Balding and bespectacled, genial and good-natured, dressed in the style of an earlier generation, Isaac D'Israeli suggests the image of a Jewish Pickwick. Today his fame and reputation have now largely been pushed into the background of that of his famous son, Benjamin Disraeli, first Earl of Beaconsfield (1804-1881), the Victorian prime minister and novelist. In his own day, however, D'Israeli was well regarded in his own right as a scholar, critic, and prolific man of letters. In a 9 October 1821 letter to John Murray, George Gordon Lord Byron, remarked that D'Israeli "is the Bayle of literary speculation--and puts together more amusing information than anybody." James Ogden, his most recent biographer, notes that he had books in press almost continuously from 1790 to 1840. A sociable man, D'Israeli frequented many literary circles. While conservative in his literary tastes, deeply admiring the poetry of Alexander Pope, he was a vigorous advocate of...