Wit, of whatever class, is, roughly speaking, twofold in degree—lightning wit and wit lambent—the wit that strikes sharply, and the pleasantry that shines around its object. In the first Disraeli excelled. Like his own Monsignor, he “sparkles with anecdote and blazes with repartee.” His pages bristle with good things; it is hard to choose. Every one remembers his political retorts and his literary aphorisms. “One whom I will not say that I respect, but rather that I regard.” Another, “Who has learned much, but has still to learn that petulance is not sarcasm, nor insolence invective.” The “conjuror who advances to the edge of the platform, and for hours draws yards of red tape from his mouth.” One quotation against Peel—“Always ready with his Virgil”—that of the Horatian “Vectabor tunc humeris;” and “Is England to be governed by Popkins’ plan?” “Batavian Grace,” “Superior Person,” and the like. Then there are the drunken recruits “full of spirit;” the hansom, the “gondola of London;” the critics, “the men who have failed;”[171] Tadpole’s, “Tory men and Whig measures;” and Rigby’s, “little words in great capitals”—these are household words. “Our young Queen, and our old institutions.” There are Diplomatists, “the Hebrews of politics;” St. James’s Square, “the Faubourg St. Germain of London;” the “bad politician” of the ’thirties, who “like a bad shilling has worn off his edge by his very restlessness,” and the enlightened Whig minister “almost eructating with the plenary inspiration of the spirit of the age;” the men of the ’seventies who “played with billiard-balls games that were not billiards,” and the lady of the ’forties who “sacrificed even her lovers to her friends;” stolid bores, our “Social Polyphemi;” books, “the curse of the human race;” of Austria, “two things made her a nation, she was German and she was a Catholic, and now she is neither;” of the Reform Bill, “It gave to Manchester a bishop and to Birmingham a dandy.” And, less familiar, there is “Lord Squib’s” definition of money value, “very dear;” “Count Mirabel’s” pleasantry, “coffee and confidence;” “Essper George’s,” “Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remembered more than I have seen;” Venus, the “goddess of watering-places,” and “Burlington” with “his old loves and new dances.” There is the advice in The Young Duke, too, that “good fortune with good management, no country house and no children, is Aladdin’s lamp,” and that in Lothair to “go into the country for the first note of the nightingale and return to town for the first muffin bell.” Then there is the “treatise on a subject in which everybody is interested, in a style no one understands;” and there are the French actresses averring at supper, “No language makes you so thirsty as French;” the English tradesmen who “console themselves for not getting their bills paid by inviting their customers to dinner;” the Utilitarian, whose dogma was “Rules are general, feelings are general, and property should be general;” and the definition of Liberty, “Do as others do, and never knock men down.” There is Monmouth’s “some woman has got hold of him and made him a Whig.” There is the great political lady “who liked handsome people, even handsome women;” and there is the unfortunate third-rate statesman, “who committed suicide from a want of imagination.” Nor should I omit an unprinted mot. He defined a political “Deputation” as “a noun of multitude meaning many, but not signifying much.” He was wont also to distinguish between “lawyers” and “legislators.” A brace of very witty similes also claim a mention here—the comparison of the Parliament-built region of Harley Square to “a large family of plain children with Portland Place and Portman Square for their respectable parents;” and that of the detached breakfast-tables at “Brentham,” to “a cluster of Greek or Italian Republics, instead of a great metropolitan table, like a central government, absorbing all the genius and resources of society.” Further, in the same category are the many metaphorical allusions and descriptions that ornament his speeches. The transference of the Bank currency crisis to the Neapolitan procession and miracle of St. Januarius, both from a common cause, “congealed circulation;” the picture of a maladroit reinforcement of opposition as the exploit of the Turkish Admiral, summoned by the Sultan and blessed by the muftis, to retrieve the war, who yet steered his imposing fleet right into the enemy’s port; and the many illustrations from Cervantes, whose irony they share.
Then, again, there are those terse figurative fancies which belong to the family of those first mentioned. The “Midland Sea” for the Mediterranean; the “Western minster” for Westminster Abbey; the “dark sex” for man; the “free-trader in gossip” for the bad listener; the “confused explanations and explained confusions,” “Stateswoman”[172] and “Anecdotage,” which, by-the-by, is a phrase of Isaac Disraeli derived by him in conversation from Rogers[173]—all these and their kindred remind us that he was the son of an author portrayed by him as sauntering on his garden terrace meditating some happy phrase.
Of the second—the wit of sustained sparkle rather than of sudden flashes—there are abundant examples. There is the passage in which “Lady Constance” in Tancred unconsciously ironises evolution in her criticism of a pamphlet, “The Revelations of Chaos.” There is the lady’s reasoning on the Gulf Stream theory, and “Lothair’s” retort, “You believe in Gulf Stream to that extent—no skating.” There is the pious regret that a boring authoress could not be married to the author of “The Letters of Junius” and “have done with it;” and the pious hope that the Whigs would disfranchise every town without a Peel statue. Then, again, there is “Herbert” in Venetia.
“I doubt whether a man at fifty is the same material being that he is at five-and-twenty.”
“I wonder,” said Lord Cadurcis, “if a creditor brought an action against you at fifty for goods sold and delivered at five-and-twenty, one could set up the want of identity as a plea in bar; it would be a consolation to elderly gentlemen.”
And to go back to an even earlier date—
“What a pity, Miss Manvers, that the fashion has gone out of selling one’s self to the devil!... What a capital plan for younger brothers! It is a kind of thing I have been trying to do all my life, and never could succeed in. I began at school with toasted cheese and a pitchfork.”
Or take the report of the debate in the House of Lords, “imposing, particularly if we take a part in it”—
“Lord Exchamberlain thought the nation going on wrong, and he made a speech full of currency and constitution. Baron Deprivyseal seconded him with great effect, brief but bitter, satirical but sore. The Earl of Quarterday answered these, full of confidence in the nation and himself. When the debate was getting heavy, Lord Snap jumped up to give them something light. The Lords do not encourage wit, and so are obliged to put up with pertness. But Viscount Memoir was very statesmanlike, and spouted a sort of universal history. Then there was Lord Ego, who vindicated his character, when nobody knew he had one, and explained his motives, because his auditors could not understand his acts.”
Or the comparison of the defeated Tories to the Saxons converted by Charlemagne—