LORD BEACONSFIELD'S WORLDLY WISDOM.
LORD BEACONSFIELD'S worldly wisdom has changed singularly little with age. It was as ripe as it was ever to become, in " Coningsby ;" it is neither richer nor poorer in " Endymion." There are whole fields of life into which Lord Beaconsfield has hardly ever had a wish to peep. There is hardly a touch of genuinely moral reflection in all his many novels. His heroes are never anxious to do right for the sake of right, never troubled at having done wrong because it is wrong. The very words " right " and " wrong " appe tl. to have lost all their meaning for him. And all the ex- perience whica is connected with this class of ideas will be found to be almost unobserved by him. He understands what he calls a " mission," but a mission is with him simply a sense of power and of destiny, not a sense of self-devotion. He has not a glimpse of the meaning of self-reproach or re- morse, or even of the difference between failure and humiliation. Again, he has no interest in science, and has gathered none of the worldly wisdom of science,—which, we need not say, is a great store. It is, perhaps, oddest of all that Lord Beacons- field, though a literary man, betrays hardly any interest in literature. That he has studied Byron and Shelley, and written a book about them, in which their characters and fates are almost as oddly mixed up and interchanged as are the real characters of Lord Palmerston and Louis Napoleon with the strangely distorted sketches of them given in his new book under the names of Lord Roehampton and Prince Florestan, we all know. But where is the evidence in Mr. Disraeli's books that any one great poem, any one great romance, any one great work of humour, has ever fully occupied his mind, and suggested to him even a scrap of subtle literary criticism ? Is he even aware that Keats wrote a great poem with the same title as his new novel ? Are Mr. St. Barbe and Mr. Gushy, in this new story, really meant as suggestions, however faint, of Thackeray and Dickens ? One can hardly help thinking so. But if that be the case, how infinitely barren has been his study of their works, how wholly has the cleverness of the latter sketch been due to some rather malicious glimpse of Mr. Thackeray, in one of his half-whimsical moods of literary ill-humour. Nothing is to us more strange than the extra- ordinary limitation of the field of view of a man whose genius is so undeniable as Lord Beaconsfield's.
Take the new book, which is full of records of the worldly wisdom by which he has governed his own career. And let us see what it amounts to. Of course, there is the old teaching that race is an enormous factor in politics, but that in consider- ing race you must not be deceived by empty names like the "Latin race," though it may be well to play with names some- times, for the purpose of deceiving others. Of course, there is the teaching that women, again, are a great factor in political success,—that if a man can but command the complete de- votion of a few considerable women, he will find himself wafted, as if, by magic, over difficulties which he would not otherwise surmount at all. That is a bit of teaching from the personal experience of Lord Beaconsfield, which is probably not very sound for the purposes of the rest of the world. If, indeed, a man can command, like Endymion, that curious power.of alternating cold bursts of passion which do him no harm, but interest these considerable women in him, with the complete indifference that always comes to his aid as soon as he needs
it, ho may be safe in trusting to this agency. But for the poli- tical world at large, Lord Beaconsfield's teaching on this sub- ject is likely to be much more misleading than effectual. Then, of course, there is the teaching that the elements of politica' power arc often thrown away, unless there be " a commanding individual will " to use them ; a lesson urged both in relation to the Whig Ministries of the years 1832-1841, and to the Ministry of Sir Robert Peel. Again, there is the permanent teaching of Sidonia, taken up again in this new tale chiefly by his alter ego, Mr. Neuchatel, that you should not be seriously, or at least for any long time, discomposed by anything that touches the affections, that you should keep down suscepti- bility by cultivating a " salutary hardness ;" that -you should rather " cherish affection than indulge grief," though " every one must follow their mood ;" that suicide, for instance, shows " a want of imagination," the deficiency in a suicide being not that he thinks too little of the purposes of suffering, but too little of the innumerable chances of escaping from it.
And then, again, there is the record of the many lessons of political tact in which Mr. Disraeli was always a proficient. First, we arc told a good deal of the use of Private Secretaries and of the pleasantness of the mutual relation between a sedulous private secretary and his chief. "There is usually in the relation an identity of interest, and that of the highest kind ; and the perpetual difficulties, the alternations of triumph and defeat, develope devotion. A youthful secretary will naturally feel some degree of enthusiasm for his chief, and a wise Minister will never stint his regard for one in whose intelligence and honour he finds he can place con- fidence." Such a Minister, even if he has been working with his private secretary all day, always greets his private secretary again, wherever he meets him, with the greatest con- sideration, because he knows that such a recognition will raise the young man " iu the eyes of the social herd, who always observe little things, and generally form from them their opinions of great affairs." Then, of course, there is the old maxim of men of tact, that if you want to succeed in what yo' are about, you should never show your hand too much,—" Tact teaches you when to be silent. Inquirers who are always in- quiring never learn anything." And there is the observation that " every one, to a certain extent, is a mannerist; every one has his ways ;" and that, if you want to increase by your help the efficiency of another to the highest point, you must acquiesce in that mannerism, and drop into those ways. Further, if you study opportunity, you will often shorten the business of life. Lord Roehampton, the Foreign Minister, is in this story accustomed to give foreign Ambassadors audiences after the shooting parties. " He thought it was a specific against their being too long. He used to say, ' The first dinner-bell often brings things to a point..' " And again, in a higher key ;—" Great men should think of Opportunity and not of Time. Time is the excuse of feeble and puzzled spirits."
And finally, there is a fund of observation in all Mr. Disraeli's books,—and perhaps it is the subtlest kind of observation he ever gives us,—of the intermediate world between real feeling and mere imagination, of the thing most like to sentiment which exists in utterly unfeeling minds, of the thing farthest removed from sentiment whi311 exists in thoroughly sentimental minds. For instance, in Lord Beaconsfield's study of the thoroughly selfish Peer, he says :—" lie seemed to like meeting men with whom he had been at school. There is certainly a magic in the memory of schoolboy friendships,—it softens the heart, and even affects the nervous system of those who have no hearts." Aud similarly, he is always studying, and studying very skilfully, the unsentimental side of sentiment itself, even of the sentiment of women. You can see that Lord Beacons- field does not really like women with soft hearts. He likes women capable of great devotion, but capable of trampling under foot all personal feelings, for their own purposes ; and he likes men who calmly accept that sacrifice, and think it the right thing for women to do.
If we were to sum up iu a word the worldly wisdom of Lord Beaconsfield, we should say it taught first the value of ambition, and next, the use of the tools with which ambition may most effectually work. The poor, if they desire wealth, should achieve it, and may be reasonably satisfied with achieving it; the rich, who have it already, should desire power which they have not got, and obtain that power. Lady Montfort's reproach to her husband is the reproach Mr. Disraeli must very often have addressed in his hcartto the great landowners and Peers
of this'Jountry. " What,' she would say, are rank and wealth to us ? We were born to them. We want something that we were not born to. You reason like a parvenu. Of course, if you had created your rank and your riches, you might rest on your oars, and find excitement in the recollection of what you had achieved. A man of your position ought to govern the country, and it always was so in old days.' " There you have the true Lord Beaconsfield,—" Set your mind to attain some form of power which you have not got, but which you may earn wholly for yourself, and your life will be more or less happy, if you are faithful to that pursuit, and show capacity as well as fidelity." This, with the maxims embodying the chief points of his own experience in working out this problem, is Lord Beaconsfield's stock of worldly wisdom, as illustrated in "Endymion." It seems to us a very humble stock of worldly wisdom, and yet, no doubt, it has served well one of the most singularly successful men of his age and country. But we think there is sufficient evidence that though Lord Beaconsfield's success has been wonderful, the aims in which he has succeeded have been singularly narrow, and sin- gularly alloyed with a metal that can only be called base.
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