CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE.
BY
ISAAC DISRAELI.
A New Edition,
EDITED, WITH MEMOIR AND NOTES,
BY HIS SON,
THE EARL OF BEACONSFIELD.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
FREDERICK WARNE AND CO.,
BEDFORD STREET, STRAND.
LONDON:
BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
ADVERTISEMENT.
This is the first collected edition of a series of works which haveseparately attained to a great popularity: volumes that have been alwaysdelightful to the young and ardent inquirer after knowledge. They offeras a whole a diversified miscellany of literary, artistic, and politicalhistory, of critical disquisition and biographic anecdote, such as it isbelieved cannot be elsewhere found gathered together in a form soagreeable and so attainable. To this edition is appended a Life of theAuthor by his son, also original notes, which serve to illustrate or tocorrect the text, where more recent discoveries have brought to lightfacts unknown when these volumes were originally published.
London, 1881.[Pg vii]
ISAAC DISRAELI.
ON THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF MR. DISRAELI.
BY HIS SON.
The traditionary notion that the life of a man of letters is necessarilydeficient in incident, appears to have originated in a misconception ofthe essential nature of human action. The life of every man is full ofincidents, but the incidents are insignificant, because they do notaffect his species; and in general the importance of every occurrence isto be measured by the degree with which it is recognised by mankind. Anauthor may influence the fortunes of the world to as great an extent asa statesman or a warrior; and the deeds and performances by which thisinfluence is created and exercised, may rank in their interest andimportance with the decisions of great Congresses, or the skilful valourof a memorable field. M. de Voltaire was certainly a greater Frenchmanthan Cardinal Fleury, the Prime Minister of France in his time. Hisactions were more important; and it is certainly not too much tomaintain that the exploits of Homer, Aristotle, Dante, or my Lord Bacon,were as considerable events as anything that occurred at Actium,Lepanto, or Blenheim. A Book may be as great a thing as a battle, andthere are systems of philosophy that have produced as great revolutionsas any that have disturbed even the social and political existence ofour centuries.[Pg viii]
The life of the author, whose character and career we are venturing toreview, extended far beyond the allotted term of man: and, perhaps, noexistence of equal duration ever exhibited an uniformity more sustained.The strong bent of his infancy was pursued through youth, matured inmanhood, and maintained without decay to an advanced old age. In thebiographic spell, no ingredient is more magical than predisposition. Howpure, and native, and indigenous it was in the character of this writer,can only be properly appreciated by an acquaintance with thecircumstances amid which he was born, and by being able to estimate howfar they could have directed or developed his earliest inclinations.
My grandfather, who became an English Denizen in 1748, was an Ital