DISRAELI AND THE CURIOSITIES OF LITER), runs.* THE word "

fourteenth " in the titlepage of this edition does not in strict- ness belong to the whole work, which gradually grew from one volume into six volumes. There is no doubt, however, of the great popularity and merit of the Curiosities of Literature; although we may not altogether go with the frank panegyric of the author upon himself, even if he were the properest person to make it—" They have passed," he writes in the preface of 1839, " through a remarkable ordeal of time ; they have survived a generation of rivals; they are found wher- ever books are bought ; and they have been repeatedly reprinted at fo- reign presses, as well as translated. These volumes have imbued our youth with their first tastes for modern literature; have diffused a delight in critical and philosophical speculation among circles of readers who are not accustomed to literary topics ; and finally, they have been honoured by eminent contemporaries, who have long consulted them, and set their stamp on the metal."

The Curiosities of Literature had the merit of supplying a public want ; and of so thoroughly seizing the principles upon which it should be done, combining at once the merits of plan and execution, that no partial inferiority, no detection of errors, is able to shake its supremacy. The work of Isaac Disraeli was not a mere collection of learned gossip and anec- dotes, or a drily systematic arrangement of antiquarian facts. It formed in a certain degree a whole; it presented its different topics in masses; the facts or anecdotes to illustrate those topics were well selected ; and, as Mr. Ben- jamin Disraeli remarks, the work was possessed by a vital spirit—not very philosophical it may be, though pretending to philosophy, and rather French than classical in its rhetoric, but animated and well-sounding. Some rather pompous misnomers of the value of particular discoveries, that exposed him to ridicule, are attributable to this "vivacious" cast of * Curiosities of Literature. By Isaac Disraeli. With aView of the Life and Writings Of the Author, by his Son. In three volumes. Published by Moxon. mind and school of composition. The occasional errors into which he fell, and the more available of which were exposed with wit and unspar- ing severity by Mr. Bolton Corney, originated in the desire to be striking, rather than in carelessness or indifference to accuracy. It must be al- lowed, too, that Isaac was in good company. The authority of Hume may to some extent support him in the error touching the Amalfi mann- script ofJustinian—only that the historian named the title correctly; and in the account of the death of Philip the Third of Spain, through etiquette, he errs with all the world. It is too striking a story to be exchanged for truth. Mr. Disraeli corrected the blunders of these " curiosities " by substituting " Pandects" for " Code," and "year of his reign" for " year of his age"; but the rest of the assertions remain. These are the only corrections we have observed in the passages we have turned to, though there was room for others.

The present book is part of an entire edition of the author's works, which the son is now raising as a monument to the memory of his father. Its chief novelty is that son's " View of the Life and Writings of the Author." This introductory notice is properly named : the estimate of the author's works is too brief and passing to be called a criticism. The Life is not so much a biography, or a biographical sketch, as an account of the family of Disraeli and their emigration from Venice to England, some striking traits in the childhood and youth of the author of the Curiosities, with a few particulars about the composition of his works, (occasionally taken from the writer's own prefaces,) and a descriptive sketch of his habits and manners. This View is not altogether divested of sounding paradoxes, but it is more sober than the usual style of Mr. Disraeli the Younger, and conveys a good idea of the family and his father so far as it goes. The following extracts are fair specimens, and they embrace some of the leading points of the subject.

ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY .AND ITS NAME.

My grandfather, who became au English denizen in 1748, was an Italian de- scendant from one of those Hebrew families whom the Inquisition forced to emi- grate from the Spanish Peninsula at the end of the fifteenth century, and who found a refuge in the more tolerant territories of the Venetian Republic. His an- cestors had dropped their Gothic surname on their settlement in the Terra Firms,, and, grateful to the God of Jacob who had sustained them through unprecedented trials and guarded them through unheard-of perils, they assumed the name of Disraeli, a name never borne before or since by any other family, in order that their race might be for ever recognized. Undisturbed and unmolested, they flourished as merchants for more than two centuries under the protection of the lion of St. Mark ; which was but just, as the patron-saint of the Republic was himself a child of Israel.

JEWS IN ENGLAND A HUNDRED YEARS SINCE.

The Jewish families who were then [circa 1748] settled in England were few, though from their wealth and other circumstances they were far from un- important. They were all of them Sephardim,—that is to say, children of Israel who had never quitted the shores of the Midland Ocean until Torquamada had driven them from their pleasant residences and rich estates in Arragon, and An- dalusia, and Portugal, to seek greater blessings even than a clear atmosphere and a glowing sun, amid the marshes of Holland and the fogs of Britain. Most of these families, who held themselves aloof from the Hebrews of Northern Europe, then only occasionally stealing into England, as from an inferior caste, and whose synagogue was reserved only for Sephardim, are now extinct; while the branch of the great family, which, notwithstanding their own sufferings from prejudice, they had the hardihood to look down upon, have achieved an amount of wealth and consideration which the Sephardim, even with the patronage of Mr. Pelham, never could have contemplated.

THE YOUTHFUL ISAAC.

The crisis arrived, when, after months of unusual abstraction and irritability, my father produced a poem. For the first time, my grandfather was seriously alarmed. The loss of one of his argosies uninsured could not have filled him with more blank dismay. His idea of a poet was formed from one of the prints of Hogarth hanging in his room, where an unfortunate wight in a garret was in- diting an ode to riches while dunned for his milk-score. Decisive measures were required to eradicate this evil, and to prevent future disgrace: so, as seems the custom when a person is in a scrape, it was resolved that my father should be sent abroad, where a new scene and a new language might divert his mind from the ignominious pursuit which so fatally attracted him. The unhappy poet was consigned like a bale of goods to my grandfather's correspondent at Amsterdam, who had instructions to place him at some collegian of repute in that city. Here were passed some years not without profit; though his tutor was a great impostor, very neglectful of his pupils, and both unable and disinclined to guide them in severe studies.

THE POET'S RETURN.

When he was eighteen he returned to England, a disciple of Rousseau. Hehad exercised his imagination during the voyage in idealizing the interview with his mother; which was to be conducted on both sides with sublime pathos. His other parent had frequently visited him during his absence. He was prepared to throw himself on his mother's bosom, to bedew her hand with his tears, and to stop her own with his lips: but when he entered, his strange appearance, his gaunt figure, his excited manner, his long hair, and his unfashionable costume, only filled her with a sentiment of tender aversion: she broke into derisive laughter, and, no- ticing his intolerable garments, she reluctantly lent him her cheek. Whereupon Emile of course went into heroics, wept, sobbed, and finally, shut up in his cham- ber, composed an impassioned epistle. My grandfather, to soothe him, dwelt on the united solicitude of his parents for his welfare, and broke to him their inten- tion, if it were agreeable to him, to place him in the establishment of a great mer- chant of Bordeaux. My father replied, that he had written a poem of consider- able length, which he wished to publish, against commerce, which was the cor- ruptor of man. In eight-and-forty hours confusion again reigned in this house- hold, and all from a want of psychological perception in its master and mistress.

FIRST SUCCESS.

There appeared about this time a satire " On the Abuse of Satire." The ver- ses were polished and pointed; a happy echo of that style of Mr. Pope which still lingered in the spell-bound ear of the public. Peculiarly they offered a contrast to the irregular effusions of the popular assailant, whom they in turn assailed; for the object of their indignant invective was the bard of the " Lousiad." The poem was anonymous, and was addressed to Dr. Warton in lines of even classic grace. Its publication was appropriate. There are moments when every one is inclined to praise, especially when the praise of a new pen may at the same time revenge the insults of an old one.

But if there could be any doubt of the success of this new band, it was quickly

removed by the conduct of Peter Pindar himself. * * *

My father, who came up to town to read the newspapers at the St. James's Coffeehouse, found their columns filled with extracts from the fortunate effusion of the hour, conjectures as to its writer, and much gossip respecting Wolcot and Hayley. He returned to Enfield laden with the journals; and, presenting them to his parents, broke to them the intelligence, that at length he was not only an au- thor, but a successful one.

ISAAC DISRAELI'S HABITS AND APPEARANCE.

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; e rose to en- ter 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 acquaintance; the bent of his disposition; and the circumstance of his in- heriting an independent fortune, which rendered unnecessary those exertions that would have broken up his self-reliance. He disliked business, and he never re- quired relaxation; he was absorbed in his pursuits. In London, his only amuse- ment was to ramble among booksellers; if he entered a club, it was only to go into the library. In the country, he scarcely ever left his room but to saunter in ab- straction upon a terrace, muse over a chapter, or coin a sentence. • • • As the world has always been fond of personal details respecting men who have been celebrated, I will mention that he was fair, with a Bourbon nose, and brown eyes of extraordinary beauty and lustre. He wore a small black velvet cap, but his white hair latterly touched his shoulders in curls almost as flowing as in his boyhood. His extremities were delicate and well-formed, and his leg, at his last hour, as shapely as in his youth; which showed the vigour of his frame. Lat- terly, he had become corpulent. He did not excel in conversation, though in his domestic circle he was garrulous.

One of his last acts was to compose some verses of gay gratitude to his daughter-in-law, who was his London correspondent, and to whose lively pen his last years were indebted for constant amusement. He had by nature a singular volatility, which never deserted him. His feelings, though always amiable, were not painfully deep, and amid joy or sorrow the philosophic vein was ever evident. He more resembled Goldsmith than any man that I can compare him to: in his conversation, his apparent confusion of ideas ending with some felicitous phrase of genius, his naiveté, his simplicity not untouched with a dash of sarcasm affect- ing innocence—one was often reminded of the gifted and interesting friend of Burke and Johnson. There was, however, one trait in which my father did not resemble Goldsmith—he had no vanity.

When we look at the self-laudation quoted in the first paragraph, and at innumerable other passages in the author's writings, this conclusion may be doubted ; or Mr. Benjamin Disraeli must attach a very different meaning to the word "vanity" from what others ascribe to it.