For _Alroy_ is a novel that deserves to live, and probably will live. From the first it has been better liked by the public than by the professional critics. Soon after the book first appeared in 1833, Disraeli wrote to his sister that he heard good reports as to the popularity of _Alroy_, and with characteristic “conceit,” some may term it, though to others it appears more like “insight,” he added: “I hear no complaints of its style, _except from the critics_.” Mr. Monypenny has repeated the same critical objections to the style. But such objections have no real basis. _Alroy_ often falls into rhythms and even into rhymes. Why is this a defect in a prose work? Dickens frequently followed the same method, and in sundry impressive passages his sentences scan faultlessly. Are prose and verse so absolutely divided from one another? If Molière’s bourgeois gentleman found that he had been speaking prose all his life without knowing it, so do we sometimes speak verse without being conscious of the fact. Do we not all “drop into poetry” on occasion, in our ordinary speech in moments of elevation? Moreover, the Oriental writers had created a form in which prose and verse merge; and Disraeli, treating an Eastern theme, might easily have justified his choice of this very form, beloved first of the medieval Arabs, and then adopted by Hebrew contemporaries. Then, as to the character of Alroy himself, Disraeli’s latest biographer says: “The real David Alroy appears to have been little better than a vulgar impostor, but Disraeli has idealised him into a figure worthy to be compared with Judas Maccabæus.” Mr. Monypenny borrowed this judgment (without acknowledgment) from the Rev. Michael Adler’s able article in the _Jewish Encyclopedia_. I cannot myself assent to this verdict, though I appreciate the grounds on which it was reached. The whole thing turns on the application of the term “Pseudo-Messiah” to such characters. Why call them _false_? There would be sufficient reason for applying the epithet if we had the clearest evidence that they were conscious rogues, exploiting their people’s faith, and using their hope as a ladder towards personal ambition. We do not know enough of Alroy to assert this of him. Was Disraeli himself an impostor because he thought of himself as another redeemer of Israel? There is little doubt that Alroy is drawn from Disraeli himself, just as the Miriam of the story is modelled on the author’s own sister. It is bad psychology to dub men of the Alroy type as impostors. Mr. Zangwill, in his _Dreamers of the Ghetto_--to my mind his most wonderful book--refuses to explain Sabbatai Zevi in this easy fashion. Graetz naturally so explained him, but it was precisely in such matters that Graetz was an unsafe guide. Are we to judge Messianic claims on the same principles as men judge political upheavals? Treason never prospers, and for this reason: That when it prospers no one calls it treason.