The author of this volume has nothing in common with the writers to whom we have just alluded. In the first place, he has no pretensions whatever to be considered as a literary man. His style is bald and bad; he is wholly unpractised in criticism; and he commits the egregious blunder of dealing in indiscriminate abuse. Notwithstanding all our admiration for Mr Disraeli, we are bound to admit that some of his novels afford ample scope for criticism; and that a witty and competent reviewer could easily, and with perfect fairness, write an amusing article on the subject. More than one excellent imitation of Mr Disraeli’s peculiar style has appeared in the periodicals; and we have no doubt that even the author of Coningsby enjoyed a hearty laugh over the facetious parodies of Punch. There is no kind of malice in the preparation or issuing of squibs like these. We should all of us become a great deal too dull and solemn without them; and they contribute to the public amusement without giving annoyance to any one. But Randal Leslie is such an absolute bungler that he is not contented with selecting the weak points in Mr Disraeli’s works, but tries to depreciate those very excellencies and beauties which have elevated him in the eyes of the public. He cannot bear to think that Mr Disraeli should have credit for having written even a single interesting chapter, and therefore he keeps battering at the fabric of his fame, like a billy-goat butting at a wall. Had Mr Randal Leslie possessed a little more real knowledge of the world, or had his conceit been but one degree less than it is, he would have paused before entering the literary and critical arena. He can talk glibly enough about gladiators—was he not aware that a certain degree of training is required, before a literary man becomes used to the practice of his art? Apparently not; for anything so utterly contemptible, in the shape of criticism, it never was our fortune to peruse. We conclude, therefore, that whatever may have been the nature of the other “private griefs” which stimulated this wretched onslaught on Mr Disraeli, literary jealousy was not among the number. The frog may wish to emulate the dimensions of the ox; but not even Esop has ventured to represent it as emulous of the caroling of the lark.
We have no hesitation in stating our belief, that a certain party in the State, to whom Mr Disraeli is peculiarly obnoxious, has addressed itself deliberately to the task, through its organs, of running him down. The Whigs, of course, regard him with no favour, for he has always been their determined opponent; but we have no reason whatever to suppose that their hostility would be carried so far as to induce them to join in so very unworthy a conspiracy. But to the Peelites he has given mortal umbrage. They cannot forget that he was the man who first challenged the despotic authority of their chief in the House of Commons, and set an example of independence in thought and action to others of the Tory party. They cannot forget the conflicts in which he was personally engaged with their leader; and they cannot forgive him for the havoc which he made in the ranks of the pseudo-Conservatives. If he and others had chosen to stifle their convictions, to lay aside all considerations of honour and consistency, to submit to mysterious but imperative dictation, and to become the passive tools of an autocratic minister, the Conservatives might still have been in power, and the red-tapists in possession of their offices. Not one of the latter class but feels himself personally injured. The Tapers and Tadpoles had been so long accustomed to the advent of quarter-day, that they regarded their places almost in the light of patrimonial possessions; and bitter indeed was their hatred of the man who had assisted to eject them from their Goshen. Besides this, their vanity, of which they were not without a large share, was sorely wounded by the manner in which they were exhibited to the public view, and more so by the intense relish with which the sketches were received. Mr Disraeli never made so happy a hit as in his portraiture of these small, bustling, self-sufficient, and narrow-minded officials, with their ridiculous notions about party watchwords, political combinations, backstairs influence, and so forth; nor was there ever a more terse or felicitous description of the then existing Government, than that which he has put into the mouth of Taper:—“A sound Conservative government—I understand: Tory men and Whig measures.” These things belong to the past. They are, however, intelligible reasons for the rancour which the remnants of the Peel party, even when allied with the Whigs in power, exhibit towards Mr Disraeli; and nothing since has occurred to mitigate the acerbity of that feeling. But there are weighty considerations applicable to the future. The Aberdeen Cabinet is composed of such heterogeneous materials that it cannot be expected to hold long together. Even now there is dissension within it; and, but for the expectation of an immediate and inveterate war, which renders the idea of a change of government distasteful to every one, men would consider it as doomed. In fact, the alliance has never been other than a hollow one, and there is no real cordiality or confidence among the chiefs. The Whigs are already looking in the direction of the Radicals; the Peelites would very gladly gain the confidence of the country gentlemen. They believe it not impossible even yet, by making certain sacrifices and concessions, to reconstruct the Conservative party; but Mr Disraeli is the obstacle, and their hatred of him is even greater than their love of office. They would, in 1852, have opened a negotiation, provided he had been excluded; and they entertain the same views in 1854. It is evident that Lord Aberdeen cannot long remain as Premier. He is anything but personally popular; he is now well advanced in years; and his conduct in the Eastern question has not raised him in the estimation of the country. But then, failing him, who is to be the leader of the Peelites in the House of Lords? Not certainly the Duke of Newcastle, who has neither temper nor ability for that duty; and they have no one else to put forward. Gladly would they serve under Lord Derby; but the same Cabinet cannot hold Mr Disraeli and Mr Gladstone.
Let them do their worst. It is not by publications of this kind, or unscrupulous newspaper invectives, that they will accomplish their object. Even the critic who has taken this book as a text for his commentary in the Times, is constrained to acknowledge that the author has sate down “to accumulate upon the head of his living victim all the dislike, malevolence, and disgust he can get together in 650 octavo pages.” We must say that it never was our lot to peruse a more extraordinary article than that which we now refer to. The critic does not even think it necessary to affect that he cares for public morality. He dislikes the Protectionists, whose general ability he doubts, as much as he abhors their tenets; and he thinks that Mr Disraeli ought to have left their camp in 1848, immediately after the death of Lord George Bentinck. We confess that we were at first a good deal startled at this proposition, inasmuch as the course of conduct which is here indicated would have laid Mr Disraeli open to such charges of perfidy as no honourable man could endure; but, on looking a little further, we began to see the drift of these observations. There are two detachments of mischief-makers at work—the object of the one being to disgust the Tory party with Mr Disraeli; that of the other being to disgust Mr Disraeli with his party. We think it right, out of sheer regard for ethics, to quote a sentence or two from the critical article in the Times:—
“For weeks,” says the critic, referring to the position of Mr Disraeli in 1848, “did he suffer mortification, insult, and ingratitude from the Protectionist party, with Lord Derby at its head; such as must have roused a nobler soul to self-respect, and stung it with a consciousness of intolerable wrong. What if, at that period of consummate baseness and unblushing insolence, Mr Disraeli had stood apart from the conspirators, and taken an independent place in the arena which he had already made his own! Does he believe that the good-will of his countrymen would have been wanting to him at that trying hour, and that the sympathies of Whig and Tory would not have sustained him in the crisis? He will never recover the consequences of the fault then committed. He stooped low as the ground to conquer, and he failed. He might have vanquished nobly, and held his head erect. By consenting to act with men who did not hesitate to let him feel how much they despised him, he has, indeed, tasted the sweets of office, and for a season held the reins of power. But where is he now? Where might he have been, had he proudly taken his seat in 1848, aloof from the false allies who had no belief in his earnestness, no satisfaction in his company, and who hurled their contempt in his teeth?”
It requires more than one perusal before the full meaning of this passage can be comprehended. The critic first informs us, with a most suspicious degree of circumstantiality as to details, that, after the death of Lord George Bentinck, there was some indisposition to intrust the leadership of the Protectionist party in the House of Commons to Mr Disraeli, and then argues that he ought to have left them at once and for ever! Beautiful, indeed, are the notions of morality and honour which are here inculcated!
But how comes the writer in the Times to be so intimately acquainted with the secret councils of the Protectionist party, whom in the aggregate he sneers at, terms “conspirators,” and accuses of “consummate baseness and unblushing insolence?” What does he know, more than other determined supporters of Sir Robert Peel, of what was passing in the opposite camp? He tells us, speaking of 1845, that “in England the injustice of the Corn Laws is felt at every hearth. Sir Robert Peel seizes the opportunity to repair some of the errors of his former life, and to establish his name for ever in the grateful recollection of his countrymen.” The man who wrote these words never could have had any trafficking with the Protectionists; he must have abhorred them throughout; and yet the curious thing is, that he knows, or pretends to know, a great deal more about them than an enemy could possibly have done. For example, he says, in reference to the alleged unwillingness, on the part of the Protectionists, to be led by Mr Disraeli, that “almost in as many words Lord Derby, then Lord Stanley, condescended to convey the intelligence to the gifted subaltern, and to inform him that, notwithstanding the transcendent services he had rendered, he had not respectability enough for the place of honour he had earned.” This is either false or true. If false, it is the most unblushing fiction we ever remember to have met with; if true, we should like very much to know how the writer came by his information.
Not less remarkable is the intimate knowledge which the critic affects of Mr Disraeli’s private character. That he dislikes him is very evident. He describes him as “Genius without Conscience;” says “he has not a bad heart—he has no heart at all;” that he “will stand before posterity as the great political infidel of his age, as one who believed in nothing but himself;” and a great deal to the same purpose. He denounces him as inconsistent; and yet, in the same breath, blames him for not having abandoned his party on the impulse of a sudden pique. If Iago were alive and a critic, we should expect from him just such an article as that which appeared in the Times.
We end as we began. In this wicked and envious little world of ours, no man of any note can hope to escape without abuse, which may be formidable or not, according to the quarter from which it comes, and the motives which called it forth. If more than the share commonly set apart for public men has fallen upon Mr Disraeli, he may comfort himself with the reflection that there is but one feeling on the part of the public with regard to the conduct of his assailants; and we are greatly mistaken if, by this time, the author of the Literary and Political Biography does not wish, in his secret heart, that he had never addressed himself to his dirty task. As for other attacks, he is certainly liable to these, both as a party leader and as an ex-minister. No one knows better than Mr Disraeli that enmities may sometimes arise from peculiar causes. Of this, indeed, he has given us, in one of his earlier fictions, a very apt illustration, when he makes Ixion say: “I remember we had a confounded poet at Larissa, who proved my family lived before the Deluge, and asked me for a pension. I refused him, and then he wrote an epigram asserting that I sprang from the veritable stones thrown by Deucalion and Pyrrha at the repeopling of the earth, and retained all the properties of my ancestors!”