His wit, his brightness of humour, and lightness of touch, long prevented many of his contemporaries from taking him seriously. Literary statesmen are often belittled by their generation; imaginative statesmen, always. They have usually to await a career after death. The stereotyped character imposed on him till his pluck and power appealed to the nation at large was largely due to the old Whigs (“oligarchy is ever hostile to genius”[29]), who for years refused to regard him with anything but amusement, yet whose drawing-rooms had been the readiest to applaud those sparkling sallies of 1845 and 1846 that demolished the premier whom they too wished to destroy; that coterie so long trained to make popular causes preserve their exclusive power, and of whom he wrote in 1833, “A Tory, a Radical, I understand; a Whig, a democratic aristocrat, I cannot comprehend.” It was not due to the Peelites, who frankly hated him as an open foe. Even the Liberals (many of whom he counted as personal friends), when he warned them of the underground rumblings, ominous of social earthquake in Ireland, shrugged their shoulders; and when he was reported, glass in eye, to have answered a duchess inquisitive about the exact date of the dissolution with “You darling,” they split their sides, and guffawed, “There he is again!” They agreed with his old family acquaintance, Bernal Osborne (if it was he), to whom the heartlessness was attributed of saying, when Lord Beaconsfield was stricken with his lingering illness, “Overdoing it, as usual.” And yet how interesting it is to find Disraeli in the Grant-Duff diaries discoursing eagerly in the faint dawn on Westminster Bridge of Lord John Russell. Perhaps Disraeli’s greatest admirer among opponents was Cobden, and that admiration was warmly returned. Both of them had one great virtue in common, and a rare one, especially in public life--gratitude; and both could afford to be generous. Read the letter now first disclosed by Mr. John Morley, whose literary appreciation of Disraeli is manifest, in which Disraeli sought to win Gladstone with “deign to be magnanimous.” Disraeli’s own magnanimity--frankly owned by Mr. Gladstone--was conspicuous though it is unfamiliar. During the decade of the ’fifties, on at least four occasions[30] he offered to sacrifice his personal position to Graham, Palmerston, and Gladstone successively for the interests of his country and his party. In 1868 and 1869 he indignantly defended the last against the carping “tail” of his supporters, rebuking alike the “frothy spouters of sedition,” and those who preferred remembrance of “accidental errors” to gratitude for “splendid gifts and signal services.” His unstinted praise of worthy foes, his conduct even towards the ostracised Dr. Kenealy, are constant proofs of a leading _trait_. He always forebore to strike an opponent to please the whim or the passion of the popular breeze.