30 VIEWS AND REVIEWS as he was naturally irreverent and contemptuous, it follows that he is best and strongest in the act of punishment not of reward. His passion for youth was beautiful, but it did not make him strong. His scorn for things contemptible, his hate for things hateful, are at times too bitter even for those who think with him; but in these lay his force they filled his brain with light, and they touched his lips with fire. The wretched Rigby is far more vigorous and life-like than the amiable Coningsby; Tom Cogit-a sketch, but a sketch of geniusis infinitely more interesting than May Dacre or even the young Duke; Tancred is a good fellow, and very real and true in his goodness, but contrast him with Fakredeen! And after his knaves, his fools, his tricksters, the most striking figures in his gallery are those whom he has considered. from a purely intellectual point of view: either kindly, as Sidonia, or coolly, as Lord Monmouth, but always calmly and with no point of passion in his regard: the Eskdales, Villebecques, Ormsbys, Bessos, Marneys, Meltons, and Mirabels, the Bohuns and St. Aldegondes and Grandisons, the Tadpoles and the Tapers, the dominant and the sub altern humanity of the world. All these are drawn with peculiar boldness of line, precision of touch, and clearness of intention. And as with his men so is it with his women the finest are not those he likes best but those who interested him most. Male and female, his eccentrics surpass his commonplaces. He had a great regard for girls, and his attitude towards them, or such of them as he elected heroines, was mostly one of adoration-magnificent, yet a little awkward and strained. With women, married women, he had vastly more in common: he could admire, study, divine, without having to feign a warmer feeling; and while his girls are poor albeit splendid young persons, his matrons are usually delightful. Edith Millbank is not a very striking figure in Coningsby; but her appearance in Tancred-well, you have only to compare it to the resurrection of Laura Bell, as Mrs. Pendennis to see how good it is. NOW OW and then the writing is bad, and His Style. the thought is stale. Disraeli had many mannerisms, innate and acquired. His English was frequently loose and in expressive; he was apt to trip in his grammar, to stumble over and which,' and to be careless about the connection between his nominatives and his verbs. Again, he could scarce ever refrain from the use of gorgeous commonplaces of sentiment and diction. His taste was sometimes ornately and barbarically conventional; he wrote as an orator, and his phrases often read as if he had used them for the sake of their associations rather than themselves. His works are a casket of such stage jewels of expression as 'Palladian structure,' 'Tusculan repose,' 'Gothic pile,' ' pellucid brow, 'mossy cell,' and 'dew-bespangled meads.' delighted in 'hyacinthine curls' and 'lustrous locks,' in 'smiling parterres' and He stately terraces.' He seldom sat down in print to anything less than a 'banquet'; he was capable of invoking 'the iris pencil of Hope'; he could not think or speak of the beauties of woman except as 'charms.' Which seems to show that to be born in a library,' and have Voltaire-that impeccable master of the phrase-for your chief of early heroes and exemplars is not everything. IT T is admitted, I believe, that he had many of the qualities of a great public speaker that he had an admirable voice and an excellent method; that his sequences were logical and natural, his arguments vigorous and persuasive; that he was an artist in style, and in the course of a single speech could be eloquent and vivacious, ornate and familiar, passionate and cynical, deliberately rhetorical and magnificently fantastic in turn; that he was a master of all oratorical modes of irony and argument, of stately declamation and brilliant and unexpected antithesis, of caricature and statement and rejoinder alike; that he could explain, denounce, retort, retract, advance, defy, dispute, with equal readiness and equal skill; that he was unrivalled in attack and unsurpassed in defence; and that in heated debate and on occasions when he felt himself justified in putting forth all his powers and in striking in with the full weight of his imperious and unique personality he was the most dangerous antagonist of his time. And yet, in spite of his mysterious and commanding influence over his followers-in spite, too, of the fact His Oratory. 34 VIEWS AND REVIEWS that he died assuredly the most romantic and perhaps the most popular figure of his time it is admitted withal that he was lacking in a certain quality of temperament, that attribute great orators possess in common with great actors: the power, that is, of imposing oneself upon an audience not by argument nor by eloquence, not by the perfect utterance of beautiful and commanding speech nor by the enunciation of eternal principles or sympathetic and stirring appeals, but by an effect of personal magnetism, by the expression through voice and gesture and presence of an individuality, a temperament, call it what you will, that may be and is often utterly commonplace but is always inevitably irresistible. He could slaughter an opponent, or butcher a measure, or crumple up a theory with unrivalled adroitness and despatch; but he could not dominate a crowd to the extent of persuading it to feel with his heart, think with his brain, and accept his utterances as the expression not only of their common reason but of their collective sentiment as well. He was as incapable of such a feat as Mr. Gladstone's Midlothian campaign as Mr. Gladstone is of producing the gaming scene |