When George III. was King, two of his servants, as retired Ministers, met one another at Bath. Said one of them, Lord Mendip, to the other, Lord Camden, ‘I hope you are well and in the enjoyment of a happy old age.’ Lord Camden replied in a querulous tone: ‘Happy! How can a man be happy who has survived all his passions and enjoyments?’ ‘Oh, my dear lord,’ was the reply of his old antagonist, ‘do not talk so; while God is pleased to enable me to read my Homer and my Bible, I cannot but be thankful and happy.’ It is easy to imagine Mr. Gladstone making a similar reply. His love of Homer is only equalled by his love of the Bible. Porson used to say of Bishop Pearson that, if he had not muddled his head with theology, he would have been a first-class critic in Greek. Mr. Gladstone, as we have seen, has had a good deal to do with theology, but that he has not muddled his brains with it is clear, not merely from his active life as a statesman, but from the perusal of the many valuable works he has written on Homer, and his life and time and work. The subject seems to have endless attractions for him. Charles James Fox used to read Homer through every year. Mr. Gladstone displays a still greater enthusiasm. In this department of human inquiry he has been emphatically distinguished, and his works on Homer, to do them adequate justice, would require a volume by no means small to themselves. In 1838 his first great work on the subject appeared. It was entitled ‘Studies of Homer and the Homeric Age,’ and consisted of three large volumes. In 1869 he republished and rewrote a great part of the previous volumes in his ‘Juventus Mundi: the Gods and Men of the Heroic Age.’ ‘I am anxious,’ he writes, ‘to commend to inquirers and readers generally conclusions from the Homeric poems which appear to me to be of great interest with reference to the general history of human culture, and in connection therewith with the Providential government of the world. But I am much more anxious to encourage and facilitate the access of educated persons to the actual contents of the text. The amount and variety of these contents have not been fully apparent. The delight received from the poems has possibly had some influence in disposing the generality of readers to rest satisfied with their enjoyment. The doubts cast upon their origin must have assisted in producing and fostering a vague instinctive indisposition to further laborious examination. The very splendour of the poems dazzles the eyes with whole sheets of lightning, and may almost give to analysis the character of vulgarity or impertinence.’ In his preface Mr. Gladstone tells us that his ideas have been considerably modified in the ethnological and mythological portions of his inquiry. The chief source of modification in the former has been that a further prosecution of the subject with respect to the Phœnicians has brought out more clearly and fully what he had only ventured to suspect—a highly influential function in forming the Greek element. A fuller view of this element in its composition naturally aids in an important manner upon any estimate of Pelasgians and Hellenes respectively. This Phœnician influence reaches far into the sphere of mythology, and tends, as he thinks, greatly to clear the views we may reasonably take of that curious and interesting subject. The aim of this revised edition of his Homeric studies was to assist Homeric studies in our schools and Universities, and to convey a practical knowledge of the subject to persons who are not habitual students.
Few men have found time to appear in print so frequently as Mr. Gladstone. His latest publication bears the date of 1898; his earliest appeared in 1837. One of his great topics has been Homer. The old Greek poet ought to be, according to Mr. Gladstone, in everyone’s hands. His latest work on the subject was the ‘Landmarks of Homeric Study, together with an Essay on the Points of Contact between the Assyrian Tablets and the Homeric Text,’ which appeared in 1890. Among the numberless solutions of the Homeric question since the days of Wolff, he still maintains the traditional view that there was but one Homer, that he wrote both poems, and that the poems themselves should be regarded as a historic whole. In Mr. Gladstone’s view one of Homer’s chief functions was to weld the diverse elements of the Hellenic nation into one. National unity necessarily involved religious unity, and so Mr. Gladstone goes on to propound the theory that Homer endeavoured to find a place in his heaven for all the gods that had been worshipped by the different races he was welding together, and that with this view he created a composite system of religion. It affords us matter for wonder, he says, as well as admiration, how Homer excluded from this new composite system the most degrading ingredients in which the religions around him abounded. Though forced to admit Aphrodite, he only admitted her to a lower place, and presented her in an unfavourable light. She is, in fact, only the Assyrian Ishtar, the Ashtoreth of the Hebrews and Phœnicians. He also elaborately contends that there was a good deal of morality among Homer’s Greeks, far more than is generally supposed. The Politics of Homer form another chapter, and he finds high praise for the value the poet attached to personal freedom, and in the extraordinary power for those times he attached to the spoken word. Except in the concluding chapter on Assyrian Tablets and the Homeric Texts, Mr. Gladstone added little to what is to be found in one or other of his previous books.
In 1896 appeared ‘The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture,’ revised and enlarged from Good Words. The argument appears to be that in the science and history of the Holy Bible there may be detected a degree of accuracy plainly supernatural and miraculous. With great warmth he owns his desire to prevent his countrymen from relaxing their hold on the Bible, which Christendom regards as ‘an inestimable treasure,’ and thus bringing on themselves ‘inexpressible calamity.’ He adopts towards Hebrew specialists an attitude neither defiant nor abjectly submissive. The meaning of Hebrew words must, of course, be determined by Hebrew scholars; but he argues that we must not forget the risks to which specialists themselves are exposed. ‘Among them,’ he writes, ‘as with other men, there may be fashions of the time and school, which Lord Bacon called idols of the market-place, and currents of prejudice below the surface, such as to detract somewhat from the authority which each inquirer may justly claim in his own field, and from their title to impose these conclusions upon mankind.’ And so often has it already happened that the Bible was supposed to be submerged by some wave of opinion, which proved, after all, to be passing and ephemeral, that we may have confidence in its power of weathering storms. He holds that if, even for argument’s sake, one concession were to be made to specialists of all they can be entitled to ask respecting the age, the authorship, the text of the books, he may still invite his readers to stand with him on the impregnable rock of Holy Scripture. Apart from all that science or criticism may say, he can still challenge men to accept the Scriptures on the moral and spiritual and historical ground of their character in themselves. In the course of his work he treats successively of the creation story as told in the first chapter of Genesis, of the Psalms, of the Mosaic legislation, of the Deluge, and of recent corroborations of Scripture from history and natural science.
In 1848 Mr. Gladstone wrote a Latin version of Toplady’s hymn, ‘Rock of Ages,’ though it did not appear till 1861, when it was published in a volume of translations by himself and Lord Lyttelton, issued by them in memory of their marriage to two sisters. The following is the translation:
‘Jesu, pro me perforatus,
Condar intra Tuum latus.
Tu per lympham profluentem,
Tu per sanguinem tepentem,
In peccata mi redunda,
Tolle culpam, sordes munda.‘Coram Te, nec justus forem,
Quamvis totâ vi laborem,
Nec si fide nunquam cesso,
Fletu stillans indefesso,
Tibi soli tantum munus;
Salva me, Salvator unus!‘Nil in manu mecum fero,
Sed me versus crucem gero;
Vestimenta nudus oro,
Opem debilis imploro;
Fontem Christi quæro immundus
Nisi laves, moribundus.‘Dum hos artus vita regit;
Quando nox sepulchro tegit;
Mortuos cum stare jubes,
Sedens Judex inter nubes;
Jesu, pro me perforatus,
Condar intra Tuum latus.’
In 1863 Mr. Gladstone printed his translation of the first book of the ‘Iliad.’ He sent a copy to Lord Lyndhurst, then in his ninety-first year. The aged critic replied in the following letter. The accident to which it alludes was one which had happened some days before to Mr. Gladstone when riding in the Park:
‘My dear Gladstone,
‘We are very sorry for your accident, but rejoice that the consequence is not likely to be serious. What should we do with the surplus without you? I return with thanks the translation. It is a remarkable effort of ingenuity, literal almost to a fault, and in a poetical form. But is the trochee suited to our heroic verse? Its real character is in some degree disguised by your mode of printing the lines. If the usual mode were adopted, the defect would at once appear:
‘“Of Achilles, son of Peleus,
How the deadly wrath arose!
How the hosts of the Achaians
Rued it with ten thousand woes!”Written and read in this way, it has a sort of ballad air. If I am wrong, correct me. Perhaps I have been too long accustomed to the iambic measure with variations, as best suited to English heroic poetry, to be able to form a correct opinion. As an example of trochaic lines, there are several in Dryden’s “Alexander’s Feast”:
‘“Bacchus, ever fair and young,
Drunken joys did first ordain,” etc.’
Mr. Gladstone thought so highly of this criticism that he wrote back asking permission to print it in a contemplated preface to his translation. ‘It is not,’ he said, ‘from a mere wish to parade you as my correspondent, though this wish may have its share. Your observation on my metre, which has great force, cuts, I think, deep into the matter—into the principles of Homeric translation. So pray let me have your permission.’
As an illustration of Mr. Gladstone’s skill as a translator, let me add some verses from his version of the ‘Hecuba’ of Euripides, seven pages of which appeared in the Contemporary Review a few years since, though the translation was made in his Eton days:
‘Antistrophe I.
‘’Twas dead of night, and silence deep
Buried all in dewy sleep,
For feast, and dance, and slaughter done,
Soft slumber’s season had begun.
The lyre was hushed, the altar cold,
The sword, the lance, all bloodless lay;
My husband, softly resting, told
The toils and dangers of the day:
No longer watching for the foe
Sworn to lay proud Ilion low.‘Strophe II.
‘I strove my flowing hair to bind
With many a festal chaplet twin’d;
The mirror’s rays of glittering hue
Betrayed me to my virgin view,
Hast’ning to rest—Then peal’d on high
O’er Ilion’s walls the victor’s cry;
Troy heard the shout that sounded then,
“Dash’d down the turrets of the foe,
Shall sons of Greece again, again
To home, and rest, and glory go.”’
In 1892 appeared ‘An Academic Sketch’ by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P., being the Romanes Lecture delivered in the Sheldon Theatre, Oxford. Whilst it did not detract from, it scarcely added to, Mr. Gladstone’s reputation. It was, in fact, a speech somewhat of the after-dinner type. All the world knew that the Oxford of the past was a theme on which he could pleasantly dilate.
In 1894 there appeared from Mr. Gladstone’s pen an article in the Nineteenth Century on the ‘Atonement,’ occasioned by the study of Mrs. Besant’s ‘Autobiography.’ He says of her: ‘Mrs. Besant passes from her earliest to her latest stage of thought as lightly as a swallow skims the surface of the lawn, and with just as little effort to ascertain what lies beneath it. Her several schemes of belief or non-belief appear to have been entertained one after another with the same undoubting confidence, until the junctures successively arrived for their not regretful, but rather contemptuous, rejection. They are nowhere based upon reasoning, but on the authority of Mrs. Besant.’ The special proposition which Mr. Gladstone examines is one of four, the difficulties of which led Mrs. Besant to reject Christianity—the nature of the atonement of Christ. In dealing with this topic, Mr. Gladstone, after condemning the crude utterances of some theologians and preachers, by whom the New Testament doctrine has been travestied and misconceived, lays down what he conceives to be the true teaching. ‘What is here enacted in the kingdom of grace only repeats a phenomenon with which we are perfectly familiar in the natural and social order of the world, where the good, at the expense of pain endured by them, procure benefits for the unworthy.’
In the same year appeared Mr. Gladstone’s Horace. It was on the whole a failure. A critic writes: ‘The uncouth diction, obscurity of expression of the rendering, are patent evidences of the translator’s being ill at ease under the restraint of narrow bounds of rhyme and metre.’ The same writer observes: ‘Mr. Gladstone’s translation of the Odes of Horace will escape oblivion. Historians will remember it as they remember the hexameters of Cicero, the verses with which Frederick the Great pestered Voltaire, and the daily poems Warren Hastings used to read at his breakfast-table.’ An ingenious contributor to Blackwood, on the publication of the book, contributed a letter from ‘Horace in the Shades,’ intimating that he had nothing to do with the matter. It is to be questioned whether worse verses were ever written than the following in the ‘Horace’:
‘No; me the feast the war employs
Of maids (their nails well clipt) with boys,
Me fancy free; or something warm,
My playful use does no one harm.’
‘Then shalt thou with flagrant passion
Like the beasts be torn,
And with fire of cankered entrails
Thou shalt grieve forlorn.’
Or,
‘The Furies grant in war no scant;
Devouring seas o’er sailors roll;
Young funerals hold their place with old;
Proserpine spares no breathing soul.’
Thus is the death of Cleopatra recorded:
‘Bold to survey with eye serene,
The void that had her palace been;
She lodged the vipers in her skin
Where best to drink the poison in.’
When ‘Ecce Homo’ appeared—a book which dear Lord Shaftesbury, Exeter Hall applauding, described as the worst book ever vomited out of the jaws of hell—Mr. Gladstone, in an article in Good Words, gave in his adherence to the book. He described the author as at once passing into the presence of Jesus of Nazareth, and then, without any foregone conclusion, either of submission or dissent, giving that heed to the acts and words of the unfriended teacher which the truest Jews did when those words were spoken and those acts done.
Mr. Gladstone found time, amid his preoccupations, to write a long article for the English Historical Review on the last portion of the ‘Greville Memoirs,’ chiefly justifying the action of the parties with which he was associated at the time of the ‘death and obsequies of Protection,’ in 1852, and during the Crimean War. Mr. Gladstone traverses Mr. Greville’s statement that in 1852 the Peelites were indisposed to join the Whigs, under the delusive belief that they could form a Government of their own. He can say positively that, with the single exception of the Duke of Newcastle, none of the party entertained this belief. ‘They knew that dichotomy, and not trichotomy, was for our times the law of the nation’s life.’ Their sympathies in regard to economy and peace lay rather with one of the Liberal wings than with the main body. In some cases they were divided between their Liberal opinions and their Conservative traditions and associations. For many a man to leave the party in which he was brought up is like the stroke of a sword dividing bone and marrow. But the intermediate position is essentially a false position, and nothing can long disguise its falseness. The right hon. gentleman confesses that he himself frankly stated to Lord Derby that the Peelites were a public nuisance, for while rapid migrations from camp to camp may be less creditable, slow ones not only are more painful, but are attended with protracted public inconvenience. The lessons of this political drama, he says—and the statement is significant at the present time—are of the present and the future. It entails a heavy responsibility to embark political parties in controversies certain to end in defeat where there is a silent sense of what is coming—a latent intention to accept defeat—and where the postponement of the final issue means only the enhancement of the price to be paid at the close. Mr. Gladstone deprecates the tone generally assumed in speaking of the Crimean War. He denies the assumptions that we drifted into that war; that the Cabinet of the day was in continual conflict with itself at the various stages of the negotiations; and that if it had adopted a bolder course at an earlier stage the Emperor Nicholas would have succumbed. The first of these assertions he characterizes as untrue, the second as ridiculous, and the third as speculative and highly improbable. Lord Clarendon did say that we drifted into war; but his meaning was simply that the time of war had not come, but the time of measures for averting it had expired; and Lord Clarendon, not less expressively than truly, said that, while the intermediate days were gliding by, we were drifting into war. ‘But the fable is brazen-fronted, and, like Pope Joan, still holds her place.’ As regards the Cabinet, Mr. Gladstone has witnessed much more sharp or warm argument in almost every other of the seven Cabinets to which he has had the honour to belong. In regard to the assumption that the war was not justifiable, he makes the ‘inconvenient admission’ that those who approved of the war at the time approved of it on very different grounds. Some favoured it as an Arthurian enterprise, the general defence of the weak against the strong; some because they had faith in the restorative energies of Turkey, if time were obtained by warding off the foe; some thought the power of Russia was exorbitant, and dangerous to Europe and to England. This last was the sentiment which most captivated the popular imagination. ‘It was feeling, and not argument, that raised the Crimean War into popularity.’ It is feeling, Mr. Gladstone thinks, which has plunged it into the abyss of odium. The war proceeded, as he conceives, upon a more just and noble idea expressed by Lord Russell when, on the outbreak of hostilities, he denounced the Emperor Nicholas as ‘the wanton disturber of the peace of Europe.’ The policy which led to the war was a European protest against the wrongdoing of a single State. His belief is that, compared with most wars, the war of 1854–56 will hold in history no dishonourable place. For its policy must be regarded à parte ante. He confesses, however, that the result of the war was exceedingly unsatisfactory.
The May number of the Nineteenth Century, 1887, contained an article by Mr. Gladstone reviewing the fifth and sixth volumes of Mr. Lecky’s ‘History of England in the Eighteenth Century.’ Towards the conclusion of the article Mr. Gladstone quotes the following sentence:
‘Mr. Lecky writes as follows: “We have seen a Minister going to the country on the promise that if he was returned to office he would abolish the principal direct tax paid by the class which was then predominant in the constituencies.”’
This sentence refers, of course, to Mr. Gladstone’s promise in his election address in 1874 to repeal the income tax. Mr. Gladstone replies that Mr. Lecky seems to be unaware that it is the practice of candidates for a seat in Parliament to announce to those whose votes they desire their views on political questions, either pending, proximate, or sometimes remote. He proceeds:
‘The accusing sentence is inaccurately written. In January, 1874, the date to which it refers, there was no question of returning to office. I addressed a constituency as Minister, and in a double capacity as Chancellor of the Exchequer and as head of the Administration, proposed to repeal the income tax. But it is also untruly written. It is untrue that the payers of income tax were then the predominant class in the constituencies. In Ireland, the payers of income tax had ceased, since the ballot was introduced, to rule elections. In England and Scotland, a very large majority of members were returned by the towns. In the towns, then as now, household suffrage was in full force, and the voters were as a body more independent of the wealthy than are the rural population. The repeal of the income tax, whether proper or improper in itself, was not then a thing improper in respect of the persons to whom it was announced.
‘It has been held by some that there should never be an appeal to the people by a Ministry on the subject of taxation. But why not? The rights of the people in respect to taxation are older, higher, clearer, than in respect to any other subject of government. Now, appeals on many such subjects have been properly made—on Reform in 1831; on the China War in 1857; on the Irish Church in 1868; on Home Rule in 1886; lastly, in 1852, by the Tories, whose creed Mr. Lecky appears in other matters to have adopted, on the finance proper to be proposed by Mr. Disraeli after, and in connection with, the repeal of the Corn Law.
‘Undoubtedly, although right in principle, such appeals and promises are eminently liable to abuse. But there is one touchstone by which the peccant element in them may be at once detected. If the promise launches into the far future, it may straightway be condemned. If, on the other hand, it is one certain to be tested within a few weeks, the case is different. A Minister casually pitchforked, so to speak, into office, and living from hand to mouth, might be tempted to a desperate venture. But can Mr. Lecky suppose that the Ministry of 1868–74, which had outlived the ordinary term, and (may it be said?) had made its mark in history, would thus have gambled with false coin, and have sought to add so ignobly, and with such compromise of character, a respite almost infinitesimal to its duration?
‘Was the engagement to the repeal of the income tax one either obligatory or proper in itself? Was the time well chosen? Was the proposer morally bound to the proposal? I will answer “Yes” to all these questions, and I will prove my affirmative, though my short recital will lead Mr. Lecky, if he reads it, into a field of contemporary history which it is quite plain that he has never traversed.’
In 1895 it was announced that Mr. Gladstone had written a book on ‘The Psalter, according to the Prayer-book Version.’ It was commenced by Mr. Gladstone many years before, but it was not till his retirement from office that he found time to finish it. He also compiled a Concordance, and added a series of notes on the Psalter. In the same year the address on the Armenian question, which was delivered by Mr. Gladstone at Chester, was republished in pamphlet form by Mr. Fisher Unwin.
I may not omit to refer to Mr. Gladstone’s utterance on the first chapter of Genesis—that sublime exordium to the Bible—that its truth is in all respects as fresh to-day as it was in the hour of its first enunciation, and that it links the Church of Adam, Abraham, and Moses in living fellowship and unity to the Church of to-day.
In 1894 Mr. Gladstone republished certain papers, which had already appeared in various periodicals, under the title of ‘Studies Subsidiary to the Works of Bishop Butler.’ He ridicules critics such as Matthew Arnold, who held that the ‘Analogy’ is dead, with the eighteenth-century Deism it opposed. He labours to show that it is as applicable to the religious problems of to-day as to those a hundred years old. The ‘Analogy,’ he holds, is one of the finest of intellectual disciplines. In the study of Butler’s works the student finds himself in an intellectual palæstra, where his best exertions are required thoroughly to grapple with his teacher. Mainly, education is a process of wrestling, and it is best to wrestle with the highest masters. The chapters on the Censors of Butler shows all the ex-Premier’s skill at fence. On the subject of the Theology of Butler, Mr. Gladstone attributes his habit of drawing it straight from the Scriptures, with little reference to authorities, as due to his Nonconformist education. In reply to the charges that the ‘Analogy’ tended to Romanism, he asks for a single known case where the study of Butler had led to Rome. The chapter on the influence of Butler is of great interest. In his second part Mr. Gladstone is occupied largely with an elaborate discussion, on the lines laid down by Butler, on the future life, and the condition of man therein. He is especially severe on the Universalists. He regards a period of future discipline for imperfect natures, ‘not without an admixture of salutary and accepted grace,’ as in accord with both faith and reason. The remaining chapters on Determinism, Teleology, Miracle, and Probability are the toughest in the whole book, and are as hard to understand as Butler himself. On miracles Mr. Gladstone follows the orthodox lines.
Mr. Gladstone’s latest utterances on the subject of Christianity appeared in 1895. He pleads for an eternity of punishment. His latest article on the subject appeared in the American Pictorial Bible. The following passage, in which he surveys the world, is worth reprinting: ‘The Christian religion,’ he says, ‘is for mankind the greatest of all phenomena. It is the dominant religion of the inhabitants of this planet in at least two important respects. It commands the largest number of professing adherents. If we estimate the population of the globe at 1,400,000,000—and some would state it at a higher figure—between 400 and 500 of these, or one-third of the whole, are professing Christians; and at every point of the circuit the question is not one of losing ground, but of gaining it. The fallacy which accepted the vast population of China as Buddhists in the mass has been exploded, and it is plain that no other religion approaches the numerical strength of Christianity—doubtful, indeed, if there be any other which reaches one-half of it. The second of the particulars now under view is perhaps more important. Christianity is the religion in the command of whose professors is lodged a proportion of power far exceeding its superiority of numbers, and this power is both moral and material. In the area of controversy it can be said to have hardly an antagonist. Force, secular or physical, is accumulated in the hands of Christians in a proportion almost overwhelming, and the accumulation of influence is not less remarkable than that of force. This is not surprising, for all the elements of influence have their home within the Christian precinct. The art, the literature, the systematic industry, invention, and commerce—in one word, the forces of the world are almost wholly Christian. In Christendom alone there seems to be an inexhaustible energy of world-wide expansion.’
In conclusion, we give a couple of extracts from Mr. Gladstone’s more recent articles of universal interest. In one he makes a noble contribution to the praise of books. ‘Books are,’ he says, ‘the voices of the dead. They are a main instrument of communion with the vast human procession of the other world. They are the allies of the thought of men. They are in a certain sense at enmity with the world. Their work is, at least, in the two higher compartments of our threefold life. In a room well filled with them no one has felt or can feel solitary. Second to none, as friends to the individual, they are first and foremost among the compages, the bonds and rivets of the race.’ But books want housing and arranging, and they are multiplying so rapidly that they threaten to get beyond all control. In an article in the Nineteenth Century, from which we quote the above, Mr. Gladstone, with a light-hearted relish of the subject it is pleasant to see, gives some of his ideas on the subject of arrangement.
Another extract will give us his ideas of the Jews. He thinks that the purport of the Old Testament can be best summed up in the words that it is a history of sin and redemption. After explaining that the narrative of the Fall is in accordance with the laws of a grand and comprehensive philosophy, and that the objections taken to it are the product of narrower and shallower modes of thought, he proceeds, passing by the story of the Deluge and the dispersion, to consider the selection of Abraham. ‘Why,’ he asks, ‘were the Jews selected as the chosen people of God?’ Not, he thinks, because of their moral superiority. He contrasts the Jewish ethics and those of the Greeks, considerably to the detriment of the former, and then sums up the matter as follows: ‘Enough has perhaps been said to show that we cannot claim as a thing demonstrable a great moral superiority for the Hebrew line generally over the whole of the historically known contemporary races. I, nevertheless, cannot but believe that there was an interior circle, known to us by its fruits in the Psalter and the prophetic books, of morality and sanctity altogether superior to what was to be found elsewhere, and due rather to the pre-Mosaic than to the Mosaic religion of the race. But it remains to answer with reverence the question, Why, if not for a distinctly superior morality, nor as a full religious provision for the whole wants of man, why was the race chosen as a race to receive the promises, to guard the oracles, and to fulfil the hopes of the great Redemption?
‘The answer may, I believe, be conveyed in moderate compass. The design of the Almighty, as we everywhere find, was to prepare the human race, by a varied and a prolonged education, for the arrival of the great Redemption. The immediate purposes of the Abrahamic selection may have been to appoint, for the task of preserving in the world the fundamental bases of religion, a race which possessed qualifications for that end decisively surpassing those of all other races. We may easily indicate two of these fundamental bases. The first was the belief in one God. The second was the knowledge that the race had departed from His laws—without which knowledge how should they welcome a Deliverer whose object it was to bring them back? It may be stated with confidence that among the dominant races of the world the belief in one God was speedily destroyed by polytheism, and the idea of sin faded gradually but utterly away. Is it audacious to say that what was wanted was a race so endowed with the qualities of masculine tenacity and persistency, as to hold over these all-important truths until that fulness of time when, by and with them, the complete design of the Almighty would be revealed to the world? A long experience of trials beyond all example has proved since the Advent how the Jews, in this one essential quality, have surpassed every other people upon earth. A marvellous and glorious experience has shown how among their ancestors before the Advent were kept alive and in full vigour the doctrine of belief in one God and the true idea of sin. These our Lord found ready to His hand, essential preconditions of His teaching. And in the exhibition of this great and unparalleled result of a most elaborate and peculiar discipline we may perhaps recognise, sufficiently for the present purpose, the office and work of the Old Testament.’
In another article Mr. Gladstone objects to Universalism as a contradiction of Divine utterance. He writes: ‘To presume on overriding the express declarations of the Lord Himself delivered upon His own authority, is surely to break up revealed religion in its very ground-work, and to substitute for it a flimsy speculation spun like a spider’s web by the private spirit, and as little capable as that web of bearing the strain by which the false is to be severed from the true.’ Speaking of the theory which denies future punishment, he says: ‘What is this but to emasculate all the sanctions of religion, and to give wickedness, already under a too feeble restraint, a new range of license?’
It is vain to seek to chronicle Mr. Gladstone’s publications. Even at the time of his last illness he was said to have been engaged in a work on the Fathers. His writings fill six columns in the library catalogue of the British Museum.
No one has been the subject of so much small talk as Mr. Gladstone. He has been a fortune to the men who think it creditable to write gossip and twaddle for newspapers in London or the provinces. In 1881 all England was interested, or supposed to be so, in the tale of his hat. A writer says: ‘The House of Commons has not had such a laugh for years as it had to-day over Mr. Gladstone and his hat. Mr. Gladstone is singular among members in never bringing a hat into the assembly. He would not wear it when his head was broken, but preferred a skull-cap. But it is the rule that after a division is called nobody shall address the Speaker standing, or with his head uncovered. To-day Mr. Gladstone wished to say something after the division-bell had rung, but no sooner did he open his mouth than the whole House yelled for him to observe the law. He sought for a hat, but could find none, the House still roaring at him. At length one of his colleagues got hold of Sir Farrer Herschell’s hat and put it on him. Now, Sir Farrer is a small man among small men, and he has a small head for a small man. Mr. Gladstone, if not exactly a giant, has the head of one. Imagine him, then, with Sir Farrer’s hat upon his head. A mountain crowned by a molehill could not have looked more ridiculous. The House laughed and roared at Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Gladstone laughed at himself. Everybody voted this the sublimest spectacle of the session.’ Alas! Mr. Gladstone too often lent himself in Parliament to being exhibited. To draw Gladstone was at one time a favourite sport among the young men of the Opposition. Nothing was easier. You had only to get up and misquote Mr. Gladstone, and the fiery old man was on his legs in an instant.
In the English Illustrated Magazine Mr. W. R. Lucy in 1892 gave an interesting analysis of Mr. Gladstone intellectually. He writes: ‘In addition to a phenomenal physical constitution, Nature has been lavish to Mr. Gladstone in other ways. Education, association, and instinct early led him into the political arena, where he immediately made his mark. But there are half a dozen professions he might have embarked upon with equal certainty of success. Had he followed the line which one of his brothers took, he would have become a prince among the merchants of Liverpool. Had he taken to the legal profession, he would have filled the courts of law with his fame. Had he entered the Church, the highest honours would have been within his grasp. If the stage had allured him, the world would have been richer by another great actor—an opportunity, some of his critics say, not altogether lost under existing circumstances. With the personal gifts of a mobile countenance, a voice sonorous and flexible, and a fine presence, Mr. Gladstone possesses dramatic instincts frequently brought into play in House of Commons debates or in his platform speeches. In both his tendency is rather towards comedy than tragedy. It is the fashion to deny him a sense of humour, a judgment that could only be passed by a superficial observer. In private conversation his marvellous memory gives forth from its apparently illimitable stores an appropriate and frequently humorous idea of the current topic. If his fame had not been established on a loftier line, he would have been known as one of the most delightful conversationalists of the day.’
The Rev. Dr. Robertson, of Venice, having sent Mr. Gladstone a copy of his second edition of ‘Fra Paolo Sarpi,’ in returning thanks from Hawarden, Mr. Gladstone writes: ‘I have a strong sympathy with men of his way of thinking. It pleases me particularly to be reminded of Gibbon’s weighty eulogy upon his history. Ever since I read it—I think over forty years ago—I have borne to it my feeble testimony by declaring that it comes nearer to Thucydides than any historical work I have ever read. It pleases me much to learn that a Sarpi literature has appeared lately at Venice. If you were so good as to send the titles of any of the works or all works on the subject, I would order them; and I should be further glad if you would at any time thereafter come and see them in a library with hostel attached, which I am engaged in founding here.’
One of the London clubs to which Mr. Gladstone belonged was that known as Grillions, where it was the custom when a member dined there alone to record the event in verse. In 1882 Mr. Gladstone dined at the club alone, and, having written as chairman in the club-book ‘one bottle of champagne,’ added the following:
‘The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell—a hell of heaven.’
To which Lord Houghton, as poet-laureate of the club, added some verses, commencing:
‘Trace we the workings of that wondrous brain,
Warmed by a bottle of our dry champagne.’
In 1891 the Literary World wrote: ‘There have been comments made lately by different writers depreciating Mr. Gladstone’s literary judgments. Whatever else may be said for them, it is certain, we think, that they are not hastily formed, for in his reading, as in all else, he is strictly methodical.’ This point is well made by a contributor to the Young Man, in a long and interesting article. ‘Mr. Gladstone,’ he says, ‘cannot read hastily, nor has he ever acquired the fine art of skipping. But he is not slow to discover whether the book is worth reading, and if not, after a few pages it is cast on one side, though, as a general rule, his judgment is lenient.’ In the ‘Autobiography of Sir Henry Taylor’ this is further illustrated. Mr. Gladstone on one occasion asked him what he thought of two or three volumes of poetry recently published. They were presentation copies sent him by obscure poets, who, if possessed of a grain or two of common-sense, could have had but little expectation that their volumes would be opened by Mr. Gladstone, even if they should pass beyond the sifting hands of his secretaries. ‘He seemed, however, to be prepared to discuss their merits, had not my entire ignorance,’ writes Sir Henry, ‘stopped the way.’
Another characteristic is mentioned by Sir Henry on the authority of Mrs. Gladstone—the power he possessed of turning from what was arduous and anxious, and becoming at once intensely occupied with what was neither, and she regarded this as having something of a saving virtue. But she added, nevertheless, it was a frightful life.
‘Gladstone’s method of impartiality is,’ wrote Lord Houghton, ‘to be furiously earnest on both sides of a question.’ Again, we have another characteristic from Lord Houghton—Gladstone saying ‘he felt strongly that the statesman was becoming every day more and more the delegate of the people and less the leader.’
Another characteristic incident is recorded by Mr. Richard Redgrave: ‘Mr. Lowe said that a few days before, dining with Mr. Gladstone, a lady being seated between them, Mr. Gladstone across said to Mr. Lowe: “I cannot think why they called Cobden the Inspired Bagman.” “Neither can I,” said Mr. Lowe; “for he was neither inspired nor a bagman. In fact, it reminds me of a story told of Madame Maintenon when someone offered to obtain an order for her to gain admission into the Maison des filles repenties. ‘Nay,’ said Madame, ‘I am neither a fille nor am I a repentie.’” At that the lady between the two politicians burst into a laugh, but Mr. Gladstone pulled rather a long face,’ as he did, I am told by a late Minister, at a dinner where Lord Westbury uttered some rather coarse jokes.
The late Mr. R. H. Hutton, of the Spectator, in an article in the Contemporary Review, smartly hit off one of Mr. Gladstone’s characteristics: ‘There is a story that one of his most ardent followers said of him that he did not at all object to Mr. Gladstone’s always having one ace up his sleeve, but he did object to his always saying that Providence placed it there.’ In 1832 a Dean of Peterborough said of Mr. Gladstone: ‘His conscience is too tender ever to run straight.’ In 1866 Dr. Lake, of Durham, remarked of Mr. Gladstone that ‘his intellect could persuade his conscience of anything.’
‘In the course of life,’ Mr. Gladstone wrote to Sir Henry Taylor, ‘I have found it just as difficult to get out of office as to get in, and I have done more doubtful things to get out than to get in. Furthermore, for more than nine or ten months of the year I am always willing to go, but in the two or three which precede the Budget I begin to feel an itch to have the handling of it. Last summer I should have been delighted [to resign]; now I am indifferent. In February, if I live so long, I shall, I have no doubt, be loath, but in April quite ready again. Such are my signs of the Zodiac.’
In the series of sketches of ‘Bookworms of Yesterday and To-day,’ place in the Bookworm is given to Mr. Gladstone, who has been a book-collector for over three-quarters of a century. ‘He kindly informs me,’ writes Mr. W. Roberts, ‘that he has two books which he acquired in 1815, one of which was a present from Miss H. More. At the present time he estimates his library to contain from 22,000 to 25,000 books, arranged by himself into divisions and sections in a very minute manner. The library is so exceedingly miscellaneous that Mr. Gladstone himself does not venture to state which section preponderates, although he thinks that “theology may be one-fourth.” There are about twenty editions of Homer, and from thirty to forty translations, whole or part. He has never sympathized to any considerable extent with the craze for modern first editions, but “I like a tall copy” is Mr. Gladstone’s reply, made with all the genuine spirit of the true connoisseur, to an inquiry on the subject. And so far as regards a preference for ancient authors, in old but good editions, to modernized reprints, the verdict is emphatically in favour of the former.’
Lord Shaftesbury seems to have been struck with Mr. Gladstone’s inconsistency. In his diary, in 1873, he writes: ‘Last year Gladstone, speaking on Female Suffrage, said “the Bill will destroy the very foundation of social life.” This year he says: “We had better defer it till we get the ballot; then it will be quite safe.”’ In 1864 his lordship had written: ‘Mr. Gladstone will succumb to every pressure except the pressure of a constitutional and Conservative party.’
Mr. W. Lucy thus illustrates Mr. Gladstone’s restlessness: ‘Except at the very best, Mr. Gladstone’s Parliamentary manner lacked repose. He was always brimming over with energy, which had much better have been reserved for worthier objects than those that sometimes succeeded in evoking its lavish expenditure. I once followed Mr. Gladstone through the hours of an eventful sitting. . . . The foe opposite was increasing in the persistence of his attack, and nominal friends on the benches were growing weary in their allegiance. The Premier came in from behind the chair with hurried pace; he had been detained in Downing Street up to the last moment. As usual, when contemplating making a great speech, he had a flower in his button-hole, and was dressed with unusual care. Striding swiftly past his colleagues on the Treasury Bench, he dropped into the seat kept vacant for him, and, hastily taking up a copy of the orders, ascertained what particular question in the long list had been reached. Then turning with a sudden bound of his whole body, he entered into animated conversation with a colleague, his pale face working with excitement, his eyes glistening, and his right hand vehemently beating the open palm of his left hand, as if he were literally pulverizing an adversary. Tossing himself back with equally rapid gesture, he lay passive for the space of eighty seconds. Then with another swift movement of the body he turned to the colleague on the left, dashed his hand into his side-pocket, as if he had suddenly become conscious of a live coal secreted there, pulled out a letter, opened it with a violent flick of extended forefingers, and earnestly discoursed thereon.’
In acknowledging a copy of a recently published work on ‘Clergymen’s Sore Throat,’ Mr. Gladstone has addressed a letter to the author, Dr. E. B. Shuldham, on the subject of the management of the voice in public speaking. ‘No part of the work,’ writes Mr. Gladstone, ‘surprised me more than your account of the various expedients resorted to by eminent singers. There, if anywhere, we might have anticipated something like a fixed tradition. But it seems we have learned nothing from experience, and I myself can testify that even in this matter fashion prevails. Within my recollection an orange, or more than one, was alone, as a rule, resorted to by members of Parliament requiring aid. Now it is never used. When I have had very lengthy statements to make I have used what is called egg-flip—a glass of sherry beaten up with an egg. I think it excellent, but I have much more faith in the egg than in the alcohol. I never think of employing it unless on the rare occasions when I have expected to go much beyond an hour. One strong reason for using something of the kind is the great exhaustion often consequent on protracted expectation and attention before speaking.’
One of the best of the many stories connected with Mr. Gladstone’s many residences in the South of France tells how one Sunday he and his wife were seated in the church at Cannes near the pulpit. The Grand Old Man, turning to his wife, said, in an irritable tone: ‘I can’t hear.’ ‘Never mind, my dear,’ said the lady. ‘Go to sleep; it will do you much more good.’
In a chapter of his autobiography Mr. Gladstone wrote: ‘In theory, and at least for others, I am a purist with respect to what touches the consistency of statesmen. Change of opinion in those to whom the public look more or less to assert its own is an evil to the country at large, though a much smaller one than their persistency in a course which they know to be wrong. It is not always to be blamed, but it is to be watched with vigilance—always to be challenged and put upon trial.’
In 1881 Mr. Gladstone told the electors of Leeds he had been a Liberal since 1846. The fact is, as Mr. Jennings has shown, that he held office under a Conservative Premier, that he was returned for Oxford as a Conservative, and that in 1858 he canvassed the county of Flint for Sir Stephen Glynne, who was a strong supporter of Lord Derby’s Government.
In 1855, when Lord Aberdeen, who was certainly no Whig, retired, Mr. Gladstone wrote a most effective letter of regret, which incidentally throws a little light on his correspondent’s character. Mr. Gladstone writes: ‘You make too much of services I have rendered you. I wish it were in my power to do justice in return for the benefits I have received from you. Your whole demeanour has been a living lesson to me, and I have never gone, with my vulnerable temper and impetuous moods, into your presence without feeling the strong influence of your calm and settled spirit.’
Pearson’s Magazine tells some interesting things about the Grand Old Man. Though possessing strict views on Sunday observance, he does not disapprove of Sunday cycling. The bicycle, he says, is no more than a perfect means of locomotion. Hawarden Park, which is closed to ordinary tourists on Sunday, is open to cyclists. He gives the first place among living writers of fiction to Zola, but his favourite English books are the Waverley Novels. Of his once large collection of axes only thirty or forty now remain. ‘In bygone days admirers were constantly sending him axes as marks of their esteem, and now other admirers quite as constantly smuggle them away as treasured mementoes of their visits.’ A silver pencil, axe-shaped, presented by the Princess of Wales ‘for axing questions,’ is among the treasures of the G.O.M. Fifty or sixty walking-sticks, part of a once unique collection, adorn a rack outside Mr. Gladstone’s study, but the number of these also ‘is being diminished by visitors whose enthusiasm is in advance of their scruples.’ Alluding to Mr. Gladstone’s fondness for fresh air, the writer (Mr. W. A. Woodward) says: ‘I have seen him, with Mrs. Gladstone at his side, a ridiculously small umbrella held between them, set forth for a pleasure drive in such torrents of rain as no ordinary mortal would have faced save on some vital purpose.’ Books on divorce and marriage—judging by the number of annotations in his neat, distinct handwriting in such volumes in his library—receive his closest attention, but he has no very great interest in the modern analytical novel. ‘It is natural,’ says the writer, ‘that the subject of marriage, in its middle relation to politics and religion, should have exercised a large fascination over so ardent a student of theology and sociology.’
Mr. Gladstone planted a young tree at Studley Royal, and the Studley and Oldfield children were specially summoned to the place to witness the ceremonial. As they were standing in review order—there being in all about one hundred and twenty youngsters—Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone passed down the lines, and some remarks by the right hon. gentleman were addressed to Lord Ripon. The point mainly dwelt upon was the large size of the heads of Yorkshire children. Mr. Gladstone suggested that it was indicative of independence. He added that his experience was that the farther north he went, the larger he found the human head, and he told an anecdote about a man who went to a hatter’s, but failed to get a hat large enough, until the tradesman, driven to desperation, called for an Aberdeen hat.
It is well known that Mr. Gladstone is an authority in the ceramic art, and he never loses an opportunity of inspecting rare and beautiful specimens. When he lately visited Manchester he spent an early hour at the exhibition among the beautiful collection placed there by Messrs. Doulton. And there he received an unexpected pleasure. More than a dozen years ago, when speaking at a dinner of the Turners’ Company, he alluded to a visit he had made to the works of Messrs. Doulton. He had been taken into the room of a young man, who happened to be absent at the time, to see the quality of his workmanship. He was delighted with what he saw, the more when he learned that the young artist had not heard a sound since his fourth year. He spoke so kindly of him and his work that it almost seemed as if Mr. Gladstone envied the isolation which seemed to favour abstraction and study in the midst of bustle and din. It was this gentleman, Mr. Frank Butler, whom Mr. Gladstone found in charge of the Doulton art treasures at Manchester. He at once remembered him, and, before leaving, he had Mr. Butler to seat himself at the potter’s wheel, and fashion before him a vase as a specimen of his skill. Upon this Mr. Gladstone inscribed his name in the wet clay, and another was turned for Mrs. Gladstone.
From a little volume—‘Mr. Gladstone in the Evening of his Days’—I take the following:
‘Another reason why Mr. Gladstone gets through such an astounding amount of work is his extraordinary habit of using up odds and ends of time. One day not long ago he was driving into Chester after luncheon; his pudding was very hot, so he went away from table, changed his clothes, got ready for his drive, and came back and finished the meal, thus saving the ten minutes during which his pudding cooled. It may here be mentioned, in connection with the drives to Chester, that on the day a few months ago when he drove in for the purpose of making his powerful Armenian speech, Mr. Gladstone had been absorbed in Butler all the morning, and the speech was made without any special preparation.’ Even at the great age of eighty-five it was evident that Mr. Gladstone worked more hours a day than many men in the prime of life would like.
Sir Francis Doyle once asked Mr. Gladstone whether, after his long years of practice, he ever felt nervous on rising to speak. ‘Not on political questions,’ was his answer; ‘but if I am called upon to deliver what the Greeks used to call an “epideictic oration,” as at the Literary Fund dinner, or the like, I am often somewhat troubled at first.’
‘I have just heard,’ wrote on one occasion a correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, ‘a highly characteristic anecdote of Mr. Gladstone’s versatility. I suppress the name and place. After an interesting interview with a prominent author, whose acquaintance he had newly made, in reply to a courteous hope that his health and strength might long be spared, Mr. Gladstone said: “Yes, I confess I wish to live for two great objects. You can guess one of them: it is to settle the Irish question. The other is, to convince my countrymen of the substantial identity between the theology of Homer and that of the Old Testament.”’
Under this heading we give a few items from Bishop Wilberforce’s notes. In 1868 he writes: ‘Gladstone noble as ever.’ Again: ‘Gladstone, as ever, just, earnest, and honest, as unlike the tricky Disraeli as ever.’ Again the Bishop writes, after staying with him at Hatfield: ‘I have very much enjoyed meeting Gladstone. He is so delightfully true—just as full of interest in every good thing of every kind, and exactly the reverse of the mystery man. When people talk of Gladstone going mad, they do not take into account the wonderful elasticity of his mind and the variety of his interests. Now, this morning after breakfast he and I and Salisbury went a walk round the beautiful park, and he was just as much interested in the size of the oaks, their probable age, etc., as if no care of State ever pressed upon him. This is his safeguard, joined to rectitude of purpose and clearness of view.’
No reference to Mr. Gladstone would be complete without a word about his collars. In a paper on the subject in the New Century, Mr. Harry Furniss writes: ‘I believe I am generally supposed to have invented Mr. Gladstone’s collars; but, as a matter of fact, I merely sketched them. Many men wear collars quite as large, and even larger, than his, but they are not so prominent in appearance, for the simple reason that when Mr. Gladstone sits down it is his custom to sit well forward; his body collapsed, so to speak, and his head sunk into his seat. The inevitable result was that his collar rose, and owing to this circumstance I have frequently seen it looking quite as conspicuous as it is depicted in my caricatures. When Mr. Gladstone upon one occasion met the artists of Punch at dinner, I was chagrined to find when he walked into the dining-room that he had discarded his usual large collar for one of the masher type. I felt that my reputation for accuracy was blighted, and sought consolation from the editor of a Gladstonian organ who happened to be present. “Yes,” he said; “he is evidently dressed up to meet the Punch artists. He is the pink of fashion and neatness now; but last night when I met him at dinner his shirt was frayed at the edges, and his collar was pinned down behind, but the pin gave way during the evening, and the collar nearly came over his head.”’
Mr. Justin McCarthy has much to say of Mr. Gladstone’s eyes: ‘I am myself strongly of opinion that Mr. Gladstone strongly improved in appearance as his life went on deepening into years. I cannot, of course, remember him as he was in 1833. I think I saw him for the first time some twenty years later. But although he was a decidedly handsome man at that time, I did not think his appearance was nearly so striking or so commanding as it became in the closing years of his career. I do not believe that I ever saw a more magnificent human face than that of Mr. Gladstone after he had grown old. Of course, the eyes were always superb. Many a stranger looking at Mr. Gladstone for the first time saw the eyes, and only the eyes, and could think for a moment of nothing else. Age never dimmed the fire of these eyes.’
A few characteristics are given by Mr. McCarthy: ‘I have mixed,’ he writes, ‘with most of Mr. Gladstone’s contemporaries, his political opponents as well as his political followers, and I have never heard a hint of any serious defect in his nature, or of any unworthy motive influencing his private or public career. Defects of temperament, and of manner, and of tact have no doubt been ascribed to him over and over again. He was not, people tell me, always successful in playing up to or conciliating the weaknesses of inferior men. He was not good, I am told, at remembering faces or names. . . . Such defects, however, in Mr. Gladstone’s nature or temperament count indeed for little or nothing in the survey of his career.’ Another characteristic of Mr. Gladstone, remarks Mr. McCarthy, is his North-country accent.
Sir Andrew Clark, who was Mr. Gladstone’s physician for years, said he never had a more docile patient than Mr. Gladstone. The moment he is really laid up he goes to bed, and there remains till he recovers. He is a firm believer in the doctrine of lying in bed when you are ill. You keep yourself in an equable temperature, avoid the worries and drudgery of everyday life, and being in bed is a good pretext for avoiding the visits of the multitude of people whose room is better than their company.
Mr. Gladstone’s admirers are very angry when it is intimated that his character is not perfection. It may be there are spots in the sun, but the idol of the party must be spotless.
The following anecdote illustrates Mr. Gladstone’s love of music. On the eve of one of his great budgets, Mr. Gladstone found time to go to the theatre to see Sarah Bernhardt act in ‘Phèdre.’ The great statesman was so delighted with the acting, that he wrote to mademoiselle a letter expressing his great gratification. The divine Sarah always had a great influence on the impressionable Premier. When she held a reception, the first to come and the last to go was Mr. Gladstone, and none who witnessed it were likely to forget the spectacle of the great statesman bending low almost till he kissed the hand of the actress when she advanced to welcome him.
According to all accounts, Mr. Gladstone is on the most friendly terms with his tenantry. To some of them he has been specially kind. On the occasion of the marriage of his son and heir he feasted 550 of his cottage tenants on the first day, and upwards of 400 on the second. On one occasion, while Mr. Gladstone was pointing out to a large party of excursionists the beauties of the trees, he added: ‘We are very proud of our trees.’ ‘Why, then, do you cut them down as you do?’ said a man in the crowd. Said the Grand Old Man in reply: ‘We cut down that we may improve. We remove rottenness that we may restore health by letting in air and light. As a good Liberal, you ought to understand that.’
Again I give an anecdote of his kindness as landlord. When Mr. Gladstone was engaged in one of his Midlothian campaigns, his principal tenant, an energetic and capable practical farmer, was suffering from severe illness. Every day during the campaign came a letter from Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone inquiring after his health. On their return from Scotland, having travelled all night, they drove from Chester straight to the tenant’s house, and were both in his bedroom at half-past eight in the morning.
Another Hawarden anecdote may be recorded here. In Mr. Gladstone’s household was an old woman-servant, who had a son inclined to go wrong. The mother remonstrated, but all to no purpose. At last she thought if the Premier would take the prodigal in hand, at last he might be reclaimed. She appealed to Mr. Gladstone, and he responded at once to her appeal. He had the lad sent to his study, spoke to him words of tender advice and remonstrance, and eventually knelt down with him and prayed to a higher Power to help in the work of reformation.
In May, 1885, Mr. Lucy writes: ‘In making a statement to-night on the course of public business, the Premier spoke, as has been a matter of custom of late, amid continuous noisy interruptions from a section of the Conservative party. To-night this method of Parliamentary procedure, novel, as directed against the leader of the House, reached a climax which had the desired effect of temporarily silencing the Premier. After a painful pause, he observed that this new kind of Parliamentary warfare was of little matter to him, whose personal interposition in political strife was a question of weeks rather than of months, certainly of months more than of years. But he had a deep conviction that within the last three years a blow had been struck at the liberty and dignity of the House of Commons by these intrusions upon debate.’
No notice can be held to be complete which does not give one an idea of the splendid physical constitution which has enabled Mr. Gladstone to lead the life he has led and to do the work he has done. On one occasion he told his Welsh admirers that it was due to the air of that part of the Principality near which he resided. But his vitality is undoubtedly an illustration of the principle of heredity. The medical journals had always much to say of Mr. Gladstone’s health. We quote one. At the end of the session in which Mr. Gladstone carried his Irish Land Bill, the Lancet wrote: ‘Apart from all party and political considerations, it is but proper to express our satisfaction at seeing Mr. Gladstone, at the end of a session almost unprecedented for length and for those influences which harass and exhaust, in a state of admirable health and spirits. It was a physiological and psychological marvel last week to see him rise and show reasons for disagreeing with the Lords’ Amendments, not in any hasty or excited mood, but with perfect serenity of intellect and temper, with absolute mastery of details, and appealing to all that was best in his opponents. This is a feat which exceeds, in our judgment, the felling of many trees, and almost crowns Mr. Gladstone’s many claims to distinction. The last straw breaks the camel’s back, and it would have been excusable if the obstructions of August had elicited peevishness and intelligible if they had produced exhaustion. But both strength and temper are intact, and Mr. Gladstone goes to his holiday with a stock of energy which many younger men would be glad to return with, and which is no mean guarantee for future service to his Queen and country.’
Archbishop Magee used to tell a good story of Father Healy and Mr. Gladstone. The latter asked him upon what principle the Roman Church offered soul indulgences, saying when he was in Rome he was offered an indulgence for fifty francs. Father Healy replied: ‘Well, Mr. Gladstone, I do not want to go into theology with you; but all I can say is, that if my Church offered you an indulgence for fifty francs, she let you off very cheap!’
A correspondent, a well-known London minister, who got crushed in the crowd at the opening of St. Martin’s Free Library, in 1891, by Mr. Gladstone, tells an anecdote of the ex-Premier’s kindness of heart, on the authority of a former vicar. When Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Gladstone regularly attended this church. A crossing-sweeper in the parish, who had been some time ill, when asked by the vicar if anybody had been to see him, said, ‘Yes, sir; Mr. Gladstone.’ ‘Which Mr. Gladstone?’ he was asked. ‘Why,’ was the answer, ‘Mr. Gladstone himself. He often speaks to me, and gives me something at my crossing. Not seeing me, he asked my mate, who was keeping it for me, why I was not there. He told him I was ill, and then he asked where I lived. So he came to see me, and talked and read to me.’
There was a characteristic big gathering, deserving to be recorded here, at the National Liberal Club, in celebration of Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone’s golden wedding. In all there were nearly 2,000 guests, and these included most of the Liberal leaders, and at least one distinguished Liberal Unionist (Sir John Lubbock), who, when perceived among the throng, received the welcome of a cordial cheer. The chief feature of the proceedings was the presentation of the handsome commemorative album—a remarkable work of art—to the ex-Premier in the reading-room. The scene here was a particularly brilliant one; and when Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone appeared among the throng, accompanied by several members of the family, there was an outburst of enthusiasm which was continued to an unwonted length. Mr. Gladstone’s reply to the address was not long; it was a feelingly-uttered expression of gratification. Only a few sentences were occupied with political allusions. They declared that Liberal principles were not of destruction, but of improvement.
These are a few of the sentences of thanks: ‘I am ashamed,’ said Mr. Gladstone, ‘of the kindness that has been shown me. (“No.”) When I speak of my wife, when I acknowledge that there is greater justice in the tributes that you have so kindly paid to her, I there enjoy a relative and a comparative freedom, and no words that I could use would ever suffice to express the debt that I owe her in relation to all the offices that she has discharged on my behalf, and on the behalf of those who are near and dearest to us, during the long and happy period of our conjugal union. (Cheers.) I hope it will not sound like exaggeration—it is really a phrase dictated by my desire to express what I feel—if I say that I feel myself to be, as it were, drowned in an ocean of kindness.’
The other day Canon Scott Holland, in a touching sermon, described Mr. Gladstone as ‘spending his life in benedictions to those whom he leaves behind in this world, and in thanksgiving to God, to whom he rehearses over and over again, day after day, Newman’s hymn of austere and splendid admiration.’ Here is the hymn:
‘Praise to the Holiest in the height,
And in the depth be praise:
In all His words most wonderful;
Most sure in all His ways!‘O loving wisdom of our God!
When all was sin and shame,
A second Adam to the fight
And to the rescue came.‘O wisest love! that flesh and blood
Which did in Adam fail,
Should strive afresh against their foe,
Should strive and should prevail;‘And that a higher gift than grace
Should flesh and blood refine,
God’s Presence and His very Self,
And Essence all-divine.‘O generous love! that He who smote
In man for man the foe,
The double agony in man
For man should undergo;‘And in the garden secretly,
And on the cross on high,
Should teach His brethren and inspire
To suffer and to die.’
At other times Mr. Gladstone has been known to say that his favourite hymns were ‘Rock of Ages’ and the version of ‘Dies Iræ’ which Scott introduced into ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel’:
‘That day of wrath, that dreadful day,
When heaven and earth shall pass away,
What power shall be the sinner’s stay?
How shall he meet that dreadful day?’
Mr. Gladstone, according to a writer in the Daily News, once remarked that he had made a careful study of all Toplady’s hymns, but had only found four other good lines in the whole of them. To those who have ever heard Mr. Gladstone recite these four lines, as he was often used to do, the recollection will come just now with pathetic poignancy:
‘Lord! it is not life to live,
If Thy Presence Thou deny,
Lord! if Thou Thy presence give,
’Tis no longer death—to die.’
For Charles Wesley’s hymns Mr. Gladstone did not greatly care. He considered them much over-rated. ‘And he wrote more than Homer,’ exclaimed Mr. Gladstone once; ‘7,000 hymns of thirty lines each, say; do the sum, gentlemen, and be appalled.’