(1809-1898)
It would be no less impertinent, and unnecessary, to dwell in these
pages upon the political, or literary, work of the greatest of modern
premiers. It is sufficient to recall the certainty which used to follow
a notice by Gladstone of a large and immediate rise in sales. Mr. John
Morley remarking that Gladstone's "place is not in literary or critical
history, but elsewhere," reminds us that his style was sometimes called
Johnsonian, though without good ground.... Some critics charged him in
1840 with "prolix clearness." "The old charge," says Mr. Gladstone upon
this, was obscure compression. I do not doubt that both may be true, and
the former may have been the result of a well-meant effort to escape
from the latter.
* * * * *
Mr. Morley, again, selects the essay on Tennyson for especial praise.
Though one is apt to forget it, the Laureate did not meet with anything
like immediate recognition; and, though coming twenty-eight years after
the appreciation by J.S. Mill, this article does not assume the
supremacy afterwards accorded the poet by common consent.