it was "as dull as
ditch-water and as flat as a flounder," and in a graver mood reproved it
as a mere "bid for the bigoted voices of Exeter Hall." Some of the
criticisms were not wanting in acumen. It was perceived at once that, as
Theodora Campion is the heroine of the book, it was an error in art to
kill her off in the middle of it. Moreover, it is only fair to admit
that if the stormy Parliamentarian life Disraeli had led so long had
given him immense personal advantages, it had also developed some
defects. It had taught him boundless independence and courage, it had
given him a rare experience of men and manners, and it had lifted his
satire far above petty or narrow personal considerations. But it had
encouraged a looseness of utterance, a mixture of the colloquial and the
bombastic, which was unfortunate. In the best parts of _Coningsby_ and
of _Tancred_ he had shown himself a very careless writer of English. But
_Lothair_, even in its corrected form--and the first edition is a
miracle of laxity--is curiously incorrect. It reads as though it were
taken down from the flowing speech of a fine orator, not as though it
were painfully composed in a study; it contains surprising ellipses,
strange freaks of grammar. There was all this, and more, to encourage
the critics, whom Disraeli had gone out of his way to affront in a
violent epigram, to attack _Lothair_ with contempt and resentment.

The critics took irony for timidity; they thought that the sardonic
novelist was the dupe of the splendours which he invented and gloated
over. But if one thing is more evident than another to-day it is that
this gorgeous story of a noble boy, whose guardians, a Presbyterian earl
and a Roman cardinal, quarrelled for his soul and for his acres, is an
immense satire from first to last. In Disraeli's own words, used in
another sense, the keynote of _Lothair_ is "mockery blended with Ionian
splendour." Never had he mocked so dauntlessly, never had his fancy been
more exuberant, and those who criticise the magnificence must realise
that it was intentional. It was thus that Disraeli loved to see life,
and, most of all, the life he laughed at. He had always been gorgeous,
but he let himself go in _Lothair_; all is like the dream of a Lorenzo
dei Medicis or an Aurungzebe. Nothing is done by halves. Muriel Towers
was set on "the largest natural lake that inland England boasts"--some
lake far larger than Windermere and entirely unsuspected by ge