As Good as his Word
Benjamin Disraeli did not make a promising start to his Parliamentary career - but he did start with a promise.
1837
Benjamin Disraeli did not make a promising start to his Parliamentary career - but he did start with a promise.
1837
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), Queen Victoria’s favourite Prime Minister, oversaw the expansion of the electorate as well as a range of social reforms aimed at improving the living and working conditions of the poorer classes. He was also an accomplished novelist, though his first attempts had been cruelly mocked by the critics, and his early political career fared little better.
AS an orator too, his first appearance in the House of Commons was a failure. Though composed in a grand and ambitious strain, every sentence was hailed with “loud laughter.” But he concluded with a sentence which embodied a prophecy.
Writhing under the laughter with which his studied eloquence had been received, he exclaimed, “I have begun several times many things, and have succeeded in them at last. I shall sit down now, but the time will come when you will hear me.”
He did not, as many young men do, having once failed, retire dejected, to mope and whine in a corner, but diligently set himself to work. He carefully unlearnt his faults, studied the character of his audience, practised sedulously the art of speech, and industriously filled his mind with the elements of parliamentary knowledge.
The recollection of his early failure was effaced, and by general consent he was at length admitted to be one of the most finished and effective of parliamentary speakers.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Why did the other MPs laugh at Disraeli’s maiden Commons speech?
Because they thought it was absurdly grandiloquent.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Disraeli gave his first Commons speech. The other MPs laughed at him. He said they would listen to him one day.