“D’Israeli he described as an affected coxcomb, with a restless desire
to appear witty; yet he never remembered him to have said a good thing
in his life except one, and that was generally repeated with the
preface, ‘D’Israeli has said a good thing at last.’”
That D’Israeli is not a “bon-mot” man, is doubtless true. It never
struck us that he manifested a “desire to appear witty.” He is very
silent in the general _melee_ of conversation, but we have never yet
seen him leave a room before he had made an impression by some burst in
the way of _monologue_—either an eloquent description or a dashing new
absurdity, an anecdote or a criticism. He sits indolently with his head
on his breast, taking sight through his eyebrows till he finds his cue
to break in, and as far as our observation goes, nobody was ever willing
to interrupt him. The doctor calls him an “affected coxcomb,” but it is
only of his dress that this is any way true. No school-boy is more frank
in his manners. When we were first in London, he was the immortal tenant
of one room and a recess, and with manners indolently pensive. Three
years after, returning to England, we found him master of a lordly
establishment on Hyde Park, and, except that he looked of a less lively
melancholy, his manners were as untroubled with affectation as before.