Studies in Contemporary Biography Part 13

That to secure it he ever either adopted or renounced an opinion, those who understood and watched the workings of his mind could not believe. He was not only too conscientious, but too proud to forego any of his convictions, and there were not a few occasions when he took a course which considerations of personal interest would have forbidden. He did not love office, feeling himself happier without its cares, and when he accepted it did so, I think, in the belief that there was work to be done which it was laid upon him individually to do. His changes sprang naturally from the development of his own ideas or (as in the case of his Irish policy) from the teaching of facts. He sometimes so far yielded to his colleagues as to sanction steps which he thought not the best, and may in this have sometimes erred; yet compromises are unavoidable, for no Cabinet could be kept together if its members did not now and then, in matters not essential, yield to one another. When all the facts of his life come to be known, instances may be disclosed in which he was the victim of his own casuistry or of his deference to Peel's maxim that a minister should not avow a change of view until the time has come to give effect to it. But it will also be made clear that he strove to obey his conscience, that he acted with an ever-present sense of his responsibility to the Almighty, and that he was animated by an unselfish enthusiasm for humanity, enlightenment, and freedom.

Whether he was a good judge of men was a question much discussed among his friends. With all his astuteness, he was in some ways curiously simple; with all his caution, he was by nature unsuspicious, disposed to treat all men as honest till they gave him strong reasons for thinking otherwise. Those who professed sympathy with his views and aims sometimes succeeded in inspiring more confidence than they deserved. But where this perturbing influence was absent he showed plenty of insight, and would pa.s.s shrewd judgments on the politicians around him, permitting neither their behaviour towards himself nor his opinion of their moral character to affect his estimate of their talents. In making appointments in the Civil Service, or in the Established Church, he rose to a far higher standard of public duty than Palmerston or Disraeli had reached or cared to reach, taking great pains to find the fittest men, and giving little weight to political considerations.[71]

His public demeanour, and especially his excitability and vehemence of speech, made people attribute to him an overbearing disposition and an irritable temper. In private one did not find these faults. Masterful he certainly was, both in speech and in action. His ardent manner, the intensity of his look, the dialectical vigour with which he pressed an argument, were apt to awe people who knew him but slightly, and make them abandon resistance. A gifted though somewhat erratic politician of long bygone days told me how he once fared when he had risen in the House of Commons to censure some act of his leader. "I had not gone on three minutes when Gladstone turned round and gazed at me so that I had to sit down in the middle of a sentence. I could not help it.

There was no standing his eye." But he neither meant nor wished to beat down his opponents by mere authority. One who knew him as few people did observed to me, "When you are arguing with Mr. Gladstone, you must never let him think he has convinced you unless you are really convinced. Persist in repeating your view, and if you are unable to cope with him in skill of fence, say bluntly that for all his ingenuity and authority you think he is wrong, and you retain your own opinion. If he respects you as a man who knows something of the subject, he will be impressed by your opinion, and it will afterwards have due weight with him." In his own Cabinet he was willing to listen patiently to everybody's views, and, indeed, in the judgment of some of his colleagues, was not, at least in his later years, sufficiently strenuous in a.s.serting and holding to his own. It is no secret that some of the most important decisions of the ministry of 1880-85 were taken against his judgment, though, when they had been adopted, he was, of course, bound to defend them in Parliament as if they had received his individual approval. Nor, though tenacious, did he bear malice against those who had baffled him. He would exert his full force to get his own way, but if he could not get it, accepted the position with good temper.[72] He was too proud to be vindictive, too completely master of himself to be betrayed into angry words.

Impatient he might sometimes be under a nervous strain, but never rude or rough. It was less easy to determine whether he was overmindful of injuries, but those who had watched him most closely held that mere opposition or even insult did not leave a permanent sting, and that the only thing he could not forget or forgive was faithlessness.

Himself a model of loyalty to his colleagues, he followed his favourite poet in consigning the _traditori_ to the lowest pit, although, like all statesmen, he often found himself obliged to work with those whom he distrusted.

He was less sensitive than Peel, as appeared from his att.i.tude toward his two chief opponents. Disraeli's attacks did not seem to gall him, perhaps because, although he recognised the ability and admired the courage of his adversary, he did not respect Disraeli's character, remembering his behaviour to Peel, and thinking him habitually untruthful. Yet he never attacked Disraeli personally. There was another of his opponents of whom he entertained a specially unfavourable opinion, but no one could have told from his speeches what that opinion was. Against Lord Salisbury, his chief antagonist from 1881 onwards, he showed no resentment, though Lord Salisbury had more than once spoken discourteously of him. In 1890 he remarked to me _apropos_ of some attack, "I have never felt angry at what Salisbury has said about me. His mother was very kind to me when I was quite a young man, and I remember Salisbury as a little fellow in a red frock rolling about on the ottoman."

That his temper was naturally hot, no one who looked at him could doubt. But he had it in such tight control, and it was so free from anything acrid or malignant, that it had become a good temper, worthy of a fine nature. However vehement his expressions, they did not wound or humiliate, and those younger men who had to deal with him were not afraid of a sharp answer or an impatient repulse. He was cast in too large a mould to have the pettiness of ruffled vanity or to abuse his predominance by treating any one as an inferior. His manners were the manners of the old time, easy but stately. Like his oratory, they were in what Matthew Arnold used to call the grand style; and the contrast in this respect between him and some of those who crossed swords with him in literary or theological controversy was apparent.

His intellectual generosity was a part of the same largeness of nature. He cordially acknowledged his indebtedness to those who helped him in any piece of work, received their suggestions candidly, even when opposed to his own preconceived notions, did not hesitate to confess a mistake. Those who know the abundance of their resources, and have conquered fame, can doubtless afford to be generous. Julius Caesar was, and George Was.h.i.+ngton, and so, in a different sphere, were Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. But the instances to the contrary are so numerous that one may say of magnanimity that it is among the rarest as well as the finest ornaments of character.

The essential dignity of Mr. Gladstone's nature was never better seen than during the last few years of his life, after he had finally retired (in 1894) from public life. He indulged in no vain regrets, nor was there any foundation for the rumours, so often circulated, that he thought of re-entering the arena of strife. He spoke with no bitterness of those who had opposed, and sometimes foiled, him in the past. He gave vent to no criticisms of those who from time to time filled the place that had been his in the government of the country or the leaders.h.i.+p of his party. Although his opinion on current questions was frequently solicited, he scarcely ever allowed it to be known, lest it should embarra.s.s his successors in the leaders.h.i.+p of the party, and never himself addressed the nation, except (as already mentioned) on behalf of what he deemed a sacred cause, altogether above party--the discharge by Britain of her duty to the victims of the Turk. As soon as an operation for cataract had enabled him to resume his habit of working for seven hours a day, he devoted himself with his old ardour to the preparation of an edition of Bishop Butler's works, resumed his multifarious reading, planned (as he told me in 1896) a treatise on the Olympian religion, and filled up the interstices of his working-time with studies on Homer which he had been previously unable to complete. No trace of the moroseness of old age appeared in his manners or his conversation, nor did he, though profoundly grieved at some of the events which he witnessed, and owning himself disappointed at the slow advance made by a cause dear to him, appear less hopeful than in earlier days of the general progress of the world, or less confident in the beneficent power of freedom to promote the happiness of his country. The stately simplicity which had always charmed those who saw him in private, seemed more beautiful than ever in this quiet evening of a long and sultry day. His intellectual powers were unimpaired, his thirst for knowledge undiminished. But a placid stillness had fallen upon him and his household; and in seeing the tide of his life begin slowly to ebb, one thought of the lines of his ill.u.s.trious contemporary and friend:--

Such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home.

Adding to his grace of manner a memory of extraordinary strength and quickness and an amazing vivacity and variety of mental force, any one can understand how fascinating Mr. Gladstone was in society. He enjoyed it to the last, talking as earnestly and joyously at eighty-seven as he had done at twenty on every topic that came up, and exerting himself with equal zest whether his interlocutor was an archbishop or a youthful curate. Though his party used to think that he overvalued the political influence of the great families, allotting them rather more than their share of honours and appointments, no one was personally more free from that taint of sn.o.bbishness which is frequently charged upon Englishmen. He gave the best he had to everybody alike, paying to men of learning and letters a respect which in England they seldom receive from the magnates who lead society. And although he was scrupulously observant of the rules of precedence and conventions of social life, it was easy to see that neither rank nor wealth had that importance in his eyes which the latter nowadays commands. Dispensing t.i.tles and decorations with a liberal hand, his pride always refused such so-called honours for himself.

It was often said of him that he lacked humour; but this was only so far true that he was apt to throw into small matters more force and moral earnestness than were needed, and to honour with a refutation opponents whom a little light sarcasm would have better reduced to their insignificance.[73] In private he was wont both to tell and to enjoy good stories; while in Parliament, though his tone was generally earnest, he could display such effective powers of banter and ridicule as to make people wonder why they were so rarely put forth. Much of what pa.s.ses in London for humour is mere cynicism, and he hated cynicism so heartily as to dislike even humour when it had a cynical flavour. Wit he enjoyed, but did not produce. The turn of his mind was not to brevity, point, and condensation. He sometimes struck off a telling phrase, but seldom polished an epigram. His conversation was luminous rather than sparkling; you were interested and instructed while you listened, but it was not so much the phrases as the general effect that dwelt in your memory. An acute observer once said to me that Mr. Gladstone showed in argument a knack of hitting the nail not quite on the head. The criticism was so far just that he was less certain to go straight to the vital issue in a controversy than one expected from his force and keenness.

After the death of Thomas Carlyle he was probably the best talker in London, and a talker in one respect more agreeable than either Carlyle or Macaulay, inasmuch as he was no less ready to listen than to speak, and never wearied the dinner-table by a monologue. His simplicity, his spontaneity, his geniality and courtesy, as well as the fund of knowledge and of personal recollections at his command, made him so popular in society that his opponents used to say it was dangerous to meet him, because one might be forced to leave off hating him. He was, perhaps, too p.r.o.ne to go on talking upon the subject which filled his mind at the moment; nor was it easy to divert his attention to something else which others might deem more important.[74] Those who stayed with him in the same country house sometimes complained that the perpetual display of force and eagerness tired them, as one tires of watching the rush of Niagara. His guests, however, did not feel this, for his own home life was quiet and smooth. He read and wrote a good many hours daily, but never sat up late, almost always slept soundly, never seemed oppressed or driven to strain his strength. With all his impetuosity, he was regular, systematic, and deliberate in his habits and ways of doing business. A swift reader and a surprisingly swift writer, he was always occupied, and was skilful in using even the sc.r.a.ps and fragments of his time. No pressure of work made him fussy, nor could any one remember to have seen him in a hurry.

The best proof of his swiftness, industry, and skill in economising time is supplied by the quant.i.ty of his literary work, which, considering the abstruse nature of the subjects to which much of it is related, would have been creditable to the diligence of a German professor sitting alone in his study. The merits of the work have been disputed. Mankind are slow to credit the same person with eminence in various fields. When they read the prose of a great poet, they try it by severer tests than would be applied to other writers. When a painter has won credit by his landscapes or his cattle pieces, he is seldom encouraged to venture into other lines. So Mr. Gladstone's reputation as an orator stood in his own light when he appeared as an author. He was read by thousands who would not have looked at the article or book had it borne some other name; but he was judged by the standard, not of his finest printed speeches, for his speeches were seldom models of composition, but rather by the impression which his finest speeches made on those who heard them. Since his warmest admirers could not claim for him as a writer of prose any such pre-eminence as belonged to him as a speaker, it followed that his written work was not duly appreciated. Had he been a writer and nothing else, he would have been eminent and powerful by his pen.

He might, however, have failed to secure a place in the front rank.

His style was forcible, copious, rich with various knowledge, warm with the ardour of his temperament. But it suffered from an inborn tendency to exuberance which the long practice of oratory had confirmed. It was diffuse, apt to pursue a topic into details, when these might have been left to the reader's own reflection. It was redundant, employing more words than were needed to convey the substance. It was unchastened, indulging too freely in tropes and metaphors, in quotations and adapted phrases even when the quotation added nothing to the sense, but was suggested merely by some a.s.sociation in his own mind. Thus it seldom reached a high level of purity and grace, and though one might excuse the faults as natural to the work of a swift and busy man, they were sufficient to reduce the pleasure to be derived from the form and dress of his thoughts.

Nevertheless there are not a few pa.s.sages of rare merit, both in the books and in the articles, among which may be cited (not as exceptionally good, but as typical of his strong points) the striking picture of his own youthful feeling toward the Church of England contained in the _Chapter of Autobiography_, and the refined criticism of _Robert Elsmere_, published in 1888. Almost the last thing he wrote, a pamphlet on the Greek and Cretan question, published in the spring of 1897, has the force and cogency of his best days. Two things were never wanting to him: vigour of expression and an admirable command of appropriate words.

His writings fall into three cla.s.ses: political, theological, and literary--the last chiefly consisting of his books and articles upon Homer and the Homeric question. All the political writings, except the books on _The State in its Relations to the Church_ and _Church Principles considered in their Results_, belong to the cla.s.s of occasional literature, being pamphlets or articles produced with a view to some current crisis or controversy. They are valuable chiefly as proceeding from one who bore a leading part in the affairs they relate to, and as embodying vividly the opinions and aspirations of the moment, less frequently in respect of permanent lessons of political wisdom, such as one finds in Machiavelli or Tocqueville or Edmund Burke. Like Pitt and Peel, Mr. Gladstone had a mind which, whatever its original tendencies, had come to be rather practical than meditative. He was fond of generalisations and principles, but they were always directly related to the questions that came before him in actual politics; and the number of weighty maxims or illuminative suggestions to be found in his writings and speeches is small in proportion to the sustained vigour they display. Even Disraeli, though his views were often fanciful and his epigrams often forced, gives us more frequently a brilliant (if only half true) historical _apercu_, or throws a flash of light into some corner of human character. Of the theological essays, which are mainly apologetic and concerned with the authenticity and authority of Scripture, it is enough to say that they were the work of an accomplished amateur, who had been too busy to follow the progress of critical inquiry. His Homeric treatises, the most elaborate piece of work that proceeded from Mr. Gladstone's pen, are in one sense worthless, in another sense admirable. Those parts of them which deal with early Greek mythology, genealogy, and religion, and, in a less degree, the theories about Homeric geography and the use of Homeric epithets, have been condemned by the unanimous voice of scholars as fantastic. The premises are a.s.sumed without sufficient investigation, while the reasonings are fine-drawn and flimsy.

Extraordinary ingenuity is shown in piling up a lofty fabric, but the foundation is of sand, and the edifice has hardly a solid wall or beam in it. A conjecture is treated as a fact; then an inference, possible but not certain, is drawn from this conjecture; a second possible inference is based upon the first; and we are made to forget that the probability of this second is at most only half the probability of the first. So the process goes on; and when the superstructure is complete, the reader is provoked to perceive how much dialectical skill has been wasted upon a series of hypotheses which a breath of common-sense criticism dissipates. If one is asked to explain the weakness in this particular department of a mind otherwise so strong, the answer would seem to be that the element of fancifulness in Mr. Gladstone's intellect, and his tendency to mistake mere argumentation for verification, were checked in practical politics by constant intercourse with friends and colleagues as well as by the need of convincing visible audiences, while in theological or historical inquiries his ingenuity roamed with fatal freedom over wide plains where no obstacles checked its course. Something may also be due to the fact that his philosophical and historical education was received at a time when the modern critical spirit and the canons it recognises had scarcely begun to a.s.sert themselves at Oxford. Similar defects may be discerned in other eminent writers of his own and the preceding generation of Oxford men, defects from which persons of inferior power in later days might be free. In some of these writers, and particularly in Cardinal Newman, the contrast between dialectical ac.u.men, coupled with surpa.s.sing rhetorical skill, and the vitiation of the argument by a want of the critical faculty, is scarcely less striking; and the example of that ill.u.s.trious man suggests that the dominance of the theological view of literary and historical problems, a dominance evident in Mr. Gladstone, counts for something in producing the phenomenon.

With these defects, Mr. Gladstone's Homeric work had the merit of 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. Pa.s.sages whose moral tendency offends him are reprobated as later insertions with a navete 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 cla.s.sics 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 const.i.tutional 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-cla.s.s in mathematics at Oxford, at the same time as his first in cla.s.sics, 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 bia.s.sed 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, authors.h.i.+p, and authority of the books of the Bible. He had faith not only in his creed, but in G.o.d as a G.o.d 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 inst.i.tutions.

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 lectures.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed 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 const.i.tuency.

He incurred the displeasure of four-fifths of the Anglican communion by disestablis.h.i.+ng 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 sanct.i.ty 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 a.s.sailed. 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 G.o.d, 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 ma.s.s of his followers, and beloved by the small inner group of family friends, the majority of his colleagues, official subordinates, and political or ecclesiastical a.s.sociates, would have hesitated to give him any of friends.h.i.+p'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, b.u.t.tress 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 l.u.s.tre 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 pa.s.sage 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 leaders.h.i.+p 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 justices.h.i.+p, 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 p.r.o.nounced 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.

THE END