Biography has so far scarcely done justice to Lord Beaconsfield’s memory. Monypenny’s scholarly book is a wonderful example of the infinite capacity for taking pains, but it altogether lacks that personal note which is so attractive in the best biographies—Boswell’s “Johnson,” Trevelyan’s “Macaulay,” Morley’s “Gladstone,” “The Life of Lord Randolph Churchill,” are delightful, not only as history, but also and mainly because of the long, intimate and personal connection in each case between the writer and his subject. It is difficult to say who could have given us a perfectly satisfactory life of Disraeli, handing down to posterity a living picture of the man. Lord Rowton had all the materials, but he suffered from acute laziness, and there is nothing to show that he had the gift of penmanship. Henry Calcraft, had he lived, might have done it. He knew Lord Beaconsfield as intimately as it would be possible for a younger man to know one so much his elder. He was very much behind the scenes in politics, and he could write. I know no one else who could have had so much chance of success. Monypenny’s book is like a posthumous portrait painted from photographs in memory of a great man, by one who never knew him—it is wanting in the life spark which only sittings could give. The study is excellent history, but how one longs for those deft touches which belong to what Goethe called “the world of the eye.” Mr. Buckle, on the other hand, in his continuation has been more successful. He has contrived to breathe soul into the cold marble statue of the first two volumes, and makes his reader regret that he did not undertake the work from the beginning. Disraeli’s veneration for his father, his love for his sister and correspondent, Sarah, the tender reverence and gratitude in which he embalmed the memory of his wife, his faithful, unswerving allegiance to his friends, dead and alive, all these are traits in his character, which could hardly be told with living force save by those who heard his familiar talk, and listened to the music of a far-off sorrow which would sometimes come into that noble voice. Happily he himself in his “Letters Home,” and indirectly in his novels, has told us much of all this. One morning, when he was living in Downing Street, I went to see him. It happened to be the Queen’s birthday, and after we had sat talking for a little while he made me give him my arm to walk across to the Foreign Office and see the preparations for his official dinner. We stood looking at the table, the flowers and all the glittering furniture of a great state banquet, when all of a sudden he turned round, his eyes were dim, and his voice husky, as he said: “Ah! my dear fellow, you are happy, you have a wife.” He was thinking of that devoted lady who could literally endure torture for his sake, and whose help he sorely missed to the end of his days.