[169] This quality is noticeable in his descriptions: Jerusalem at noon—“A city of stone in a land of iron with a sky of brass.” Seville—“Figaro in every street, Rosina on every balcony.” Cf. p. 304.
[170] It will be recalled that in opposing the Burials Bill, which he treated with respect, Disraeli, after expounding the parish rights in the churchyard, said, “I must confess that, were I a Dissenter contemplating burial, I should do so with feelings of the utmost satisfaction.”
[171] Cf. The Infernal Marriage—“Are there any critics in Hell?” “Myriads,” rejoined the ex-King of Lydia. There is a kindred remark in one of Landor’s Dialogues.
[172] From Swift, however.
[173] See his “Literary Character; or, The History of Men of Genius.”
[174] One of the best is the invective against the collapse of Peel’s “sliding scale:”—“... Of course the Whigs will be the chief mourners; they cannot but weep for their innocent, though it was an abortion. But ours was a fine child. Who can forget how its nurse dandled and fondled it? ‘What a charming babe! Delicious little thing! So thriving! Did you ever see such a beauty for its years?’ And then the nurse, in a fit of patriotic frenzy, dashes its brains out, and comes down to give master and mistress an account of this terrible murder. The nurse too, a person of a very orderly demeanour, not given to drink, and never showing any emotion, except of late when kicking against protection.”
[175] The late Duke of Abercorn.
[176] Of his verse I have not treated. No reader, however, of his fine sonnet on the Duke of Wellington, inscribed in the Stowe album, or of the wistful lyric addressed from the Ægean to his family in the Home Letters, or of the “Bignetta” rondel in the Young Duke, with its Heinesque close, or even of “Spring in the Apennines” from Venetia, can doubt his genuine gift for poetry and metre.
[177] “The art of poetry was to express natural feelings in unnatural language.”—Contarini.
[178] In five volumes. Its original dedication ran:—