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Now here is the Box Office test with a vengeance. Not in its soundest form, perhaps, because the really ideal manager would have found a piece and a company that would draw stalls and dress circle as well as pit and gallery. For Bacon says: ‘If a man so temper his actions as in some of them he do content every faction, the music will be the fuller.’ But Gladstone at that time had neither the piece nor the company for this, and, great artist as he was, his music did not in later years draw the stalls and dress circle; but having mastered the eternal Box Office principle, this did not disconcert him, for he knew that of the two the pit and gallery were sounder business for a manager who wanted to succeed in the provinces and was eager for a long run.

This recognition by Mr. Gladstone of the Box Office as supreme comes with especial interest when you consider that his education and instinct made it peculiarly difficult for him to appreciate the truth. Disraeli jumped at it more easily, as one might expect from a man of Hebrew descent, for that great race have always held the soundest views on questions of the Box Office. As a novelist, the novels he wrote were no doubt the best he was capable of, but whatever may be their merits or demerits, they were written with an eye to the Box Office and the Box Office responded. His first appearance upon the political stage was not a success. The pit and gallery howled at him. But this did not lead him to pretend that he despised his audience, and that they were a mob whose approval was unworthy of winning; on the contrary, he told them to their faces that ‘the time would come when they would be obliged to listen.’ A smaller man would have shrunk with ready excuse from conquering such a Box Office, but Disraeli knew that it was a condition precedent to greatness, and he intended to be great. He had no visionary ideas about the political game. As he said to a fellow-politician: ‘Look at it as you will, it is a beastly career.’ Much the same may be said in moments of despondency of any career. The only thing that ultimately sweetens the labour necessary to success is the Box Office returns, not by any means solely because of their value in money—though a man honest with himself does not despise money—but because every shilling paid into the Box Office is a straight testimonial from a fellow-citizen who believes in your work. Disraeli’s Box Office returns were colossal and deservedly so—for he had worked hard for them.