hot and hurried sketch." It was a sketch of what he
had never seen, yet of what he had begun to foresee with amazing
lucidity. It is a sort of social fairy-tale, where every one has
exquisite beauty, limitless wealth, and exalted rank, where the
impossible and the hyperbolic are the only homely virtues. There has
always been a tendency to exalt _Vivian Grey_ at the expense of _The
Young Duke_ (1831), Disraeli's next leading permanence; and, indeed, the
former has had its admirers who have preferred it to all the others in
this period. The difference is, however, not so marked as might be
supposed. In _The Young Duke_ the manner is not so burlesque, but there
is the same roughness of execution, combined with the same rush and
fire. In either book, what we feel to-day to be the great objection to
our enjoyment is the lack of verisimilitude. Who can believe in the
existence of persons whose titles are the Earl of Fitz-Pompey and Baron
Deprivyseal, or whose names are Lady Aphrodite and Sir Carte Blanche?
The descriptions are "high-falutin" beyond all endurance, and there is
particularly noticeable a kind of stylistic foppery, which is always
hovering between sublimity and a giggle.

But here is an example, from _Vivian Grey_, of Disraeli's earliest
manner:--

"After a moment had passed, he was pouring forth in a rapid voice,
and incoherent manner, such words as men speak only once. He spoke
of his early follies, his misfortunes, his misery; of his matured
views, his settled principles, his plans, his prospects, his hopes,
his happiness, his bliss; and when he had ceased, he listened, in
his turn, to some small still words, which made him the happiest of
human beings. He bent down, he kissed the soft silken cheek which
now he could call his own. Her hand was in his; her head sank upon
his breast. Suddenly she clung to him with a strong clasp. 'Violet!
my own, my dearest; you are overcome. I have been rash, I have been
imprudent. Speak, speak, my beloved! say, you are not ill!'

"She spoke not, but clung to him with a fearful strength, her head
still upon his breast, her full eyes closed. Alarmed, he raised her
off the ground, and bore her to the river-side. Water might revive
her. But when he tried to lay her a moment on the bank, she clung
to him gasping, as a sinking person clings to a stout swimmer. He
leant over her; he did not attemp