being based on a full and thorough knowledge of the Homeric text. He
had seen, at a time when few people in England had seen it, that the
Homeric poems are an historical source of the highest value, a
treasure-house of data for the study of early Greek life and thought,
an authority all the more trustworthy because an unconscious
authority, addressing not posterity but contemporaries. This mastery
of the matter contained in the poems enabled him to present valuable
pictures of the political and social life of Homeric Greece, while the
interspersed literary criticisms are often subtle and suggestive,
erring, when they do err, chiefly through the over-earnestness of his
mind. He often takes the poet too seriously; reading an ethical
purpose into descriptive or dramatic touches which are merely
descriptive or dramatic. Passages whose moral tendency offends him are
reprobated as later insertions with a naivete which forgets the
character of a primitive age. But he has for his author not only that
sympathy which is the best basis for criticism, but a justness of
poetic taste which the learned and painstaking German commentator
frequently wants. That Mr. Gladstone was a sound scholar in that
narrower sense of the word which denotes a grammatical and literary
command of Greek and Latin, goes without saying. Men of his generation
kept a closer hold upon the ancient classics than we do to-day; and
his habit of reading Greek for the sake of his Homeric studies, and
Latin for the sake of his theological, made this familiarity more than
usually thorough. Like most Etonians, he loved and knew the poets by
preference. Dante was his favourite poet, perhaps because Dante is the
most theological and ethical of the great poets, and because the
tongue and the memories of Italy had a peculiar attraction for him. He
used to say that he found Dante's thought incomparably inspiring, but
hard to follow, it was so high and so abstract. Theology claimed a
place beside poetry; history came next, though he did not study it
systematically. It seemed odd that he was sometimes at fault in the
constitutional antiquities of England; but this subject was, until the
day of Dr. Stubbs, pre-eminently a Whig subject, and Mr. Gladstone
never was a Whig, never learned to think upon the lines of the great
Whigs of former days. His historical knowledge was not exceptionally
wide, but it was generally accurate in matters of fact, however
fanciful he might be in reasoning from the facts, however wild his
conjectures in the prehistoric region. In metaphysics strictly so
called his reading did not go far beyond those companions of his
youth, Aristotle and Bishop Butler; and philosophical speculation
interested him only so far as it bore on Christian doctrine. Keen as
was his interest in theology and in history, it is not certain that
he would have produced work of permanent value in either sphere even
had his life been wholly devoted to study. His mind seemed to need to
be steadied, his ingenuity restrained, by having to deal with concrete
matter for a practical end. Neither, in spite of his eminence as a
financier and an advocate of free trade, did he show much taste for
economic studies. On practical topics, such as the working of
protective tariffs, the abuse of charitable endowments, the
development of fruit-culture in England, the duty of liberal giving by
the rich, the utility of thrift among the poor, his remarks were full
of point, clearness, and good sense, but he seldom launched out into
the wider sea of economic theory. He took a first-class in mathematics
at Oxford, at the same time as his first in classics, but did not
pursue the subject in later life. Regarding the sciences of experiment
and observation, he seemed to feel as little curiosity as any educated
man who notes the enormous part they play in the modern world can
feel. Sayings of his have been quoted which show that he imperfectly
comprehended the character of the evidence they rely upon and of the
methods they employ. On one occasion he horrified a dinner-table of
younger friends by refusing to accept some of the most certain
conclusions of modern geology. No doubt he belonged, as Lord Derby
(the Prime Minister) once said of himself, to a pre-scientific age.
Perhaps he was unconsciously biassed by the notion that such sciences
as geology and biology, for instance, were being used by some students
to sap the foundations of revealed religion. But I can recall no sign
of disposition to dissuade free inquiry either into those among the
sciences of nature which have been supposed to touch theology, or into
the date, authorship, and authority of the books of the Bible. He had
faith not only in his creed, but in God as a God of truth, and in the
power of research to elicit truth.
General propositions are dangerous, yet it seems safe to observe that
great men have seldom been obscurantists or persecutors. Either the
sympathy with intellectual effort which is natural to a powerful
intellect, or the sense that free inquiry, though it may be checked by
repression for a certain time or within a certain area, will
ultimately have its course, dissuades them from that attempt to dam up
the stream of thought which smaller minds regard as the obvious
expedient for saving souls or institutions.
It ought to be added, for this was a remarkable feature of his
character, that he had the deepest reverence for the great poets and
philosophers, placing the career of the statesman on a far lower plane
than that of those who rule the world by their thoughts enshrined in
literature. He expressed in a striking letter to Tennyson's eldest
son his sense of the immense superiority of the poet's life and work.
Once, in the lobby of the House of Commons, seeing his countenance
saddened by the troubles of Ireland, I told him, in order to divert
his thoughts, how some one had recently discovered that Dante had in
his last years been appointed at Ravenna to a lectureship which raised
him above the pinch of want. Mr. Gladstone's face lit up at once, and
he said, "How strange it is to think that these great souls whose
words are a beacon-light to all the generations that have come after
them, should have had cares and anxieties to vex them in their daily
life, just like the rest of us common mortals." The phrase reminded me
that a few days before I had heard Mr. Darwin, in dwelling upon the
pleasure a visit paid by Mr. Gladstone had given him, say, "And he
talked just as if he had been an ordinary person like one of
ourselves." The two great men were alike unconscious of their
greatness.
It was an unspeakable benefit to Mr. Gladstone that his love of
letters and learning enabled him to find in the pursuit of knowledge a
relief from anxieties and a solace under disappointments. Without some
such relief his fiery and restless spirit would have worn itself out.
He lived two lives--the life of the statesman and the life of the
student, and passed swiftly from the one to the other, dismissing when
he sat down to his books all the cares of politics. But he led a
third life also, the secret life of the soul. Religion was of all
things that which had the strongest hold upon his thoughts and
feelings. Nothing but his father's opposition prevented him from
becoming a clergyman when he quitted the University. Never thereafter
did he cease to take the warmest interest in everything that affected
the Christian Church. He lost his seat for Oxford University by the
votes of the country clergy, who formed the bulk of the constituency.
He incurred the displeasure of four-fifths of the Anglican communion
by disestablishing the Protestant Episcopal Church in Ireland, and
from 1868 to the end of his life found nearly all the clerical force
of the English establishment arrayed against him, while his warmest
support came from the Nonconformists of England and the Presbyterians
of Scotland. Yet nothing affected his devotion to the Church in which
he had been brought up, nor to the body of Anglo-Catholic doctrine he
had imbibed as an undergraduate. After an attack of influenza which
had left him very weak in the spring of 1891, he endangered his life
by attending a meeting on behalf of the Colonial Bishoprics Fund, for
which he had spoken fifty years before. His theological opinions
tinged his views upon political subjects. They filled him with dislike
of the legalisation of marriage with a deceased wife's sister; they
made him a vehement opponent of the bill which established the
English Divorce Court in 1857, and a watchfully hostile critic of all
divorce legislation in America afterwards. Some of his friends traced
to the same cause his less than adequate appreciation of German
literature (though he admired Goethe and Schiller) and even his
political coldness towards Prussia and afterwards towards the German
Empire. He could not forget that Germany had been the fountain of
rationalism, while German Evangelical Protestantism was more
schismatic and farther removed from the mediaeval Catholic Church than
it pleased him to deem the Church of England to be. He had an
exceedingly high sense of the duty of purity of life and of the
sanctity of domestic relations, and his rigid ideas of decorum
inspired so much awe that it used to be said to a person who had told
an anecdote with ever so slight a tinge of impropriety, "How many
thousands of pounds would you take to tell that to Gladstone?" When
living in the country, it was his practice to attend daily morning
service in the parish church, and on Sunday to read in church the
lessons for the day; and he rarely, if ever, transgressed his rule
against Sunday labour. Religious feeling, coupled with a system of
firm dogmatic beliefs, was the mainspring of his life, a guiding light
in perplexities, a source of strength in adverse fortune, a
consolation in sorrow, a beacon of hope beyond the failures and
disappointments of this present world. He did not make what is
commonly called a profession of religion, and talked little about it
in general society, although always ready to plunge into a magazine
controversy when Christianity was assailed. But those who knew him
best knew that he was always referring current questions to, and
trying his own conduct by, a religious standard. He believed in the
efficacy of prayer, and sought through prayer for strength and for
direction in the affairs of state. He was a remarkable example of the
coexistence together with a Christian virtue of a quality which
Catholic theologians treat as a mortal sin. He was an exceedingly
proud man, yet an exceedingly humble Christian. With a high regard for
his own dignity and a sensitiveness to any imputation on his honour,
he was deeply conscious of his imperfections in the eye of God,
realising the weakness and sinfulness of human nature with a mediaeval
intensity. The language of self-depreciation he was wont to use,
sometimes deemed unreal, expressed his genuine sense of the contrast
between the religious ideal he set up and his own attainment. And the
tolerance which he extended to those who attacked him or who had (as
he thought) behaved ill in public life was largely due to this
pervading sense of the frailty of human character, and of the
inextricable mixture in conduct of good and bad motives. "It is
always best to take the charitable view," he once observed when I had
quoted to him the saying of Dean Church that Mark Pattison had painted
himself too black in his autobiography--"always best," adding, with
grim emphasis, "especially in politics."
In this indulgent view, more evident in his later years, and the more
remarkable because his expressions were often too vehement, there was
nothing of the cynical "man of the world" acceptance of a low standard
as the only possible standard, for his moral earnestness was as
fervent at eighty-eight as it had been at thirty, and he retained a
simplicity and an unwillingness to suspect sinister motives, singular
in one who had seen so much. Although accessible and frank in the
ordinary converse of society, he was in reality a reserved man; not
shy, stiff, and externally cold, like Peel, nor always standing on a
pedestal of dignity, like the younger Pitt, but revealing his deepest
thoughts only to a few intimate friends, and treating others with a
courteous kindliness which, though it put them at their ease, did not
encourage them to approach nearer. Thus, while he was admired by the
mass of his followers, and beloved by the small inner group of family
friends, the majority of his colleagues, official subordinates, and
political or ecclesiastical associates, would have hesitated to give
him any of friendship's confidences. Though quick to mark and
acknowledge good service, or to offer to a junior an opportunity of
distinction, many deemed him too much occupied with his own thoughts
to show interest in his disciples, or to bestow those counsels which a
young man prizes from his chief. But for the warmth of his devotion to
a few early friends and the reverence he paid to their memory, a
reverence touchingly shown in the article on Arthur Hallam which he
published near the end of his own life, sixty-five years after
Hallam's death, there might have seemed to be a measure of truth in
the judgment that he cared less for men than for ideas and causes.
Those, however, who marked the pang which the departure to the Roman
Church of his friend Hope Scott caused him, those who in later days
noted the enthusiasm with which he would speak of Lord Althorp, his
opponent, and of Lord Aberdeen, his chief, dwelling upon the
truthfulness and uprightness of the former and the amiability of the
latter, knew that the impression of detachment he gave wronged the
sensibility of his own heart. Of how few who have lived for more than
sixty years in the full sight of their countrymen, and have been as
party leaders exposed to angry and sometimes spiteful criticism, can
it be said that there stands on record against them no malignant word
and no vindictive act! This was due not perhaps entirely to natural
sweetness of disposition, but rather to self-control and to a certain
largeness of soul which would not condescend to anything mean or
petty. Pride, though it may be a sin, is to most of us a useful, to
some an indispensable, buttress of virtue. Nor should it be forgotten
that the perfectly happy life which he led at home, cared for in
everything by a devoted wife, kept far from him those domestic
troubles which have soured the temper and embittered the judgments of
not a few famous men. Reviewing his whole career, and summing up the
concurrent impressions and recollections of those who knew him best,
this dignity is the feature which dwells most in the mind, as the
outline of some majestic Alp thrills one from afar when all the lesser
beauties of glen and wood, of crag and glacier, have faded in the
distance. As elevation was the note of his oratory, so was magnanimity
the note of his character.
The Greek maxim that no one can be called happy till his life is
closed must, in the case of statesmen, be extended to warn us from the
attempt to fix a man's place in history till a generation has arisen
to whom he is a mere name, not a familiar figure to be loved or hated.
Few reputations made in politics so far retain their lustre that
curiosity continues to play round the person when those who can
remember him living have departed. Dante has in immortal stanzas
contrasted the fame of Provenzano Salvani that sounded through all
Tuscany while he lived with the faint whispers of his name heard in
his own Siena forty years after his death.[75] So out of all the men
who have held a foremost place in English public life in the
nineteenth century there are but six or seven--Pitt, Fox, Wellington,
Peel, Disraeli, possibly Canning, or O'Connell, or Melbourne--whose
names are to-day upon our lips. The great poet or the great artist
lives as long as his books or his pictures; the statesman, like the
singer or the actor, begins to be forgotten so soon as his voice is
still, unless he has so dominated the men of his own time, and made
himself a part of his country's history, that his personal character
is indissolubly linked to the events the course of which he helped to
determine. Tried by this test, Mr. Gladstone's fame seems destined to
endure. His eloquence will soon become merely a tradition, for his
printed speeches do not preserve its charm. If some of his books
continue to be read, it will be rather because they are his than in
respect of any permanent contribution they have made to knowledge. The
wisdom of his policy, foreign and domestic, will have to be judged,
not only by the consequences we see, but also by other consequences
still hidden in the future. Yet among his acts there are some with
which history cannot fail to concern herself, and which will keep
fresh the memory of their author's energy and courage. Whoever
follows the annals of England during the memorable years from 1843 to
1894 will meet his name on almost every page, will feel how great must
have been the force of an intellect that could so interpenetrate the
story of its time, and will seek to know something of the dauntless
figure that rose always conspicuous above the struggling throng.
There is a passage in the _Odyssey_ where the seer Theoclymenus says,
in describing a vision of death: "The sun has perished out of heaven."
To Englishmen, Mr. Gladstone had been like a sun which, sinking
slowly, had grown larger as he sank, and filled the sky with radiance
even while he trembled on the verge of the horizon. There were men of
ability and men of renown, but there was no one comparable to him in
fame and power and honour. When he departed the light seemed to have
died out of the sky.
-----
[63] "Gled" is a kite or hawk. The name was Gladstones till Mr.
Gladstone's father dropped the final s.
[64] One of his most intimate friends has, I think, said that "he
never knew what it was to be bored." Fortunate, indeed, would
he have been had this been so; but that one who had watched him
long and closely should make the statement shows how gently
bores fared at his hands.
I recollect his once remarking on the capacity for boring
possessed by a gentleman who had been introduced and had talked
for some fifteen minutes to him; but his own manner through the
conversation had betrayed no impatience.
[65] Sermons belong to a somewhat different category, else I should
have to add the discourses of a few great preachers, such as
Robert Hall, J. H. Newman, Phillips Brooks.
[66] Though one of Macaulay's speeches (that against the exclusion of
the Master of the Rolls from the House of Commons) had the rare
honour of turning votes.
[67] "He said that this was the hardest battle of men he had entered,"
_Iliad_ vi. 185.
[68] His physical courage was no less evident than his moral. For two
or three years his life was threatened, and policemen were told
off to guard him wherever he went. He disliked this protection
so much (though the Home Office thought it necessary) that he
used to escape from the House of Commons by a little-frequented
exit, give the policemen the slip, and stroll home to his
residence along the Thames Embankment in the small hours of the
morning. Fear was not in his nature.
[69] The late Protestant Episcopal Primate of Ireland said that
Disestablishment had proved a blessing to his Church; and this
would seem to be now the general view of Irish Protestants.
[70] His abdication of leadership in 1875 was meant to be final,
though when the urgency of Eastern affairs had drawn him back
into strife, the old ardour revived, and he resumed the place
of Prime Minister in 1880. It has been often said that he would
have done better to retire from public life in 1880, or in
1885, yet the most striking proofs both of his courage and of
his physical energy were given in the latest part of his
career.
[71] For instance, he recommended Dr. Stubbs for a bishopric and Sir
John Holker for a lord justiceship, knowing both of them to be
Tories.
[72] His respect and regard for Mr. Bright were entirely unaffected by
the fact that Mr. Bright's opposition to the Home Rule Bill of
1886 had been the chief cause of its defeat.
[73] Usually over-anxious to vindicate his own consistency, he showed
on one occasion a capacity for recognising the humorous side of
a position into which he had been brought. In a debate which
arose in 1891 frequent references had been made to a former
speech in which he had pronounced a highly-coloured panegyric
upon the Church of England in Wales, the disestablishment of
which he had subsequently become willing to support. He
replied, "Many references have been made to a former speech of
mine on this subject, and I am not prepared to deny that in
that speech, when closely scrutinised, there may appear to be
present some element of exaggeration." The House dissolved in
laughter, and no further reference was made to the old speech.
[74] His Oxford contemporary and friend, the late Mr. Milnes Gaskell,
told me that when Mr. Gladstone was undergoing his _viva voce_
examination for his degree, the examiner, satisfied with the
candidate's answers on a particular matter, said, "And now, Mr.
Gladstone, we will leave that part of the subject." "No,"
replied the examinee, "we will, if you please, not leave it
yet." Whereupon he proceeded to pour forth a further flood of
knowledge and disquisition.
[75] _Purgat._ xi. 100-126.
INDEX
Acton, John Edward Emerich Dalberg, Lord--
career of, 382-84
characteristics of, 399
critical taste of, 390
family of, 382
history, view of, 391-92;
view of study of, 394-95
learning of, 386-89, 392
liberty, history of, projected by, 395-96
libraries of, 388-89 and note
political opinions of, 384
style of, 396-97
thoroughness of, 390, 393-95
University work of, 397-98
writings of, 395
American Civil War, 55, 57, 90 and note. _See also_ United States
Arnold, Dr., 343, 346
Austen, Jane, 127
Beaconsfield, Benjamin Disraeli, Lord--
Cairns valued by, 186-87
career of, 3-16
characteristics of--
ambition, 21-22, 26, 30-31
_bonhomie_, 32, 34
courage, 11, 25-26, 65
cynicism, 30, 40-41
debating power, 47
intellectual congruity, 35-38, 42
loyalty, 33
self-confidence, 21, 26, 50, 65, 224
tactical adroitness, 48-50
tenacity, 11, 15, 23-24, 60, 65
Eastern policy of, 140, 275-76, 300, 356
education of, 39
epigrammatic phrases of, 41-42
estimates regarding, 1-2;
foreign, 54, 58
family of, 3
Gladstone compared with, 418, 429, 465;
contrasted with, 422;
Gladstone's attitude towards, 455-56
influence of, 66-68
literary works of, 4-5, 18-19, 29, 31-33, 35, 41, 43-45, 52 note;
quoted, 21 note, 25 note, 41, 50 note, 55
Lowe and, 34, 302
Northcote appreciated by, 21, 218
political views of, 6-8;
foreign policy of (_see also above_, Eastern policy), 15, 56, 59, 67
Stanley and, 81
suffrage extension, policy of, 305-306, 309-10, 442
otherwise mentioned, 107, 171, 220
Bentinck, Lord George, 9
Bishops--
change in type of, 196-98
House of Lords, presence in, 112
industry of, 199
influence of, 100-101, 103
Bismarck, Prince, 54
Black, J. Sutherland, 311 note
Bowen, Edward Ernest--
biography of, 343 note
career of, 345-46
characteristics of, 360-62
death of, 355
games, attitude towards, 351-52
influence of, 350;
views regarding, 353-54
military history, fondness for, 357-58
political interests of, 355-57
school songs of, 343 note, 359-360
teaching methods of, 346-47, 349-350, 354-55
training of teachers, views on, 348
travel, fondness for, 358
walking tours of, 355
Bowen, Lord, 345, 359
Bright, John, 30, 98, 304, 428-29, 443, 455 note
Bradlaugh, Mr., 437
Brooke, Rev. Stopford, quoted, 135-137
Brooks, Dr. Phillips, 209, 381
Brougham, Lord, 64, 428
Browning, Robert, 39, 126
Burke, Edmund, 410, 427-28, 440
Burney, Miss, 127
Cairns, Hugh M'Calmont, Earl--
American Civil War, attitude towards, 57
career of, 184-86
characteristics of, 184, 188-91
Disraeli compared with, 47
Gladstone compared with, 429
Jessel compared with, 180, 193
judicial gifts of, 192-93
legal manner of, 191-92
Mellish and, 176-78
parliamentary reform opposed by, 307
political partisanship of, 187, 194-195
religious views and interests of, 185-86, 193-94
Cambridge--
Jewish scholar at, 319 note
Sidgwick at, 327 _seq._
Smith, W. R., at, 319
Canterbury,
importance of See of, 101-105;
qualifications of archbishops of, 105-107
Carlyle, Thomas, 40, 87, 92, 126, 277, 461
Celtic temperament, 403, 405
Chancery Bar, 170;
famous trio at, 191
Chancery Courts, 181-82
Charity Organisation Society, 133
Church, Dean, 251-52
Church--
Anglican--
disestablishment of, 114-15, 141
possibilities before, 209-10
Stanley's view of, 78-79
Tractarian movement in, 252, 264 note, 406
Roman Catholic--
adaptability of, 259
Infallibilist claims of, 256, 385
modern research, attitude towards, 317
Clark, George T., quoted, 266-67
Clough, Miss A. J., 329
Clough, Arthur Hugh, 338
Cobden, Mr., quoted, 429-30
Collins, Wilkie, 116
Copleston, Dr. (Bishop of Llandaff), 197
Creighton, Bishop, 289, 387
Dalgairns, 251
Dante, 468-69, 471
Darwin, Charles, 457, 471-72
_De la Democratie_, Scherer's, cited, 309 note
Delane, Mr., 422
_Democracy and the Organisation of Political Parties_,
Ostrogorski's, cited, 309 note
Denison, Archdeacon, 133, 271 note
Derby, Lord, 10, 12, 28, 47, 57, 198, 429, 470
Dickens, Charles, 123, 127
Disraeli. _See_ Beaconsfield
Dissenters. _See_ Nonconformists
Doellinger, Dr. von, 383, 385, 392
Dupanloup, Archbishop, 209, 385
Eastern Question (1876), 140, 275-276, 300, 356, 419
Editors,
types of, 363-64;
temptations of, 370, 380-81
Eliot, George, 124, 328
Equity Courts, 170, 173
_Essays and Reviews_, 113, 317
_Essays on Reform_, cited, 307 and note
_Evening Post, The_, 365, 374-76
Forster, W. E., 234, 239 and note
Fox, Charles James, 428-29, 435
France, novelists of, 129
Franchise extension. _See_ Suffrage
Fraser, James, Bishop of Manchester--
biographies of, 196 note
career of, 196, 200-201
characteristics of, 204-205
energy of, 202
Fraser, James, Bishop of Manchester--
influence of, 206
new Episcopal type created by, 196, 210
personality of, 203-204
popularity of, 202, 206
ritualist illegalities, attitude towards, 208
science, attitude towards, 207
views of, 206-207
Freeman, Edward Augustus--
biography of, 262 note
career of, 262-63
friendships of, 290
Green influenced by, 137
historical work,
merits of, 276-84;
style of, 286-87
humour of, 287
interests of, 264-67, 271-72
kindliness of, 278, 291
literary preferences of, 269-70
methodical ways of, 285
military history, fondness for, 357
Oxford work of, 287-89
political views of, 272-75
simplicity and directness of, 270-71, 275
Trollope and, 120, 271 and note
works of, 267, 284-86, 291-92
Froude, J. A., 271 note
Gardiner, S. R., 357;
quoted, 274
Gibbon, 133, 169, 281, 284