I have therefore thought that, pending such an enterprise, some account, however imperfect, of the ideas that governed him throughout--a slight biography, as it were, of his mind--might prove acceptable. It will endeavour to depict the spirit of his attitude to the world in which he moved and for which he worked. It will aim at representing the temperature of his opinions immanent alike in his writings and speeches. His utterance was never bounded by the mere occasion, and light and guidance may be found in it for the problems of to-day. In most that he wrote or said, a certain swell of soul, a sweep and stretch of mind are strikingly manifest. “How very seldom,” he has written, “do you encounter in the world a man of great abilities, acquirements, experience, who will unmask his mind, _unbutton his brains_, and pour forth in careless and picturesque phrase all the results of his studies and observations, his knowledge of men, books, and nature!” Such a contribution is anyhow feasible, and is fraught with more than even the glamour linked with the person by whom these ideas were clothed in words and deeds. For principles are applied ideas; habits are applied principles. Disraeli’s ideas have, to some extent, become ruling principles, several of them are at this moment national habits; while some of them, unachieved during his lifetime, seem in process of accomplishment. Disraeli was a poet--one of those “unacknowledged legislators of the world” described by “Herbert” in _Venetia_; but his imaginative fancy was allied to a very strong character. It is a rare combination. To Bolingbroke’s youthful genius he united that force of will and purpose for which Bolingbroke had long to wait, and which, perhaps, he never fully attained. This analogy was pressed on Disraeli on the threshold of his career by a distinguished friend.