So, too, at the middle period of Disraeli's literary life, such books as _Coningsby_ and _Tancred_ were looked upon as amusing commentaries on the progress of a strenuous politician, not by any means, or by any responsible person, as possible minor classics of our language. And at his third period, the ruling criticism of the hour was aghast at faults which now entertain us, and was blind to sterling merits which we are now ready to acknowledge. Shortly after his death, perhaps his most brilliant apologist was fain to admit that if Disraeli had been undistinguished as a speaker, his novels would have been "as the flowers of the field, charming for the day which was passing over them, and then forgotten." It is only since the beginning of the present century that a conviction has been gaining ground that some of these books were in themselves durable, not because they were the work of a man who became Prime Minister of England and made his sovereign Empress of India, but as much or as little as if they had been composed by a recluse in a hermitage. This impression has now become so general with enlightened critics that the danger seems to be that we should underrate certain excesses of rhetoric and the Corinthian mode the errors of which used to be over-emphasised, but should not, in a comparative survey of Victorian literature, be neglected as serious drawbacks to our perfect enjoyment of the high-spirited, eloquent, and ardent writings of Benjamin Disraeli. It is in this spirit of moderation that I now attempt a rapid sketch of his value as an English author. I There is, perhaps, no second example of a writer whose work is divided, as is that of Disraeli, into three totally distinct periods. Other authors, as for example, the poet Crabbe, and in a less marked degree Rogers, have abandoned the practice of writing for a considerable number of years, and then have resumed it. But the case of Disraeli seems to be unique as that of a man who pursued the writing, of books with great ardour during three brief and independent spaces of time. We have his first and pre-Parliamentarian period, which began with _Vivian Grey_ (1826) and closed with _Venetia_ (1837). We have a second epoch, opening with _Coningsby_ (1844) and ending with _Tancred_ (1847), during which time he was working out his political destiny; and we have the novels which he wrote after he had won the highest distinction in the State. Certain general characteristics are met with in all these three classes, but they have also differences which require to be noted and accounted for. It will, therefore, be convenient to treat them successively.