[41] The title of “Beaconsfield,” long before foreshadowed in Vivian Grey, was adopted in homage to the abode of Burke.
[42] This phrase was used by Disraeli in a speech of the ’fifties. Its origin, though not its phrasing, is to be found in Bolingbroke.
[43] His conviction, however, that our Lord came to fulfil, not to abolish, was directly derived from his father’s “Genius of Judaism.”
[44] I am informed, through the kindness of my friend Mr. George Russell, that the original of “Theodora” was one Madame Mario, née Jessie White.
[45] “Shelley and Lord Beaconsfield.” Blackwood, 1881. For private circulation. Only twenty-five copies printed.
[46] Canning’s ideas on variety of representation influenced Disraeli.
[47] It must be remembered that in 1833 the Radicals were a very small band, and differed vastly from their successors of the Manchester School. They were thoroughly discontented with the middle-class legislation of the Reform Bill, and they were violently opposed to the Whig pretensions to popular emancipation. Disraeli shared these feelings.
[48] It should be remembered that in the brilliant characterisation of Bolingbroke in Disraeli’s Letter to Lord Lyndhurst, he says, “that despite the Whig affectation of popular sympathies, and the Tory admiration of arbitrary power, Bolingbroke penetrated appearances, and perceived that the choice really lay ‘between oligarchy and democracy.’”
[49] A sentence from his appeal to Mr. Gladstone in 1859.
[50] The Press, June 11, 1853. The whole series is full of great strokes; and there is also a critique on the dividing periods of English history, which is most bold and original.