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ally as his political and social career became more definite and progressive, the humour in his novels recedes and the wit abounds. The only English prime minister who has been a professed wit, he felt its efficacy as a weapon, used it, and we may add never abused it. Squib, repartee, epigram, and lampoon, all applied by him, have yet never been misapplied to gloze immorality or profane religion. His very sneer is good humour, and if he was in any sense Diogenes, he was certainly a Diogenes who lived out of the tub.

Wit, to classify roughly, is twofold. There is the lightning wit that flashes of a short sentence or an apt reply, and there is the lambent wit that sparkles either by description or dialogue. We shall begin with instances of the first. And here there is scarcely need to quote. Every one knows his aphorisms. The hansom cab, "the gondola of London," and the critics, "the men who have failed;' "1 Tadpole's "Tory men and Whig measures," and Rigby's "Little words in great capitals;" "Don Juan, the style of the House of Commons, Paradise Lost, that of the House of Lords;" "All the great things have been done by the little nations" and "Our young Queen and our old constitution," "The Whigs bathing," and, we may add, "London, the key of India; are household words.

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It is in Coningsby and Lothair that perhaps the best of his apophthegms are found. Thence spring "The government of great measures, or little men of humbug or humdrum;" and "Youth, the trustees of posterity; "The Austrians, the Chinese of Europe;" and "Diplomatists the Hebrews of politics;""Paris, the university of the world ;" and "St. James's Square, the Faubourg St. Germain of London;" "The gentlemen who played with billiard-balls games that were not billiards ;" and "The lady who sacrificed

1 Compare the Infernal Marriage.—“ Ixion. 'Are there any critics in Hell?' ' Myriads,' rejoined the ex-King of Lydia."

even her lovers to her friends;" "Most women are vain, some men are not ;" and the lawyer who " was not an intellectual Croesus, but had his pockets full of sixpences;" "Pantheism, Atheism in domino;" and "Books, the curse of the human race;" "Pearls are like Girls,” and “Malt tax is madness; " of Austria, "two things made her a nation-she was German and she was Catholic, and now she is neither;" and of the Reform Bill, “It gave to Manchester a bishop and to Birmingham a dandy." But indeed words fully as good as these are to be found throughout. It is time to recall Lord Squib's definition of

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the value of money, "very dear;' and Count Mirabel's (D'Orsay's) plea"Coffee and confidence;' santry, Essper George's "Like all great travellers I have seen more than I remember and remembered more than I have seen;" and Popanilla, "The most dandified of savages and the most savage of dandies;" "Venus, the goddess of watering places;" 4 and

Burlington, with his old loves and new dances; "5"Good fortune with good management, no country house, and no children, is Aladdin's lamp ;"6 and the "Treatise on a subject in which everybody is interested, in a style no one understands; 7 the French actress who avers at supper "No language makes you so thirsty as French; "8 and the English tradesmen, who "console themselves for not getting their bills paid by inviting their customers to dinner." The utilitarian whose dogma was, "Rules are general, feelings are general, and property should be general"; and the definition of Liberty, "Do as others do, and never knock men down." There has been scarcely time to forget the advice in Lothair to "go into the country for the first note of the nightingale and return to town for the first note of the muffin-bell;" or 3 Vivian Grey. 5 The Young Duke. 7 Vivian Grey. 9 Popanilla.

2 The Young Duke. Irion in Heaven.

6 Tancred. 8 The Young Duke.

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perhaps to remember Zenobia in Endymion, "who liked handsome people, even handsome women," and Mr. Ferrars who committed suicide from a "want of imagination." A brace of very witty similes should not be here omitted. The one a comparison of the parliament-built region of Harley Street to "a large family of plain children, with Portland Place and Portman Square for their respectable parents;" " the other, that of the detached breakfast-tables at Brentham to "a cluster of Greek or Italian Republics, instead of a great metropolitan table like a central government, absorbing all the genius and resources of society;"2 nor should the Heinesque lyric on "Charming Bignetta," with its witty close, be suffered to die away unreechoed :

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novelist.

In the same category too are those felicitous turns of terse expression, whether new or newly-shaped, which distinguish Lord Beaconsfield above any other modern The "Parliamentary Christian," for Protestant, and the "Freetrader in Gossip" for the bad listener in Lothair, the "Midland sea," for the Mediterranean in Tancred and Venetia; the figure of unbuttoning one's brains, and the jingle "plundered and blundered," of Coningsby, the "Heresy of cutlets," from Venetia, the "ortolans stuffed with truffles and the truffles with ortolans" from Endymion, the "

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fused explanations and explained confusions," from Popanilla. The terms 66 Stateswoman and Anecdotage,"

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Melancholy ocean and "Batavian grace," remind us that Benjamin Disraeli is the son of an author he has himself portrayed as sauntering on his garden terrace meditating some happy phrase.

It still remains for us to advert to the wit of sustained sparkle rather than of sudden flashes. Of this there

is an admirable specimen in Tancred. Lady Constance is alluding to "The Revelations of Chaos," a tract on Evolution.

"... It shows you exactly how a star is formed; nothing could be so pretty. A cluster of vapour-the cream of the Milky Way, a sort of celestial cheese churned into light. You must read it; it is charming.'

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'Nobody ever saw a star formed,' said Tancred.

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Perhaps not; you must read the Revelations. It is all explained. But what is most interesting is the way in which man has been developed. You know all is development. The principle is perpetually going on. First there was nothing, then there was something, then- I forget the next. I think there were shells, then fishes; then we came, let me see, did we come next

Never

mind that we came, and the next change there will be something very superior to us, something with wings. Ah! that's it, we were fishes, and I believe we shall be crows. Everything is proved by geology, you This is development; we had

know.
fins, we may have wings."

This passage is not only wit, but humour also, according as we regard the speaker or the speech, and as both combined as in fact " West-Oriental," irresistible. Or again, Herbert in Venetia :

"I doubt whether a man at fifty is the same material being that he is at five-andtwenty.'

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"I wonder,' said Lord Cadurcis, if a creditor brought an action against you at fifty for goods sold and delivered at five-andtwenty one could set up the want of identity as a plea in bar; it would be a consolation to an elderly gentleman.'

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Or the lady's reasoning on the Gulf Stream theory:—

"I think we want more evidence of a change. The Vice-Chancellor and I went

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Or once more, a piece of raillery from Vivian Grey:

"What a pity, Miss Manvers, that the fashion has gone out of selling oneself to the devil.'

"Good gracious, Mr. Grey !'

"On my honour I am quite serious. It does appear to me to be a very great pity; what a capital plan for younger brothers. It is a kind of thing I have been trying to do all my life, and never could succeed. I began at school with toasted cheese and a pitchfork.""

Or the report of the debate in the House of Lords "imposing particularly if we take a part in it."

"Lord Exchamberlain thought the nation going on wrong, and he made a speech full of currency and constitution. Baron Deprivyseal seconded him with great effect, brief but bitter, satirical and sore. The Earl of Quarterday answered these full of confidence in the nation and himself. When the debate was getting heavy Lord Snap jumped up to give them something light. The Lords do not encourage wit, and so are obliged to put up with pertness. But Viscount Memoir was very statesmanlike and spouted a sort of universal history. Then there was Lord Ego, who vindicated his character when nobody knew he had one, and explained his motives because his auditors could not understand his acts." 1

Or the comparison of the Tories who supported Peel in his defection to the converted Saxons by Charlemagne :

"When the Emperor appeared, instead of conquering he converted them. How were they converted? In battalions-the old chronicler informs us they were converted in battalions and baptized in platoons. utterly impossible to bring these individuals from a state of reprobation to one of grace with a celerity sufficiently quick."

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not difficult to master. Its range is limited; it consists, as far as I can observe, of four words, 'nice,' 'jolly,' 'charming,' and 'bore,' and some grammarians add 'fond.""

And now we have done. Whatever the divergencies of opinion on the literary merit of Lord Beaconsfield -and this rests with the best critic, posterity it is at least unquestionable that in wit and humour he never flags. There are those who have called him dull, but they are dullards. The Boeotians could hardly have proved fair judges of Aristophanes.

But our object in this article has been to vindicate a much higher honour for Lord Beaconsfield than any such mere cleverness. We have endeavoured to prove that not only does he "sparkle with epigram and blaze with repartee" of unusual brilliance, but that his humour, necessarily hampered as it was by his surroundings and his aims, can boast keen insight and original manipulation; that the bizarre and the frivolous is the mere froth on its surface-unessential and evanescent, and that as a wit and a humorist he is now, by the prerogative of death, classical. Nor is the least enduring of the wreaths heaped upon his bier that he always, and in the best manner, amused us while he instructed, and instructed us while he amused.

His wit and his humour offer a complete refutation to the Shakespearian adage, “When the age is in the wit is out," for he preserved them youthful as a septuagenarian, and they in requital shall preserve his memory ever vivid and vigorous.

"Alas! poor Yorick, where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table in a roar?" may exclaim one who discerns only in Lord Beaconsfield, the Court Jester. Our rejoinder shall be that of truth and

reverence,

"He being dead yet speaketh."

WALTER SYDNEY SICHEL.

THE REVISION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

"ONCE more the quiet years, From their long slumber leap," and England, after a silence of ten generations, is engaged in revising her Bible. Between 1526 and 1611 new translations, partial or complete, were constantly coming forth. From 1611 down to very recent times, there was nothing of the kind.

The authorised version seemed to share the immutability of the solar system; partly, no doubt, because it was an authorised version—or rather was supposed to be so, for, as a matter of fact, it never was formally authorised either by Crown or Parliament, or Convocation-and partly perhaps because, of the two parties which so long divided the Church, the one was less occupied with the words of the Bible than with the formularies derived from them, while the other regarded those words with an exaggerated reverence which would have shrunk from the idea of amendment as a profanation. Is the present movement a sign that these two great parties have somewhat modified their views, or that their exclusive domination is no more ? However this may be, it affords a fitting occasion for recalling some of the leading points in the history of our English Bible.

The

And first, as to the name. It may be asked, What's in a name? but every one who has reflected at all on the subject, knows how powerfully names may influence thought. late Mr. Charles Buxton, in his Notes of Thought, speaks of it as nothing short of a national calamity that the record of our Saviour's life and teaching should be designated by the word "Gospel," a word which has to the mass of those who hear it no significance or "connotation," instead of by the word "Good tidings." Perhaps this is not a very strong case; for it may be maintained that "Gospel" does

carry with it a meaning to those who think at all; and further that to express any complex phenomenon of world-wide importance there must be one word set apart and withdrawn from its ordinary uses; that to fit it for its great mission it must pass through a process analogous to that by which a corn of wheat dies, and by dying becomes capable of bringing forth much fruit. At all events, if "Gospel" has the negative defect of suppressio veri, it is at least free from the far graver fault of suggestio falsi.

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It is not so with an allied term, "Religion." Whatever may be the etymology of the Latin religio-and Max Müller agrees with Cicero in deriving it from re-legere, the opposite of negligere, to express thoughtfulness, the opposite of carelessness-it will hardly be denied that in nine out of ten cases where it occurs it carries with it an evil flavour of unmanly fear, seeking refuge in slavish service. Tantum Relligio potuit suadere malorum is the line which it at once recalls to every scholar. And this even in its English form it has never quite lost. In the Bible, "religion” and religious" are very rarely used, and never in their best-if even in a good -sense. Their distinctive use is as the equivalents of θρησκεία and θρήσκος, as in James i. 26, 27, where the whole object of the writer is to impress on his disciples how unworthy of God is the idea of His service which underlies those words. And though "religion" is now enthroned on the lips and in the hearts of men as the recognised name for the highest aspiration of the human soul towards God, it is constantly betraying its meaner origin, not only in such phrases as "Sister in religion," "the religious order," "a religious," but also, though less

obviously, in many others, as when we speak of "the religious life," as something distinct from the godly, righteous, and sober life after which every true Christian strives. Who shall say how much in this case, as in others, the mortal word may have clogged the immortal thought; to how great an extent a good cause may have suffered from the imperfection of a watchword, misleading those within the camp as to the true strength of their position, and keeping out many who might have been within it?

The name " Bible," as applied to the Holy Scriptures, is perhaps open to some objection of a similar kind, as tending to make us forget their multifarious character; that what we are speaking of is not one book but a collection of books; how else, indeed, could it have fitted into every part of human life, every corner of the human heart? "Bibliotheca sacra," Jerome calls it, the holy library; and the early English form of it was "bibliopece." It was through the Normans that "Bible" came to us; the neuter plural Biblia having been, according to a well-known law, changed into the feminine singular. There is, however, a very real and important sense in which the Scriptures are one; and there is some advantage in a title which brings this prominently forward. Only it is the more necessary constantly to remind ourselves that their unity is that of a literature and not of a book, and can never be fully realised but by those who appreciate their diversity.

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for

The title of "New Testament the Christian Scriptures is happily as appropriate, as it was inevitable from the moment when St. Paul, in writing to the Corinthians, spoke of the Hebrew Scriptures (or at least the earlier portion of them) as the "Old Testament"; and it seems hardly credible that the Christian Church should at one time have hesitated between it and the "New Instrument." The Greek word represented here by 1 2 Cor. iii. 14.

Testament means properly a "disposition" or "arrangement"; but it is often used in a special sense, to mean an arrangement made by one who is leaving the world, for the benefit of his friends. In the phrase "New Testament" is reproduced and perpetuated that inextricable confusion of the general with the special sense which is found in more than one passage of the Gospels and Epistles. And carrying thus with it a meaning which hovers between "a merciful arrangement and a "loving friend's bequest," what name could be more happy for the written record of our Saviour's utterances respecting the relations between God and Man?

But what is this English Bible of which we speak, and how have its contents come to be what they are? It is clear that before such a book can be produced at least three distinct processes must be gone through. The Canon of Scripture must be settled; the Text must be ascertained; and that text must be translated. Of these processes the first has hitherto received comparatively little attention in this country. Even the valuable labours of Canon Westcott have awakened but a faint interest in the subject. The vast majority of students of the Bible are quite content to take it, in this respect, as it is; putting aside, as to them of no moment, any doubts which they may hear expressed as to the canonicity, for instance, of the Song of Solomon, or of the 2nd Epistle of St. Peter. Nor is there anything surprising in this indifference. Extremes meet; and as in the early days of Christianity, with the sound of the Apostolic voices still ringing in their ears, men felt no need of a Canon, and none was formed until the persecution of Diocletian, acting as a re-agent, threw it into shape, so the solvent of the modern spirit has taken something both from the definiteness of the Canon then formed, and from its authority. Men feel that the question whether a certain book was or was not included in the Carthaginian Cata

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