"'Wi' the shocks an' the sheaves, the lambs an' the beeves, The ducks an' the geese an' the good speckled hen, The cattle all lowin', the crops all a-growin', To feed the King's horses and feed the King's men.'"
THE GREAT GAME.
Subaltern (wounded four times at Gallipoli, about to rejoin after four months' sick leave). "Can I Get a Trench Dagger Here?"
Shopwalker. "Trench dagger? Certainly, Sir. You'll get that in the Sports Department."
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
Except by keen politicians the fourth volume of Mr Buckle's Life of Benjamin Disraeli (Murray) may be found a little dull in comparison with its predecessors. That is not the fault of the biographer, who has done his best with a vast mass of somewhat dry material, but could not make this portion of his record so enthralling as that which preceded it or—we may confidently hope—that which will follow it. In 1855 Disraeli had arrived at respectability, but had not yet attained power. The Conservative Party recognised that he was indispensable, but continued to withhold its full confidence, with the result that, although his brain still teemed with the great schemes formed in his hot youth, he had to defer their practical accomplishment and to devote himself to educating his party and its titular leader, Lord Derby, for the day when the swing of the pendulum might give it a majority in the House of Commons. Only one great triumph came to him during these years in the wilderness. Disraeli had never visited India, but, owing perhaps to his Eastern ancestry, he had a truer intuition of Oriental needs than most contemporary statesmen; and it was fortunate that it fell to him in 1858, during one of the brief periods when the Conservatives held office on sufferance, to carry the Bill which transferred the government of India from "John Company" to the Crown. The principles which he then laid down, and which eighteen years later he carried a stage further in the Imperial Titles Act, justify Mr. Buckle in claiming the Coronation Durbar of 1911 as "the logical conclusion of Disraeli's policy." Apart from this one episode the volume is mainly concerned with the reconstruction of the Conservative party—"at about the pace of a Tertiary formation"—with which Disraeli's voluminous correspondence with Lord Derby was mainly concerned. Happily he had other correspondents, and, though too self-conscious to be a perfect letter-writer, he could be playful enough when writing to his wife or to Mrs. Brydges-Williams. In this volume Mr. Buckle has given us a careful portrait of the Politician Disraeli; in his next we look to see a little more of the Man.