As oblivion scatters its poppy over the prose fiction of the reigns of
George IV. and William IV., it becomes in creasingly dangerous that
criticism should take the early "fashionable" novels of Disraeli as
solitary representations of literary satire or observation. It is true
that to readers of to-day this class of romance is exclusively
suggestive of _Vivian Grey_ and its fellows, with perhaps the _Pelham_
of Bulwer. But this was not the impression of the original readers of
these novels, who were amused by them, but found nothing revolutionary
in their treatment of society. In the course of _The Young Duke_,
written in 1829, Disraeli suggests an amiable rivalry with the romances
"written by my friends Mr. Ward and Mr. Bulwer." The latter name had
only just risen above the horizon, but that of Plumer Ward, forgotten as
it now is, was one to conjure by. Ward was the author of _Tremaine_
(1825) and _De Vere_ (1827), two novels of the life of a modern English
gentleman, which seems to a reader to-day to be insipid and dull enough.
But they contained "portraits" of public persons, they undertook to hold
the mirror up to the political and fashionable world of London, and they
lashed that fastidiousness which was considered to be the foible of the
age.

The books of Plumer Ward, who was an accomplished personage in advancing
years, were treated with marked distinction in the press, and were
welcomed by critics who deigned to take little notice of even such books
as _Granby_ and _Dacre_. But the stories of the youthful Disraeli
belonged to a class held in still less esteem than those just mentioned.
They had to hold their own as best they might in rivalry with a huge
flight of novels of fashionable life, all of them curiously similar in
general treatment. Above these the romances of Plumer Ward rose in a
sort of recognised dignity, as two peaks around which were crowded
innumerable hillocks. It is necessary to recall readers of to-day, who