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DIS completion. The proposals were printed at Lincoln in 1713. He published, however, a great many books, of which may he mentioned—"Primitiæ Sacræ, the Reflections of a Devout Solitude, consisting of meditations and poems on divine subjects;" "An Essay on the Execution of the Laws against Immorality and Profaneness;" "A View of the Ancient Laws against Immorality and Profaneness, under the following heads—Lewdness, Cursing, Blaspheming, &c., collected from the Jewish, Roman, Greek, Gothic, Lombard, and other laws, down to the middle of the eleventh century."—R. M., A.  * DISRAELI,, the Right Hon., a leading conservative statesman, and contributor to several departments of literature, was born in London on the 21st of December, 1805. He was the eldest of the three sons of Isaac Disraeli, the author of the Curiosities of Literature. (See .) His early education was strictly private. For two or three years he was at school under the Rev. Dr. Cogan, a Greek scholar of eminence, who had contributed notes to the Æschylus of Bishop Bloomfield, and was himself the editor of the Greek gnomic poets. On leaving the establishment of Dr. Cogan, Mr. Disraeli was placed with a private tutor in Buckinghamshire, his father's adopted county, and his education was severely classical. This circumstance gave shape to his first literary effort—an edition of the Adonisian Eclogue of Theocritus—printed for private circulation. The elder Disraeli, who always lived in seclusion, and during the last thirty years of his life almost uninterruptedly in Bucks, had a powerful friend who offered to provide for his promising son in one of the offices of the court of chancery. The post offered was one, the tenure of which would, in the usual course, have led to some of the highest prizes of the profession. To be admitted as a solicitor was a necessary preliminary, and hence the mythus that Mr. Disraeli was once, as has been often published, "an attorney's clerk." Although the legal life thus commenced was little more than a form, Mr. Disraeli soon relinquished it from a youthful restlessness of head and heart, which then rendered travel absolutely necessary. In due course a younger brother, Mr. Ralph Disraeli, was offered and embraced the same opportunity, and that gentleman has now risen to the post of registrar of the court of chancery, one of responsibility and emolument. While quite a youth, Mr. Disraeli made the acquaintance of the late Mr. Lockhart, the son-in-law and biographer of Sir Walter Scott, and for many years the editor of the Quarterly Review. In 1825 Mr. Lockhart undertook, with the countenance of Mr. Canning, to edit the ill-fated Representative, a daily newspaper, of which, as of the Quarterly, the late John Murray of Albemarle Street was the proprietor. It was fondly hoped that the Representative would be to the Times what the tory Quarterly had become to the whig Edinburgh. The experiment signally failed. Started in the January of 1826, the Representative expired in the following July; and when schemes for new daily papers were broached in his presence, Mr. Murray, it is said, used to point to the bound volume of the Representative in his book-shelves, and say, "There is all that remains of £50,000." The intimacy between Mr. Lockhart and the young Disraeli gave rise to, or encouraged a report perpetuated and popular to this day, that Mr. Disraeli conducted the Representative; but we have reason to believe that this is a complete mistake, and that Mr. Disraeli, far from having edited the Representative, never wrote a line in that journal, or was even asked to write a line in it. 1826, the year of the foundation of the Representative, was, however, certainly that of Mr. Disraeli's first notable appearance as an author. In that year the London world was startled by the appearance of an anonymous novel—"Vivian Grey"—in which the political, social, and literary celebrities of the day were sketched, and sometimes satirized, with remarkable power. The attempt was then a new one, and its combined vigour and novelty made "Vivian Grey," and of course its authorship, one of the chief topics of the day. The secret could not long be kept, and Mr. Disraeli, then only twenty, became a social and literary notability. The second part of "Vivian Grey," which excited less attention than its predecessor, was published in 1827, and followed in 1829 by the "Young Duke," a powerful story of love and catholic emancipation. In the year of the appearance of the "Young Duke," Mr. Disraeli left England for a second time with, for those days, an extensive plan of travel, embracing Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor generally. It was during this tour that he wrote "Contarini Fleming," which excited the enthusiasm of Heinrich Heine; and the "Wondrous Tale of Alroy," planned and partly composed at Jerusalem; both of them were published during the years 1831-32. Mr. Disraeli was thus absent from England during the crisis of catholic emancipation, and returned to it towards the close of 1831 to find the reform bill the law of the land. His pen, as has been seen, had not been idle in the interval, and the time seemed now come for an entry into the parliamentary arena. At the general election of 1832 he appeared as a candidate for the representation of the borough of High Wycombe, in the immediate neighbourhood of his father's seat of Bradenham, Bucks. The rival candidate was the Hon. Charles Grey, a son of the then premier, Earl Grey. Mr. Disraeli was brought forward under the auspices of the old corporation, and proposed by the tory mayor. The tories were influential men, but constituted a very small minority of the electoral body. Mr. Disraeli effected a coalition between them and the radicals. The leaders of the latter party obtained the famous recommendatory letters of Joseph Hume and Daniel O'Connell, with neither of whom was Mr. Disraeli then personally acquainted. Colonel (now General) Grey was successful, but Mr. Disraeli's candidature excited attention beyond the limits of High Wycombe. The premier put the question—"Who is he?" respecting the opponent of his son; and Mr. Disraeli made the interrogatory the title of a pamphlet, now extremely rare. Immediately after the loss of this election, he was invited to stand for Marylebone, and issued an address; but the matter went no further. Towards the close of 1833 we find him once more addressing the electors of Wycombe, and publishing a pamphlet "The crisis examined." To the same year belong the publication of the "Revolutionary Epic," a quarto volume of blank verse.

In 1835 the contest with Colonel Grey was repeated at High Wycombe, where Mr. Disraeli was supported by the same combination as in 1833. Once more unsuccessful at High Wycombe, he contested in the same year the representation of Taunton with Mr. Labouchere (now Lord Taunton); and in the course of the election he had occasion to attack O'Connell. O'Connell retorted, and during the controversy Mr. Disraeli wrote to the Irish agitator—"We shall meet at Philippi." But some time had to elapse. Mr. Disraeli was defeated at Taunton, and fell back upon his pen. In his second candidature at High Wycombe, he had been encouraged by Sir Robert Peel, and Lord Lyndhurst was now among his intimate friends. Sir Robert Peel's chancellor was "the noble and learned lord," to whom Mr. Disraeli addressed his "Vindication of the English Constitution," published in 1835, in which admiration for Bolingbroke was warmly expressed, and Mr. Disraeli's favourite theory of the "Venetian constitution" emphatically broached. Nor was fiction neglected amid political study and lucubration. The year which witnessed the publication of the "Vindication" ushered into the world the novel of "Venetia," of which Byron and Shelley were the heroes. So too in 1836, "Henrietta Temple," a love story, followed the collective publication of those "Letters of Runnymede," which, appearing in the Times, and distinguished by the boldness of their invective against the whigs, were universally ascribed to Mr. Disraeli. "The Letters of Runnymede," in their collective form, were dedicated to Sir Robert Peel.

At last, in 1837, Mr. Disraeli's ambition was gratified. At the general election which followed the death of William IV., he stood as one of the two conservative candidates for Maidstone, who were opposed by Colonel, now General Thompson, of corn-law repeal celebrity. He was successful, and the "meeting at Philippi" took place on the 7th of December, during an adjourned debate on the Irish election petitions. O'Connell had delivered himself of a violent tirade against Sir Francis Burdett, and the house was in a state of great excitement when Mr. Disraeli rose. The occasion, and something perhaps both in his matter and his manner, told against him. The house would not hear him. "I am not at all surprised," were his closing words, "at the reception I have experienced. I have begun several times many things, and I have often succeeded at last. I sit down now, but the time will come when you will hear me." Mr. Disraeli went the right way to work to retrieve his failure. He spoke soon again, but briefly, and was by degrees recognized as somebody. In 1841 he was returned as member for Shrewsbury, which he represented for six years. In the new parliament he was a supporter of Sir Robert Peel; but as the policy of the minister became identified with that of his opponents, Mr. Disraeli fell away from him. As time wore on, there were 