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
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