Born, at Enfield, May 1766. Educated at a school near Enfield. At Amsterdam, 1780–82. Contrib. to “Gentleman’s Magazine,” Dec. 1786 and July 1789; to “St. James’s Chronicle,” Nov. 1787. In France, 1787–89. In Devonshire, owing to ill-health, 1795–98. Married Maria Basevi, 10 Feb. 1802. Elected Warden of London Synagogue of Spanish and Portuguese Jews, 3 Oct. 1813, but declined the office. Active literary life. Removed from London to Bradenham House, Bucks, 1829. Hon. D.C.L., Oxford, 4 July 1832. Became blind, 1839. Died, at Bradenham, 19 Jan. 1848. Buried there. Works: “A Defence of Poetry,” 1790; “Narrative Poems,” 1803; “Curiosities of Literature” (anon.), vol. i., 1791; vol. ii., 1793; vol. iii., 1817; vols. iv. and v., 1823; vol. vi., 1834 (various edns. of whole, 1793–1841); 2nd series 1823; “A Dissertation on Anecdotes” (anon.), 1793; “Domestic Anecdotes of the French Nation” (anon.), 1797; “Essay on the Manners and Genius of the Literary Character,” 1795 (enlarged edn. under title of “The Literary Character,” anon. 1818); “Miscellanies,” 1796; “Vaurien” (anon.), 1797; “Flim-Flams” (anon.), 1797; “Mejnoun and Leila,” 1797; “Romances,” 1799; “Despotism” (anon.), 1811; “Calamities of Authors” (anon.), 1812–13; “Quarrels of Authors” (anon.), 1814; “Inquiry into the Literary and Political Character of James I.,” 1816; “Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles I.,” 1828–31; “Eliot, Hampden, and Pym” (anon.), 1832; “The Genius of Judaism” (anon.), 1833; “The Illustrator Illustrated” (anon.), 1838; “Amenities of Literature,” 1840. Collected Works: ed. by Benjamin Disraeli, 1858–59. Life: by Benjamin Disraeli, in 1849 edn. of “Curiosities of Literature.”

Personal

  An old gentleman, strictly, in his appearance; a countenance which at first glance (owing, perhaps to the mouth, which hangs) I fancied slightly chargeable with stolidity of expression, but which developed strong sense as it talked; a rather soigné style of dress for so old a man, and a manner good-humoured, complimentary (to Gebir), discursive and prosy, bespeaking that engrossment and interest in his own pursuits which might be expected to be found in a person so patient in research and collection. But there is a tone of the philosophe (or I fancied it), which I did not quite like; and that tone (addressing the instinct rather than the judgment) which is felt or imagined to bespeak (how shall it be?) absence of high principle. No one can be more hardy in his negation than Mr. Fonblanque; in no one a sneer be more triumphantly incarnate—and it is sometimes very withering and painful; but he gives you the impression of considering destruction and denial to be his mission; whereas there is an easy optimism and expediency associated with my idea of Mr. Disraeli, which, while it makes his opinions less salient, increases their offence.

  A pale, pensive child, with large dark brown eyes, and flowing hair, such as may be beheld in one of the portraits annexed to these volumes, had grown up beneath this roof of worldly energy and enjoyment, indicating even in his infancy, by the whole carriage of his life, that he was of a different order from those among whom he lived. Timid, susceptible, lost in reverie, fond of solitude, or seeking no better company than a book, the years had stolen on, till he had arrived at that mournful period of boyhood when eccentricities excite attention and command no sympathy. In the chapter on Pre-disposition, in the most delightful of his works, my father has drawn from his own, though his unacknowledged feelings, immortal truths. Then commenced the age of domestic criticism. His mother, not incapable, of deep affections, but so mortified by her social position, that she lived until eighty without indulging in a tender expression, did not recognize in her only offspring a being qualified to control or vanquish his impending fate. His existence only served to swell the aggregate of many humiliating particulars. It was not to her a source of joy, or sympathy, or solace. She foresaw for her child only a future of degradation. Having a strong clear mind, without any imagination, she believed that she beheld an inevitable doom…. With a home that ought to have been happy, surrounded with more than comfort, with the most good-natured father in the world, and an agreeable man, and with a mother whose strong intellect, under ordinary circumstances, might have been of great importance to him, my father, though himself of a very sweet disposition, was most unhappy. His parents looked upon him as moonstruck, while he himself, whatever his aspirations, was conscious that he had done nothing to justify the eccentricity of his course, or the violation of all prudential considerations in which he daily indulged…. He was himself a complete literary character, a man who really passed his life in his library. Even marriage produced no change in these habits; he rose to enter the chamber where he lived alone with his books, and at night his lamp was ever lit within the same walls. Nothing, indeed, was more remarkable than the isolation of this prolonged existence; and it could only be accounted for by the united influence of three causes: his birth, which brought him no relations or family acquaintances, the bent of his disposition, and the circumstance of his inheriting an independent fortune, which rendered unnecessary those exertions, that would have broken up his self-reliance. He disliked business, and he never required relaxation; he was absorbed in his pursuits…. He had not a single passion or prejudice.

  The late Mr. D’Israeli was one of the few men who lived exclusively for literature. Early placed in a position of independence, which rendered it unnecessary for him to adopt the commercial pursuits of his father, he indulged his taste, or rather his passion, for curious research, and never was satisfied in the investigation of any question until he had examined the original authorities. His writings and example have diffused a taste for historical inquiry and criticism, which has become, to a great extent, the prevalent characteristic of our age. In 1841 he was stricken with blindness, and though he submitted to an operation, his sight was not restored. He, the great American writer, Prescott, and Thierry, the author of the “History of the Conquest of England by the Normans,” (who has published several considerable works since his blindness), are probably the only historical authors who have continued their labours in spite of so terrible a calamity. Aided by his daughter, he produced the “Amenities of Literature,” and completed the revision of his great work on the Reign of Charles I., which, on its first publication, had procured for him the degree of D.C.L. from the University of Oxford. A cultivated and powerful memory enabled him, in the later years of his life, to pour forth the stores he had accumulated in his long and varied studies with a profusion as delightful as it was surprising. “The blind old man eloquent” was a description as applicable to him as to the bard of Scio.

  Whether I regard his long and honourable life, exclusively devoted to the best interests of literature,—the pure and elevating pleasure which his writings have bestowed,—the influence which they have had in diffusing that taste for historical and literary investigation which is a marked characteristic of the age,—the impartiality of his judicial decisions,—the catholicity of his sentiments,—the philosophic tone of his criticism,—or the industry and conscientiousness of his research,—I commence a few notes upon the literary career of Isaac D’Israeli, with feelings of profound respect and gratitude.

  The reader at this distance will perhaps imagine, wonderingly, whether that career ever commenced at all. He lived to be a very old man, like so many of the subjects of this history. Great genius may exhaust and wear out, though chiefly when associated with great passions; but a little genius is a wonderfully safe and comfortable possession. It gives interest to life whatever may be its burdens, and cheers the weary years.

General

  If we were to form our opinion of this book [“Calamities of Authors”] from its title page, it would not be very favourable: authors are there introduced as a genus, and their moral and literary characters spoken of as if each had not a moral and literary character of his own. Neither should we think more highly of the writer’s precision of style by looking at the end, where a portentous metaphor about “barren fertility” stares the reader in the face. But the middle of the book is much better than the two ends: it is one of those works which are designed for the breakfast table and the sofa, and is so well adapted for its purpose, that he who takes it up will not readily lay it down. The matter is as amusing as any lover of light reading can desire, and of such a desultory kind that a comment might easily be made as extensive as the text.

  Read the “Quarrels of Authors,” a new work by that most entertaining and researching writer, Israeli.

  I wish I had not sent you this great blubbering numskull D’Israeli: his “Calamities” have sunk upon your spirits, and tinged the whole world of intellect with the hue of mourning and despair. The paths of learning seem, in your present mood of mind, to lead but through regions of woe and lamentation and darkness and dead men’s bones. Hang the ass!—it is all false, if you take it up in this light. Do you not see that his observations can apply only to men in whom genius was more the want of common qualities than the possession of uncommon ones; whose life was embittered not so much because they had imagination and sensibility, as because they had not prudence and true moral principles? If one chose to investigate the history of the first twenty tattered blackguards to be found lying on the benches of the watch-house, or stewing in drunkenness and squalor in the Jerusalem Tap-room, it would not be difficult to write a much more moving book on the “calamities of shoemakers” or street-porters, or any other class of handicraftsmen, than this of D’Israeli’s on Authors.

  He is one of the most learned, intelligent, lively, and agreeable authors of our era; he has composed a series of works, which, while they shed abundance of light on the character and condition of literary men, and show us the state of genius in this land, have all the attractions for general readers of the best romances…. I see it intimated, that D’Israeli has the History of British Literature in contemplation; he cannot do a more acceptable service to the republic of letters, than write it.

  The poetical temperament was not thrown away upon him, it never is on any one; it was this great gift which prevented his being a mere literary antiquary; it was this which animated his page with picture and his narrative with interesting vivacity; above all, it was this temperament, which invested him with that sympathy with this subject, which made him the most delightful biographer in our language. In a word, it was because he was a poet, that he was a popular writer, and made belles-lettres charming to the multitude.

  The work, however, by which the elder D’Israeli will always be best known, because it is the work which has made the deepest impression on the mind of the age, is the “Curiosities of Literature.” It was the first revelation to the English people that they possessed materials for historical and critical investigations hardly inferior in value to the celebrated Memoirs of the French; and it was also one of the earliest attempts to vindicate the memory of the Stuarts, but more especially the first James and the first Charles, from the odium which had been accumulated upon them ever since the revolution. More than one of the Waverley Novels was obviously suggested by the “Curiosities of Literature;” and to that work our modern writers of historical romance have been far more deeply indebted than they have ever yet acknowledged. The “Quarrels of Authors,” the “Calamities of Authors,” and the “Illustrations of the Literary Character,” though more immediately connected with literary history, are everywhere marked with the characteristic feelings and sentiments which rendered the author so earnest an advocate and so zealous a pleader for the hapless house of Stuart. The descendant of a fallen race, which still clung to its theocratic title, was the natural sympathiser with a fallen dynasty, which, in the midst of all its misfortunes, never abandoned its hereditary claims.

  He was among the first who made literary history a study; and notwithstanding the disadvantages under which he labored, he attained an honorable position among his contemporaries; his books were popular; and he had the reputation of being a well-read scholar. This reputation has somewhat declined; but it will not be denied that he had a very extensive acquaintance with English and Continental literature, and that he neglected no opportunity for self-culture. He was, however, a man of facts and details, rather than a man of principles. He had little power of generalization or of sustained reasoning, and he rarely took a comprehensive view of any subject. Hence his works are, almost without exception, fragmentary in form. They are replete with curious and amusing information, but the facts seldom have an orderly and systematic arrangement, or illustrate any central idea. His books, indeed, must be regarded as collections of materials, rather than as elaborate treatises, and their real value consists in the variety and interest of the details of author-life which they embody. Disraeli, as we have intimated, lacked a judicial habit of mind, and like most antiquaries he was disposed to magnify the importance of his researches, and to regard every circumstance which had escaped the notice of previous writers as a piece of secret intelligence. This weakness subjected him to some undeserved criticism, and it is probably one of the causes which have tended to diminish his reputation. In early life his style was florid and pompous, but as he advanced in years it gained clearness and force, and his later works, the “Genius of Judaism” and the “Amenities of Literature,” contain many passages of genuine eloquence.

  In the writings of the elder Disraeli we meet with occasional touches of the felicity of expression so conspicuous in his more distinguished son.

  Chance directed him to the quiet byways of literature, in which he achieved a mild but complete success. The “Curiosities of Literature” is more interesting than many a book of higher pretensions, and some of Mr. Disraeli’s essays were good and able; but, perhaps, had not his son arisen greater than he, we should have thought less of the father: and granting the interest of his chief publication, there is no sort of greatness in it, nor original power.

  As a populariser of literary researches D’Israeli achieved a deserved reputation, but he was not very accurate, and his practice of announcing small literary discoveries as “secret histories,” exposed him to merited ridicule.

  His style in some of his earlier works is thoroughly bad—a vile imitation of the whimsical caprices which the genius of a Sterne might make acceptable, but which in the hands of imitators was only ridiculous. A specimen of this may be sought in “Flim-flams: the Life and Errors of my Uncle;” but, for the sake of his reputation, it is better forgotten. In his other works the style has perhaps a little too much of formality, and gives the impression that he is taking himself rather more seriously than is necessary. It is not always very correct, and is sometimes open to the charge of ambiguity. But on the other hand it has the graceful and courteous dignity of a scholar, imbued with a deep and reverent sympathy for literature: and at times there is a boldness and happy fancy in the choice and collocation of epithets, which not only marks the author’s Eastern origin, but gives a foretaste of that which was the crowning oratorical glory of his son’s transcendent genius. Isaac Disraeli had not the intellectual grasp nor the critical insight required for the literary historian: neither had he the subtle art of the essayist, to whom anecdotes only serve as apt illustrations, and who sustains our interest by combining unity of theme with copiousness of allusion. But at his best he has all the grace, the culture, the well-stored memory, the ready sympathy of the retiring and leisurely scholar—with a formality of manner which is at times a little obtrusive.

  Isaac Disraeli was not a good writer; and his original reflections may sometimes make the reader doubt for a moment whether Rogers was not more wrong in granting him half an intellect than in denying him a whole one. But his anecdotage, though, as perhaps such anecdotage is bound to be, not extremely accurate, is almost inexhaustibly amusing, and indicates a real love as well as a wide knowledge of letters.

  The “Curiosities of Literature,” by Isaac D’Israeli, was not a masterpiece, but its storehouses of anecdote and cultivated reflection must have familiarised with the outlines of literary history thousands who would have been repelled by a more formal work.

  A book [“Curiosities of Literature”] which sixty years since used to be reckoned a necessary part of all well-equipped libraries; but which—to tell the truth—has very little value; being without any method, without fulness, and without much accuracy. It is very rare that so poor a book gets so good a name, and wears it so long.