Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 15.djvu/123

 Court will henceforth think his pilgrimage complete without a visit to the shades of Hughenden and the tomb of Lord Beaconsfield.



D'ISRAELI, ISAAC (1766–1848), author, was born at his father's residence, 5 Great St. Helens, London, on 11 May 1766. His ancestors were Jews of the Levant who had settled in the sixteenth century in Italy. His grandfather Isaac Israeli, of Cento, Ferrara, married Rica or Eurichetta Rossi, a member of a distinguished Jewish-Italian family of Ferrara. His father, Benjamin D'Israeli, was born at Cento 22 Sept. 1730; settled in England in 1748, prospered first as a merchant in London, importing Italian products and manufactures, and afterwards as a stockbroker, and was made an English citizen by act of denization 24 Aug. 1801. He was a member of the London congregation of Spanish and Portuguese Jews, and married at their synagogue in Bevis Marks: first, on 2 April 1756, Rebecca Mendez, second daughter of Gaspar Mendez Furtado, a Portuguese Jew who had sought refuge in England from the Inquisition at Lisbon, and whose elder daughter Rachel was wife of Francisco or Aaron Lara; and secondly, on 28 May 1765, Sarah Shiprut or Syprut de Gabay, whose father was descended from a Spanish-Jewish family which had intermarried with the Villareals of Portugal. By his first wife (1727–1765) he had one daughter, Rachel, who married, firstly in 1771, at the age of 14, her first cousin Aaron Nunes Lara, of London, and secondly on 4 July 1792, Mordecai, alias Angiolo Tedesco of Leghorn. Isaac was the sole issue of the second marriage. Benjamin D'Israeli died on 28 Nov. 1816, at his house in Charles Street, Stoke Newington, where he had lived since 1801, and was buried in the cemetery of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews at Mile End. He left 35,000l. One Benjamin Disraell, a Protestant, of a Huguenot family, was a public notary in Dublin from 1788 to 1796, and subsequently until 1810 a prominent member of the Dublin Stock Exchange. He built a house called Beechey Park, co. Carlow, in 1810, and in the same year became sheriff of co. Carlow. He died at Beechey Park 9 Aug. 1814, aged 48, and was buried in St. Peter's churchyard, Dublin (, Collectanea Genealogica, pp. 6–16, 60; Notes and Queries, 5th ser. vi. 47, 136, xi. 23, 117).

Isaac was sent at an early age to a school near Enfield kept by a Scotchman named Morison. Before 1780 he was staying with his father's agent at Amsterdam, and studying under a freethinking tutor. He returned home in 1782, determined to become a poet and a man of letters. His mother ridiculed his ambition, and his father arranged to place him in a commercial house at Bordeaux. The youth protested, and for a time was left to his own devices. He wrote a poem condemning commerce, and left it at Bolt Court for Dr. Johnson's inspection, but the doctor was ill and the manuscript was returned unopened. In April 1786 he implored [q. v.], master of Tunbridge grammar school, whom he only knew through his writings, to receive him into his house as an enthusiastic disciple (see letters in Gent. Mag. 1848, pt. ii. p. 29). In December 1786 he first appeared in print with a vindication of Dr. Johnson's character signed ‘I.D.I.’ in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine.’ Some poor verse addressed to [q. v.], the well-known topographer, then an Enfield neighbour, was printed in the ‘St. James's Chronicle’ on 20 Nov. 1787. Gough made a sarcastic acknowledgment, and temporarily damped the writer's poetic ardour. His father, dissatisfied with his studious habits, sent him to travel in France, and at Paris D'Israeli read largely and met many men of letters. He was home again in 1789, when he published in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ for July an anonymous attack on Peter Pindar (Dr. John Wolcot), entitled ‘An Abuse of Satire.’ Wolcot attributed the attack to William Hayley, and virulently abused him. D'Israeli avowed himself the author, and was applauded by those who had suffered from Wolcot's lash. [q. v.] patronised him, and finally led the elder D'Israeli to consent to his son's adoption of a literary career. In 1790 D'Israeli's first volume, a ‘Defence of Poetry’ in verse, was dedicated to Pye. He became intimate, through Pye, with [q. v.], who introduced him to Samuel Rogers, and he made the acquaintance of Wolcot, who received him kindly. In 1791 and 1801 D'Israeli wrote the annual verses for the Literary Fund (cf. Gent. Mag. lxxi. 446), and in 1803 published ‘Narrative Poems.’ As a poet he showed little promise.

From an early period D'Israeli read regularly at the British Museum, where he met Douce, who encouraged him in his literary