BOOKS.

" ENDYMION." * Endysz;on is at least a step above Lothair, not a step below it ; aucl though we cannot admit that this hybrid kind of amalgam between fact and fiction, in which the imagination,—instead of taking its materials from the experience of life, and fairly fusing them, and then creating anew,—first copies reality, and then distorts it in order to evade the inconvenience of remonstrances and reclamations, is legitimate at all, it is something to find Lord Beaconsfield going a step forward, instead of a step backward, after an interval of ten years, in the rococo style he has de-

liberately chosen. It is likely enough, indeed, that no small portion of these sketches had been written before the period of Lord Beaconsfield's last Government ; but whenever they were written,they are, we think, livelier, and have more of mind in them, and less of the Minerva Press than was visible in Lot hair. We still, of course, have the same pompous catalogues of jewelry, the same inventories of magnificent upholstery, and the same tendency to tawdry sentiment. It is hard to believe that an understand- ing as cultivated as Lord Beaconsfield's can really be responsible for such a sentence as the following, which is as vulgar as it is tawdry :—" She sat down, and burying her face in her alabaster arms, for a long time remained motionless." One would have said that if Lord Beaconsfield knew anything, he would know that such a piece of pathos as that was the kind of thing, if it pleases anybody at all, to please only minds steeped alike in conventionalism and insincerity. But the radical vice of the style, is closely allied to the radical vice of the plot of all these stories. The ability in both, such as there is, is all grounded on acute perceptions ; the romance, such as there is, is all the result of a cold and callous ambitiousness of taste. There is no simplicity in either the story or the style. Both, so far as they are good at all, are grounded in keen criticism ; both, so far as they are bad, are spoiled by a deliberate preference for gaudy life and gaudy words,—words which do not even sug- gest reality of any sort, earthly or spiritual, but rather

the careful hiding of reality under a flaunting veil. Lord Beaconsfield, in this novel, describes the Cardinal whom he makes up by amalgamating the careers of Cardinal Wiseman and Cardinal Manning, as one of the most eloquent of mankind ; and amongst his many eloquent words, the novelist records what lie afterwards expressly tells us were the most eloquent of all,— those in which, as a young man, he had offered his heart to the heroine of this tale. Here they are :—

" All seasons would be to me fascination, were I only by your side. Yes ; I can no longer repress the irresistible confession of my love. I am here, and I am here only, because I love you. I quitted Oxford and all its pride, that I might have the occasional delight of being your companion. I was not presumptuous in my thoughts. and believed that would content me ; but I can no longer resist the con- summate spell, and I offer you my heart and my life."

In the third volume, we hear of this same gentleman. " Yes, he was walking in the same glade where he had once pleaded his own cause with an eloquence which none of his most celebrated sermons had excelled." Such glorious expressions as " Oxford and all its pride," "I can no longer resist the con- summate spell," constitute then the climax of the eloquence of a most eloquent speaker's life. But what is "a consummate spell"? A consummate hypocrite, or consummate villain, is a hypocrite or a villain who has put the last finishing touch to an elaborate structure of hypocrisy or villainy. But for this ecclesiasti- cal hero to attribute to Myra the exercise of a " consummate spell " over him, was neither very complimentary nor very eloquent, unless it be eloquence to use inapplicable words because they are fine, which is precisely what Lord Beaconsfield too often does. We fear that what Lord Beaconsfield aims at in his novels is the style which he describes in one of the pages

of Endymioa as "the Corinthian style, in which the Maenad of Mr. Burke was habited in the last mode of Almack's." But though that suggests a bad style enough, he often falls beneath It. There is no trace of the Maenad of Mr. Burke, and hardly

more than a trace of the lowest phase of the society of Almack's, in making a lover speak of the "consummate spell" of the lady to whom he is offering himself, or in describing that lady in a sub- sequent page as " burying her face in her alabaster arms." And what we say of the style is still truer of the substance of the story. To idealise Cardinal Manning by attributing to him some of the achievements of Cardinal Wiseman,—to make a study of

• Endyniion. By the Anther of "Lothair." London : Longmans and Co. one aspect of Louis Napoleon, and attribute to him the achieve- ments of Garibaldi,—to sketch Lord Palmerston and Mr. Sidney Herbert, mix the two careers together, and blend both of them after an impossible fashion with the career of the late Emperor of the French,—to introduce Prince Bismarck as tilting at the Eglinton tournament with Louis Napoleon,—to solder together Mr. Poole and Mr. Hudson,—all this seems to us neither his- tory nor romance, nor such a happy blending of the two as was devised by Sir Walter Scott for the purpose of introducing-

historic figures into an otherwise imaginary scene, but some- thing which is neither fish. nor flesh, nor fowl, nor good red- herring, or, as Lord Beaconsfield himself, by the mouth of one of his young ladies, more nobly expresses it,—" neither fish, nor flesh, nor fowl, nor even that coarser hut popular delicacy never forgotten."

We fail to get any insight into the reason why this tale was named" Endymion." There seems to be no analogy between the hero's fate and his name, and Lord Beaconsfield has not even so far utilised his name as to give his story a motto from Keats's beautiful poem. He puts, indeed, on his title-page the utterly unmeaning motto, " Quicquid agent homines," which might be appropriate enough to one of Balzac's realistic stories, or one of Dickens's omnivorous descriptions of the humours of a busy earth, but has little aptness indeed, when applied to the doings of the great politicians and the " select circles of the fashion- able world. As Lord Beaconsfield was going to select so very fancy a title as "Endymion," he might at least have given his readers the pleasure of recalling the delight which a great poet took in the name:—

" Therefore, 'tis with fall happiness that I Will trace the story of Endymion ; The very music of the name has gone Into my being."

However, we must take Lord Beaconsfield,—unreality, grandi- osity, and all,—as he is, and let him amuse us as he wilL And if we do this, and come to his pages with no preconceived ideal of our own, there is a good deal here to amuse us,—more, a good deal, as we think, than there was in " Lothair." It is true that iu one or two cases, where we expect most, we find least. The sketch of Prince Bismarck, for instance, is thoroughly poor. It does not add a single trait to what

every one knows. It does not even give one-half of the traits which every one may know. The sketch of Prince

Florestan,—in the main, of course, Louis Napoleon, is better. The brief and emphatic messages in which, from time to timer Prince Florestan takes care to keep up Myra's interest in his destiny, and his final offer to her, show a good deal of Lord Beaconsfield's genuine power; and though he suppresses alto- gether the seamy and disreputable side of the late Emperor's character, this part of his story is worth reading. And the sketch of the envious St. Barbe,—a sketch, we fear, intended, in some degree at least, to suggest Mr. Thackeray, and if so, most unworthy of Lord Beaconsfield,—is extremely clever,

though deficient in this,—that Lord Beaconsfield, while he lets you see the envy by which this literary snob is con- sumed, does not let you see in the least the flash of literary genius by the help of which St. Barbe is supposed to be- come a formidable power. St. Barbe is a malicious sketch of a malicious litterateur, not even a malicious sketch of a genuine man of genius. Still, as a sketch of a man whose whole nature is absorbed with himself, and who feeds deliber- ately his wrath against every one who gains anything which he himself had coveted, it is a very able one. Here is St. Barbe's complaint to the hero, when he meets him at the house of the great banker, Neuchatel, Lord Beaconsfield's last equiva- lent for Mr. Disraeli's old hero, Sidonia

:- "After dinner, St. Barbe pounced upon Endymion. Only think of our meeting here !' be said. wonder why they asked you. Yon are not going to Paris, and you are not a wit. What a family this is !' he said ; I had no idea of wealth before ! Did you observe the- silver plates ? I could not hold mine with one hand, it was so heavy. I do not suppose there are such plates in the world. It gives one an idea of the galleons and Anson's plunder. But they deserve their wealth,' he added ; nobody grudges it to them. I declare when I was eating that truffle, I felt a glow about my heart that, if it were not indigestion, I think must have been gratitude ; though that is an article I had not believed in. He is a wonderful man, that Neuchatel. If I had only known him a year ago ! I would have dedicated my novel to him. He is a sort of man who would have given you a cheque immediately. He would not have read it, to be sure, but what of that ? If you had dedicated it to a lord, the most he would have done would have been to have asked you to dinner, and then perhaps have cut up your work in one of the Quality reviews, and taken money for doing it out of our pockets ! Oh! it's too horrid!. There are some top-sawyers here to-day, Ferran. It would make Seymour Hicks' mouth water to be here. We should have had it in the papers, and he would have left us out of the list, and called us, &c. Now, I dare say that ambassador has been blundering all his life, and yet there is something in that star and ribbon; I do not know how you feel, but I could almost go down on my knees to him. And there is a Cabinet Minister ; well, we know what he is; I have been squibbing him for these two years, and now that I meet him I feel like a snob. Oh ! there is an immense deal of superstition left in the world. I am glad they are going to the ladies. I am to be honoured by some conversation with the mistress of the house. She seems a first-rate woman, familiar with the glorious pages of a certain classic work, and my humble effusions. She praised one she thought I wrote, but between ourselves it was written by that fellow Seymour Hicks, who imitates me ; but I would not put her right, as dinner might have been announced every moment. But she is a great woman, sir,—wonderful eyes ! They are all great women here. I sat next to one of the daughters, or daughters-in-law, or nieces, I suppose. By Jove ! it was tierce and quart. If you had been there, you would have been run through in a moment. I had to show my art. Now they are rising. I should not be surprised if Mr. Neuchatel were to present me to some of the grandees. I believe them to be all impostors, but still it is pleasant to talk to a man with a star. ' Ye stars which are the poetry of heart:in,'

Byron wrote; a silly line; he should have written,

6Ye stars which are the poetry of dress.' " The sketch of Waldershare, which is said to be intended for the late Mr. George Smythe, is also very lively and effective ; and the account of the gradual decline of the elder Mr. Ferran, in consequence of his want of money, is almost powerful.

We do not know that the sketch of any of the women is good, unless it be, perhaps, that of Imogene, afterwards Lady Beau- maris. But Lord Beaconsfield sketches very cleverly the pertinacious partisanship of " women of society," their

wonderful indifference to the political issues really at stake, and the unconsciousness with which they adopt to-

morrow political cries which they had ridiculed yesterday. The political gossip of the Clubs and drawing-rooms is, however, not nearly so well given, on the whole, as in the early novels. It is a little tedious, and does not usually even lead up to a point. The best satiric touch of this kind in the book is the " smile of affec- tionate credulity" with which Mr. Tadpole says, "I depend upon you," to a Tory who is to exercise his influence to secure a doubtful borough.

On the whole, the book, like most of Mr. Disraeli's works, is a poor and flashy one, with plenty of cleverness in it, though not nearly so much as the three stories which preceded his official

career,—Coningsby, Sybil, and Tancrecl. None of these works

will live for their own sakes, nor at all, except as illustrating the career of one of the most unique of the men of genius of our clay. For though there are distinct traces of the genius which made Mr. Disraeli Prime Minister of England, in his

novels, there are only traces even in the best of them. Lord Beaconsfield the politician is as much more able than these rubbishy and incoherent stories, as Addison the politician was inferior to Addison the essayist and critic. Audacity is the great power of Lord Beaconsfield, and audacity can only be effectually shown in real life. In literature, it is a very am- biguous sort of quality, being very apt to bring rubbish to the surface, and pass it off as gold.