house in Isaac D'Israeli's letters to John Murray the Second. His
experiences are held up for his son's guidance, as for example, when
Isaac, urging the young publisher to support some petition to the East
India Company, writes, "It was a ground your father trod, and I suppose
that connection cannot do you any harm"; or again, when dissuading him
from undertaking some work submitted to him, "You can mention to Mr.
Harley the fate of Professor Musaeus' 'Popular Tales,' which never sold,
and how much your father was disappointed." On another occasion we find
D'Israeli, in 1809, inviting his publisher to pay a visit to a yet older
generation, "to my father, who will be very glad to see you at Margate."

Besides the "Curiosities of Literature," and "Flim-Flams," the last a
volume not mentioned by Lord Beaconsfield in the "Life" of his father
prefixed to the 1865 edition of the "Curiosities of Literature," Mr.
D'Israeli published through Murray, in 1803, a small volume of
"Narrative Poems" in 4to. They consisted of "An Ode to his Favourite
Critic"; "The Carder and the Currier, a Story of Amorous Florence";
"Cominge, a Story of La Trappe"; and "A Tale addressed to a Sybarite."
The verses in these poems run smoothly, but they contain no wit, no
poetry, nor even any story. They were never reprinted.

The following letter is of especial interest, as fixing the date of an
event which has given rise to much discussion--the birth of Benjamin
Disraeli.

_Mr. Isaac D'Israeli to John Murray_.

_December_ 22, 1804. [Footnote: Mr. D'Israeli was living at this time in
King's Road (now 1, John Street), Bedford Row, in a corner house
overlooking Gray's Inn Gardens.]