nonchalant, who lost fortunes and regained them.[149] Disraeli the Younger united the two strains of his father and of his grandfather. He was a practical dreamer. Isaac Disraeli, then, gave his boy an opening to the literary world. Among his intimates was the shrewd solicitor, Mr. Austin, and his clever young wife, a literary coquette of talent, the aunt of the future Sir Henry Layard, the transcriber of _Vivian Grey_. Her salon was frequented, among others, by the Hooks[150] and the Mathews. With the Austins young Disraeli journeyed in Italy and Germany. From his father’s library he thus emerged on a larger world. But he soon outstepped its bounds. After his long Eastern travels with Clay, and Meredith[151] affianced to Disraeli’s sister--a voyage on which Byron’s Tita became Disraeli’s valet, and on which he encountered the most opposite types as well as some curious adventures[152]--his own first books made him the lion of several seasons. He and Bulwer divided the honors of Bath, then still fashionable. Lyndhurst grew to depend on his assistance, and even advice; Disraeli escorted him when as Chancellor he was present at Kensington at the accession of Queen Victoria; Lyndhurst’s daughter became an associate of Disraeli’s sister; and nothing gave Disraeli more unfeigned pleasure than the visits of Lyndhurst and Bulwer to his father at Bradenham. He not only wrote novels, pamphlets, and sonnets (his vain ambition was to revolutionise poetry), but he seems to have contributed to the _Edinburgh Review_ as well as to many magazines. In 1833, as has been noticed, he corresponded with its editor, Napier, with a view to a “slasher” on Morier’s “Zohrab,” which had been puffed in the _Quarterly_. Of the book he remarks, “A production in every respect more contemptible I have seldom met with;” and of the puff, “This is what comes of putting a tenth-rate novelist at the head of a great critical journal.”[153]