may be admirable in the domain of literature. It is hardly desirable
that the followers of a political leader should be haunted by an
ever-recurring doubt as to whether his philosophical utterances express
deep convictions, or the extemporised combinations of a fertile fancy,
and be uncertain whether he is really putting their clumsy thoughts into
clearer phrases, or foisting showy nonsense upon them for his own
purposes, or simply laughing at them in his sleeve. But, in a purely
literary sense, this ambiguous hovering between two meanings, this
oscillation between the ironical and the serious, is always amusing, and
sometimes delightful. Some simple-minded people are revolted, even in
literature, by the ironical method; and tell the humorist, with an air
of moral disapproval, that they never know whether he is in jest or in
earnest. To such matter-of-fact persons Disraeli's novels must be a
standing offence; for it is his most characteristic peculiarity that
the passage from one phase to the other is imperceptible. He has moments
of obvious seriousness; at frequent intervals comes a flash of downright
sarcasm, as unmistakable in its meaning as the cut of a whip across your
face; and elsewhere we have passages which aim unmistakably, and
sometimes with unmistakable success, at rhetorical excellence. But,
between the two, there is a wide field where we may interpret his
meaning as we please. The philosophical theory may imply a genuine
belief, or may be a mere bit of conventional filling in, or perhaps a
parody of his friends or himself. The gorgeous passages may be
intentionally over-coloured, or may really represent his most sincere
taste. His homage may be genuine or a biting mockery. His extravagances
are kept precisely at such a pitch that it is equally fair to argue that
a satirist must have meant them to be absurd, or to argue only that he
would have seen their absurdity in anybody else. The unfortunate critic
feels himself in a position analogous to that of the suitors in the
'Merchant of Venice.' He may blunder grievously, whatever alternative he
selects. If he pronounces a passage to be pure gold, it may turn out to
be merely the mask of a bitter sneer; or he may declare it to be
ingenious burlesque when put forward in the most serious earnest; or may
ridicule it as overstrained bombast, and find that it was never meant to
be anything else. It is wiser to admit that perhaps the author was not
very clear himself, or possibly enjoyed that ambiguous attitude which
might be interpreted according to the taste of his readers and the
development of events. A man who deals in oracular utterances acquires
instinctively a mode of speech which may shift its colour with every
change of light. The texture of Disraeli's writings is so ingeniously
shot with irony and serious sentiment that each tint may predominate by
turns. It is impossible to suppose that the weaver of so cunning a web
should never have intended the effects which he produces; but
frequently, too, they must be the spontaneous and partly unconscious
results of a peculiar intellectual temperament. Delight in blending the
pathetic with the ludicrous is the characteristic of the true humorist.
Disraeli is not exactly a humorist, but something for which the rough
nomenclature of critics has not yet provided a distinctive name. His
pathos is not sufficiently tender, nor his laughter quite genial enough.
The quality which results is homologous to, though not identical with,
genuine humour: for the smile we must substitute a sneer, and the
element which enters into combination with the satire is something more
distantly allied to poetical unction than to glittering rhetoric. The
Disraelian irony thus compounded is hitherto a unique product of
intellectual chemistry.
Most of Disraeli's novels are intended to set forth what, for want of a
better name, must be called a religious or political creed. To grasp its
precise meaning, or to determine the precise amount of earnestness with
which it is set forth, is of course hopeless. Its essence is to be
mysterious, and half the preacher's delight is in tantalising his
disciples. At moments he cannot quite suppress the amusement with which
he mocks their hopeless bewilderment. When Coningsby is on the point of
entering public life, he reads a speech of one of the initiated,
'denouncing the Venetian constitution, to the amazement of several
thousand persons, apparently not a little terrified by this unknown
danger, now first introduced to their notice.' What more amusing than
suddenly to reveal to good easy citizens that what they took for
wholesome food is deadly poison, and to watch their hopeless incapacity
to understand whether you are really announcing a truth or launching an
epigram!
Disraeli, undoubtedly, has certain fixed beliefs which underlie and
which, indeed, explain the superficial versatility of his teaching.
Amongst the various doctrines with which he plays more or less
seriously, two at least are deeply rooted in his mind. He holds, with a
fervour in every way honourable, a belief in the marvellous endowments
of his race, and connected with this belief is an almost romantic
admiration for every manifestation of intellectual power. Vivian Grey,
in a bit of characteristic bombast, describes himself as 'one who has
worshipped the empire of the intellect;' and his career is simply an
attempt to act out the principle that the world belongs of right to the
cleverest. Of Sidonia, after every superlative in the language has been
lavished upon his marvellous acquirements, we are told that 'the only
human quality that interested him was intellect.' Intellect is equally,
if not quite as exclusively, interesting to the creator of Sidonia. He
admires it in all its forms--in a Jesuit or a leader of the
International, in a charlatan or a statesman, or perhaps even more in
one who combines the two characters; but the most interesting of all
objects to Disraeli, if one may judge from his books, is a precocious
youth, whose delight in the sudden consciousness of great abilities has
not yet been dashed by experience. In some other writers we may learn
the age of the author by the age of his hero. A novelist who adopts the
common practice of painting from himself naturally finds out the merits
of middle age in his later works. But in every one of Disraeli's works,
from 'Vivian Grey' to 'Lothair,' the central figure is a youth, who is
frequently a statesman at school, and astonishes the world before he has
reached his majority. The change in the author's position is, indeed,
equally marked in a different way. The youthful heroes of Disraeli's
early novels are creative; in his later they become chiefly receptive.
Vivian Grey and Contarini Fleming show their genius by insubordination;
Coningsby and Tancred learn wisdom by sitting at the feet of Sidonia;
and Lothair reduces himself so completely to a mere 'passive bucket' to
be pumped into by every variety of teacher, that he is unpleasantly like
a fool. Disraeli still loves ingenuous youth; but he has gained quite a
new perception of the value of docility. Here and there, of course,
there is a gentle gibe at juvenile vanity. 'My opinions are already
formed on every subject,' says Lothair; 'that is, on every subject of
importance; and, what is more, they will never change.' But such vanity
has nothing offensive. The audacity with which a lad of twenty solves
all the problems of the universe, excites in Disraeli genuine and really
generous sympathy. Sidonia converts the sentiment into a theory.
Experience, he says, is less than nothing to a creative mind. 'Almost
everything that is great has been done by youth.' The greatest captains,
the greatest poets, artists, statesmen, and religious reformers of the
world, have done their best work by middle life. All theories upon all
subjects can be proved from history; and the great Sidonia is not to be
pinned down by too literal an interpretation. But at least he is
expressing Disraeli's admiration for intellect which has the fervour,
rapidity, and reckless audacity of youth, which trusts its intuitions
instead of its calculations, and takes its crudest guesses for flashes
of inspiration. The exuberant buoyancy of his youthful heroes gives a
certain contagious charm to Disraeli's pages, which is attractive even
when verging upon extravagance. Our popular novelists have learned to
associate high spirits with muscularity; their youthful heroes are
either athletes destined to put on flesh in later days, or premature
prigs with serious convictions and a tendency to sermons and blue-books.
After a course of such books, Disraeli's genuine love of talent is
refreshing. He dwells fondly upon the effervescence of genius which
drives men to kick over the traces of respectability and strike out
short cuts to fame. If at bottom his heroes are rather eccentric than
original, they have at least a righteous hatred of all bores and
Philistines, and despise orthodoxy, political economy, and sound
information generally. They can provide you with new theories of
politics and history, as easily as Mercutio could pour out a string of
similes; and we have scarcely the heart to ask whether this vivacious
ebullition implies the process of fermentation by which a powerful mind
clears its crude ideas, or only an imitation of the process by which
superlative cleverness apes true genius. Intellect, as it becomes
sobered by middle age and by scholastic training, is no longer so
charming. When its guesses ossify into fixed opinions, and its arrogance
takes the airs of scientific dogmatism, it is always a tiresome and may
be a dangerous quality. Some indication of what Disraeli means by
intellect may be found in the preface to 'Lothair.' Speaking of the
conflict between science and the old religions, he says that it is a
most flagrant fallacy to suppose that modern ages have a monopoly of
scientific discovery. The greatest discoveries are not those of modern
ages. 'No one for a moment can pretend that printing is so great a
discovery as writing, or algebra, or language. What are the most
brilliant of our chemical discoveries compared with the invention of
fire and the metals?' Hipparchus ranks with the Keplers and Newtons; and
Copernicus was but the champion of Pythagoras. To say nothing of the
characteristic assumption that somebody 'discovered' language and fire
in the same sense as modern chemists discovered spectrum analysis, the
argument is substantially that, because Hipparchus was as great a genius
as Newton, the views of the ancients upon religious or historical
questions deserve just as much respect as those of the moderns. In other
words, the accumulated knowledge of ages has taught us nothing. 'What is
conveniently called progress' is merely a polite name for change; and
one clever man's guess is as good as another, whatever the period at
which he lived. This theory is the correlative of Sidonia's assertion,
that experience is useless to the man of genius. The experience of the
race is just as valueless. Modern criticism is nothing but an
intellectual revolt of the Teutonic races against the Semitic
revelation, as the French revolution was a political revolt of the
Celtic races. The disturbance will pass away; and we shall find that
Abraham and Moses knew more about the universe than Hegel or Comte. The
prophets of the sacred race were divinely endowed with an esoteric
knowledge concealed from the vulgar behind mystic symbols and
ceremonies. If the old oracles are dumb, some gleams of the same power
still remain, and in the language of mere mortals are called genius. We
find it in perfection only amongst the Semites, whose finer
organisation, indicated by their musical supremacy, enables them to
catch the still small voice inaudible to our grosser ears. The Aryans,
indeed, have some touches of a cognate power, but it is dulled by a more
sensuous temperament. They can enter the court of the Gentiles; but
their mortal vesture is too muddy for admission into the holy of holies.
If ever they catch a glimpse of the truth, it is in their brilliant
youth, when, still uncorrupted by worldly politics, they can induce some
Sidonia partly to draw aside the veil.
The intellect, then, as Disraeli conceives it, is not the faculty
denounced by theologians, which delights in systematic logical inquiry,
and hopes to attain truth by the unrestricted conflict of innumerable
minds. It is an abnormal power of piercing mysteries granted only to a
few distinguished seers. It does not lead to an earthly science,
expressible in definite formulas, and capable of being taught in Sunday
schools. The knowledge cannot be fully communicated to the profane, and
is at most to be shadowed forth in dim oracular utterances. Disraeli's
instinctive affinity for some kind of mystic teaching is indicated by
Vivian Grey's first request to his father. 'I wish,' he exclaims, 'to
make myself master of the latter Platonists. I want Plotinus and
Porphyry, and Iamblichus, and Syrianus, and Mosanius Tyrius, and
Pericles, and Hierocles, and Sallustius, and Damasenis!' But Vivian
Grey, as we know, wanted also to conquer the Marquis of Carabas; and the
odd combination between a mystic philosopher and a mere political
charlatan displays Disraeli's peculiar irony. Intellect with him is a
double-edged weapon: it is at once the faculty which reads the dark
riddle of the universe, and the faculty which makes use of Tapers and
Tadpoles. Our modern Daniel is also a shrewd electioneering agent.
Cynics, indeed, have learned in these later days to regard mystery as
too often synonymous with nonsense. The difficulty of interpreting
esoteric doctrines to the vulgar generally consists in this--that the
doctrines are mere collections of big words which collapse, instead of
becoming lucid, when put into plain English. The mystagogue is but too
closely allied to the charlatan. He may be straining to utter some
secret too deep for human utterance, or he is looking wise to conceal
absolute vacuity of thought. And at other times he must surely be
laughing at the youthful audacity which fancies that speculation is to
be carried on by a series of sudden inspirations, instead of laborious
accumulation of rigorously-tested reasonings.
The three novels, 'Coningsby,' 'Sybil,' and 'Tancred,' published from
1844 to 1847, form, as their author has told us, a trilogy intended to
set forth his views of political, social, and religious problems. Each
of them exhibits, in one form or other, this peculiar train of thought.
'Coningsby,' if I am not mistaken, is by far the ablest, and probably
owes its pre-eminence to the simple fact that it deals with the topics
in which its author felt the keenest interest. The social speculations
of 'Sybil' savour too much of the politician getting up a telling case;
and the religious speculations of 'Tancred' are pushed to the extreme
verge of the grotesque. But 'Coningsby' wants little but a greater
absence of purpose to be a first-rate novel. If Disraeli had confined
himself to the merely artistic point of view, he might have drawn a
picture of political society worthy of comparison with 'Vanity Fair.'
Lord Monmouth is evidently related to the Marquis of Steyne; and Rigby
is a masterpiece, though perhaps rather too suggestive of a direct study
from nature. Lord Monmouth is the ideal type of the 'Venetian'
aristocracy; and Rigby, like his historical namesake, of the corrupt
wire-pullers who flourished under their shade. The consistent
Epicureanism of the noble, in whom a sense of duty is only represented
by a vague instinct that he ought to preserve his political influence as
part of his personal splendour, and as an insurance against possible
incendiarism, is admirably contrasted by the coarser selfishness of
Rigby, who relieves his patron of all dirty work on consideration of
feathering his own nest, and fancying himself to be a statesman. The
whole background, in short, is painted with inimitable spirit and
fidelity. The one decided failure amongst the subsidiary characters is
Lucian Grey, the professional parasite, who earns his dinners by his
witty buffoonery. Somehow, his fun is terribly dreary on paper; perhaps
because, as a parasite, he is not allowed to indulge in the cutting
irony which animates all Disraeli's best sayings. The simple buffoonery
of exuberant animal spirits is not in Disraeli's line. When he can
neither be bitter nor rhetorical, he is apt to drop into mere mechanical
flatness. But nobody has described more vigorously all the meaner forms
of selfishness, stupidity, and sycophancy engendered under 'that fatal
drollery,' as Tancred describes it, 'called a parliamentary government.'
The pompous dulness which affects philosophical gravity, the appetite
for the mere dry husks and bran of musty constitutional platitude which
takes the airs of political wisdom, the pettifogging cunning which
supposes the gossips of lobbies and smoking-rooms to be the embodiment
of statesmanship, the selfishness which degrades political warfare into
a branch of stock-jobbing, and takes a great principle to be useful in
suggesting electioneering cries, as Telford thought that navigable
rivers were created to feed canals,--these and other tendencies favoured
by party government are hit off to the life. 'The man they called Dizzy'
can despise a miserable creature having the honour to be as heartily as
Carlyle himself, and, if his theories are serious, sometimes took our
blessed Constitution to be a mere shelter for such vermin as the Tapers
and Tadpoles. Two centuries of a parliamentary monarchy and a
parliamentary Church, says Coningsby, have made government detested, and
religion disbelieved. 'Political compromises,' says the omniscient
Sidonia, 'are not to be tolerated except at periods of rude transition.
An educated nation recoils from the imperfect vicariat of what is called
representative government. Your House of Commons, that has absorbed all
other powers in the State, will in all probability fall more rapidly
than it rose.' In short, the press will take its place. This is one of
those impromptu theories of history which are not to be taken too
literally. Indeed, the satirical background is intended to throw into
clearer relief a band of men of genius to whom has been granted some
insight into the great political mystery. Who, then, are the true
antithesis to the Tapers and Tadpoles? Should we compare them with a
Cromwell, who has a creed as well as a political platform; and contrast
'our young Queen and our old institutions' with some new version of the
old war cry, 'The sword of the Lord and of Gideon'? Or may we at least
have a glimpse of a Chatham, wakening the national spirit to sweep aside
the Newcastles and Bubb Dodingtons of the present day? Or, if Cromwells
and Chathams be too old-fashioned, and translate the Semitic principle
into a narrow English Protestantism, may we not have some genuine
revolutionary fanatic, a Cimourdain or a Gauvain, to burn up all this
dry chaff of mouldy politics with the fire of a genuine human passion?
Such a contrast, however effective, would have been a little awkward in
the year 1844. Young England had an ideal standard of its own, and
Disraeli must be the high priest of its peculiar hero-worship. Whether,
in this case, political trammels injured his artistic sense, or whether
his peculiar artistic tendencies injured his political career, is a
question rather for the historian than the critic.
Certain it is, at any rate, that the _cénacle_ of politicians, whose
interests are to be thrown in relief against this mass of grovelling
corruption, forms but a feeble contrast, even in the purely artistic
sense. We have no right to doubt that Disraeli thought that Coningsby
and his friends represented the true solution of the difficulty; yet if
anybody had wished to demonstrate that a genuine belief might sometimes
make a man more contemptible than hypocritical selfishness, he could
scarcely have defended the paradox more ingeniously. 'Unconscious
cerebration' has become a popular explanation of many phenomena; and it
would hardly be fanciful to assume that one lobe of Disraeli's brain is
in the habit of secreting bitter satire unknown to himself, and
cunningly inserting it behind the thin veil of sentiment unconsciously
elaborated by the other. We are prepared, indeed, to accept the new
doctrine, as cleverly as Balzac could have inoculated us with a
provisional belief in animal magnetism, to heighten our interest in a
thrilling story of wonder. We have judicious hints of esoteric political
doctrine, which has been partially understood by great men at various
periods of our history. The whole theory is carefully worked out in the
opening pages of 'Sybil.' The most remarkable thing about our popular
history, so Disraeli tells us, is, that it is 'a complete
mystification;' many of the principal characters never appear, as, for
example, Major Wildman, who was 'the soul of English politics from 1640
to 1688.' It is not surprising, therefore, that two of our three chief
statesmen in later times should be systematically depreciated. The
younger Pitt, indeed, has been extolled, though on wrong grounds. But
Bolingbroke and Shelburne, our two finest political geniuses, are passed
over with contempt by ordinary historians. A historian might amuse
himself by tracing the curious analogy between the most showy
representatives of the old race of statesmen and the modern successor
who delights to sing his praises. The Patriot King is really to some
extent an anticipation of Disraeli's peculiar democratic Toryism. But
the chief merit of Shelburne would seem to be that the qualities which
earned for him the nickname of Malagrida made him convenient as a
hypothetical depository of some esoteric scheme of politics. For the
purposes of fiction, at any rate, we may believe that English politics
are a riddle of which only three men have guessed the true solution
since the 'financial' revolution of 1688. Pitt was only sound so far as
he was the pupil of Shelburne; but Bolingbroke, Shelburne, and Disraeli
possessed the true key, and fully understood, for example, that Charles
I. was the 'holocaust of direct taxation.' But frankly to expound this
theory would be to destroy its charm, and to cast pearls before
political economists. And, therefore, its existence is dimly adumbrated
rather than its meaning revealed; and we have hints that there are
wheels within wheels, and that in the lowest deep of mystery there is a
yet deeper mystery. Coningsby and his associates, the brilliant
Buckhurst and the rich Catholic country gentleman, Eustace Lyle, are but
unripe neophytes, feeling after the true doctrine, but not yet fully
initiated. The superlative Sidonia, the man who by thirty has exhausted
all the sources of human knowledge, become master of the learning of
every nation, of all tongues, dead or living, and of every literature,
western and oriental; who has pursued all the speculations of science to
their last term; who has lived in all orders of society, and observed
man in every phase of civilisation; who has a penetrative intellect
which enables him to follow as by intuition the most profound of all
questions, and a power of communicating with precision the most abstruse
ideas; whose wealth would make Monte Cristo seem a pauper; who is so far
above his race that woman seems to him a toy, and man a machine,--this
thrice miraculous Sidonia, who can yet stoop from his elevation to win a
steeplechase from the Gentiles, or return their hospitality by an
exquisite dinner, is the fitting depository of the precious secret. No
one can ever accuse Disraeli of a want of audacity. He does not, like
weaker men, shrink from introducing men of genius because he is afraid
that he will not be able to make them talk in character; and when, in
'Venetia,' he introduces Byron and Shelley, he is kind enough to write
poetry for them, which produces as great an effect as the original.
And now having a true prophet, having surrounded him with a band of
disciples, so that the transmitted rays of wisdom may be bearable to our
mortal eyes, we expect some result worthy of this startling machinery.
Let the closed casket open, and the magic light stream forth to dazzle
the gazing world. We know, alas! too well that our expectation cannot be
satisfied. There is not any secret doctrine in politics. Bolingbroke may
have been a very clever man, but he could not see through a stone wall.
The whole hypothesis is too extravagant to admit of any downright
prosaic interpretation. But something might surely be done for the
imagination, if not for the reason. Some mystic formula might be
pronounced which might pass sufficiently well for an oracle so long as
we are in the charmed world of fiction. Let Sidonia only repeat some
magniloquent gnome from Greek, or Hebrew, or German philosophers, give
us a scrap of Hegel, or of the Talmud, and we will willingly take it to
be the real thing for imaginative purposes, as we allow ourselves to
believe that some theatrical goblet really contains a fluid of magical
efficacy. Unluckily, however, and the misfortune illustrates the
inconvenience of combining politics with fiction, Disraeli had something
to say, and still more unluckily that something was a mere nothing. It
was the creed of Young England; and even greater imaginative power might
have failed in the effort to instil the most temporary vitality into
that flimsy collection of sham beliefs. A mere sentimentalist might
possibly have introduced it in such a way as to impress us at least with
his own sincerity. But how is such doctrine to be uttered by lips which
are, at the same time, pouring out the shrewdest of sarcasms against
politicians who, if more pachydermatous, were at least more manly? In a
newfangled church, amidst incense and genuflexions and ecclesiastical
millinery, one may listen patiently to a ritualist sermon; but no mortal
skill could make ritualism sound plausible in regions to which the outer
air of common sense is fairly admitted. The only mode of escape is by
slurring over the doctrine, or by proclaiming it with an air of
burlesque. Disraeli keeps most dexterously in the region of the
ambiguous. He does at last produce his political wares with a certain
_aplomb_; but a doubtful smile about his lips encourages some of the
spectators to fancy that he estimates their value pretty accurately. His
last book of 'Coningsby' opens with a Christmas scene worthy of an
illustrated keepsake. We have buttery-hatches, and beef, and ale, and
red cloaks, and a lord of misrule, and a hobby-horse, and a boar's head
with a canticle.
Caput apri defero,
Reddens laudes Domino,