[1] Froude's _Carlyle_, i. 192.




IV

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

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