DISPOSITION, a term used in psychology to characterize the manner in which instinctive tendencies operate in the human organism. The total pattern of instinctive mechanisms is a per son's disposition. The great variety of human dispositions is due to the innumerable combinations of relative intensities with which instinctive impulses may assert themselves in different individuals. One person may be very irascible or pugnacious, another timid, another meek and docile, etc. The quality of these dispositions depends upon the relative strengths of the underlying instincts. Excessive preponderance of any one instinctive tendency makes for an unbalanced personality. The term disposition is also used in psychology to characterize the total personality as modified by past experience. In this sense disposition would include the effect of habits and acquired attitudes as well as instinctive tendencies.
When Isaac D'Israeli was about 14 his father sent him to live with his agent at Amsterdam, where he worked under a tutor for four or five years. Here he studied Bayle and Voltaire, and be came an ardent disciple of Rousseau. Here also he wrote a long poem against commerce, which he produced as an exposition of his opinions when, on his return to England, his father announced his intention of placing him in a commercial house at Bordeaux. Young D'Israeli was sent to travel in France, and spent some time in literary circles in Paris, returning to London in 1788. A poem printed in The Gentleman's Magazine, attacking Peter Pindar (John Wolcot) brought him the friendship of his opponent and of H. J. Pye, who helped to persuade his father that it would be a mistake to force him into a business career. D'Israeli dedicated his first book, A Defence of Poetry, to Pye in 179o. Henceforth his life was passed in the way he best liked—in quiet and almost uninterrupted study. In 1802 he married Maria Basevi, by whom he had five children, of whom Benjamin (afterwards Lord Beaconsfield and Prime Minister of England) was the sec ond. He died at his seat at Bradenham house, Buckinghamshire, on Jan. 19, 1848.
Isaac D'Israeli is the author of the Curiosities of Literature (1791, subsequent volumes in 1793, 1817, 1823 and 1834). It is a miscellany of literary and historical anecdotes, of original critical remarks, and of interesting and curious information of all kinds, animated by genuine literary feeling, taste and enthusiasm. He also wrote Miscellanies, or Literary Recreations (1796), the Ca lamities of Authors (1812-13), and the Quarrels of (1814). Towards the close of his life D'Israeli projected a con tinuous history of English literature, three volumes of which .ap peared in under the title of the Amenities of Literature. But of all his works the most delightful is his Essay on the Lit erary Character (1795), which, like most of his writings, abounds in illustrative anecdotes. In the famous "Pope controversy" he supported Byron and Campbell against Bowles and Hazlitt by a defence of Pope in the form of a criticism of Joseph Spence's Anecdotes contributed to the Quarterly Review (July 1820). In 1797 D'Israeli published three novels; one of these, Mejnoun and Leila, the Arabian Petrarch and Laura, was said to be the first oriental romance in English. His last novel Despotism, or the Fall of the Jesuits, appeared in 1811, but none of his romances was popular. He also published a slight sketch of Jewish history, and especially of the growth of the Talmud, entitled the Genius of Judaism (1833) . He was the author of two historical works—a brief defence of the literary merit and personal and political char acter of James I. 0816), and a learned Commentary on the Life and Reign of King Charles I. (1828-31).
Of the amiable personal character and the placid life of Isaac D'Israeli a charming picture is to be found in the brief memoir prefixed to the edition of Curiosities of Literature, by his son Lord Beaconsfield.