e
that is really sheer inadvertence.' It is said that the Monmouth of
_Coningsby_ and the Steyne of _Vanity Fair_ are painted from one and the
same original; and you have but to compare the savage realism of
Thackeray's study to the scornful amenity of the other's--as you have but
to contrast the elaborate and extravagant cruelty of Thackeray's Alcide
de Mirobolant with the polite and half-respectful irony of Disraeli's
treatment of the cooks in _Tancred_--to perceive that in certain ways the
advantage is not with 'the greatest novelist of his time,' and that the
Monmouth produces an impression which is more moral because more kindly
and humane than the impression left by the Steyne, while in its way it is
every whit as vivid and as convincing. Yet another excellence, and a
great one, is his mastery of apt and forcible dialogue. The talk of Mr.
Henry James's personages is charmingly equable and appropriate, but it is
also trivial and tame; the talk in Anthony Trollope is surprisingly
natural and abundant, but it is also commonplace and immemorable; the
talk of Mr. George Meredith is always eloquent and fanciful, but the
eloquence is too often dark and the fancy too commonly inhuman. What
Disraeli's people have to say is not always original nor profound, but it
is crisply and happily phrased and uttered, it reads well, its impression
seldom fails of permanency. His _Wit and Wisdom_ is a kind of _Talker's
Guide_ or _Handbook of Conversation_. How should it be otherwise, seeing
that it contains the characteristic utterances of a great artist in life
renowned for memorable speech?

A Contrast.

Now, if you ask a worshipper of him that was so long his rival, to repeat
a saying, a maxim, a sentence, of which his idol is the author, it is
odds but he will look like a fool, and visit you with an evasive answer.
What else should he do? His deity is a man of many words and no sayings.
He is the prince of agitators, but it would be impossible for him to mint
a definition of 'agitation'; he is the world's most eloquent
arithmetician, but it is beyond him to epigrammatise the fact that two
and two make four. And it seems certain, unless the study of Homer and
religious fiction inspire him to some purpose, that his contributions to
axiomatic literature will be still restricted to the remark that 'There
are three courses open' to something or other: to the House, to the angry
cabman, to what and whomsoever you will. In