A sophistical rhetorician [Gladstone], inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.

Disraeli’s description is a deliberately scathing piece of political character-assassination aimed at William Ewart Gladstone, his great Liberal rival. The phrasing attacks not Gladstone’s policies directly but his manner of argument: “sophistical” suggests specious reasoning; “rhetorician” implies persuasion over truth; “inebriated…with…verbosity” paints him as intoxicated by his own words; and the “egotistical imagination” charge frames his arguments as self-serving improvisations rather than principled positions. The final clause—“interminable and inconsistent series of arguments”—accuses Gladstone of opportunism: endless justifications that shift as needed to wound opponents and elevate himself. The quote exemplifies the intensely personal, performative combat of Victorian parliamentary politics.