A BOOK OF THE • MOMENT
New York Times.]
Benjamin Disraeli. The Romance or a Great Career. By the Rt. Hon. Sir Edward Clarke, K.C. (John Murray. 10s. 6(1.
net.) -
IT IS to me a personal pleasure to review a book by Sir Edward Clarke, a politician in whom there is and was no guile, and whose public life, not only at the Bar, but in Parliament, never lost him a friend whose friendship was worth preserving. I'cannot recall anyone attributing to him sordid or unworthy motives. The gift of eloquence, the gift to move juries and popular assemblies is one very like that of the popular actor, and very apt to have the same influences on character. There is always a danger of the successful orator or actor becoming vain and egotistical. In spite of the fact that Sir Edward Clarke was immensely successful as an advocate, he never lost his .personal balance by his triumphs in Court or on the platform. '
In politics he was always a Tory Democrat, and it is therefore only natural that he should have had an intense admiration for
He was the ideal compiler for a short and, in a sense, popular, though by no means vulgarized, epitome of the great work begun by Mr. Monypenny and continued so ably by Mr. Buckle. Sir Edward Clarke has performed his difficult task with no small success. Occasionally, no doubt, the excessive labour of making a précis, which is only another way of saying pouring a. quart into a pint pot, has led him to the omission of certain aspects of Disraeli's character and to the minimizing of others, and so to a sense of disproportion and confusion, coupled with occasional repetitions. I am bound to say, however, that the net result is not only readable, but convincing. Consider for a moment what a many-sided man Disraeli was, and how difficult was the task of showing us in three hundred pages the image of his mind. Disraeli was, to begin with, a metaphysical politician—a man never content with mere opportunism and expediency. When the force of circumstances compelled him to act, he was never happy until he could underpin the position he had assumed with speculative and philosophic foundations. Next, he was always a research student in the management of life, personal and public—a psychologist in the modem sense, before modern psychology had been invented. Add to this that he was a religious dreamer and a religious critic. Like the true son of Israel that he was, he could not imagine a community in which religion did not play an essential part. But his religion was never superstitious or dominated by ritual ; it was an inspiration of the mind and the heart. He was in many ways a devotee of Political Economics, but he always remembered so to temper his devotion as not to forget the call of human feeling. He never forgot that he was dealing with hungering, thirsting men, not with that dreadful simulacrum, "economic man." Above all, he was an " understander "—.- a man who tried to see things as they are, and not as they ought to be, according to some preconceived theory. It must be admitted, no doubt, that he did not see life steadily. He was too emotional and too mercurial for that ; but, at any rate, he saw it as a whole. There was nothing parochial about him. He had none of the fatal fury of the Jacobin, but also none of the cast-iron Prussianism of the reactionary. No one could ever have said of him that he would rather domineer in a parish of Jews than rule the whole Christian world.
But these are by no means all the qualities of this strangely gifted man. In a very real sense he was a great novelist and, if not a great man of letters, at any rate a very great phrase- maker. And the phrases were not mere verbal fireworks, but genuine contributions to aphoristic wisdom. Last of all, he was a true orator. He had much of Burke's impassioned imagination and a touch, also, of his prophetic vision ; but these qualities were always endowed with a finer edge through his sense of humour, or perhaps it would be truer to say wit, for Disraeli's power to make men laugh was not genial, but mordant.
The best way to realize Disraeli's perception, and power of diagnosis, is to study his novels, letters and speeches in those soul:shairing'years, still so greatly misunderstood, which have
been called." the Hungry 'Forties." It was in the 'forties there arose the schools of thought and opinion which are shaking us at this very moment and demanding the recognition and the understanding that they failed to get at their birth, owing to the lack of prudence, balance, and, one might almost say, sanity of their exponents and suppcirters. The Industrial Revolution spread like a conquering flood over Europe, and especially over this country, in the period from 1810 to 1840. But then began a period of protest and revolt against the worst manifestations of Factory. and Mass production. When 1847 came the seething pot of revolutionary misery, unrest, and misunderstanding began to boil over. Men attempted to fight the growing inhumanity of industrialism with an equal inhumanity of tumid ratiocination from false premises. The clash intoxicated the Western hemisphere. Marxism -.made its attempt to -change the world by the fatal device of physical force based on "class consciousness," a concept which proved to be little but an alias for class hatred and the creation of a rigid and dominant caste—the Proletariat. The tragedy of the 'forties was that the great majority of people in England, and indeed in Europe generally,, did not recognize the forces that were at work, and did not understand how they ought to be directed. • Among the minute-band of men who did under- stand Disraeli holds a high place. • Carlyle also understood, very exactly, though in his later life he largely forgot what he had once known. Matthew Arnold marked the storm and its nature with a. poet's vision and also with that perfect balance and good sense which was his prerogative. Though he lived beyond Carlyle, his gift of moderation prevented him ever wishing to change the attitude which he took up during the revolutionary period. Maurice and Kingsley on the literary and theological side also understood, and so did Ruskin. Last of all one must name and honour Lord Shaftes- bury—not a man of great insight or clarity of mind, and not a man free from the prejudices of his birth and surroundings, but, all the same, a man of true gravity and piety of soul..
I am convinced that the more men study Disraeli's actions the more they will agree that, with all his faults, vulgarities, and follies, 'there was a true touch of goodness as well as of greatness in the man. Bismarck's famous comment, . " The old Jew—that's the man ! " meant more than the cynical autocrat intended. Disraeli was in earnest when he said in his address to the electors of High Wycombe in 1832 that he would withhold his support from any Ministry "which would not originate some great measure to ameliorate the condition of the labouring classes." Seven years later, in 1839, as Sir Edward Clarke points out, "lie astonished and offended the Tory members among whom he sat by avowing his sympathy with Chartism as a great social movement. " At Shrewsbury in 1843 he went even further :—" Let mc tell those gentlemen who are so fond of telling its that property has its rights as well as its duties, that labour also has its rights as well as its duties."
Clearly this sincerity of vision, admirable as it was, cannot entirely excuse many of the lapses caused by Disraeli's personal ambition, or by the temptation to put party above patriotism. But if I have had to neglect this side of his career, I have also been unable to note many of the good results of that power of gocial and political diagnosis upon which I have dwelt.
J. Sr. LOE STRACHEY.
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