Note 288 — Chapter II · INSTITUTIONS

Concluding his contrast between Alton Locke and Disraeli’s Trilogy, in Transcripts and Studies, 193. In this connection another contrast, between Disraeli and Mrs. Ward, is interesting, because it turns on the effect of humor. “Her presentment of the lighter side of English political life is accurate, and in its way interesting and historically valuable, but it is wholly wanting in that brilliant satiric touch which has made Disraeli’s novels live as literature when their political significance has utterly passed away.” Traill, in The New Fiction, 44.