democracy. In Night and Morning he speaks of men losing their democratic enthusiasm; and in The Coming Race he gives proof that his is entirely lost. The family of the narrator are Americans, "rich and aristocratic, therefore disqualified for public service;" his father, defeated by his tailor in the race for Congress, decides on the superior beauty of private life. The Vrilya have a very expressive compound word. Koom means a profound hollow; Posh is a term of utter contempt; "Koom-Posh is their name for the government of the many, or the ascendency of the most ignorant and hollow."[1] This contempt, distributed impartially over dishonest demagogue and gullible public, is nothing new. Smollett, for instance, in his Adventures of an Atom, appreciates the art of oratory:
"Our orator was well acquainted with all the legerdemain of
his own language, as well as with the nature of the beast he had
to rule. He knew when to distract its weak brain with a tumult
of incongruous and contradictory ideas: he knew when to overwhelm
its feeble faculty of thinking, by pouring in a torrent of
words without any ideas annexed."
The same Adventurer notes that the names of the two
political parties of Japan signify respectively More Fool
than Knave, and More Knave than Fool. It is, of course
this aspect of democracy that leads Lowell to picture it as
"Helpless as spilled beans on a dresser."
Statemanship was Disraeli's whole existence, and his art a handmaiden to politics. More than any other nineteenth century novelist he complemented destructive criticism by a definite constructive policy. To a contemporary critic, a reforming Tory was a white blackbird; but our own generation, having witnessed the phenomenon
- ↑ The Coming Race, 81.
