reading _Zadig_ and _Candide_ was the completion of the style of
Disraeli; that "strange mixture of brilliant fantasy and poignant truth"
which he rightly perceived to be the essence of the philosophic _contes_
of Voltaire, finished his own intellectual education. Henceforth he does
not allow his seriousness to overweigh his liveliness; if he detects a
tendency to bombast, he relieves it with a brilliant jest. Count de
Moltke and the lampoons offer us a case to our hand; "he was just the
old fool who would make a cream cheese," says Contarini, and the
startled laugh which greets him is exactly of the same order as those
which were wont to reward the statesman's amazing utterances in
Parliament.

In spite of a certain undeniable insipidity, the volumes of _Contarini
Fleming_ cannot but be read with pleasure. The mixture of Byron and
Voltaire is surprising, but it produces some agreeable effects. There is
a dash of Shelley in it, too, for the life on the isle of Paradise with
Alcesté Contarini is plainly borrowed from _Epiphsychidion_. Disraeli
does not even disdain a touch of "Monk" Lewis without his
voluptuousness, and of Mrs. Radcliffe without her horrors, for he is
bent on serving up an olio entirely in the taste of the day. But through
it all he is conspicuously himself, and the dedication to beauty and the
extraordinary intellectual exultation of such a book as _Contarini
Fleming_ are borrowed from no exotic source.

It is impossible to overlook the fascination which Venice exercises
over Disraeli in these early novels. Contarini's great ambition was to
indite "a tale which should embrace Venice and Greece." Byron's _Life
and Letters_ and the completion of Rogers' _Italy_ with Turner's
paradisaical designs had recently awakened to its full the romantic
interest which long had been gathering around "the sun-girt city."