at
all .... "

The feelings with which he approached this not altogether congenial
task are described in the following passages from letters to Lady
Derby:

.... "THE MOLT, September 14th, 1889.

"If my wonderful adventure into the Beaconsfield country comes off,
I shall want all the help which Lord D. offered to give me. I do not
wonder that he and you were both startled at the proposition, and I
am not at all sure that in a respectable series of Victorian Prime
Ministers I should be allowed to treat the subject in the way that I
wish. The point is to make out what there was behind the mask. Had
it not been for Lothair I should have said nothing but a charlatan.
But that altered my opinion, and the more often I read it the more I
want to know what his real nature was. The early life is a blank
filled up by imaginative people out of Vivian Grey. I am feeling my
way indirectly with his brother, Ralph D'Israeli, and whether I go
on or not will depend on whether he will help me."

"THE MOLT, November 12th, 1889,

"The difficulty is to find out the real man that lay behind the
sphynx-like affectations. I have come to think that these
affectations (natural at first) came to be themselves affected as a
useful defensive armour which covered the vital parts. Anyway, the
study of him is extremely amusing. I had nothing else to do, and I
can easily throw what I write into the fire if it turns out
unsatisfactory."

Although the book was necessarily a short one, it is too
characteristic to be lightly dismissed. When Froude gave Mr. Reid
the manuscript, he said, "It will please neither Disraeli's friends
nor his foes. But it is at least an honest book." He heard, with
more amusement than satisfaction, that it had pleased Gladstone. For
the political estimate of a modern and Parliamentary statesman
Froude lacked some indispensable qualifications. He knew little, and
cared less, about the House of Commons, in which the best years of
Disraeli's life were passed. He despised the party system, of which
Disraeli was at once a product and a devotee. He had no sympathy
with Lord Beaconsfield's foreign policy, and the colonial policy
which he would have substituted for it was outside Lord
Beaconsfield's scope. He had adopted from Carlyle the theory that
Disraeli and Gladstone were both adventurers, the difference between
them being that Disraeli only deceived others, whereas Gladstone
deceived also himself. But Gladstone had ignor