as pains and practice would hardly have
lessened. That he had still less the imagination needed by a poet, his
_Revolutionary Epick_, conceived on the plains of Troy, and meant
to make a fourth to the _Iliad_, the _Aeneid_, and the _Divina
Commedia_, is enough to show. The literary vocation he was best
fitted for was that of a journalist or pamphleteer; and in this he
might have won unrivalled success. His dash, his verve, his
brilliancy of illustration, his scorching satire, would have made
the fortune of any newspaper, and carried dismay into the enemy's
ranks.

In inquiring how far the gifts I have sought to describe qualified
Disraeli for practical statesmanship, it is well to distinguish the
different kinds of capacity which an English politician needs to
attain the highest place. They may be said to be four. He must be a
debater. He must be a parliamentary tactician. He must understand the
country. He must understand Europe. This last is, indeed, not always
necessary; there have been moments when England, leaving Europe to
itself, may look to her own affairs only; but when the sky grows
stormy over Europe, the want of knowledge which English statesmen
sometimes evince may bode disaster.

An orator, in the highest sense of the word, Disraeli never was. He
lacked ease and fluency. He had not Pitt's turn for the lucid
exposition of complicated facts, nor for the conduct of a close
argument. The sustained and fiery declamation of Fox was equally
beyond his range. And least of all had he that truest index of
eloquence, the power of touching the emotions. He could not make his
hearers weep. But he could make them laugh; he could put them in
good-humour with themselves; he could dazzle them with rhetoric; he
could pour upon an opponent streams of ridicule more effective than
the hottest indignation. When he sought to be profound or solemn, he
was usually heavy and laboured--the sublimity often false, the diction
often stilted. For wealth of thought or splendour of language his
speeches will not bear to be compared--I will not say with those of
Burke (on whom he sometimes tried to model himself), but with those of
three or four of his own contemporaries. Even within his own party,
Lord Derby, Lord Ellenborough, and Lord Cairns in their several ways
surpassed him. There is not one of his longer and more finished
harangues which can be read with interest from beginning to end. But
there is hardly any among them which doe