DISRAELI'S BORROWING-S.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR." j Sin,—In May, 1904, I contributed to the Spectator a list of seventeen maxims and witticisms ascribed to Disraeli which had the appearance of being derived from external sources. The letter gave rise to an interesting correspondence in the Spectator, and I have seen many references to it in other papers. As recently as last October and November I saw the letter referred to in a London evening daily and a Glasgow weekly paper. To the list then given it may be interesting to add some others :—(18) The phrase " men of light and leading," used by Disraeli in a speech in 1858, came from Burke. (19) Disraeli's assertion that only those nations that behaved well to the Jews prospered had been made long before by Frederick the Great. (20) Disraeli said : " Youth is a blunder, manhood a struggle, old age a regret." This is based on Seneca's famous saying, Initium caecitas, pro- gressio labor, error omnia. (21) In 1864 Disraeli said of the French Revolution : " When the turbulence was over, when the shout of triumph and the wail of agony were alike stilled ; when, as it were, the waters had subsided, the sacred heights of Sinai and Calvary were again revealed," &c. This simile had been used by other orators again and again. Canning used it in proposing the vote of thanks to the Duke of Wellington after the battle of Vittoria, and Shiel used it in his speech on the Irish State trials in the House of Commons in 1844; Sir Walter Scott also introduced it in his "Life of Napoleon." (22) Disraeli's phrase " stateswoman " comes from Swift. (23) "Anecdotage " was derived by Disraeli from his father, who in his turn derived it in conversation from Rogers. (24) In " Sybil " Disraeli compares Fox to Catiline. Canning described Fox as "the Catiline of modern times" in the Anti- Jacobin. (25) Disraeli compared the Ministers of Mr. Glad- stone's Government to " a range of exhausted volcanoes." This was an image used by Wilkes. " How ie it, Wilkes," said somebody to the demagogue, " that you sat silent through all the French Revolution debates ?" " The fact is," replied Wilkes, "I am a burnt-out volcano." Somebody once pointed out the coincidence to Disraeli, and he is said to have remarked : " It looks like a crib, but it is the first time I knew that Wilkes had ever said anything worth repeating and fit for publication." (26) The advice given to Contarini Fleming by his father is based on that of Lord Chesterfield to his son. Chesterfield, like Contarini Fleming's
father, advised his son to "read Rochefoncault," and study French writers, and cultivate the society of women.
(27) Disraeli wrote of Bolingbroke as "the glory of his order and the shame." This is probably from Pope's description of Erasmus in his " Essay on Criticism "-
" At length Erasmus, that great injured name,
The glory of the priesthood and the shame"— but a still older writer, Sir George Mackenzie, the "Bluidy Mackenzie" of Scottish Presbyterian hagiology, described Montrose in his " Ccelia's Country House and Closet " as
"His country's glory and its shame,
Caesar in all things equall'd, but his fame."
(28) Disraeli's phrase Imperium et Libertas was suggested by Bolingbroke, from whom Disraeli derived so many of his ideas. The words "imperio et libertate " are used by Cicero in the fine passage at the end of his fourth oration against
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