Is an enthusiastic believer in himself, as the instrument of a great emancipation, “pseudo” because he fails? Such explanations explain nothing. Whatever be the truth as to the original Alroy--and I repeat that the historical sources give us inadequate information as to his inner personality--there is no room for doubting the character of Disraeli’s fictitious hero. Alroy is a thoroughly sincere portraiture. Mr. Monypenny thought that the story “never really grips us.” It depends on who the “us” are. A good many readers find George Eliot’s _Daniel Deronda_ uninteresting. Yet _Daniel Deronda_ in Hebrew had a considerable success. Despite its queer mixture of ill-digested lore and of genuine material derived from what Disraeli termed the “erratic” Talmud, _Alroy_ has a good deal of Jewish spirit in it. In the many references to the poetical elements of Jewish life, the sentiment rings true. This fact works backward. Whence did the novelist derive this feeling for the beautiful in Judaism except from his father? Isaac Disraeli presents himself to us as a rather unsympathetic student of Judaism. In his books he shows knowledge, but no feeling for the synagogue. It almost seems as though we do not see the real man in his books, and yet, after all, it may be doubted whether Benjamin inherited his Jewish idealism from his father. The latter did not at all approve of his son’s Eastern journey. But Benjamin was consumed with the desire to visit Jerusalem, and he realized this passionate longing in 1830-1. In later life he said that he had begun _Alroy_ before he left England. In the preface to _Alroy_ he writes: “Being at Jerusalem in the year 1831, and visiting the traditionary tombs of the Kings of Israel, my thoughts recurred to a personage whose marvellous career had, even in boyhood, attracted my attention, as one fraught with the richest materials of poetic fiction. And I then commenced these pages that should commemorate the name of ‘Alroy.’” I do not think that this statement contradicts his later assertion. When he says: “I _then_ commenced,” he may well be referring to his “boyhood.”