One unique figure remains to be noticed among novelists of the first half of the century, though as a matter of fact his last novel was not published till within twenty years of its close. Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, belongs, as a special person, to another story than this. But this would be very incomplete without him and his novels. They were naturally written for the most part before, in 1852, he was called to the leadership of the House of Commons, but in two vacations of office later he added to them _Lothair_ (1870) and _Endymion_ (1881). It is, however, in his earlier work that his chief virtue is to be found. It is especially in its first division,--the stories of _Vivian Grey_, _The Young Duke_, _Contarini Fleming_, _Alroy_, _Venetia_, and _Henrietta Temple_,--published between 1827 and 1837. They are more like Bulwer's than like anybody else's work, but _Vivian Grey_ appeared in the same year with _Falkland_ and before _Pelham_. Later novels--_Coningsby_ (1844), _Sybil_ (1845), and _Tancred_ (1847)--are more directly political; while certain smaller and chiefly early tales--_Ixion_, _The Infernal Marriage_, _Popanilla_, etc.--are pure fantasy pieces with a satirical intent, and the first of them is, with perhaps Bedford's _Vathek_ as a companion, the most brilliant thing of its kind in English. In these more particularly, but in all more or less, a strong Voltairian influence is perceptible; but on the whole the set of books may be said to be like nothing else. They have grave faults, being sometimes tawdry in phrase and imagery, sometimes too personal, frequently a little unreal, and scarcely ever finally and completely adjusted to the language in which and the people of whom they are written. Yet the attraction of them is singular; and good judges, differing very widely in political and literary tastes, have found themselves at one as to the strange way in which the reader comes back to them as he advances in life, and as to the marvellous cleverness which they display. Let it be added that _Henrietta Temple_, a mere and sheer love story written in a dangerous style of sentimentalism, is one of the most effective things of its kind in English, and holds its ground despite all drawbacks of fashion in speech and manners, which never tell more heavily than in the case of a book of the kind; while in _Venetia_ the story of Byron is handled with remarkable closeness, and yet in good taste.