BOOKS.
LOTHAIB.* LOTHAIR " floats so very high in the aristocratic empyrean,— that without an impartial Duke on your literary staff, a conscien- tious editor has scruples as to forming an opinion upon it. The psychology of a man who scarcely knows any woman under a Duchess, and who, strolling into his jeweller's to order "ropes of pearls" for the lady he admires, finds his own service of gold plate, after Flaxman, which he had never before seen, in the back room, and is rather indifferent to the discovery than otherwise, must ever be to some extent an unknown world to writers like the present. Indeed Lothair is apt to give one duchesses, jewels, and general splendours on the brain. Like one of the best sketches in the book,—Lord St. Aldegonde, who at a great banquet where all the delicacies of London are collected, calls disconsolately for "cold meat," and will ribt be solaced by anything else,—we have felt disposed more than once, in the anxious task of studying this noble work, to crave a plain man or two. There is, to be sure, a cabman introduced for a second in the first volume, who bids fair to be a relief, but even he gets a sovereign from the magnifi- cent Lothair, instead of half-a-crown or so,for his fare, and so is rapt away into the legendary region. No doubt, it may be said that Lord Lothair's agent, "Mr. Putney Giles," and his wife " Apollonia," are commoners ; but then they are very rich com- moners, humbly serving the infinitely richer nobility, and so borrowing a nimbus of glory from that super-celestial world. It is true, again, that Lothair deigns to dedicate his life to a woman who has neither wealth nor title,—who is apparently simply the Italian wife of an American gentleman from the Southern States, —a Mrs. Campian. But then, again, the apparent simplicity and naturalness of Lothair's taste is a mere outside show. The "divine Theodora," as her admirers call this lady, is even farther above the ordinary world than the great lords and the duchesses. She is the most perfect specimen of the Aryan race ; she had "inspired as many painters and sculptors as any Aryan goddess ;" she is ashamed of eating anything more material than strawberries and cream; and she has a "tumult of her brow," "quite a Maenad look," in momenta of enthusiasm or excitement, which evidently raise her whole worlds above the proprietors of ordinary Anglo-Saxon foreheads. In short, from the opening to the close of Lothair we are in a grandiose world, of which it takes a grandiose experience to judge. Mr. Disraeli, in a sarcastic and somewhat ungenerous satire on an Oxford professor whom it is easy to see that he means to be identified with his old antagonist, Mr. Goldwiu Smith, accuses him,—and the accusation seems to us as false and wide of the mark as the still more absurd insinuation against him of tuft- hunting,—of speaking in an "ornate jargon." The phrase is happy, but surely it is one derived from the reflex action of Mr. Disraeli's mind, much more than from observation. For instance, let us quote a sentence or two from the mouth of the divine Theodora :'- "'Railways have elevated and softened the lot of man,' said Theodora, and Colonel Campian views them with almost a religious sentiment. But I cannot read on a railroad, and the human voice is distressing to me amid the whirl and the whistling and the wild panting of the loosened Megatheria who drag us. And then those terrible grottoes,—it is quite a descent of Proserpine ; so I have no resources but my thoughts.'" (Vol. I., p. 219.) That is not up to the mark of " Venetia " or " Alroy," but nobody, we are sure, could have thought of it all who was not habitually given to "tumults of the brow." By way of synonyms for locomotive engines and tunnels, "the loosened Megatheria who drag us," and "those terrible grottoes,—quite a descent of Proserpine," are surely noble specimens of "ornate jargon." Indeed, there is a great deal of writing in almost all Mr. Disraeli's books, Lothair not excepted, which can hardly be better described than either in this, his own phrase, or that still more sparkling, though less caustic one of De Quincey's,-- " a jewelly hmrnorrhage of words." The book seems to be written by a clever and viewy associate of Dukes and Duchesses, not entirely clear in his own mind whether he most envies or despises their rank and their possessions, but entirely clear that the reading English public is very difficult to satiate with any quantity of details of the glories of those possessions,—especially if the dissertation be set in a quasi-intellectual frame, and diversi- fied by grandiose disquisitions on the theory of race and the conflict of religions.
If there be a clear moral drift in Lothair at all, it is to preach that youth thinks life simple, and finds it a jungle from which the * Lothalr. By the Bight Hon. B. Disraeli. 8 vols. London: Longmans.
fortunate and the rich may perhaps extricate themselves without total wreck, and possibly even with a doubtful guess or two on tran- scendental subjects, which, if not true, are as much like truth as on such subjects you can expect ;—the only clear result being, perhaps, that religion has not very much to do with actual life, since "so long as one was on the earth, the incidents of this world con- siderably controlled one's existence, both in behaviour and in thought," find since "all the world could not retire to Mount
Athos" (vol. ii., p. 114). If there be an intellectual purpose about the book, it is the intention to increase the panic about Jesuitism and Catholicism, and impress on the British people that Cardinals and Monsignores are leagued together in a bond of unscrupulous conspiracy to win imposing converts for the Church by any means, however base,—such as the deliberate in- vention of false miracles. Mr. Disraeli draws an awful picture of the power of that propaganda which, as he assured the Ilouse of Commons in 1868, might "even dangerously touch the tenure of the Throne," portrays it as sticking at no sort of fraud or false- hood to compass its ends, and then, characteristically enough, in- timates quite clearly, through his hero, that he thinks not a bit the worse of those who are guilty of such nefarious acts in the cause of their holy religion. 'Cardinal Grandison,' as he calls a figure meant to remind us partly of Archbishop Manning and partly of Cardinal Wiseman, is party to the most gross, shameless, and deliberate fraud, in he hope of absorbing his former ward, Lord Lothair, into the Roman Catholic Church, and Lothair himself knows this. But evidently he thinks none the worse of the Cardinal for his conduct, walks and talks with him 8.3 respectfully and cordially as ever, and only declares his con- fidence in the Cardinal positively destroyed when he finds him,— long after this act of infernal villainy,—siucerely approving the determination of a young lady with whom Lothair himself is provisionally in love, to take the veil. Indeed, the obvious inten- tion to foment the panic about Rouaanism is partly frustrated by Mr. Disraeli's clear incapacity to think ill of the politic frauds and falsehoods which he ascribes to the Papal personages of his story. Now, the Roman Church, if it is like that, is a lie ; but then, what is life itself, to Mr. Disraeli, but a lie of still more subtle convolutions? For such a statesman as Mr. Disraeli to write a book just now expressly intended to excite in England new odium against the Roman Catholic Church on account of its jesuitical frauds, would be an attempt which we should hardly be able to characterize too strongly, were it not so evident that Mr. Disraeli does not suppose that there is anything particularly odious in the imputation. Yet Lothair himself, who was to have been the victim of the manufactured miracle, and who hardly seems to blame the Cardinal,—certainly never reproaches him with his conduct,— assuredly does not for an instant seem to think him a dishonour- able villain whom it would do his own nature a violence ever again to trust as a friend,—this Lothair himself is described to us as "an earnest young man " !
The book is entertaining enough. Nothing can be better than Mr. Disraeli's sketches of "the grand affectations" of the aristo- cratic youths whom he delights to depict,—the youths who describe a visit to a country-house as "a series of meals mitigated
by the new dresses of the ladies." Lord St. Aldegonde, who asks for cold meat at great banquets, and shows such profound confi- dence in the good faith and good capacity displayed by his wife in the task of protecting him from being bored, is a very lively sketch ; and nothing can be better than this account of his reasons for hating the Duke of Brecon, and deprecating an alliance between his sister-in-law, Lady Corisande, and that personage :— "Why St. Aldegonde hated him was not very clear, for they had never
crossed each other, nor were the reasons for his detestation, which he occasionally gave, entirely satisfactory; sometimes it was because the
Duke drove piebalds; sometimes because he had a large sum in the Funds, which St. Aldegonde thought disgraceful for a Duke ; sometimes because he wore a particular hat, though, with respect to this last allega- tion, it does not follow that St. Aldegonde was justified in his criticism, for in all these matters St. Aldegonde was himself very deficient, and had ones strolled up St. James's Street with his dishevelled locks crowned with a wide-awake. Whatever might be the cause, St. Aide- gonde generally wound up—',I tell ypu what, Bertha, if Corisando marries that fellow I have made up my mind to go to the Indian Ocean. It is a country I never have seen, and Pinto tells me you cannot do it well under five years.'—' I hope you will take me, Granville, with you.' said Lady St. Aldegonde, because it is highly probable Corisando will marry the Duke ; mamma, you know, likes him so much.'—' Why can- not Corisando marry Carisbrooke ?' said St. Aldegonde, pouting; he is a really good follow, much better looking, and so far as land is concerned, which after all is the only thing, has as large an estate as the Duke.'— 'Well, these things depend a little upon taste,' said Lady St. Aldegonde. —' No, no,' said St. Aldegonde ; • Corisande must marry Carisbrooke. Your father would not like my going to the Indian Archipelago and not returning for five years, perhaps never returning. Why should Cori- • sande break up our society ?—why are people so selfish ? I never could go to Brentham again if the Duke of Brecon is always to be there, giving his opinion, and being what your mother calls "straightforward" —I hate a straightforward fellow. As Pinto says, if every man were straightforward in his opinions, there would be no conversation. The fun of talk is to find out what a man really thinks, and then contrast it with the enormous lies he has been telling all dinner, and, perhaps, all his life.' " The beseeching, petted-child sort of way in which Lord St. Aide- gonde,—who is really a clever man,—leans on his wife's good sense, to save him from being bored and other calamities, and the tender humour with which she always enters into the situation, are very good, and contain perhaps the happiest sketch in the book, always excepting the admirable picture of Mr. Ruby, the jeweller, to which we refer elsewhere. As for Mr. Disraeli's State characters, they are but seldom well drawn, and in Lothair, at least, not clearly distin- guishable. Cardinal Grandisou, Monsignore Berwick, Monsignor° Catesby are all far too much alike,—there is no proper study of their individual side. The divine Theodora is, as we have before intimated, a grandiloquent abstraction,—Mr. Disraeli would have delighted in transcendental tall talk if he had lived in America. And as for Lothair himself, he is a regular walking hero,—a grandiose goose, who is depicted as 'introspective,' and yet knows so exceedingly little of himself as to tell Lady Corisaude, when he indulges in that sweet scene with her in her own special garden, at the end of the third volume, that he has at least ever been constant to her,—whereas, through almost the whole of the three volumes he has been making either faint love to Miss Arundel], or very strong love to "the divine Theodora." The latter, indeed, allowed herself to go so far towards returning his passion as to send away her worthy husband in her dying hour, in order to bid Lothair embrace her, that his spirit might be upon her at the last. For a youth with a genius for introspection we can hardly imagine one who was so distinguished for not knowing himself as this very magnificent and colourless young peer. If we were to form an opinion of the author solely from the book before us, we should call him a G. P. It. James, mitigated by a sense of humour and great fertility in viewy theories. lie is not so much devoted to doublets, we admit, as G. P. R. James, but almost, if not quite, as much to furniture and jewels and the false-picturesque. For the last, witness, for instance, that mentiou of the descent of the Italian lancer to the revolutionary camp :— "The sun had sunk behind the mountains, but was still high in the western heaven, when a mounted lancer was observed descending a distant pass into the valley."
As a whole, undoubtedly, Mr. Disraeli's last work, though fully as entertaining, is less clever than his more political novels, and not at all nearer to true art. It is ambitious and flashy, with no thorough drawing, and, if any, a bad moral. It is, however, often piquant, and full of clever superficial touches which make it in the highest degree readable to this generation.
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