May 11, 1766

There was, in the 18th century, a sense of joy and delight at the expanse of intellectual vista revealed by a European rationalism. The church no longer imposed effective restraints on what could or could not be studied, and new intellectual schemas were available. It was a little like today, with the access the web provides. These thrills are most vivid to people whose bent is mental/intellectual. To them, and if you are reading this blog, perhaps you, intellectual discovery can be like finding jeweled eggs, only every day.

My interest in Isaac D'Israeli (May 11, 1766 to January 19, 1848) includes such delight, and that is partly because he was one of those, at that time called antiquarians, (today we call them geeks) whose delight in obscure facts, underappreciated books and authors, and other glimmers of dusty perspectives, define a certain spectrum of humanity. He wrote a book called:

The Literary Character Illustrated by the History of Men of Genius, Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions (1818).  There we find this interesting quote:

... La Harpe, an author by profession, [Jean-François de La Harpe, 1739 - 1803], observes, that as it has been shewn, that there are some maladies peculiar to artists,—there are also sorrows which are peculiar to them, and which the world can neither pity nor soften, because they do not enter into their experience. The querulous language of so many men of genius has been sometimes attributed to causes very different from the real ones,—the most fortunate live to see their talents contested and their best works decried. An author with certain critics seems much in the situation of Benedict, [a character in "Much Ado About Nothing"] when he exclaimed—" Hang me in a bottle, like a cat, and shoot at me; and he that hits me, let him be clapped on the shoulder, and called Adam!" Assuredly many an author has sunk into his grave without the consciousness of having obtained that fame for which he had in vain sacrificed an arduous life. The too feeling Smollet has left this testimony to posterity. "Had some of those, who are pleased to call themselves my friends, been at any pains to deserve the character, and told me ingenuously... what I had to expect in the capacity of an author, I should, in all probability, have spared myself the incredible labour and chagrin I have since undergone."

We can see in this quote the European beginnings of an artistic self-definition which would continue to develop in succeeding eras. A few of D'Israeli's other titles include:

An Essay on the Manners and Genius of the Literary Character (1795)

Calamities of Authors; Including Some Inquiries Respecting Their Moral and Literary Characters (1812)

Quarrels of Authors: Or, Some Memoirs of Our Literary History Including Specimens of Controvery to the Reign of Elizabeth (1814)

Curiosities of literature. (two multi- volume sets) (1824)

Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles the First (1828)

These are just a few of D'Israeli's books; he tried various literary genres. D'Israeli, independently wealthy, married in 1802 a woman from his own class and they were quite happy. They had five children, of whom one, Benjamin Disraeli, became Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Other writers would soon resolve such granular details into over-arching and artificial systems as the 19th century wore on. D'Israeli and other scholars at the turn of the 19th century could be criticized for inaccuracy but not for confusing mere epiphenomena and historical forces. Professionalism had not yet made the position of the independent scholar tenuous.