Some Diversions of a Man of Letters Author:Edmund Gosse General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1920 Original Publisher: C. Scribner's sons Subjects: English literature American literature World War, 1914-1918 European war, 1914-1918 History / Military / World War I Literary Collections / American / General Literary Collections / Essays Literary Critici... more »sm / General Literary Criticism / American / General Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: The portraiture of living people is performed with the greatest good-nature. It is difficult to believe that the most sensitive and the most satirised could really be infuriated, so kindly and genial is the caricaturing. We are far here from Swift's bludgeon and from Voltaire's poisoned needle. The regeneration of the social order in England, as Disraeli dreamed it, involved the removal of some mediocrities, but he was neither angry nor impatient. The " brilliant personages who had just scampered up from Melton, thinking it probable that Sir Robert might want some moral Lords of the Bedchamber," and the Duke, who " might have acquired considerable information, if he had not in his youth made so many Latin verses," were true to their principles, and would scarcely have done more than blush faintly when he poked his fun at them. Of all the portraits none is more interesting than that of the dark, pale stranger, Sidonia, as he revealed himself to Coningsby at the inn in the forest, over the celebrated dish of " still- hissing bacon and eggs that looked like tufts of primroses." This was a figure which was to recur, and to become in the public mind almost coincident with that of Disraeli himself. When we pass from Coningsby to Sybil...« less