The Sun.
London, England, 1870-07-18 00:00:00

AIR. DISRAELI'S LOTHAIR.

SIXTH EDITION,

THREE VOLUMES. LONGMAN AND CO.

A sufficient interval has by this time elapsed since the
original publication of " Lothair " to admit of its merits
and demerits (foi it has both, glaringly and in abundarice)
being weighed in the balance at last dispassionately.
" A clear stage and no favour" can hardly be said to have
marked its reception. It was welcomed first of all not
simply with favour, but with flattery—flattery in many
instances the most egregious and the most nauseating.
Nevertheless, the stage upon which the author of so many
radiant fictions, from " Vivian Grey" to " Tancred" had
once more adventured—ex-Prime Minister of England
though he had come to be, since his last appearance there
in his capacity as a political novelist—that stage, so • long
deserted by him, though once so familiar to his footsteps,
the writer of "Lothair" has found to have been left anything
but "clear" before him. On the contrary, it has been
full of obstructions. It has been set with vampire traps,
so to speak, at points the most unexpected. An am-
buscade as deadly as though prepared by a garotter, has
been suddenly sprung upon him from what might until
then have been regarded as the faithful, and certainly
harmless, prompter's box of Blackwood. This, let it be
remembered, immediately after the well graced actor had
been nearly smothered under the mingled hail and snow
of bonbons and bouquets showered upon him as plentifully
as in carnival time by the chief critics in the stalls, as their
most obsequious and extravagant welcome on his unex-
pected reappearance before the footlights. Blackwood,
however, and others to the contrary notwithstanding, it.
has been, in its way, the 'success of the season, this
bepraised and bespattered novel of "Lothair." It has
certainly been the talk of the town, the rage at Mudie's,
and the utter bewilderment of those who look for guidance
to the opinions of the reviewers. According to one of the
Dublin newspapers "Lothair " is one of the most immoral
books ever published. According to one of the journals
of New York it is a masterpiece of divine, philosophy.
While the reviewers have thus been at loggerheads about
it, however, the publishers, to use an apt and most expres-
sive Americanism, have only had to let it slide ! And
brother Jonathan might say—As if launched down a Mon-
tagne .Russe in a sledge winged with "greased lightening"
to the accompaniment of the "buttered thunder" of Festus,
it has slid ! Already, in a couple of months or thereabouts,
it is in a sixth edition. From eight to ten thousand
copies of it have gone off—it sounds like a gilded cracker
to say it, though it is the simple truth—here in the United
Kingdom, some fifty thousand going off simultanously
in the United States. Under the sanction of the Board
of Works, a new street has been called after it, " Lothair-
street," in one of the London suburbs. A race-horse—
Lothair, by Prime Minister—has entered the betting list
and had the running, this season, to the advantage of many
of the knowing ones at the Ring and at the Corner. A
popular song and a galop de concert, each entitled
" Lothair," have been sung and danced to in many a
drawing-room and ball-room this year in Mayfair and Bel-
gravia. Although, in the estimation of many of its more
supercilious deriders, it is so extra-superfine in its aristo-
cratic tone that, in another sense than that of King Claudius
in "Hamlet," its "offence is rank and smells to heaven"
—it is so agreeable' in the nostrils of the Messrs.
Piesse and Lubin, the fashionable perfumers,
that they have called a new scent the par fum de
Lothair. Finally, there has been very recently
launched, from the Deptford-green Dockyard, a new clip-
per, 900 tons register, rated Al at Lloyd's, yclepped—at
the usual dashing of a bottle of wine across the bows—
" The Lothair." Rage, though the excited Rhada-
manthus of Blackwood, may, at a result so outrageously
in defiance of the mere fitness of things, looking at it
from his point of view—the success of " Lothair" is, as
things go, a fact quite visible and unmistakeable. One
can see it, as the phrase goes, with half an eye. Hope
has not told the flattering tale to Mr. Disraeli— the same
flattering tale is brought to the recognition of all his
senses, as we have seen, by Street, Song, Dance, Perfume,
by swift running Race-horse, and by fast sailing Clipper.
No wonder the young under-graduates in the Sheldonian
Theatre, last Commemoration Day down at Oxford—no
wonder, we say, they cheered Disraeli, and hissed (like
so many geese ?) at Blackwood—
" Success is virtue, and misfortune blame,"
elsewhere than in the precincts of Alma Mater. Outside
the cloistered walls of Oxford so many others join just as
heartily in the same cheers and hisses, that those still
keeping their serener judgments. in equilibrium ask, not
unnaturally, how stands the matter in regard to the in-
trinsic value or worthlessness of " Lothair"—vaunted to
the skies as a literary masterpiece, trodden down into the
' dust as simply beneath contempt—in the midst of the
wild inconsistency of so many impassioned disputants.
Having, quite dispassionately and very carefully, read the
book through ourselves, from cover to cover, right through
the three volumes, we would speak of it here, frankly and
candidly, as an elaborate jeu d'esprit (we mean no pun),
appearing under the guise of three vole. octavo, having
lords and ladies floating all through it, in the empyrean of
the great world—meaning the little one—dandling, and
toying with, and prattling the sublimest truths in the
midst of the clattering of croquet .balls and
mallets, and the cracking of the guns fired off
by the pigeon shooters at Hurlingham. Sydney
Smith's ne plus ultra of Epicurean enjoyment was
—" eating ortolans to the sound of trumpets." Well,
here in " Lothair," in the 21st chapter of the first volume,
we have it—literally ! A sumptuous ball and supper are
given at Crecy House, the Duke's town house, to celebrate
the " coming out " of his grace's youngest daughter, .one
of the heroines of the tale, the Lady Corisande. And here it
is, in this wonderful chapter that we read, at p. 176, how,
during the dance, "The silver trumpets sounded a brave
flourish ;" and directly afterwards, at page 180, we have
Hugo Bohun remarking at the supper-table, as he extracts
a couple of fat little birds from their bed of aspic jelly,
" What a perfect family [meaning the Duke's, not the
birds}—everything they do in such perfect taste. How safe
you were here to have ortolans for supper !" It is Sydney's
dream realized ! Rose-coloured tapestry, we are told,
draped the walls of the saloon in which the guests were
served from gold plate illumined by crystal chandeliers.
That is the atmosphere surrounding us throughout
" Lothair." " Dazzling duchesses escorted by paladins of
high degree," royalty even, " followed by the imperial
presence of ambassadors," we rub elbows with, as we
move on through a very mob of magnificence. The open-
ing words of the book are, " I `remember him [i. e. Lothair]
a little boy,' said the Duchess." The closing words, let us
hope do not imply that Lothair, whenbecoming a Benedict
in the prime of his manhood, is one of those who as Pope
sings—