y_ and its fellows, with perhaps the _Pelham_
of Bulwer. But this was not the impression of the original readers of
these novels, who were amused by them, but found nothing revolutionary
in their treatment of society. In the course of _The Young Duke_,
written in 1829, Disraeli suggests an amiable rivalry with the romances
"written by my friends Mr. Ward and Mr. Bulwer." The latter name had
only just risen above the horizon, but that of Plumer Ward, forgotten as
it now is, was one to conjure by. Ward was the author of _Tremaine_
(1825) and _De Vere_ (1827), two novels of the life of a modern English
gentleman, which seems to a reader to-day to be insipid and dull enough.
But they contained "portraits" of public persons, they undertook to hold
the mirror up to the political and fashionable world of London, and they
lashed that fastidiousness which was considered to be the foible of the
age.

The books of Plumer Ward, who was an accomplished personage in advancing
years, were treated with marked distinction in the press, and were
welcomed by critics who deigned to take little notice of even such books
as _Granby_ and _Dacre_. But the stories of the youthful Disraeli
belonged to a class held in still less esteem than those just mentioned.
They had to hold their own as best they might in rivalry with a huge
flight of novels of fashionable life, all of them curiously similar in
general treatment. Above these the romances of Plumer Ward rose in a
sort of recognised dignity, as two peaks around which were crowded
innumerable hillocks. It is necessary to recall readers of to-day, who
think of _Vivian Grey_ as a work of amazing novelty, to the fact that
the _genre_ it represents to us was one which had been lifted into high
credit the year before by the consecrated success of _Tremaine_, and was
at that moment cultivated by a multitude of minor novelists.

There was, however, a distinction, and it lay in the greater fund of
animal spirits which Disraeli brought to his business. _Vivian Grey_ was
absurd, but it was fresh and popular, and it pleased at once. As the
opening work of a literary career, it promised well; the impertinent
young gentleman dashed off to Parnassus at a gallop. It was a bold bid
for personal distinction, which the author easily perceived already to
be "the only passport to the society of the great in England." _Vivian
Grey_ is little more than a spirited and daring boy's book; Disraeli
himself called it "a