In the blaze of the political reputation of the Earl of Beaconsfield we
are too apt to overlook the literary claims of Benjamin Disraeli. But
many of those who have small sympathy with his career as a statesman
find a keen relish in certain of his writings; and it is hardly a
paradox to augur that in a few generations more the former chief of the
new Tory Democracy may have become a tradition, whilst certain of his
social satires may continue to be widely read. Bolingbroke, Swift,
Sheridan, and Macaulay live in English literature, but are little
remembered as politicians; and Burke, the philosopher, grows larger in
power over our thoughts, as Burke, the party orator, becomes less and
less by time. We do not talk of Viscount St. Albans, the learned
Chancellor: we speak only of Bacon, the brilliant writer, the potent
thinker. And so perhaps in the next century, we shall hear less of
Lord Beaconsfield, the Imperial Prime Minister: but Benjamin Disraeli's
pictures of English society and the British Parliament may still amuse
and instruct our descendants.
It is true that the permanent parts of his twenty works may prove to be
small. Pictures, vignettes, sketches, epigrams will survive rather
than elaborate works of art; these gems of wit and fancy will have to
be picked out of a mass of rubbish; and they will be enjoyed for their
vivacious originality and Voltairean pungency, not as masterpieces or
complete creations. That Disraeli wrote much stuff is true enough.
But so did Fielding, so did Swift, and Defoe, and Goldsmith. Writers
are to be judged by their best; and it does not matter so very much if
that best is little in bulk. Disraeli's social and political satires
have a peculiar and rare flavour of their own, charged with an insight
and a vein of wit such as no other man perhaps in this century has
touched--so that, even though they be thrown off in sketches and
sometimes in mere _jeux d'esprit_, they bring him into the company of
Swift, Voltaire, and Montesquieu. He is certainly inferior to all
these mighty satirists both in wit and passion, and also in definite
purpose. But he has touches of their lightning-flash irradiating
contemporary society. And it seems a pity that the famous _Men of
Letters_ series which admits (and rightly admits) Hawthorne and De
Quincey, could find no room for the author of _Ixion in Heaven_, _The
Infernal Marriage_, _Coningsby_, and _Lothair_.
Disraeli's literary reputation has suffered much in England by the
unfortunate circumstance of his having been the leader of a political
party. As the chief of a powerful party which he transformed with
amazing audacity, as the victorious destroyer of the old Whig oligarchy
and the founder of the new Tory democracy, as a man of Jewish birth and
alien race, as a man to whom satire was the normal weapon and bombastic
affectation a deliberate expedient for dazzling the weak--Disraeli,
even in his writings, has been exposed in England to a bitter system of
disparagement which blinds partisans to their real literary merit. His
political opponents, and they are many and savage, can see little to
admire in his strange romances: his political worshippers and
followers, who took him seriously as a great statesman, are not fond of
imagining their hero as an airy satirist. His romances as well as his
satires are wholly unlike anything English; and though he had brilliant
literary powers, he never acquired any serious literary education.
Much as he had read, he had no learning, and no systematic knowledge of
any kind. He was never, strictly speaking, even an accurate master of
literary English. He would slip, as it were, unconsciously, into
foreign idioms and obsolete words. In America, where his name arouses
no political prejudice, he is better judged. To the Englishman, at
least to the pedant, he is still a somewhat elaborate jest.
Let us put aside every bias of political sympathy and anything that we
know or suspect of the nature of the man, and we may find in the
writer, Benjamin Disraeli, certain very rare qualities which justify
his immense popularity in America, and which ought to maintain it in
England. In his preface to _Lothair_ (October 1870), he proudly said
that it had been "more extensively read both by the people of the
United Kingdom and the United States than any work that has appeared
for the last half century." This singular popularity must have a
ground. Disraeli, in truth, belongs to that very small group of real
political satirists of whom Swift is the type. He is not the equal of
the terrible Dean; but it may be doubted if any Englishman since Swift
has had the same power of presenting vivid pictures and decisive
criticisms of the political and social organism of his times. It is
this Aristophanic gift which Swift had. Voltaire, Montesquieu,
Rabelais, Diderot, Heine, Beaumarchais had it. Carlyle had it for
other ages, and in a historic spirit. There have been far greater
satirists, men like Fielding and Thackeray, who have drawn far more
powerful pictures of particular characters, foibles, or social
maladies. But since Swift we have had no Englishman who could give us
a vivid and amusing picture of our political life, as laid bare to the
eye of a consummate political genius.
It must be admitted that, with all the rare qualities of Disraeli's
literary work, he hardly ever took it quite seriously, or except as an
interlude and with some ulterior aim. In his early pieces he simply
sought to startle the town and to show what a wonderfully clever young
fellow had descended upon it. In his later books, such as _Coningsby_,
_Sybil_, and _Tancred_, he wished to propound a new party programme.
_Lothair_ was a picture of British society, partly indulgent and
sympathetic, partly caustic or contemptuous, but presented all through
with a vein of _persiflage_, mockery, and extravaganza. All this was
amusing and original; but every one of these things is fatal to
sustained and serious art. If an active politician seeks to galvanise
a new party by a series of novels, the romances cannot be works of
literary art. If a young man wants only to advertise his own
smartness, he will not produce a beautiful thing. And if a statesman
out of office wishes to amuse himself by alternate banter and laudation
of the very society which he has led and which looks to him as its
inspiration, the result will be infinitely entertaining, but not a
great work of art. Disraeli therefore with literary gifts of a very
high order never used them in the way in which a true artist works, and
only resorted to them as a means of gaining some practical and even
material end.
But, if Disraeli's ambition led him to political and social triumphs,
for which he sacrificed artistic success and literary honours, we ought
not to be blind to the rare qualities which are squandered in his
books. He did not produce immortal romances--he knew nothing of an
ingenious plot, or a striking situation, or a creative character--but
he did give us inimitable political satires and some delicious social
pantomimes; and he presented these with an original wit in which the
French excel, which is very rare indeed in England. Ask not of
Disraeli more than he professes to give you, judge him by his own
standard, and he will still furnish you with delightful reading, with
suggestive and original thoughts. He is usually inclined to make game
of his reader, his subject, and even of himself; but he lets you see
that he never forgets this, and never attempts to conceal it. He is
seldom dull, never sardonic or cruel, and always clean, healthy, and
decent. His heroines are ideal fairy queens, his heroes are all
visionary and chivalrous nincompoops; and even, though we know that
much of it is whimsical banter and nonsensical fancy, there is an air
of refined extravaganza in these books which may continue to give them
a lasting charm.
The short juvenile drolleries of his restless youth are the least
defective as works of art; and, being brief and simple _jeux d'esprit_
of a rare order, they are entirely successful and infinitely amusing.
_Ixion in Heaven_, _The Infernal Marriage_, and _Popanilla_, are
astonishing products of a lad of twenty-three, who knew nothing of
English society, and who had had neither regular education nor social
opportunities. They have been compared with the social satirettes of
Lucian, Swift, and Voltaire. It is true they have not the fine touch
and exquisite polish of the witty Greek of Samosata, nor the subtle
irony of Voltaire and Montesquieu, nor the profound grasp of the Dean.
But they are full of wit, observation, sparkle, and fun. The style is
careless and even incorrect, but it is full of point and life. The
effects are rather stagey, and the smartness somewhat strained--that
is, if these boyish trifles are compared with _Candide_ and the
_Lettres Persanes_. As pictures of English society, court, and manners
in 1827 painted in fantastic apologues, they are most ingenious, and
may be read again and again. The _Infernal Marriage_, in the vein of
the _Dialogues of the Dead_, is the most successful. _Ixion_ is rather
broader, simpler, and much more slight, but is full of boisterous fun.
_Popanilla_, a more elaborate satire in direct imitation of _Gulliver's
Travels_, is neither so vivacious nor so easy as the smaller pieces,
but it is full of wit and insight. Nothing could give a raw Hebrew lad
the sustained imagination and passion of Jonathan Swift; but there are
few other masters of social satire with whom the young genius of
twenty-three can be compared. These three satires, which together do
not fill 200 pages, are read and re-read by busy and learned men after
nearly seventy years have passed. And that is in itself a striking
proof of their originality and force.
It is not fair to one who wrote under the conditions of Benjamin
Disraeli to take any account of his inferior work: we must judge him at
his best. He avowedly wrote many pot-boilers merely for money; he
began to write simply to make the world talk about him, and he hardly
cared what the world might say; and he not seldom wrote rank bombast in
open contempt for his reader, apparently as if he had made a bet to
ascertain how much stuff the British public would swallow. _Vivian
Grey_ is a lump of impudence; _The Young Duke_ is a lump of
affectation; _Alroy_ is ambitious balderdash. They all have passages
and epigrams of curious brilliancy and trenchant observation; they have
wit, fancy, and life scattered up and down their pages. But they are
no longer read, nor do they deserve to be read. _Contarini Fleming_,
_Henrietta Temple_, _Venetia_, are full of sentiment, and occasionally
touch a poetic vein. They had ardent admirers once, even amongst
competent judges. They may still be read, and they have scenes,
descriptions, and detached thoughts of real charm, and almost of true
beauty. They are not, in any sense, works of art; they are ill
constructed, full of the mawkish gush of the Byronic fever, and never
were really sincere and genuine products of heart and brain. They were
show exercises in the Byronic mode. And, though we may still take them
up for an hour for the occasional flashes of genius and wit they
retain, no one believes that they can add much permanent glory to the
name of Benjamin Disraeli.
Apart from the three early burlesques of which we have spoken--trifles
indeed and crude enough, but trifles that sparkle with penetration and
wit--the books on which Disraeli's reputation alone can be founded are
_Coningsby_, _Sybil_, and _Lothair_. These all contain many striking
epigrams, ingenious theories, original suggestions, vivacious
caricatures, and even creative reflections, mixed, it must be admitted,
with not a little transparent nonsense. But they are all so charged
with bright invention, keen criticism, quaint paradox, they are so
entirely unlike anything else in our recent literature, and they
pierce, in a Voltairean way, so deeply to the roots of our social and
political fabric, that they may long continue to be read. In the
various prefaces, and especially in the general preface to _Lothair_
(of October 1870), Disraeli has fully explained the origin and aim of
these and his other works. It is written, as usual, with his tongue in
his cheek, in that vein of semi-bombastic paradox which was designed to
mystify the simple and to amuse the acuter reader. But there is an
inner seriousness in it all; and, as it has a certain correspondence
with his public career and achievements, it must be taken as
substantially true. _Coningsby_ (1844) and _Sybil_ (1845) were written
in the vigour of manhood and the early days of his political ambition,
with an avowed purpose of founding a new party in Parliament. It must
be admitted that they did to some extent effect their purpose--not
immediately or directly, and only as part of their author's schemes.
But the Primrose League and the New Tory Democracy of our day bear
witness to the vitality of the movement which, fifty years ago,
Disraeli propounded to a puzzled world. _Lothair_ (1870) came
twenty-five years later--when he had outlived his illusions; and in
more artistic and more mellow tones he painted the weaknesses of a
society that he had failed to inspire, but which it gratified his pride
to command.
"_Coningsby_, _Sybil_, and _Tancred_," says he, in his grandiose way,
"form a real Trilogy." "The derivation and character of political
parties,"--he goes on to explain--"was the subject of _Coningsby_."
"The condition of the people which had been the consequence of
them"--was the subject of _Sybil_. "The duties of the Church as a main
remedial agency" and "the race who had been the founders of
Christianity" [although, surely, friend Benjamin, if we are to believe
the Gospels, the murderers and persecutors of Christ and His
Apostles]--were the subjects of _Tancred_ (1847). _Tancred_, though it
has some highly amusing scenes, may be dismissed at once. Disraeli
fought for the Chosen Race, their endowments and achievements, with
wonderful courage and ingenuity. It was perhaps the cause which he had
most deeply at heart, from its intimate relation to his own superb
ambition and pride. But it has made no real way, nor has it made any
converts, unless we count _Daniel Deronda_ as amongst them.
Thackeray's "Codlingsby" has almost extinguished "Sidonia." And the
strange phantasmagoria of the Anglican Church, revivified by the
traditions of Judaism, and ascending to the throne of St. Peter, is
perhaps the most stupendous joke which even Disraeli had ever dared to
perpetrate. In the preface to _Lothair_ we read:--
The tradition of the Anglican Church was powerful. Resting on the
Church of Jerusalem, modified by the divine school of Galilee, it would
have found that rock of truth which Providence, by the instrumentality
of the Semitic race, had promised to St. Peter.
Whatever this jargon may mean, the public has allowed it to fall flat.
It seems to suggest that the Archbishop of Canterbury, by resuming the
tradition of Caiaphas, as "modified" by the Sermon on the Mount, might
oust the Pope of Rome as was foretold by the Divine young Jewish
reformer when he called the fishermen of Galilee. It is difficult to
believe that Disraeli himself was serious in all this. In the last
scene, as Tancred is proposing to the lovely Jewess, their privacy is
disturbed by a crowd of retainers around the papa and mamma of the
young heir. The last lines of _Tancred_ are these:--"The Duke and
Duchess of Bellamont had arrived at Jerusalem." This is hardly the way
in which to preach a New Gospel to a sceptical and pampered generation.
But, if the regeneration of the Church of England by a re-Judaising
process and by return to the Targum of the Pharisees has proved
abortive, it must be admitted that, from the political point of view,
the conception announced in the "trilogy," and rhapsodically
illustrated in _Tancred_--the conception of the Anglican Church
reviving its political ascendancy and developing "the most efficient
means of the renovation of the national spirit"--has not proved quite
abortive. It shows astonishing prescience to have seen fifty years ago
that the Church of England might yet become a considerable political
power, and could be converted, by a revival of Mediaeval traditions,
into a potent instrument of the New Tory Democracy. Whatever we may
think about the strengthening of the Established Church from the point
of view of intellectual solidity or influence with the nation, it can
hardly be doubted that in the fifty years that have passed since the
date of the "trilogy," the Church as a body has rallied to one party in
the State, and has proved a potent ally of militant Imperialism and
Tory Democracy. Lord Beaconsfield lived to witness that great
transformation in the Church of the High and Dry Pluralists and the
Simeonite parsons, which he had himself so powerfully organised in
Parliament, in society, and on the platform. His successor to-day can
count on no ally so sure and loyal as the Church. But it was a
wonderful inspiration for a young man fifty years ago to perceive that
this could be done--and to see the way in which it might be done.
_Coningsby_ and _Sybil_ at any rate were active forces in the formation
of a definite political programme. And this was a programme which in
Parliament and in the country their author himself had created,
organised, and led to victory. It cannot be denied that they largely
contributed to this result. And thus these books have this very
remarkable and almost unique character. It would be very difficult to
mention anything like a romance in any age or country which had ever
effected a direct political result or created a new party. _Don
Quixote_ is said to have annihilated chivalry; _Tartuffe_ dealt a blow
at the pretensions of the Church; and the _Marriage of Figaro_ at those
of the old _noblesse_. It is possible that _Bleak House_ gave some
impulse to law reform, and _Vanity Fair_ has relieved us of a good deal
of snobbery. But no novel before or since ever created a political
party and provided them with a new programme. _Coningsby_ and _Sybil_
really did this; and it may be doubted if it could have been done in
any other way. "Imagination, in the government of nations" (we are
told in the preface to _Lothair_) "is a quality not less important than
reason." Its author trusts much "to a popular sentiment which rested
on a heroic tradition and which was sustained by the high spirit of a
free aristocracy."
Now this is a kind of party programme which it was almost impossible to
propound on the platform or in Parliament. These imaginative and
somewhat Utopian schemes of "changing back the oligarchy into a
generous aristocracy round a real throne," of "infusing life and
vigour into the Church as the trainer of the nation," of recalling
the popular sympathies "to the principles of loyalty and religious
reverence"--these were exactly the kind of new ideas which it would be
difficult to expound in the House of Commons or in a towns-meeting. In
the preface to _Coningsby_ the author tells us that, after reflection,
the form of fiction seemed to be the best method of influencing
opinion. These books then present us with the unique example of an
ambitious statesman resorting to romance as his means of reorganising a
political party.
There is another side to this feature which is also unique and
curiously full of interest. These romances are the only instances in
which any statesman of the first rank, who for years was the ruling
spirit of a great empire, has thrown his political conceptions and
schemes into an imaginative form. And these books, from _Vivian Grey_
(1825) to _Endymion_ (1880), extend over fifty-five years; some being
published before his political career seemed able to begin, some in the
midst of it, and the later books after it was ended. In the
grandiloquent style of the autobiographical prefaces, we may say that
they recall to us the _Meditations_ of Marcus Aurelius, the _Political
Testament_ of Richelieu, and the _Conversations_ of Napoleon at St.
Helena.
In judging these remarkable works, we ought to remember that they are
not primarily romances at all, that they do not compete with genuine
romances, and they ought to be read for the qualities they have, not
for those in which they fail. They are in part autobiographical
sketches, meditations on society, historical disquisitions, and
political manifestoes. They are the productions of a statesman aiming
at a practical effect, not of a man of letters creating a work of
imaginative art. The creative form is quite subsidiary and
subordinate. It would be unreasonable to expect in them elaborate
drawing of character, complex plot, or subtle types of contemporary
life. Their aim is to paint the actual political world, to trace its
origin, and to idealise its possible development. And this is done,
not by an outside man of letters, but by the very man who had conquered
a front place in this political world, and who had more or less
realised his ideal development. They are almost the only pictures of
the inner parliamentary life we have; and they are painted by an artist
who was first and foremost a great parliamentary power, of consummate
experience and insight. If the artistic skill were altogether absent,
we should not read them at all, as nobody reads Lord Russell's dramas
or the poems of Frederick the Great. But the art, though unequal and
faulty, is full of vigour, originality, and suggestion. Taken as a
whole, they are quite unique.
_Coningsby; or, the New Generation_, was the earliest and in some ways
the best of the trilogy. It is still highly diverting as a novel, and,
as we see to-day, was charged with potent ideas and searching
criticism. It was far more real and effective as a romance than
anything Disraeli had previously written. There are scenes and
characters in the story which will live in English literature.
Thackeray could hardly have created more living portraits than "Rigby,"
"Tadpole," and "Taper," or "Lord Monmouth." These are characters which
are household words with us like "Lord Steyne" and "Rawdon Crawley."
The social pictures are as realistic as those of Trollope, and now and
then as bright as those of Thackeray. The love-making is tender,
pretty, and not nearly so mawkish as that of "Henrietta Temple" and
"Venetia." There is plenty of wit, epigram, squib, and _bon mot_.
There is almost none of that rhodomontade which pervades the other
romances, except as to "Sidonia" and the supremacy of the Hebrew
race--a topic on which Benjamin himself was hardly sane. _Coningsby_,
as a novel, is sacrificed to its being a party manifesto and a
political programme first and foremost. But as a novel it is good. It
is the only book of Disraeli's in which we hardly ever suspect that he
is merely trying to fool us. It is not so gay and fantastic as
_Lothair_. But, being far more real and serious, it is perhaps the
best of Disraeli's novels.
As a political manifesto, Coningsby has been an astonishing success.
The grand idea of Disraeli's life was to struggle against what he
called the "Venetian Constitution," imposed and maintained by the "Whig
Oligarchy." As Radical, as Tory, as novelist, as statesman, his ruling
idea was "to dish the Whigs," in Lord Derby's historic phrase. And he
did "dish the Whigs." The old Whigs have disappeared from English
politics. They have either amalgamated with the Tories, become
Unionist Conservatives, henchmen of Lord Salisbury, or else have become
Gladstonians and Radicals. The so-called Whigs of 1895, if any
politicians so call themselves, are far more Tory than the Whigs of
1844, and the Tories of 1895 are far more democratic than the Whigs of
1844. This complete transformation is very largely due to Disraeli
himself.
Strictly speaking, Disraeli has eliminated from our political arena
both "Whig" and "Tory," as understood in the old language of our party
history. And the first sketch of the new policy was flung upon an
astonished public in _Coningsby_, just fifty years ago. No doubt, the
arduous task of educating the Conservative Party into the new faith of
Tory Democracy was not effected by _Coningsby_ alone. But it may be
doubted if Mr. Disraeli would have accomplished it by his speeches
without his writings. As a sketch of the inner life of the
parliamentary system of fifty years ago, _Coningsby_ is perfect and has
never been approached. Both Thackeray and Trollope have painted
Parliament and public life so far as it could be seen from a London
club. But Disraeli has painted it as it was known to a man who threw
his whole life into it, and who was himself a consummate parliamentary
leader.
_Sybil; or, the Two Nations_, the second of the trilogy (1845), was
devoted, he tells us, "to the condition of the people," that dismal
result of the "Venetian Constitution" and of the "Whig Oligarchy" which
he had denounced in _Coningsby_. _Sybil_ was perhaps the most
genuinely serious of all Disraeli's romances; and in many ways it was
the most powerful. Disraeli himself was a man of sympathetic and
imaginative nature who really felt for the suffering and oppressed. He
was tender-hearted as a man, however sardonic as a politician. He had
seen and felt the condition of the people in 1844. It was a time of
cruel suffering which also stirred the spirits of Carlyle, Mill,
Cobden, and Bright. It led to the new Radicalism of which Mr.
Gladstone and Mr. John Morley are eminent types. But the genius of
Disraeli saw that it might also become the foundation of a new Toryism;
and _Sybil_ was the first public manifesto of the new departure. The
political history of the last fifty years is evidence of his insight
that, to recover their political ascendancy, a Conservative Party must
take in hand "the condition of the people," under the leadership of "a
generous aristocracy," and in alliance with a renovated Church. These
are the ideas of _Sybil_, though in the novel they are adumbrated in a
dim and fantastic way. As a romance, _Sybil_ is certainly inferior to
_Coningsby_. As a political manifesto, it has had an almost greater
success, and the movement that it launched is far from exhausted even
yet. One of Disraeli's comrades in the new programme of 1844-5 was a
member of the last Conservative cabinet. And when we consider all the
phases of Tory Democracy, Socialistic Toryism, and the current type of
Christian Socialism, we may come to regard the ideas propounded in
_Sybil_ as not quite so visionary as they appeared to the Whigs,
Radicals, Free Traders, and Benthamites of fifty years ago.
In _Lothair_, which did not appear until twenty-five years after
_Sybil_, we find an altered and more mellow tone, as of a man who was
playing with his own puppets, and had no longer any startling theories
to propound or political objects to win. For this reason it is in some
ways the most complete and artistic of Disraeli's romances. The plot
is not suspended by historical disquisitions on the origin of the Whig
oligarchy, by pictures of the House of Commons that must weary those
who know nothing about it, and by enthusiastic appeals to the younger
aristocracy to rouse itself and take in hand the condition of the
people. In 1870, Mr. Disraeli had little hope of realising his earlier
visions, and he did not write _Lothair_ to preach a political creed.
The tale is that he avowed three motives, the first to occupy his mind
on his fall from power, the second to make a large sum which he much
needed, and the third to paint the manners of the highest order of rank
and wealth, of which he alone amongst novelists had intimate knowledge.
That is exactly what we see in _Lothair_. It is airy, fantastic, pure,
graceful, and extravagant. The whole thing goes to bright music, like
a comic opera of Gilbert and Sullivan. There is life and movement; but
it is a scenic and burlesque life. There is wit, criticism, and
caricature;, but it does not cut deep, and it is neither hot nor
fierce. There is some pleasant tom-foolery; but at a comic opera we
enjoy this graceful nonsense. We see in every page the trace of a
powerful mind; but it is a mind laughing at its own creatures, at
itself, at us. _Lothair_ would be a work of art, if it were explicitly
presented as a burlesque, such as was _The Infernal Marriage_, or if we
did not know that it was written to pass the time by one who had ruled
this great empire for years, and who within a few years more was
destined to rule it again. It was a fanciful and almost sympathetic
satire on the selfish fatuity of the noble, wealthy, and governing
orders of British society. But then the author of this burlesque was
himself about to ask these orders to admit him to their select ranks,
and to enthrone him as their acknowledged chief.
As the rancour of party feeling that has gathered round the personality
of Beaconsfield subsides, and as time brings new proofs of the sagacity
of the judgments with which Benjamin Disraeli analysed the political
traditions of British society, we may look for a fresh growth of the
popularity of the trilogy and _Lothair_. England will one day be as
just, as America has always been, to one of our wittiest writers. He
will one day be formally admitted into the ranks of the Men of Letters.
He has hitherto been kept outside, in a sense, partly by his being a
prominent statesman and party chief, partly by his incurable tone of
mind with its Semitic and non-English ways, partly by his strange
incapacity to acquire the _nuances_ of pure literary English. No
English writer of such literary genius slips so often into vulgarisms,
solecisms, archaisms, and mere slip-shod gossip. But these are after
all quite minor defects. His books, even his worst books, abound in
epigrams, pictures, characters, and scenes of rare wit. His painting
of parliamentary life in England has neither equal nor rival. And his
reflections on English society and politics reveal the insight of vast
experience and profound genius.
V