" An Old Spirit of Spring 2!

Disraeli. A Picture of the Victorian Age. By Andre Maurois. (The Bodley Head. 12s. 6d.)

• DISRAELI, who hiniself advised us to read only biographies (" the best form of history "), will always remain a perfect subject for the biographer's art. M. Maurois pictures him vividly and dramatically as intensely alien, intensely southern and 'Oriental, fighting passionately for success in the cold, heavy, bleak, powerful world of Victorian England.

As a writer, M. Maurois has the supreme talent of making us want to read what he writes. He has zest and vitality and seems really to feel the good and evil fortunes which befall his characters. Maybe he regards historical personages in a biography very much as he would the characters of a novel. Disraeli is to him certainly the hero of a long and perfect romance, rather than a builder of the British Empire.

But, at any rate, he is a supremely interesting hero, : stranger, livelier, more human than those of fiction. Disraeli's life, as here portrayed, is bathed in the tears of heroic self- pity. No contemptible emotion this ; not the self-pity of the weakling who has never failed because he has never dared ; but the profounder self-pity of the man who has dared everything, attempted everything ; -who has known enormous failures, ghastly humiliations, inextricably inter- mingled with glorious successes, dazzling triumphs ; of one who, when he comes to the end of his life, finds that, though he has accomplished much indeed, has yet accomplished little that he set out to do ; who became Prime Minister too late to attempt to realize his dreams ; who conquered Victorian society, but who in the process received such mortal wounds that he could scarce enjoy his triumphs. When Disraeli was a very young man and an eccentric dandy, quite unable to enter Parliament, he told the great Melbourne, the Prime Minister of the day, who had taken a fancy to him, that he wanted to be Prime Minister :—

" Melbourne shrugged his shoulders and sighed. No, no,' he said very seriously. ' No chance of that in our -time. It is . all arranged and settled. The next Prime Minister will be Stanley, who is like a young eagle over the heads of all his rivals. No, -.go into politics, you will be right ; you have ability and enterptise, and with patience I dare say you will do very well. But you :must put all these foolish ideas out of your head.' " Many years later when Melbourne was old, broken and dying, he heard that Dizzy had become Leader of the Con- servative Party and of Her Majesty's Opposition. " By God," he said, " the fellow will do it yet ! " But the way- - was not so clear before "Disraeli's eyes. Never an optimist, _he saw the terrible barriers he had to surmount. M. Maurois.

-sums up his position in- that -epoch- in the best epigram in -the book :—

" Although he was leader of the party in the Conunons; he did not feel himself respected. Disraeli was the Mephistopheles to the Conservative party's Faust. Strength and youth shall I give you, but on one condition : that I must ever be by your -side.' Faust put up with Mephisto, but he hardly liked him."

There is always a fascination in seeing an intelligent foreigner's point of view on British histOry. In. our opinion M. Maurois, without attempting a profound analysis, under- stands extremely well the real issues on which Peel, Disraeli,

Gladstone, Bright, and the rest fought out their duels. Take

this passage, for example,: summing up-what Disraeli' had Readers-having anything to sell, or services to offer, are invited to do for the. Conservative: Party. "It_provides incidentally tovinfor!n the many tb,ousands ,,Of_ readers of the SPEcraxoa, by the Most amusing illustration of the growth a le Sport. aaof vett:ell-87 in Small: ZasstfiecliiiadHFertl.sement columns. Details Who; even t senty years ago, would have conceived it possible

that a French author would use a Rugby football simile. in describing the position of a -statesman ?

" Just as in Rugby football a good half-back, still keen in spite of disappointments, will psss---the ball a score of times to slack three-quarters who do not even try to charge, so did Disraeli-divert power into the negligent grasp of Stanley. His great task was the education-of-the Party' ; he had to extricate it from Protec- tion, to raise it from a caste feeling to a national feeling, to teach it to take heed of popular comfort and of the solidity of the Empire. lie put forward a bold programme to take the place of Protection, in the shape Of an Imperial reform of Parliament : to admit the Colonies to a share in the administration of the Empire, to balance with their vote. the- democratic. vote of the towns, and thus to introduce fresh eleniente and put an end to the absurd rivalries of Town versus County, Industry versus Agriculture. Romantic imaginings,' thought the noble lord, and returned to his pleasures."

Admirable, too, is the account of Dizzy's pathetic first taste of office and the formation of the "Who ? Who ? Cabinet "

" The Duke of Wellington had the list of new Ministers read out to him ; but as he was. very old and very deaf, and all the names were now to him, he kept interrupting his informant with a repeated ' Who ? Who ? ' The newspapers seized on the saying, and the Ministry came to 'be- known as the ' Who ? Who ? ' Cabinet. As for the selection of Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer, that was regarded as ridiculous."

Who could have imagined from such a beginning the splendours of the Congress of Berlin ?

There is a delightful account of the two old statesmen, Bistharck and Beaconsfield, when they meet at the Congress :— " This episode gave Prince Bismarck a high opinion of Lord Beaconsfield. Der alto Jude, des ist der Xann,' he used to say. They became very friendly, and took a curious pleasure in talking shop' together and conversing about Princes, Ministers, Parlia- ments. It is so rare to find a fellow-workman when one is Prime Minister. One feels quite naturally in sympathy with him. But Bismarck judged himself the superior,-as being still more detached, still more cynical. Lord Beacon.4fiekl had his weak points ; he had joints in his armour ; as soon as he was assailed by certain romantic associations of ideas, he resisted poorly. 13ismarck observed his vanities, delighted in opposing them, and exploited his failings. Beaconsfield, for his part, divined the distant goal of the Chancellor. They were standing in front of a large map of the world, discussing the question of colonization, to which Bismarck thought it politic to- appear opposed. Beaconsfield's finger strayed over the Balkan provinces. Don't you think,' said he, that there is a fine field for colonization here too ? "

Bismarck looked at him, and made no reply." ' • For the last political incident M. Maurois chooses an interview between Disraeli and Hyndman recorded in the latter's

memoirs. Hyndman went to explain to the old statesman the new strange doctrine of Socialism to which Marx had converted him. Hyndman had read Sybil and knew how near Disraeli had come to anticipating both himself

and his master. Beaconsfield kept him waiting for some time. At length the old man entered :— " with a red fez on his head, which drooped forward over his chest, one eye quite closed, the other only half open. From under the fez projected the gleaming, varnished curve of the last black ringlet. The impression of ruin and fatigue was such that the young man at first despaired."

Lord Beaconsfield,' said Hyndman shyly, Peace with Honour was a dead formula. Peace with Comfort was what the people would have liked to hear.' One eyelid rose. ' Peace with Comfort is not a bad phrase.' Hyndman proceeded to explain his ideas. Utopia to order ? ' the old statesman replies. A fine dream— yes . . . and you- think you have some chance of realizing this policy ? Not with the Conservative Party, I assure you. The moment you wish to act you will find yourself beset by a phalanx of great families, men and especially women, who will put you to rout every time. This England, mark you, Mr. Hyndman, is a very difficult country to move. One can make it do this,' and Lord Beaconsfield's hands, at first pressed one against the other, were separated half an inch, -very painfully, as if, to force them apart, he had had to lift a whole world—' and then this,' and he managed one more half inch, but never this ! ' And the fleshless hands of the mummy, after one last vain effort to open further apart, fell back upon. his :knees."

Thus Disraeli.looked forward sceptically towards the new century. After his death the Conservative Party canonized

him as a saint. " As a saint ? " asks M. Maurois. " No, Disraeli was very far from being a saint. But perhaps as

some old Spirit of Spring, ever vanquished and ever alive, and as a symbol of what can be accomplished, in a cold and hostile universe, by a Idng youthfulness of heart."

JOHN STRACHEY.