He had no sympathy with Lord Beaconsfield's foreign policy, and the colonial policy which he would have substituted for it was outside Lord Beaconsfield's scope.

He had adopted from Carlyle the theory that Disraeli and Gladstone were both adventurers, the difference between them being that Disraeli only deceived others, whereas Gladstone deceived also himself.

But Gladstone had ignored whereas Disraeli, with singular magnanimity, had offered to the author of Shooting Niagara a pension and a Grand Cross of the Bath.
It was, however, as a man of letters rather than as a politician that Disraeli fascinated Froude, so much so that he is betrayed into the paradox of representing his hero as a lover of literature rather than politics.

Disraeli sometimes talked in that way himself, as when he was persuading Lightfoot to accept the Bishopric of Durham, and remarked, "I, too, have sacrificed inclination to duty." But he was hardly serious, and even in his novels it is the political parts that survive.

Although Froude had found it impossible to review Endymion, the book is very like the author, and can only be appreciated by those who have been behind the scenes in politics.
Froude's idea of Disraeli as a man with a great opportunity who threw it away, who might have pacified Ireland and preferred to quarrel with Russia, was naturally not agreeable to Disraelites, and as a general rule it is desirable that a biographer should be able, to write from his victim's point of view.