on the drawing-room sofa. He found rivals in Bulwer and Mrs.
Gore, and a master in Plumer Ward. His brilliant stories sold, but at
first they won him little advantage. Slowly, by dint of his inherent
force of genius, his books have not merely survived their innumerable
fellows, but they have come to represent to us the form and character of
a whole school; nay, more, they have come to take the place in our
memories of a school which, but for them, would have utterly passed away
and been forgotten. Disraeli, accordingly, is unique, not merely because
his are the only fashionable novels of the pre-Victorian era which any
one ever reads nowadays, but because in his person that ineffable manner
of the "thirties" reaches an isolated sublimity and finds a permanent
place in literature. But if we take a still wider view of the literary
career of Disraeli, we are bound to perceive that the real source of the
interest which his brilliant books continue to possess is the evidence
their pages reveal of the astonishing personal genius of the man. Do
what we will, we find ourselves looking beyond Contarini Fleming and
Sidonia and Vivian Grey to the adventurous Jew who, by dint of infinite
resolution and an energy which never slept, conquered all the prejudices
of convention, and trod English society beneath his foot in the
triumphant irony of success. It is the living Disraeli who is always
more salient than the most fascinating of his printed pages.

THREE EXPERIMENTS IN PORTRAITURE

I

LADY DOROTHY NEVILL

AN OPEN LETTER

Dear Lady Burghclere,

When we met for the first time after the death of our friend, you
desired me to produce what you were kind enough to call "one of my
portraits." But the art of the portrait-writer is capricious, and
at that time I felt wholly disinclined for the adventure. I excused
myself on the ground that the three thick volumes of her
reminiscences made a further portrait needless, and I reflected,
though I did not say, that the difficulties of presenting the
evanescent charm and petulant wit of Lady Dorothy were insuperable.
I partly think so still, but your command has lingered in my memory
all these months, and I have determined to attempt to obey you,
although what I send you can be no "portrait," but a few leaves
torn out of a painter-writer's sketch-book.

The existence of the three published volumes does, after