(3 of 3)
The Significance. It has been said, you cannot write of Disraeli without blowing upon Gladstone, nor of Gladstone without decrying Disraeli. Disraeli, a character to excite the imagination, has excited his fair share of disparagement. Gladstone biographers blame him for delaying and hindering the work of their hero, rate him as the monster rather than the ornament of the Victorian Age. Froude, time-honored authority, belittles him, insists sweepingly he solved no political problem at home or abroad. Laymen credit him with a general impression of glitter, conceit, trickiness, and the somehow illicit purchase of the Suez Canal. His own biographers have pleaded his cause, themselves confused as to his enigmatic character.
The present biographer offers no startling new information, but arranges the old in so graceful and, more important, so entertaining a pattern that the reader is charmed, and dares not remember that Gladstone was after all the Great Liberal Leader who accomplished notable reforms in England. The French have always scorned what they consider Anglo-Saxon cant: Maurois reproaches Gladstone "not so much for always having the ace of trumps up his sleeve as for claiming that God had put it there." But Dizzy's trumps are of his own naming: for himself, no knave, "British Premier;" for the Queen, "Empress of India."
The Author dreamt of becoming professor of philosophy; actually followed the family tradition of manufacturing textiles. Familiar with the English language, he was, during the war, attached to the staff of a British general, as liaison officer, and wrote at that time Les Silences du Colonel Bramble. After the war he is said to have devoted three days a week to business, three to literature, time enough, however, to produce Ariel, popularly acclaimed fanciful biography of Shelley. Maurois now pays his first visit to this country, lecturing on "The Newest French Literature," "The Poetry of the Movies."