ISAAC D', the author of The Curiosities of Literature, and many other works connected with literary history, was the son of a Venetian merchant of Jewish race settled in England, and was born at Enfield, near London, in 1766. His early education at the place of his birth was shaped with a view to fit him for the merchant's desk; but, while at school, he evinced a precocious, and, as his parents thought, a dangerous fondness for literary, and especially poetic pursuits. To cure him of these tastes they sent him to Amsterdam, where a correspondent of his father's was charged to place him in some school of repute. At the age of eighteen he returned to England with a great knowledge of Bayle, Voltaire, and the French philosophes, and a MS. poem of his own against "Commerce." Meeting with no sympathy in his favourite pursuits at home, he sought it abroad. Samuel Johnson had long been the English dictator on all questions of poetry and criticism, and the story is that the young D'Israeli sent his poem to him for judgment about the same time that Samuel Rogers sought an opinion on the first fruits of his genius. Both alike were disappointed. The reign of the great critic was then drawing to a close. While they were still in suspense as to their fate, they heard that Johnson was dead. The satire against Commerce never saw the light; but its author, still believing himself a poet, continued to pour forth his soul in song, and beside many short pieces in verse (contributed chiefly to the Gentleman's Magazine), published also, but without his name, some romantic tales in prose. The latter do not seem to have ever had much success, if we except the satirical pieces called Flim-Flams; and his Defence of Poetry, his most ambitious effort in rhyme, was speedily suppressed by himself. The fortune which awaited him on reaching manhood enabled him to shape his future life according to the plan long before laid and cherished by himself. He resolved to devote himself to the career of literature, and to take the literary character itself for his theme. Some of the fruits of his wide and miscellaneous reading appeared in 1791, when he gave to the world the first volume of his Curiosities of Literature; a second followed a few years later; and a third appeared in 1817. A second series appeared in 1823. In the intervals of his deeper studies he contributed occasional papers to the Quarterly Review. The most memorable of these was his review of Spence's Anecdotes in 1820. This essay gave rise to the famous Pope controversy, in which Campbell, Byron, Bowles, Roscoe, and others less eminent, broke lances. The character of Pope had long occupied D'Israeli's thoughts, and he had gathered a great mass of materials for a life of the poet. But after hesitating for a while between this task, and the weightier one of contributing to the history of our vernacular literature, he decided, as must ever be regretted, in favour of the latter. In 1795 he had published one of the most delightful of his works, his Essay on the Literary Character, and had followed it up in the ensuing year with his Literary Miscellanies. Between 1812 and 1816 appeared the Calamities of Authors, the Quarrels of Authors, and the Character of King James I. The last-named work was described by himself as "an affair of literary conscience." Naturally shy and timid in private life, D'Israeli proved his moral courage as a writer by vindicating the first of the Stuart dynasty. Whatever weight be allowed to this defence of James, it was from no love of paradox that it was undertaken by its author. He earnestly believed every line that he wrote on the subject, and that his judgment was borne out by the original records on which his work was based. A similar motive actuated him in his next elaborate work on the history of the seventeenth century—his Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles I., This work excited far more interest than its predecessor. "Men were attracted," says his son, "to a writer who traced the origin of the anti-monarchical principle in modern Europe; treated of the arts of insurgency; gave them at the same time a critical history of the Puritans, and a treatise on the genius of the Papacy; scrutinized the conduct of triumphant patriots, and vindicated a decapitated monarch. The success of this work was eminent; and its author appeared for the first and only time of his life in public, when, amid the cheers of undergraduates, and the applause of graver men, the solitary student received an honorary degree from the university of Oxford, a fitting homage, in the language of the great university, 'optimi regis optimo vindici.'"

Increasing years and infirmities were not able to damp the ardour of his literary enthusiasm; and it was for many years believed that a complete history of our literature might be looked for from his pen. His historical labours interfered with this design, and it was only partly fulfilled in his Amenities of Literature. This was his last work, and it saw the light in 1841, two years after its author had been struck with blindness. The devotion of his daughter enabled him to finish it, and carry it through the press. D'Israeli spent the last thirty years of his life in studious ease at Bradenham House, Buckinghamshire, where he died in the January of 1848, in the eighty-third year of his age.

In works like D'Israeli's, which range over the whole field of modern literature, and present flowers culled from every tree, it would be too much to look for absolute correctness in many small matters of detail. But, though the critics have detected errors (few of them of any importance), yet, on the whole, D'Israeli's works deserve high praise on the score of accuracy as well as honesty. Without prejudices and without passions, almost, it might be said, without a country, he had no motive either to distort the facts of history, or by adroitly managing its lights and shadows, to gild the evil, and obscure the good. Having no theories or traditionary opinions to defend, he sought truth for itself, and reproduced it, set and polished perhaps, but intrinsically the same as he found it. The literary vein upon which he fell had been, till his day, almost unworked in England, though the French had for ages known its value, and had gathered from it some rare and precious ore. He may therefore fairly be called the father of that very important and interesting branch of English literature of which his own Curiosities may serve as a type. It may be doubted if, in the walk which he marked out for himself, he has yet been approached—he certainly has not been left behind. It would be absurd to place him, as is sometimes done, on the same niche with Montaigne; yet it is true that one reads the works of both with a similar kind of interest. His delightful gossipings are made the vehicle of curious and valuable learning. His criticism, though not always very philosophical, is generally set off by some choice felicity of phrase, while many of his isolated remarks are singularly acute and happy. Sometimes, as in his story of Chidlock Titelbourne, he strikes upon a chord of deep and subtle pathos. Many of his miscellaneous papers present pictures of past times, more graphic and memorable than the formal disquisitions of the most learned antiquarians. The reader enjoys the fruit, without having planted the tree, or anxiously watched the stages of its growth. In the charm and freshness of these pieces one forgets that they are merely the fragments, which it was the author's plan to have welded into the unity of a perfect whole. Had he been able to carry out this design he would have been entitled to rank with Warton; but he wanted the fine critical sagacity and compass of mind which the poet-historian brought to bear on his History of English Poetry.

In private life D'Israeli was one of the best of men. By one who had the best means of judging he is described as having "passed through life without an evil act, without an evil thought." His excessive nervousness made him shy, timid, and sometimes irritable; but it was not in his nature to harbour thoughts either of guile or malice.