In this comparative calm he resumed his profession as a novelist, which he had laid aside for more than twenty years, and delivered himself of a work immeasurably superior to anything of the kind which he had hitherto produced. 'Vivian Grey' and 'Contarini Fleming' were portraits of himself, drawn at an age of vanity and self-consciousness. 'Henrietta Temple' and 'Venetia' were clever stories--written, probably, because he wanted money--but without the merit or the interest which would have given them a permanent place in English literature. The famous trilogy, 'Coningsby,' 'Sybil,' and 'Tancred,' though of far greater value, have the fatal defect, as works of art, that they were avowedly written for a purpose. 'Lothair' has none of these faults--Disraeli himself is imperceptible; the inner meaning of the book does not lie upon the surface. It was supposed, on its first appearance, to be a vulgar glorification of the splendours of the great English nobles into whose society he had been admitted as a _parvenu_, and whose condescension he rewarded by painting them in their indolent magnificence. The glitter and tinsel was ascribed to a Jewish taste for tawdry decoration, while he, individually, was thought to be glutted to satiation in the social Paradise, like 'Ixion at the feasts of the gods.' The divinities themselves were amused and forgiving. They did not resent--perhaps they secretly liked--the coloured photographs in which they saw themselves depicted. The life which Disraeli described was really their own, drawn naturally, without envy or malice; a life in which they enjoyed every pleasure which art could invent or fortune bestow, where they could discharge their duties to society by simply existing, and where they had the satisfaction of knowing that, by the mere gratification of their wishes, they were providing employment for multitudes of dependents. They had cultivated the graces of perfected humanity in these splendid surroundings, and 'Lothair' was accepted as a voluntary offering of not undeserved homage.