about him when he stood for Wycombe. O'Connell retorted by comparing Disraeli to the 'impenitent thief.' There was some talk of a duel with O'Connell's son, Morgan, O'Connell having made a vow against the practice; but nothing came of it. In a letter to the 'Times' of 31 Dec. 1835 Disraeli gave his own version of the quarrel. While willing to accept the assistance of these influential politicians against whig dictation, he had distinctly disavowed all sympathy with their peculiar principles. His support of the ballot and triennial parliaments he justified by the example of Bolingbroke and Sir William Wyndham. But the public of that day knew nothing of either, and the historical toryism of Disraeli was entirely beyond their grasp.
During the five years that elapsed between his return to England and his entrance into parliament Disraeli's pen was constantly employed. Besides 'What is He?' (1833), a reply to a reported sneer of Earl Grey, and 'The Present Crisis Examined' (1834), he published in 1835 his 'Vindication of the British Constitution,' a copy of which he forwarded to Sir Robert Peel, who thanked him for the gift in a very complimentary letter, and in 1830 the 'Letters of Runnymede,' an attack on the government of Lord Melbourne. In pure literature he was still more prolific. Within the same period he published 'The Young Duke' (1831), 'Contarini Fleming' (1832), 'The Wondrous Tale of Alroy' (1833), 'The Rise of Iskander,' 'The Revolutionary Epic' (1834), 'Venetia' (1837), and 'Henrietta Temple' (1837). We learn from the 'Letters' that he was received in the best society, and mingled in all the gaieties of the fashionable world. A hundred exaggerated stories of his dress, his manners, and his conversation at this period of his life were long current in London. One lady declared that she had seen him at a party in green velvet trousers and a black satin shirt. He was said to have delighted in shocking the respectability of decorous celebrities by the most startling moral paradoxes, and in short to have done everything that he ought not to have done, if he really hoped to be, what he told Lord Melbourne in 1835 that he wished to be, 'prime minister of England.' He himself was so far nettled by the revival of some of this gossip many years afterwards that he wrote to the editor of an evening paper to declare that he never possessed a pair of green trousers in his life. His great friend at this time was Lord Lyndhurst, and much was made of the fact that in 1835 the two were seen pacing the Opera Colonnade together at half-past twelve o'clock at night, engaged in the most animated conversation. Lord Lyndhurst had before that date interested himself in Mr. Disraeli's parliamentary prospects; but whether he had any share in procuring his return for Maidstone we are unable to say.
On the death of William IV, parliament was again dissolved, and Disraeli received an invitation to stand for the borough of Maidstone in conjunction with Mr. Wyndham Lewis. They were both returned (27 July 1837); and Disraeli was now to measure himself in reality against the statesmen and orators with whom he had often contended in imagination, and in his own opinion with success. That he was not cowed by the failure of his first attempt might have convinced his contemporaries that his confidence was not ill-founded. The thin, pale, dark-complexioned young man, with the long black ringlets and dandified costume, rising from below the gangway, delivering an ambitious and eccentric speech, received with shouts of derision, and finally sitting down with the defiant assertion that the time will come when they will hear him, is the central figure of a group destined one day, we hope, to be enrolled among the great historic paintings which illustrate the life of English politics. The subject of his speech (7 Dec. 1837) was a motion made by Mr. Smith O'Brien for a select committee to inquire into the existence of an alleged election subscription in Ireland for promoting petitions against the return of certain members of parliament. O'Connell spoke against the motion and Disraeli replied to him. In this famous speech there is nothing outrageously bombastic, nothing more so, certainly, than what was listened to with applause when the orator had won the ear of the house. But the language, the manner, and the appearance of the new member, neither of which by itself would have provoked the reception which he experienced, combined together to produce an irresistible effect, which, heightened by the knowledge of his rather singular antecedents, may excuse, though they cannot justify, the roars of laughter amid which he was compelled to sit down. At the same time it should be remembered that this derisive clamour proceeded only from a portion of the house, and chiefly from a knot of members congregated below the bar. Two such judges as Mr. Sheil and Sir Robert Peel thought very differently of the young orator; both detected in his speech the germs of future excellence, and Sheil gave him some excellent advice, by which he seems to have profited.
Of the impression which his appearance, manner, and mode of speaking fifty years ago produced upon a wholly disinterested spec-
