a poet who is also a great mover and master of men--this is what is
manifest to us throughout _Contarini Fleming_. It is almost pathetically
manifest, because Disraeli--whatever else he grew to be--never became a
poet. And here, too, his wonderful clairvoyance, and his command over
the vagaries of his own imagination, come into play, for he never
persuades himself, with all his dithyrambics, that Contarini is quite a
poet.

A new influence is felt upon his style, and it is a highly beneficial
one. Up to this date, Disraeli had kept Byron before him, and in his
serious moments he had endeavoured to accomplish in prose what the
mysterious and melancholy poet of the preceding generation had done in
verse. The general effect of this Byronism, in spite of a certain
buoyancy which carried the reader onwards, had been apt to be wearisome,
in consequence of the monotony of effort. The fancy of the author had
been too uniformly grandiose, and in the attempt to brighten it up he
had sometimes passed over into positive failure. The most unyielding
admirers of his early novels can hardly contradict a reader who
complains that he finds the adventures of the bandits at Jonstorna
insupportable and the _naïveté_ of Christiana mawkish. There are pages
in _Alroy_ that read as if they were written for a wager, to see how
much balderdash the public will endure. Disraeli seems to have been
conscious of this weakness, and he tried to relieve the pompous gravity
of his passionate scenes by episodes of irony and satire. From his
earliest days these were apt to be very happy; they were inspired,
especially in the squibs, by Lucian and Swift.

But in _Contarini Fleming_ we detect a new flavour, and it is a very
fortunate one. The bitterness of Swift was never quite in harmony with
the genius of Disraeli, but the irony of Voltaire was. The effect of