No More Learning

We are suffering from the intolerable competition of a foreign
rival, placed, it would seem, in a condition so far superior to
ours for the production of light, that he absolutely inundates our
national market with it at a price fabulously reduced. The
moment he shows himself, our trade leaves us — all consumers
apply to him; and a branch of native industry, having countless
ramifications, is all at once rendered completely stagnant. This
rival, who is no other than the Sun, wages war to the knife
against us, and we suspect that he has been raised up by perfid-
ious Albion (good policy as times go); inasmuch as he displays
towards that haughty island a circumspection with which he dis-
penses in our case.
What we pray for is, that it may please you to pass a law
ordering the shutting up of all windows, skylights, dormer win-
dows, outside and inside shutters, curtains, blinds, bull's-eyes; in
a word, of all openings, holes, chinks, clefts, and fissures, by or
through which the light of the sun has been in use to enter
houses, to the prejudice of the meritorious manufactures with
which we flatter ourselves we have accommodated our country,
a country which, in gratitude, ought not to abandon us now to a
strife so unequal.


## p. 1611 (#409) ###########################################

FRÉDÉRIC BASTIAT
1611
We trust, gentlemen, that you will not regard this our re-
quest as a satire, or refuse it without at least previously hearing
the reasons which we have to urge in its support.
And first, if you shut up as much as possible all access to
natural light, and create a demand for artificial light, which of
our French manufactures will not be encouraged by it ?
If more tallow is consumed, then there must be more oxen
and sheep; and consequently, we shall behold the multiplication
of artificial meadows, meat, wool, hides, and above all manure,
which is the basis and foundation of all agricultural wealth.
If more oil is consumed, then we shall have an extended
cultivation of the poppy, of the olive, and of rape. These rich
and exhausting plants will come at the right time to enable us
to avail ourselves of the increased fertility which the rearing of
additional cattle will impart to our lands.
Our heaths will be covered with resinous trees. Numerous
swarms of bees will, on the mountains, gather perfumed treas-
ures, now wasting their fragrance on the desert air, like the
flowers from which they emanate. No branch of agriculture but
will then exhibit a cheering development.
The same remark applies to navigation. Thousands of vessels
will proceed to the whale fishery; and in a short time we shall
possess a navy capable of maintaining the honor of France, and
gratifying the patriotic aspirations of your petitioners, the under-
signed candle-makers and others.
But what shall we say of the manufacture of articles de
Paris ? Henceforth you will behold gildings, bronzes, crystals,
in candlesticks, in lamps, in lustres, in candelabra, shining forth
in spacious warerooms, compared with which those of the pres-
ent day can be regarded but as mere shops.
No poor résinier from his heights on the sea-coast, no coal-
miner from the depth of his sable gallery, but will rejoice in
higher wages and increased prosperity.
Only have the goodness to reflect, gentlemen, and you will
be convinced that there is perhaps no Frenchman, from the
wealthy coal-master to the humblest vender of lucifer matches,
whose lot will not be ameliorated by the success of this our
petition.
We foresee your objections, gentlemen, but we know that you
can oppose to us none but such as you have picked up from the
effete works of the partisans of Free Trade. We defy you to


## p. 1612 (#410) ###########################################

1612
FRÉDÉRIC BASTIAT
.
utter a single word against us which will not instantly rebound
against yourselves and your entire policy.
You will tell us that if we gain by the protection which we
seek, the country will lose by it, because the consumer must
bear the loss.
We answer:
You have ceased to have any right to invoke the interest of
the consumer; for whenever his interest is found opposed to that
of the producer, you sacrifice the former. You have done so for
the purpose of encouraging labor and increasing employment. For
the same reason you should do so again.
You have yourself refuted this objection. When you are told
that the consumer is interested in the free importation of iron,
coal, corn, textile fabrics — yes, you reply, but the producer is
interested in their exclusion. Well, be it so; — if consumers are
interested in the free admission of natural light, the producers
of artificial light are equally interested in its prohibition.
But again, you may say that the producer and consumer are
identical. If the manufacturer gain by protection, he will make
the agriculturist also a gainer; and if agriculture prosper, it will
open a vent to manufactures. Very well: if you confer upon us
the monopoly of furnishing light during the day,— first of all,
we shall purchase quantities of tallow, coals, oils, resinous sub-
stances, wax, alcohol — besides silver, iron, bronze, crystal — to
carry on our manufactures; and then we, and those who furnish
us with such commodities, having become rich, will consume a
great deal, and impart prosperity to all the other branches of
our national industry.
If you urge that the light of the sun is a gratuitous gift of
nature, and that to reject such gifts is to reject wealth itself
under pretense of encouraging the means of acquiring it, we
would caution you against giving a death-blow to your own
policy. Remember that hitherto you have always repelled for-
eign products, because they approximate more nearly than home
products to the character of gratuitous gifts. To comply with the
exactions of other monopolists, you have only half a motive; and
to repulse us simply because we stand on a stronger vantage-
ground than others would be to adopt the equation, +x+=-; in
other words, it would be to heap absurdity upon absurdity.
Nature and human labor co-operate in various proportions
(depending on countries and climates) in the production of com-


## p. 1613 (#411) ###########################################

FRÉDÉRIC BASTIAT
1613
modities. The part which nature executes is always gratuitous;
it is the part executed by human labor which constitutes value,
and is paid for.
If a Lisbon orange sells for half the price of a Paris orange,
it is because natural and consequently gratuitous heat does for
the one what artificial and therefore expensive heat must do for
the other.
When an orange comes to us from Portugal, we may conclude
that it is furnished in part gratuitously, in part for an onerous
consideration; in other words, it comes to us at half-price as
compared with those of Paris.
Now, it is precisely the gratuitous half (pardon the word)
which we contend should be excluded. You say, How can nat-
ural labor sustain competition with foreign labor, when the
former has all the work to do, and the latter only does one-half,
the sun supplying the remainder ? But if this half, being gratu-
itous, determines you to exclude competition, how should the
whole, being gratuitous, induce you to admit competition ? If
you were consistent, you would, while excluding as hurtful to
native industry what is half gratuitous, exclude a fortiori and
with double zeal that which is altogether gratuitous.
Once more, when products such as coal, iron, corn, or textile
fabrics are sent us from abroad, and we can acquire them with
less labor than if we made them ourselves, the difference is a
free gift conferred upon us. The gift is more or less considera-
ble in proportion as the difference is more or less great. It
amounts to a quarter, a half, or three-quarters of the value of
the product, when the foreigner only asks us for three-fourths,
a half, or a quarter of the price we should otherwise pay. It is
as perfect and complete as it can be, when the donor (like the
sun in furnishing us with light) asks us for nothing. The ques-
tion, and we ask it formally, is this, Do you desire for our
country the benefit of gratuitous consumption, or the pretended
advantages of onerous production ? Make your choice, but be
logical; for as long as you exclude, as you do, coal, iron, corn,
foreign fabrics, in proportion as their price approximates to cero,
what inconsistency would it be to admit the light of the sun, the
price of which is already at sero during the entire day!


## p. 1614 (#412) ###########################################

1614
FRÉDÉRIC BASTIAT
STULTA AND PUERA
T"
HERE were, no matter where, two towns called Fooltown and
Babytown. They completed at great cost a highway from
the one town to the other. When this was done, Fooltown said to
herself, “See how Babytown inundates us with her products; we
must see to it. ” In consequence, they created and paid a body
of obstructives, so called because their business was to place
obstacles in the way of traffic coming from Babytown. Soon
afterwards Babytown did the same.
At the end of some centuries, knowledge having in the
interim made great progress, the common sense of Babytown
enabled her to see that such reciprocal obstacles could only be
reciprocally hurtful. She therefore sent a diplomatist to Fool-
town, who, laying aside official phraseology, spoke to this effect:
“We have made a highway, and now we throw obstacles in
the way of using it. This is absurd. It would have been better
to have left things as they were.
We should not, in that case,
have had to pay for making the road in the first place, nor
afterwards have incurred the expense of maintaining obstructives.
In the name of Babytown, I come to propose to you, not to give
up opposing each other all at once, — that would be to act upon
a principle, and we despise principles as much as you do, — but
to lessen somewhat the present obstacles, taking care to estimate
equitably the respective sacrifices we make for this purpose. ”
So spoke the diplomatist. Fooltown asked for time to con-
sider the proposal, and proceeded to consult in succession her
manufacturers and agriculturists. At length, after the lapse of
some years, she declared that the negotiations were broken off.
On receiving this intimation, the inhabitants of Babytown
held a meeting. An old gentleman (they always suspected he
had been secretly bought by Fooltown) rose and said: “The
obstacles created by Fooltown injure our sales, which is a mis-
fortune Those which we have ourselves created injure our pur-
chases, which is another misfortune. With reference to the first,
we are powerless; but the second rests with ourselves.
at least get quit of one, since we cannot rid ourselves of both
evils. Let us suppress our obstructives without requiring Fool-
town to do the same. Some day, no doubt, she will come to
know her own interests better. ”
Let us


## p. 1615 (#413) ###########################################

FRÉDÉRIC BASTIAT
1615
A second counselor, a practical, matter-of-fact man, guiltless
of any acquaintance with principles, and brought up in the ways
of his forefathers, replied
"Don't listen to that Utopian dreamer, that theorist, that
innovator, that economist; that Stultomaniac. We shall all be
undone if the stoppages of the road are not equalized, weighed,
and balanced between Fooltown and Babytown. There would be
greater difficulty in going than in coming, in exporting than in
importing We should find ourselves in the same condition of
inferiority relatively to Fooltown, as Havre, Nantes, Bordeaux,
Lisbon, London, Hamburg, and New Orleans, are with relation
to the towns situated at the sources of the Seine, the Loire, the
Garonne, the Tagus, the Thames, the Elbe, and the Mississippi;
for it is more difficult for a ship to ascend than to descend a
river.
[A Voice — « Towns at the embouchures of rivers prosper
more than towns at their source. ”] This is impossible. [Same
Voice — “But it is so. "] Well, if it be so, they have prospered
contrary to rules. ”
Reasoning so conclusive convinced the assembly, and the ora-
tor followed up his victory by talking largely of national independ-
ence, national honor, national dignity, national labor, inundation
of products, tributes, murderous competition. In short, he carried
the vote in favor of the maintenance of obstacles; and if you are
at all curious on the subject, I can point out to you countries,
where you will see with your own eyes Roadmakers and Obstruct-
ives working together on the most friendly terms possible, under
the orders of the same legislative assembly, and at the expense
of the same taxpayers, the one set endeavoring to clear the road,
and the other set doing their utmost to render it impassable.


## p. 1616 (#414) ###########################################

1616
FRÉDÉRIC BASTIAT
INAPPLICABLE
TERMS
From "Economic Sophisms)
La
the puerility of applying to industrial
competition phrases applicable to war,- a way of speaking
which is only specious when applied to competition between
two rival trades. The moment we come to take into account
the effect produced on the general prosperity, the analogy dis-
appears.
In a battle, every one who is killed diminishes by so much
the strength of the army. In industry, a workshop is shut up
only when what it produced is obtained by the public from
another source and in greater abundance. Figure a state of
things where for one man killed on the spot two should rise
up full of life and vigor. Were such a state of things possible,
war would no longer merit its name.
This, however, is the distinctive character of what is so
absurdly called industrial war.
Let the Belgians and the English lower the price of their
iron ever so much; let them, if they will, send it to us for
nothing: this might extinguish some of our blast-furnaces; but
immediately, and as a necessary consequence of this very cheap-
ness, there would rise up a thousand other branches of industry
more profitable than the one which had been superseded.
We arrive, then, at the conclusion that domination by labor
is impossible, and a contradiction in terms, seeing that all supe-
riority which manifests itself among a people means cheapness,
and tends only to impart force to all other nations.
banish, then, from political economy all terms borrowed from
the military vocabulary: to fight with equal weapons, to conquer,
to crush, to stifle, to be beaten, invasion, tribute, etc. What do
such phrases mean? Squeeze them, and you obtain nothing.
Yes, you do obtain something; for from such words
proceed absurd errors, and fatal and pestilent prejudices. Such
phrases tend to arrest the fusion of nations, are inimical to their
peaceful, universal, and indissoluble alliance, and retard the pro-
gress of the human race.
Let us


## p. 1617 (#415) ###########################################

1617
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
(1821–1867)
BY GRACE KING
HARLES BAUDELAIRE was born in Paris in 1821; he died there
in 1867. Between these dates lies the evolution of one of
the most striking personalities in French literature, and
the development of an influence which affected not only the litera-
ture of the poet's own country, but that of all Europe and America.
The genuineness of both personality and influence was one of the
first critical issues raised after Baudelaire's advent into literature;
it is still one of the main issues in all critical consideration of
him. A question which involves by impli-
cation the whole relation of poetry, and of
art as such, to life, is obviously one that
furnishes more than literary ssues, and
engages other than literary interests. And
thus, by easy and natural corollaries, Bau-
delaire has been made a subject of appeal
not only to judgment, but even to con-
science. At first sight, therefore, he ap-
pears surrounded either by an intricate
moral maze, or by a no less troublesome
confusion of contradictory theories from
opposing camps rather than schools of criti-
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
cism. But no author — no dead author – is
more accessible, or more communicable in his way; his poems, his
theories, and a goodly portion of his life, lie at the disposition of any
reader who cares to know him.
The Baudelaire legend, as it is called by French critics, is one of
the blooms of that romantic period of French literature which is
presided over by the genius of Théophile Gautier. Indeed, it is
against the golden background of Gautier's imagination that the pict. .
ure of the youthful poet is best preserved for us, appearing in all
the delicate and illusive radiance of the youth and beauty of legend-
ary saints on the gilded canvases of mediæval art. The radiant
youth and beauty may be no more truthful to nature than the gilded
background, but the fact of the impression sought to be conveyed is
not on that account to be disbelieved.
Baudelaire, Gautier writes, was born in the Rue Hautefeuille, in
one of those old houses with a pepper-pot turret at the corner which

111-102


## p. 1618 (#416) ###########################################

1618
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
i
have disappeared from the city under the advancing improvement of
straight lines and clear openings. His father, a gentleman of learn-
ing, retained all the eighteenth-century courtesy and distinction of
manner, which, like the pepper-pot turret, has also disappeared under
the advance of Republican enlightenment. An absent-minded, re-
served child, Baudelaire attracted no especial attention during his
school days. When they were over, his predilection for a literary
vocation became known. From this his parents sought to divert hiin
by sending him to travel. He voyaged through the Indian Ocean,
visiting the great islands: Madagascar, Ceylon, Mauritius, Bourbon.
Had there been a chance for irresolution in the mind of the youth,
this voyage destroyed it forever. His imagination, essentially exotic,
succumbed to the passionate charm of a new, strange, and splendidly
glowing form of nature; the stars, the skies, the gigantic vegetation,
the color, the perfumes, the dark-skinned figures in white draperies,
formed for him at that time a heaven, for which his senses unceas-
ingly yearned afterwards amid the charms and enchantments of civ-
ilization, in the world's capital of pleasure and luxury. Returning to
Paris, of age and master of his fortune, he established himself in his
independence, openly adopting his chosen career.
He and Théophile Gautier met for the first time in 1849, in the
Hotel Pimodau, where were held the meetings of the Hashish Club.
Here in the great Louis XIV. saloon, with its wood-work relieved
with dull gold; its corbeled ceiling, painted after the manner of
Lesueur and Poussin, with satyrs pursuing nymphs through reeds and
foliage; its great red and white spotted marble mantel, with gilded
elephant harnessed like the elephant of Porus in Lebrun's picture,
bearing an enameled clock with blue ciphers; its antique chairs and
sofas, covered with faded tapestry representing hunting scenes, hold-
ing the reclining figures of the members of the club; women cele-
brated in the world of beauty, men in the world of letters, meeting
not only for the enjoyment of the artificial ecstasies of the drug, but
to talk of art, literature, and love, as in the days of the Decameron
here Baudelaire made what might be called his historic impression
upon literature.
He was at that time twenty-eight years of age; and
even in that assemblage, in those surroundings, his personality was
striking. His black hair, worn close to the head, grew in regular
scallops over a forehead of dazzling whiteness; his eyes, the color of
Spanish tobacco, were spiritual, deep, penetrating, perhaps too insist-
ently so, in expression; the mobile sinuous mouth had the ironical
voluptuous lips that Leonardo da Vinci loved to paint; the nose was
delicate and sensitive, with quivering nostrils; a deep dimple accent-
uated the chin; the bluish-black tint of the shaven skin, softened
with rice-powder, contrasted with the clear rose and white of the


## p. 1619 (#417) ###########################################

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
1619
upper part of his cheeks. Always dressed with meticulous neatness
and simplicity, following English rather than French taste; in man-
ner punctiliously observant of the strictest conventionality, scrupu-
lously, even excessively polite; in talk measuring his phrases, using
only the most select terms, and pronouncing certain words as if the
sound itself possessed a certain subtle, mystical value, — throwing
his voice into capitals and italics; - in contrast with the dress and
manners about him, he, according to Gautier, looked like a dandy
who had strayed into Bohemia.
The contrast was no less violent between Baudelaire's form and
the substance of his conversation. With a simple, natural, and per-
fectly impartial manner, as if he were conveying commonplace
information about every-day life, he would advance some axiom
monstrously Satanic, or sustain, with the utmost grace and coolness,
some mathematical extravagance in the way of a theory.
And no
one could so inflexibly push a paradox to the uttermost limits,
regardless of consequences to received notions of morality or reli-
gion; always employing the most rigorous methods of logic and
reason. His wit was found to lie neither in words nor thoughts, but
in the peculiar standpoint from which he regarded things, a stand-
point which altered their outlines, — like those of objects looked down
upon from a bird's flight, or looked up to on a ceiling. In this way,
to continue the exposition of Gautier, Baudelaire saw relations inap-
preciable to others, whose logical bizarrerie was startling.
His first productions were critical articles for the Parisian journals;
articles that at the time passed unperceived, but which to-day
furnish perhaps the best evidences of that keen artistic insight and
foresight of the poet, which was at once his greatest good and evil
genius. In 1856 appeared his translation of the works of Edgar Allan
Poe; a translation which may be said to have naturalized Poe in
French literature, where he has played a rôle curiously like that of
Baudelaire in Poe's native literature. The natural predisposition of
Baudelaire, which fitted him to be the French interpreter of Poe,
rendered him also peculiarly sensitive to Poe's mysteriously subtle
yet rankly vigorous charms; and he showed himself as sensitively
responsive to these as he had been to the exotic charms of the East.
The influence upon his intellectual development was decisive and
final. His indebtedness to Poe, or it might better be said, his iden-
tification with Poe, is visible not only in his paradoxical manias, but
in his poetry, and in his theories of art and poetry set forth in his
various essays and fugitive prose expressions, and notably in his
introduction to his translations of the American author's works,
In 1857 appeared the (Fleurs du Mal’ (Flowers of Evil), the vol-
ume of poems upon which Baudelaire's fame as
a poet is founded.


## p. 1620 (#418) ###########################################

1620
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
It was the result of his thirty years' devotion to the study of his art
and meditation upon it. Six of the poems were suppressed by the
censor of the Second Empire. This action called out, in form of
protest, that fine appreciation and defense of Baudelaire's genius and
best defense of his methods, by four of the foremost critics and
keenest artists in poetry of Paris, which form, with the letters from
Sainte-Beuve, de Custine, and Deschamps, a precious appendix to the
third edition of the poems.
The name Flowers of Evil” is a sufficient indication of the inten-
tions and aim of the author. Their companions in the volume are:
(Spleen and Ideal, Parisian Pictures, Wine,' Revolt,' Death. '
The simplest description of them is that they are indescribable.
They must not only be read, they must be studied repeatedly to be
understood as they deserve. The paradox of their most exquisite art,
and their at times most revolting revelations of the degradations and
perversities of humanity, can be accepted with full appreciation of
the author's meaning only by granting the same paradox to his
genuine nature; by crediting him with being not only an ardent
idealist of art for art's sake, but an idealist of humanity for human-
ity's sake; one to whom humanity, even in its lowest degradations
and vilest perversions, is sublimely sacred; - one to whom life offered
but one tragedy, that of human souls flying like Cain from a guilt-
stricken paradise, but pursued by the remorse of innocence, and
scourged by the consciousness of their own infinitude.
But the poet's own words are the best explanation of his aim and
intention :
«Poetry, though one delve ever so little into his own self, interrogate his
own soul, recall his memories of enthusiasms, has no other end than itself; it
cannot have any other aim, and no poem will be so great, so noble, so truly
worthy of the name of poem, as that which shall have been written solely for
the pleasure of writing a poem. I do not wish to say that poetry should not
ennoble manners – – that its final result should not be to raise man above vul-
gar interests.
That would be an evident absurdity. I say that if the poet
has pursued a moral end, he has diminished his poetic force, and it would
not be imprudent to wager that his work would be bad. Poetry cannot,
under penalty of death or forfeiture, assimilate itself to science or morality.
It has not Truth for object, it has only itself. Truth's modes of demonstra-
tion are different and elsewhere. Truth has nothing to do with ballads; all
that constitutes the charm, the irresistible grace of a ballad, would strip
Truth of its authority and power. Cold, calm, impassive, the demonstrative
temperament rejects the diamonds and flowers of the muse; it is, therefore, the
absolute inverse of the poetic temperament. Pure Intellect aims at Truth,
Taste shows us Beauty, and the Moral Sense teaches us Duty. It is true
that the middle term has intimate connection with the two extremes, and
only separates itself from Moral Sense by a difference so slight that Aristotle


## p. 1621 (#419) ###########################################

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
1621
did not hesitate to class some of its delicate operations amongst the virtues.
And accordingly what, above all, exasperates the man of taste is the spectacle
of vice, is its deformity, its disproportions. Vice threatens the just and true,
and revolts intellect and conscience; but as an outrage upon harmony, as dis-
sonance, it would particularly wound certain poetic minds, and I do not think
it would be scandal to consider all infractions of moral beauty as a species of
sin against rhythm and universal prosody.
«It is this admirable, this immortal instinct of the Beautiful which makes
us consider the earth and its spectacle as a sketch, as a correspondent of
Heaven. The insatiable thirst for all that is beyond that which life veils is
the most living proof of our immortality. It is at once by poetry and across
it, across and through music, that the soul gets a glimpse of the splendors
that lie beyond the tomb. And when an exquisite poem causes tears to rise
in the eye, these tears are not the proof of excessive enjoyment, but rather
the testimony of a moved melancholy, of a postulation of the nerves, of a
nature exiled in the imperfect, which wishes to take immediate possession,
even on earth, of a revealed paradise.
« Thus the principle of poetry is strictly and simply human aspiration
toward superior beauty; and the manifestation of this principle is enthusi-
asm and uplifting of the soul, - enthusiasm entirely independent of passion,-
which is the intoxication of heart, and of truth which is the food of reason.
For passion is a natural thing, even too natural not to introduce a wounding,
discordant tone into the domain of pure beauty; too familiar, too violent, not
to shock the pure Desires, the gracious Melancholies, and the noble Despairs
which inhabit the supernatural regions of poetry. ”
Baudelaire saw himself as the poet of a decadent epoch, an epoch
in which art had arrived at the over-ripened maturity of an aging
civilization; a glowing, savorous, fragrant over-ripeness, that is
already softening into decomposition. And to be the fitting poet of
such an epoch, he modeled his style on that of the poets of the
Latin decadence; for, as he expressed it for himself and for the
modern school of «decadents” in French poetry founded upon his
name: -
“Does it not seem to the reader, as to me, that the language of the last
Latin decadence — that supreme sigh of a robust person already transformed
and prepared for spiritual life — is singularly fitted to express passion as it is
understood and felt by the modern world ? Mysticism is the other end of the
magnet of which Catullus and his band, brutal and purely epidermic poets,
knew only the sensual pole. In this wonderful language, solecisms and bar-
barisms seem to express the forced carelessness of a passion which forgets
itself, and mocks at rules. The words, used in a novel sense, reveal the
charming awkwardness of a barbarian from the North, kneeling before Roman
Beauty. ”
Nature, the nature of Wordsworth and Tennyson, did not exist for
Baudelaire; inspiration he denied; simplicity he scouted as an an-
achronism in a decadent period of perfected art, whose last word in


## p. 1622 (#420) ###########################################

1622
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
poetry should be the apotheosis of the Artificial. “A little charlatan-
ism is permitted even to genius,” he wrote: “it is like fard on the
cheeks of a naturally beautiful woman; an appetizer for the mind. ”
Again he expresses himself:-
It seems to me, two women are presented to me, one a rustic matron,
repulsive in health and virtue, without manners, without expression; in short,
owing nothing except to simple nature ; – the other, one of those beauties that
dominate and oppress memory, uniting to her original and unfathomable
charms all the eloquence of dress; who is mistress of her part, conscious of
and queen of herself, speaking like an instrument well tuned; with looks
freighted with thought, yet letting flow only what she would. My choice
would not be doubtful; and yet there are pedagogic sphinxes who would
reproach me as recreant to classical honor. )
In music it was the same choice. He saw the consummate art
and artificiality of Wagner, and preferred it to all other music, at a
time when the German master was ignored and despised by a classic-
ized musical world. In perfumes it was not the simple fragrance of
the rose or violet that he loved, but musk and amber; and he said,
“my soul hovers over perfumes as the souls of other men hover
over music. »
Besides his essays and sketches, Baudelaire published in prose a
novelette; Fanfarlo,' Artificial Paradises,' opium and hashish, imi-
tations of De Quincey's 'Confessions of an Opium Eater); and Little
Prose Poems, also inspired by a book, the (Gaspard de la Nuit) of
Aloysius Bertrand, and which Baudelaire thus describes: -
« The idea came to me to attempt something analogous, and to apply to
the description of modern life, or rather a modern and more abstract life, the
methods he had applied to the painting of ancient life, so strangely pictur-
esque. Which one of us in his ambitious days has not dreamed of a miracle
of poetic prose, musical, without rhythm and without rhyme, supple enough
and rugged enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of the soul, to
the undulations of reverie, and to the assaults of conscience ? »
Failing health induced Baudelaire to quit Paris and establish
himself in Brussels; but he received no benefit from the change of
climate, and the first symptoms of his terrible malady manifested
themselves a slowness of speech, and hesitation over words. As a
slow and sententious enunciation was characteristic of him, the
symptoms attracted no attention, until he fell under a sudden and
violent attack. He was brought back to Paris and conveyed to a
«maison de santé,” where he died, after lingering several months in
a paralyzed condition, motionless, speechless; nothing alive in him
but thought, seeking to express itself through his eyes.
The nature of Baudelaire's malady and death was, by the public
at large, accepted as confirmation of the suspicion that he was in the
1


## p. 1623 (#421) ###########################################

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
1623
are.
habit of seeking his inspiration in the excitation of hashish and
opium. His friends, however, recall the fact of his incessant work,
and intense striving after his ideal in art; his fatigue of body and
mind, and his increasing weariness of spirit under the accumulating
worries and griefs of a life for which his very genius unfitted him.
He was also known to be sober in his tastes, as all great workers
That he had lent himself more than once to the physiological
and psychological experiment of hashish was admitted; but he was a
rare visitor at the séances in the saloon of the Hotel Pimodau, and
came as a simple observer of others. His masterly description of
the hallucinations produced by hashish is accompanied by analytical
and moral commentaries which unmistakably express repugnance to
and condemnation of the drug:
«Admitting for the moment,” he writes, “the hypothesis of a constitution
tempered enough and strong enough to resist the evil effects of the perfidious
drug, another, a fatal and terrible danger, must be thought of, — that of habit.
He who has recourse to a poison to enable him to think, will soon not be
able to think without the poison. Imagine the horrible fate of a man whose
paralyzed imagination is unable to work without the aid of hashish or opium.
But man is not so deprived of honest means of gaining heaven,
that he is obliged to invoke the aid of pharmacy or witchcraft; he need not
sell his soul in order to pay for the intoxicating caresses and the love of
houris. What is a paradise that one purchases at the expense of one's own
soul ?
Unfortunate wretches who have neither fasted nor prayed, and
who have refused the redemption of labor, ask from black magic the means
to elevate themselves at a single stroke to a supernatural existence. Magic
dupes them, and lights for them a false happiness and a false light; while we,
poets and philosophers, who have regenerated our souls by incessant work and
contemplation, by the assiduous exercise of the will and permanent nobility of
intention, we have created for our use a garden of true beauty. Confiding
in the words that (faith will remove mountains,' we have accomplished the
one miracle for which God has given us license. ”
The perfect art-form of Baudelaire's poems makes translation of
them indeed a literal impossibility. The Little Old Women,' (The
Voyage, The Voyage to Cytherea, A Red-haired Beggar-girl,'
“The Seven Old Men,' and sonnet after sonnet in (Spleen and Ideal,'
seem to rise only more and more ineffable from every attempt to
filter them through another language, or through another mind than
that of their original, and, it would seem, one possible creator.
Grace Trung


## p.
1624 (#422) ###########################################

1624
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
MEDITATION
B
E PITIFUL, my sorrow - be thou still:
For night thy thirst was lo, it falleth down,
Slowly darkening it veils the town,
Bringing its peace to some, to some its ill.
While the dull herd in its mad career
Under the pitiless scourge, the lash of unclean desire,
Goes culling remorse with fingers that never tire:
My sorrow, — thy hand! Come, sit thou by me here.
Here, far from them all. From heaven's high balconies
See! in their threadbare robes the dead years cast their eyes:
And from the depths below regret's wan smiles appear.
The sun, about to set, under the arch sinks low,
Trailing its weltering pall far through the East aglow.
Hark, dear one, hark! Sweet night's approach is near.
Translated for the Library of the World's Best Literature. )
THE DEATH OF THE POOR
This
his is death the consoler — death that bids live again;
Here life its aim: here is our hope to be found,
Making, like magic elixir, our poor weak heads to swim round,
And giving us heart for the struggle till night makes end of the
pain.
Athwart the hurricane — athwart the snow and the sleet,
Afar there twinkles over the black earth's waste,
The light of the Scriptural inn where the weary and the faint may
taste
The sweets of welcome, the plenteous feast and the secure retreat.
It is an angel, in whose soothing palms
Are held the boon of sleep and dreamy balms,
Who makes a bed for poor unclothèd men;
It is the pride of the gods - the all-mysterious room,
The pauper's purse — this fatherland of gloom,
The open gate to heaven, and heavens beyond our ken.
Translated for the Library of the World's Best Literature. )


## p. 1625 (#423) ###########################################

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
1625
MUSIC
SWEETToward my pale star
WEET music sweeps me like the sea
Toward my pale star,
Whether the clouds be there or all the air be free
I sail afar.
With front outspread and swelling breasts,
On swifter sail
I bound through the steep waves' foamy crests
Under night's veil.
Vibrate within me I feel all the passions that lash
A bark in distress:
By the blast I am lulled — by the tempest's wild crash
On the salt wilderness.
Then comes the dead calm — mirrored there
I behold my despair.
Translated for the Library of the World's Best Literature.
THE BROKEN BELL
B.
ITTER and sweet, when wintry evenings fall
Across the quivering, smoking hearth, to hear
Old memory's notes sway softly far and near,
While ring the chimes across the gray fog's pall.
Thrice blessed bell, that, to time insolent,
Still calls afar its old and pious song,
Responding faithfully in accents strong,
Like some old sentinel before his tent.
I too — my soul is shattered; - when at times
It would beguile the wintry nights wiih rhymes
Of old, its weak old voice at moments seems
Like gasps some poor, forgotten soldier heaves
Beside the blood-pools—’neath the human sheaves
Gasping in anguish toward their fixed dreams.
Translated for the Library of the World's Best Literature. )


## p. 1626 (#424) ###########################################

1626
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
The two poems following are used by permission of the J. B. Lippincott
Company
THE ENEMY
M
Y YOUTH swept by in storm and cloudy gloom,
Lit here and there by glimpses of the sun;
But in my garden, now the storm is done,
Few fruits are left to gather purple bloom.
Here have I touched the autumn of the mind;
And now the careful spade to labor comes,
Smoothing the earth torn by the waves and wind,
Full of great holes, like open mouths of tombs.
And who knows if the flowers whereof I dream
Shall find, beneath this soil washed like the stream,
The force that bids them into beauty start?
O grief! O grief! Time eats our life away,
And the dark Enemy that gnaws our heart
Grows with the ebbing life-blood of his prey!
Translation of Miss Katharine Hillard.
BEAUTY
B В
EAUTIFUL am I as a dream in stone;
And for my breast, where each falls bruised in turn,
The poet with an endless love must yearn
Endless as Matter, silent and alone.
A sphinx unguessed, enthroned in azure skies,
White as the swan, my heart is cold as snow;
No hated motion breaks my lines' pure flow,
Nor tears nor laughter ever dim mine eyes.
Poets, before the attitudes sublime
I seem to steal from proudest monuments,
In austere studies waste the ling'ring time;
For I possess, to charm my lover's sight,
Mirrors wherein all things are fair and bright-
My eyes, my large eyes of eternal light!
Translation of Miss Katharine Hillard.


## p. 1627 (#425) ###########################################

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
1627
DEATH
Hº DUp"anchor, away from this region of blight:
O, DEATH, Boatman Death, it is time we set sail;
U'p anchor, away from this region of blight:
Though ocean and sky are like ink for the gale,
Thou knowest our hearts are consoled with the light.
Thy poison pour out — it will comfort us well;
Yea — for the fire that burns in our brain
We would plunge through the depth, be it heaven or hell,
Through the fathomless gulf — the new vision to gain.
Translated for the Library of the World's Best Literature. )
THE PAINTER OF MODERN LIFE
From "L'Art Romantique)
T"
He crowd is his domain, as the air is that of the bird and
the water that of the fish. His passion and his profession
is to wed the crowd. ” For the perfect flâneur, for the
passionate observer, it is an immense pleasure to choose his
home in number, change, motion, in the fleeting and the infinite.
To be away from one's home and yet to be always at home; to
be in the midst of the world, to see it, and yet to be hidden
from it; such are some of the least pleasures of these independ-
ent, passionate, impartial minds which language can but awk-
wardly define. The observer is a prince who everywhere enjoys
his incognito. The amateur of life makes the world his family,
as the lover of the fair sex makes his family of all beauties,
discovered, discoverable, and indiscoverable, as the lover of paint-
ing lives in an enchanted dreamland painted on canvas. Thus
the man who is in love with all life goes into a crowd as into
an immense electric battery. One might also compare him to a
mirror as immense as the crowd; to a conscious kaleidoscope
which in each movement represents the multiform life and the
moving grace of all life's elements. He is an ego insatiably
hungry for the non-ego, every moment rendering it and express-
ing it in images more vital than life itself, which is always
unstable and fugitive. “Any man,” said Mr. G- one day, in
one of those conversations which he lights up with intense look
and vivid gesture, “any man, not overcome by a
sorrow
SO


## p. 1628 (#426) ###########################################

1628
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
heavy that it absorbs all the faculties, who is bored in the midst
of a crowd is a fool, a fool, and I despise him. ”
When Mr. G— awakens and sees the blustering sun attack-
ing the window-panes, he says with remorse, with regret:-
«What imperial order! What a trumpet flourish of light! For
hours already there has been light everywhere, light lost by my
sleep! How many lighted objects I might have seen and have
not seen! ” And then he starts off, he watches in its flow the
river of vitality, so majestic and so brilliant. He admires the
eternal beauty and the astonishing harmony of life in great
cities, a harmony maintained in so providential a way in the
tumult of human liberty. He contemplates the landscapes of the
great city, landscapes of stone caressed by the mist or struck by
the blows of the sun. He enjoys the fine carriages, the fiery
horses, the shining neatness of the grooms, the dexterity of the
valets, the walk of the gliding women, of the beautiful children,
happy that they are alive and dressed; in a word, he enjoys the
universal life. If a fashion, the cut of a piece of clothing has
been slightly changed, if bunches of ribbon or buckles have been
displaced by cockades, if the bonnet is larger and the back hair
a notch lower on the neck, if the waist is higher and the skirt
fuller, be sure that his eagle eye will see it at an
distance. A regiment passes, going perhaps to the end of the
earth, throwing into the air of the boulevards the flourish of
trumpets compelling and light as hope; the eye of Mr. G-
has already seen, studied, analyzed the arms, the gait, the physi-
ognomy of the troop. Trappings, scintillations, music, firm looks,
heavy and serious mustaches, all enters pell-mell into him, and
in a few moments the resulting poem will be virtually composed.
His soul is alive with the soul of this regiment which is march-
ing like a single animal, the proud image of joy in obedience!
But evening has come. It is the strange, uncertain hour at
which the curtains of the sky are drawn and the cities are lighted.
The gas throws spots on the purple of the sunset.
Honest or
dishonest, sane or mad, men say to themselves, "At last the day
is at an end! » The wise and the good-for-nothing think of
pleasure, and each hurries to the place of his choice to drink the
cup of pleasure. Mr. G— will be the last to leave any place
where the light may blaze, where poetry may throb, where life
may tingle, where music may vibrate, where a passion may strike
an attitude for his eye, where the man of nature and the man
enormous
1
1
1


## p. 1629 (#427) ###########################################

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
1629
of convention show themselves in a strange light, where the sun
lights up the rapid joys of fallen creatures! A day well spent,"
says a kind of reader whom we all know, “any one of us has
genius enough to spend a day that way. ” No! Few men are
gifted with the power to see; still fewer have the power of
expression. Now, at the hour when others are asleep, this man
is bent over his table, darting on his paper the same look which
a short time ago he was casting on the world, battling with his
pencil, his pen, his brush, throwing the water out of his glass
against the ceiling, wiping his pen on his shirt,—driven, violent,
active, as if he fears that his images will escape him, a quarreler
although alone, - a cudgeler of himself. And the things he has
seen are born again upon the paper, natural and more than nat-
ural, beautiful and more than beautiful, singular and endowed
with an enthusiastic life like the soul of the author. The phan-
tasmagoria have been distilled from nature. All the materials
with which his memory is crowded become classified, orderly,
harmonious, and undergo that compulsory idealization which is
the result of a childlike perception, that is to say, of a percep-
tion that is keen, magical by force of ingenuousness.
MODERNNESS
T“ tainty his man,"such as I have portrayed him, this soli-
hus he goes, he runs, he seeks. What does he seek? Cer-
tainly this
.
tary, gifted with an active imagination, always traveling
through the great desert of mankind, has a higher end than that
of a mere observer, an end more general than the fugitive pleas-
ure of the passing event. He seeks this thing which we may
call modernness, for no better word to express the idea pre-
sents itself. His object is to detach from fashion whatever it
may contain of the poetry in history, to draw the eternal from
the transitory. If we glance at the exhibitions of modern pic-
tures, we are struck with the general tendency of the artists to
dress all their subjects in ancient costumes. That is obviously
the sign of great laziness, for it is much easier to declare that
everything in the costume of a certain period is ugly than to
undertake the work of extracting from it the mysterious beauty
which may be contained in it, however slight or light it may be.
The modern is the transitory, the fleeting, the contingent, the


## p. 1630 (#428) ###########################################

1630
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
half of art, whose other half is the unchanging and the eternal.
There was a modernness for every ancient painter; most of the
beautiful portraits which remain to us from earlier times are
dressed in the costumes of their times. They are perfectly har-
monious, because the costumes, the hair, even the gesture, the
look and the smile (every epoch has its look and its smile), form
a whole that is entirely lifelike. You have no right to despise
or neglect this transitory, fleeting element, of which the changes
are so frequent. In suppressing it you fall by necessity into the
void of an abstract and undefinable beauty, like that of the only
woman before the fall. If instead of the costume of the epoch,
which is a necessary element, you substitute another, you create
an anomaly which can have no excuse unless it is a burlesque
called for by the vogue of the moment. Thus, the goddesses,
the nymphs, the sultans of the eighteenth century are portraits
morally accurate.
FROM (LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE)
EVERY ONE HIS OWN CHIMERA
U roads, withoue grass, without a thistle, without a nettle, I
1
met several men who were walking with heads bowed
down.
Each one bore upon his back an enormous Chimera, as heavy
as a bag of flour or coal, or the accoutrements of a Roman sol-
dier.
But the monstrous beast was not an inert weight; on the con-
trary, it enveloped and oppressed the man with its elastic and
mighty muscles; it fastened with its two vast claws to the breast
of the bearer, and its fabulous head surmounted the brow of the
man, like one of those horrible helmets by which the ancient
warriors hoped to increase the terror of the enemy.
I questioned one of these men, and I asked him whither they
were bound thus. He answered that he knew not, neither he
nor the others; but that evidently they were bound somewhere,
since they were impelled by an irresistible desire to go forward.
It is curious to note that not one of these travelers looked
irritated at the ferocious beast suspended from his neck and
glued against his back; it seemed as though he considered it as


## p. 1631 (#429) ###########################################

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
1631
making part of himself. None of these weary and serious faces
bore witness to any despair; under the sullen cupola of the sky,
their feet plunging into the dust of a soil as desolate as that sky,
they went their way with the resigned countenances of those who
have condemned themselves to hope forever.
The procession passed by me and sank into the horizon's atmo-
sphere, where the rounded surface of the planet slips from the
curiosity of human sight, and for a few moments I obstinately
persisted in wishing to fathom the mystery; but soon an irre-
sistible indifference fell upon me, and I felt more heavily
oppressed by it than even they were by their crushing Chimeras.
HUMANITY
At the feet of a colossal Venus, one of those artificial fools,
those voluntary buffoons whose duty was to make kings laugh
when Remorse or Ennui possessed their souls, muffled in a glaring
ridiculous costume, crowned with horns and bells, and crouched
against the pedestal, raised his eyes full of tears toward the im-
mortal goddess. And his eyes said:— "I am the least and the
most solitary of human beings, deprived of love and of friendship,
and therefore far below the most imperfect of the animals. Never-
theless, I am made, even I, to feel and comprehend the immortal
Beauty! Ah, goddess! have pity on my sorrow and my despair! ”
But the implacable Venus gazed into the distance, at I know not
what, with her marble eyes.
WINDOWS
He who looks from without through an open window never
sees as many things as he who looks at a closed window. There
is no object more profound, more mysterious, more rich, more
shadowy, more dazzling than a window lighted by a candle.
What one can see in the sunlight is always less interesting than
what takes place behind a blind. In that dark or luminous hole
life lives, dreams, suffers.
Over the sea of roofs I see a woman, mature, already wrinkled,
always bent over something, never going out. From her clothes,
her movement, from almost nothing, I have reconstructed the
history of this woman, or rather her legend, and sometimes I tell
it over to myself in tears.


## p. 1632 (#430) ###########################################

1632
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
If it had been a poor old man I could have reconstructed his
story as easily.
And I go to bed, proud of having lived and suffered in lives
not my own.
Perhaps you may say, “Are you sure that this story is the
true one ? » What difference does it make what is the reality out-
side of me, if it has helped me to live, to know who I am and
what I am ?
DRINK
One should be always drunk. That is all, the whole question.
In order not to feel the horrible burden of Time, which is break-
ing your shoulders and bearing you to earth, you must be drunk
without cease.
But drunk on what ? On wine, poetry, or virtue, as you
choose.
But get drunk.
And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass
of a moat, in the dull solitude of your chamber, you awake with
your intoxication already lessened or gone, ask of the wind, the
wave, the star, the clock, of everything that flies, sobs, rolls, sings,
talks, what is the hour? and the wind, the wave, the star, the
bird, the clock will answer, "It is the hour to get drunk! ” Not
to be the martyred slave of Time, get drunk; get drunk unceas-
ingly. Wine, poetry, or virtue, as you choose.
FROM A JOURNAL
I
SWEAR to myself henceforth to adopt the following rules as the
everlasting rules of my life.
To pray every morning
to God, the Fountain of all strength and of all justice; to my
father, to Mariette, and to Poe. To pray to them to give me
necessary strength to accomplish all my tasks, and to grant my
mother a life long enough to enjoy my reformation. To work
all day, or at least as long as my strength lasts. To trust to
God — that is to say, to Justice itself — for the success of my
projects. To pray again every evening to God to ask Him for
life and strength, for my mother and myself. To divide all my
earnings into four parts - one for my daily expenses, one for my
creditors, one for my friends, and one for my mother. To keep
to principles of strict sobriety, and to banish all and every stim-
ulant.


## p. 1633 (#431) ###########################################

1633
LORD BEACONSFIELD
(1804-1881)
BY ISA CARRINGTON CABELL
B
ENJAMIN DISRAELI, Earl of Beaconsfield, born in London, De-
cember, 1804; died there April 19th, 1881. His paternal
ancestors were of the house of Lara, and held high rank
among Hebrew-Spanish nobles till the tribunal of Torquemada drove
them from Spain to Venice. There, proud of their race and origin,
they styled themselves “Sons of Israel,” and became merchant
princes. But the city's commerce failing, the grandfather of Benjamin
Disraeli removed to London with a diminished but comfortable for-
tune. His son, Isaac Disraeli, was a well-
known literary man, and the author of
(The Curiosities of Literature. )
On ac-
count of the political and social ostracism
of the Jews in England, he had all his
family baptized into the Church of Eng-
land; but with Benjamin Disraeli espe-
cially, Christianity was never more than
Judaism developed. His belief and his
affections were in his own race.
Benjamin, like most Jewish youths,
was educated in private schools, and at
seventeen entered a solicitor's office. At
twenty-two he published Vivian Grey' LORD BEACONSFIELD
(London, 1826), which readable and amus-
ing take-off of London society gave him great and instantaneous noto-
riety. Its minute descriptions of the great world, its caricatures of
well-known social and political personages, its magnificent diction,
- too magnificent to be taken quite seriously,- excited inquiry; and
the great world was amazed to discover that the impertinent observer
was not one of themselves, but a boy in a lawyer's office. To add
to the audacity, he had conceived himself the hero of these diverting
situations, and by his cleverness had outwitted age, beauty, rank,
diplomacy itself.
Statesmen, poets, fine ladies, were all genuinely amused; and the
author bade fair to become a lion, when he fell ill, and was com-
pelled to leave England for a year or more, which he spent in travel
on the Continent and in Egypt, Nubia, and Palestine. His visit to
III-103



## p. 1634 (#432) ###########################################

1634
LORD BEACONSFIELD
the birthplace of his race made an impression on him that lasted
through his life and literature. It is embodied in his Letters to His
Sister? (London, 1843), and the autobiographical novel Contarini
Fleming' (1833), in which he turned his adventures into fervid
English, at a guinea a volume. But although the spirit of poesy, in
the form of a Childe Harold, stalks rampant through the romance,
there is both feeling and fidelity to nature whenever he describes
the Orient and its people. Then the bizarre, brilliant poseur forgets
his rôle, and reveals his highest aspirations.
When Disraeli returned to London he became the fashion. Every-
body, from the prime minister to Count D'Orsay, had read his clever
novels. The poets praised them, Lady Blessington invited him to
dine, Sir Robert Peel was “most gracious. ”
But literary success could never satisfy Disraeli's ambition: a seat
in Parliament was at the end of his rainbow. He professed himself
a radical, but he was a radical in his own sense of the term; and
like his own Sidonia, half foreigner, half looker-on, he felt himself
endowed with an insight only possible to an outsider, an observer
without inherited prepossessions.
Several contemporary sketches of Disraeli at this time have been
preserved. His dress was purposed affectation; it led the beholder
to look for folly only: and when the brilliant flash came, it was the
more startling as unexpected from such a figure. Lady Dufferin told
Mr. Motley that when she met Disraeli at dinner, he wore a black-
velvet coat lined with satin, purple trousers with a gold band running
down the outside seam, a scarlet waistcoat, long lace ruffles falling
down to the tips of his fingers, white gloves with several rings out-
side, and long black ringlets rippling down his shoulders. She told
him he had made a fool of himself by appearing in such a dress, but
she did not guess why it had been adopted. Another contemporary
says of him, “When duly excited, his command of language was
wonderful, his power of sarcasm unsurpassed. ”
He was busy making speeches and writing political squibs for the
next two years; for Parliament was before his eyes. “He knew,”
says Froude, he had a devil of a tongue, and was unincumbered by
the foolish form of vanity called modesty. ” Ixion in Heaven,' (The
Infernal Marriage,' and (Popanilla' were attempts to rival both
Lucian and Swift on their own ground. It is doubtful, however,
whether he would have risked writing (Henrietta Temple) (1837) and
(Venetia' (1837), two ardent love stories, had he not been in debt;
for notoriety as a novelist is not always a recommendation to a con-
stituency.
In (Henrietta” he found an opportunity to write the biography of
a lover oppressed by duns. It is a most entertaining novel even to


## p. 1635 (#433) ###########################################

LORD BEACONSFIELD
1635
a reader who does not read for a new light on the great statesman,
and is remarkable as the beginning of what is now known as the
« natural manner; a revolt, his admirers tell us, from the stilted
fashion of making love that then prevailed in novels.
(Venetia' is founded on the characters of Byron and Shelley, and
is amusing reading. The high-flown language incrusted with the
gems of rhetoric excites our risibilities, but it is not safe to laugh at
Disraeli; in his most diverting aspects he has a deep sense of humor,
and he who would mock at him is apt to get a whip across the face
at an unguarded moment. Mr. Disraeli laughs in his sleeve at many
things, but first of all at the reader.
He failed in his canvass for his seat at High Wycombe, but he
turned his failure to good account, and established a reputation for
pluck and influence. «A mighty independent personage,” observed
Charles Greville, and his famous quarrel with O'Connell did him so
little harm that in 1837 he was returned for Maidstone. His first
speech was a failure. The word had gone out that he was to be put
down. At last, finding it useless to persist, he said he was not sur-
prised at the reception he had experienced. He had begun several
things many times and had succeeded at last. Then pausing, and
looking indignantly across the house, he exclaimed in a loud and
remarkable tone, “I will sit down now, but the time will come when
you will hear me. "
He married the widow of his patron, Wyndham Lewis, in 1838.
This put him in possession of a fortune, and gave him the power to
continue his political career. His radicalism was a thing of the past.
He had drifted from Conservatism, with Peel for a leader, to aristo-
cratic socialism; and in 1844, 1845, and 1847 appeared the Trilogy, as
he styled the novels Coningsby,' Tancred,' and (Sibyl. ? Of the
three, Coningsby' will prove the most entertaining to the modern
reader. The hero is a gentleman, and in this respect is an improve-
ment on Vivian Grey, for his audacity is tempered by good breeding.
The plot is slight, but the scenes are entertaining. The famous
Sidonia, the Jew financier, is a favorite with the author, and betrays
his affection and respect for race.