing them forward. He must have been very much amazed when an elder and more sagacious colleague explained to him that, instead of throwing dirt upon the object of his enmity, he had unconsciously been passing upon him a high encomium, such as any statesman might be proud of for his panegyric; and that his work, if generally read, would greatly tend to sap the faith in present political combinations. After all, how stand the facts? Ten years ago Mr Disraeli, a member of the Tory party, but not then greatly distinguished as a politician, nor possessing that influence which hereditary rank and high connection give to others, had the sagacity to discern that Sir Robert Peel was not a safe leader, and the courage to make the avowal. Randal quotes his language in 1844. “He had always acknowledged that he was a party man. It was the duty of a member of the House of Commons to be a party man. He, however, would only follow a leader who was prepared to lead.” No doubt the lips of many a Tadpole and Taper curled with derision at this audacious declaration of contempt for constituted authority, on the part of a young man, the tenor of whose speeches they could not rightly understand. He professed himself to be a Tory, but he often uttered sentiments which seemed to them strongly to savour of Radicalism. He did not scruple to avow his sympathy with the labouring classes, his desire to see them elevated and protected, and his wish for the adoption of a more genial, considerate, and paternal course of legislation. He traced the agitation for the Charter to the establishment of the supremacy of a middle-class government in the country; and boldly announced his opinion that this monarchy of the middle classes might one day shake our institutions and endanger the throne. In particular he denounced centralisation—a great and growing evil, to which he attributed much of the existing discontent. Such views were of course unintelligible to the Tadpoles and Tapers—men who considered statesmanship a science only in so far as it could insure ascendancy to their party, and places to themselves. There were then a good many veteran Tadpoles and Tapers; and Sir Robert Peel was doing his best to educate a new generation of them to supply inevitable vacancies. Naturally enough they regarded Mr Disraeli as a pure visionary; but there were others upon whom his argument and example were not lost. Young men began to consider whether, after all, they were doing their duty by blindly submitting themselves to party domination, as rigid and exacting as the most autocratic rule. They were desired, under very severe penalties for rising politicians, not to venture to think for themselves, but to do as the minister ordered. They were not to take up their time in unravelling social questions—if they wanted mental exercise, let them serve on a railway committee. There might be, and doubtless was, a cry of distress and a wailing from without—but the minister would see to that, settle everything by an increase of the police force, or perhaps a coercion bill; and the Treasury whip would give them due notice when they were expected to vote. In short, young members of Parliament were then treated exactly as if they had been children, incapable of forming an opinion; and they were told, in almost as many words, that if they did not choose to submit themselves to this dictation, the doors of the Treasury would remain closed against them for ever. The effect of this insolence—for we can give it no other name—was that a considerable portion of the young aristocracy rebelled. They would not submit to such preposterous tyranny, and they cared not a rush for any of the Ministerial threats. They saw that, in the country, there was distress—that discontent and disaffection were very rife—and that, in the very heart of England, a large body of the working population were absolutely in a state of bondage. They could not find it in their hearts to greet, with exultation, the announcement of increased exports, whilst every year the condition of the producers seemed to be becoming worse. Looking to the state, they saw two great parties under autocratic chiefs, bidding against each other for popularity—that is, power—and for office to their respective staffs, without any real regard for the interest or improvement of the masses. That was not a spectacle likely to find favour in the eyes of a young, ardent, and generous-minded man; and accordingly from that time we may date the formation of another party, still on the increase, and rapidly augmenting, which, rejecting what was bad in the old Toryism, but maintaining its better principle—resolute to preserve the constitution, but cordially sympathising with the people—is preparing to encounter, and will encounter with success, the cold-blooded democracy of Manchester, which would destroy everything that is venerable, noble, or dear to England, and establish on the ruins a serfdom of Labour, with Capital as the inexorable tyrant. We do not say that Mr Disraeli is to be regarded as the founder of that party. Young men professing conservative opinions were beginning about that time to think independently for themselves, and to doubt the authenticity and soundness of tradition. The young Whigs, who were kept in much better order by their seniors, stuck by their old political breviary; but the young Tories would not. They were ready, if occasion required, to maintain to the death the Monarchy, the House of Peers, and the Church; but they could not, for the lives of them, understand that it was not their duty to investigate, and if possible improve, the condition of the working-classes. On the contrary, they regarded that as a distinct moral duty, in which they were resolved to persevere, notwithstanding the advice of their own political Gallios, or the example of their opponents who were always ready, when the people asked for relief, to tender them a stone. Mr Disraeli, however, has this credit, that he was the first, in the House of Commons, to free himself from a debasing domination, and to assert his absolute independence of the minister in thought and deed. Of course he was never forgiven by the autocrat, nor will he be forgiven by the men who still swear by their idol. But he went on undauntedly, never fearing to say his thought; and barely two years had elapsed before the great bulk of the Tory party—the Tapers and Tadpoles excepted—had acknowledged the justness of his estimate as to the trustworthiness of their former chief, and ranged themselves in opposition to the late Sir Robert Peel.
It is not our intention to pronounce a panegyric upon Mr Disraeli. We see no occasion for doing so, and we doubt if he would care to hear one. But we confess that the impudence of this young whipper-snapper has somewhat roused our bile. He reminds us of a wretched curtailed messan whom we once saw introduced into a drawing-room. The creature, which, in mercy to the future canine breed, ought to have been drowned in the days of its puppydom, went sniffing about at the furniture, thrusting its odious nose everywhere, and at last committed sacrilege by lifting its leg against a magnificent china jar. Of course Nemesis was speedy. We had the satisfaction of kicking the cur from the upper landing to the lobby, by a single pedal application; and, beyond the hint gathered from a dolorous howl, have no cognizance of its after fate. Mr Disraeli’s present position in the House of Commons is the best possible answer to “one of the humblest”—for which, read, meanest—“individuals of this great empire.”
Randal, however, does not confine himself to a review of Mr Disraeli’s political career. He must needs—though of all men the most unfitted for the task, for he has no more notion of literature than a Hottentot—attempt to criticise him as an author. Here he evidently thinks that he can make out a strong case; and accordingly he goes over, seriatim, the whole of the publications to which Mr Disraeli has set his name, and one or two others which were not so authenticated. At first sight it is not easy to understand why he should have given himself so much trouble. Mr Disraeli’s earliest novel, Vivian Grey, was written when the author was about the age of two-and-twenty, and, no doubt, to the critical eye, it has many faults. But so have the early productions of every master—not only in language, but in painting and all other branches of art,—yet we forgive them all for the unmistakable traces of real genius which are displayed. That early novel of Mr Disraeli, though produced so far back as 1826, has never been forgotten. It took its place at once as a decided work of genius; and, as such, continued to be read before the author became a political character or celebrity. And so it was, even in larger measure, with his next work, Contarini Fleming. Now, it is of some importance to ask, why these books were popular? They certainly could not recommend themselves to the old, as elaborate compositions, for they showed a lack of worldly experience, and sometimes bordered on extravagance. But they recommended themselves to the young, because they were brimful of a youthful spirit; because they expressed, better perhaps than ever had been done before, the daring, recklessness, and utter exuberance of youth; and because even older men recognised in them the distinct image of passions which they had once entertained, but from which they were divorced for ever. Poor pitiful Randal, who even in his boyhood does not seem to have experienced a single generous impulse, thinks that in these juvenile pictures he can identify the future politician. He says, “It is impossible, in perusing the book, not to connect Mr Disraeli with Contarini Fleming;” and he then goes on gravely to argue that many of the positions in the romance are objectionable. Because Mr Disraeli makes his leading character talk extravagantly when in love—as what boy under such circumstances does not talk extravagantly?—we are asked to believe that the author is habitually addicted to fustian! Because Contarini Fleming is represented at the head of a band of reckless collegians, who, inspired by the “Robbers” of Schiller, betake themselves to the woods, Randal politely insinuates that Mr Disraeli was intended by nature for a bandit! He might just as well tell us that Miss Jane Porter was intended for a Scottish chief! Such absolute trash as this is really below contempt; nor would we have noticed it at all except to show the animus of this singularly paltry critic. We shall make no further allusion to his commentary on the early novels, beyond remarking, that he crawls over every page of Venetia and Henrietta Temple, in the hope to leave upon them traces of his ugly slime.
It is, however, against the political novels that Mr Randal Leslie chooses principally to inveigh. That he regards them as heterodox in doctrine is not to be wondered at—that he cannot discriminate between the sportive and the real is the result of his own narrow powers of comprehension. But his chief cry, as we have remarked before, is against personality, and he thus favours us with his ideas: “All men must execrate the midnight stabber. And a midnight stabber is a man who, in a work of fiction, endeavours to make a fictitious character stand for a real one, and attributes to it any vices he pleases. Nothing can be more unfair; nothing can be more reprehensible. Against such a system of attack even the virtues of a Socrates are no protection,” &c. We see no occasion for dragging Socrates into the discussion. Those twin sons of Sophroniscus, Tadpole and Taper, are quite sufficient for our purpose in discussing this point of literary personality. We are therefore given to understand by Mr Leslie, that it is utterly unjustifiable to display, in a work of fiction, any character corresponding to a real one. That, certainly, is a broad enough proposition. According to this view, Virgil was a midnight stabber, because it is notorious that the characters in the Eneid were intended to represent eminent personages of Rome; and all of them were not flatteringly portrayed—as, for instance, Drances, who stands for Cicero. Spenser was a midnight stabber, in respect of Duessa, intended for Mary Queen of Scots. Shakespeare was a midnight stabber, in respect of Justice Shallow, the eidolon of Sir Thomas Lucy. Dryden was an irreclaimable bravo; witness his Absalom and Achitophel. We are afraid that even Pope must wear the badge of the poniard. Very few of our deceased, and scarce one of our living novelists, can escape the charge of satire and personality. If a man is writing about things of the present day, he must, perforce, take his characters from the men who move around him, else he will produce no true picture. Both Dickens and Thackeray draw from life, and their sketches are easily recognisable. There are certain characters in Mr Warren’s Ten Thousand A-Year, which we apprehend nobody can mistake. In depicting, for example, the House of Commons, would it be correct to paint that assembly, not as it is, but as what it might be, if a total change were made in its members? If a literary man has occasion, in a work of fiction, to sketch the Treasury Bench, must he necessarily leave out the principal figures which give interest to that Elysian locality? But is it really true that Mr Disraeli has been so excessively licentious in his personality? Tadpoles he has drawn, no doubt, and Tapers; but there are at least two dozen gentlemen who have equal right to appropriate those designations to themselves. He has given us two perfect types of a narrow-minded class, but the class itself is numerous. The originals of Coningsby and Millbank, if there were any such, are not likely to complain of their treatment; and positively the only objectionable instance of personality which we can remember as occurring in Mr Disraeli’s political novels, is the character of Rigby. It is quite possible that Mr Disraeli might, if he chose, give a satisfactory explanation of this departure from decorum; for we are not of the number of those who profess, like Mr Randal Leslie, to think that it is unlawful to retaliate with the same weapon which has been used in assault. But the truth is, we care very little about the matter. Let us grant that this one character of Rigby is objectionable—does that justify this outrageous howl about perpetual personalities? Where are the personalities in Sybil and Tancred? We may be very dull, but we really cannot find them; and yet we have perused both works more than once with great pleasure. Who are the leading political characters whom Mr Disraeli is said to have sketched for the purpose of misrepresenting their motives? Has he given us in his novels a sketch of Wellington, of Peel, of Brougham, of Lord John Russell, of Sir James Graham, of O’Connell, of Cobden, or of Hume? We never heard that alleged; and yet we are told that his novels are full of outrageous political libels! Why, if he had intended to be politically personal, he could not by possibility have avoided introducing some of these men, under feigned names, seeing that they have all played a conspicuous part in the great drama of public life. He might, we think, have introduced them, had he so pleased, without any breach of propriety; but it is enough, in dealing with Mr Randal Leslie, to remark that he has not done so, and consequently the whole elaborate structure of hypocrisy falls to the ground.
It may be said that it was not worth our while to waste powder and shot upon a jackdaw; nor, in all probability, should we have done so, were this the sole chatterer of his species. But the splendid abilities and political success of Mr Disraeli have created for him a host of enemies, who seem determined, at all hazards, to run him down, and whose attacks are not only malignant, but unintermitting. Some of these may be regarded simply as the ebullitions of envy—the mutterings of discontent against success. The feeling which prompts such attacks is anything but commendable; but we are inclined to draw a distinction between that class of writers, and another, whose enmity to Mr Disraeli may be traced to more personal motives. The former may, perhaps, have no absolute dislike to the man whom they are endeavouring to decry. They assail him because he has risen so much and so swiftly above their social level; and if he were to experience a reverse, their feeling towards him would probably change. Theirs is just the sentiment of vulgar radicalism—that which stimulates demagogues to attack the Church and the aristocracy. Men of the literary profession are very liable to such influences, more especially when one of their number passes into another sphere of distinction. So long as Mr Disraeli confined himself to literary pursuits, he might be regarded and dealt with as one of themselves: it was his political career, and his accession to office as a Cabinet Minister, which made the gap between him and the literary multitude. It is much to be regretted, for the sake of literature itself, that any such demonstrations of jealousy should be exhibited, but we fear there is no remedy for it. Other times, besides our own, furnish us with examples in abundance of this kind of unworthy detraction, which, however, may not be tinged with absolute personal malice.