The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume III Part 41

Just in the tone of Greek epigram, a sort of point, but not too much point.

_Parliamentary Wit._-Thought Disraeli had never been surpa.s.sed, nor even equalled, in this line. He had a contest with General Grey, who stood upon the general merits of the whig government, after both Lord Grey and Stanley had left it. D. drew a picture of a circus man who advertised his show with its incomparable team of six grey horses. One died, he replaced it by a mule. Another died, and he put in a donkey, still he went on advertising his team of greys all the same. Canning's wit not to be found conspicuously in his speeches, but highly agreeable pleasantries, though many of them in a vein which would jar horribly on modern taste.

Some English redcoats and a pack of hounds pa.s.sed us as we neared the station. They saluted Mr. G. with a politeness that astonished him, but was pleasant. Took the train for Irun, the fields and mountain slopes delightful in the sun, and the sea on our right a superb blue such as we never see in English waters. At Irun we found carriages waiting to take us on to Fuentarabia. From the balcony of the church had a beautiful view over the scene of Wellington's operations when he crossed the Bida.s.soa, in the presence of the astonished Soult. A lovely picture, made none the worse by this excellent historic a.s.sociation. The alcalde was extremely polite and intelligent. The consul who was with us showed a board on the old tower, in which _v_ in some words was _b_, and I noted that the alcalde spoke of Viarritz. I reminded Mr. G. of Scaliger's epigram-

Haud temere antiquas mutat Vasconia voces, Cui nihil est alind vivere quam bibere.

Pretty cold driving home, but Mr. G. seemed not to care. He found both the churches at St. Jean and at Fuentarabia very noteworthy, though the latter very popish, but both, he felt, "had a certain a.s.sociation with grandeur."

_Sunday, Dec. 27._-After some quarter of an hour of travellers' topics, we plunged into one of the most interesting talks we have yet had. _Apropos_ of I do not know what, Mr. G. said that he had not advised his son to enter public life. "No doubt there are some men to whom station, wealth, and family traditions make it a duty. But I have never advised any individual, as to whom I have been consulted, to enter the H. of C."

_J. M._-But isn't that rather to encourage self-indulgence? n.o.body who cares for ease or mental composure would seek public life?

_Mr. G._-Ah, I don't know that. Surely politics open up a great field for the natural man. Self-seeking, pride, domination, power-all these pa.s.sions are gratified in politics.

_J. M._-You cannot be sure of achievement in politics, whether personal or public?

_Mr. G._-No; to use Bacon's pregnant phrase, they are too immersed in matter. Then as new matter, that is, new details and particulars, come into view, men change their judgment.

_J. M._-You have spoken just now of somebody as a thorough good tory. You know the saying that n.o.body is worth much who has not been a bit of a radical in his youth, and a bit of a tory in his fuller age.

_Mr. G._ (laughing)-Ah, I'm afraid that hits me rather hard. But for myself, I think I can truly put up all the change that has come into my politics into a sentence; I (M168) was brought up to distrust and dislike liberty, I learned to believe in it. That is the key to all my changes.

_J. M._-According to my observation, the change in my own generation is different. They have ceased either to trust or to distrust liberty, and have come to the mind that it matters little either way. Men are disenchanted. They have got what they wanted in the days of their youth, yet what of it, they ask? France has thrown off the Empire, but the statesmen of the republic are not a great breed. Italy has gained her unity, yet unity has not been followed by thrift, wisdom, or large increase of public virtue or happiness. America has purged herself of slavery, yet life in America is material, prosaic,-so say some of her own rarest sons. Don't think that I say all these things. But I know able and high-minded men who suffer from this disenchantment.

_Mr. G._-Italy would have been very different if Cavour had only lived-and even Ricasoli. Men ought not to suffer from disenchantment. They ought to know that _ideals in politics are never realised_. And don't let us forget in eastern Europe the rescue in our time of some ten millions of men from the harrowing domination of the Turk. (On this he expatiated, and very justly, with much energy.)

We turned to our own country. Here he insisted that democracy had certainly not saved us from a distinct decline in the standard of public men.... Look at the whole conduct of opposition from '80 to '85-every principle was flung overboard, if they could manufacture a combination against the government. For all this deterioration one man and one man alone is responsible, Disraeli. He is the grand corrupter. He it was who sowed the seed.

_J. M._-Ought not Palmerston to bear some share in this?

_Mr. G._-No, no; Pam. had many strong and liberal convictions. On one subject Dizzy had them too-the Jews. There he was much more than rational, he was fanatical. He said once that Providence would deal good or ill fortune to nations, according as they dealt well or ill by the Jews. I remember once sitting next to John Russell when D. was making a speech on Jewish emanc.i.p.ation. "Look at him," said J. R., "how manfully he sticks to it, tho' he knows that every word he says is gall and wormwood to every man who sits around him and behind him." A curious irony, was it not, that it should have fallen to me to propose a motion for a memorial both to Pam. and Dizzy?

A superb scene upon the ocean, with a grand wind from the west. Mr. G. and I walked on the sh.o.r.e; he has a pa.s.sion for tumultuous seas. I have never seen such huge ma.s.ses of water shattering themselves among the rocks.

In the evening Mr. G. remarked on our debt to Macaulay, for guarding the purity of the English tongue. I recalled a favourite pa.s.sage from Milton, that next to the man who gives wise and intrepid counsels of government, he places the man who cares for the purity of his mother tongue. Mr. G.

liked this. Said he only knew Bright once slip into an error in this respect, when he used "transpire" for "happen." Macaulay of good example also in rigorously abstaining from the inclusion of matter in footnotes.

Hallam an offender in this respect. I pointed out that he offended in company with Gibbon.

_Monday, Dec. 28._-We had an animated hour at breakfast.

_Oxford and Cambridge._-Curious how, like two buckets, whenever one was up, the other was down. Cambridge has never produced four such men of action in successive ages as Wolsey, Laud, Wesley, and Newman.

_J. M._-In the region of thought Cambridge has produced the greatest of all names, Newton.

_Mr. G._-In the earlier times Oxford has it-with Wycliff, Occam, above all Roger Bacon. And then in the eighteenth century, Butler.

_J. M._-But why not Locke, too, in the century before?

This brought on a tremendous tussle, for Mr. G. was of the same mind, and perhaps for the same sort of reason, as Joseph de Maistre, that contempt for Locke is the beginning of knowledge. All very well for De Maistre, but not for a man in line with European liberalism. I pressed the very obvious point that you must take into account not only a man's intellectual product or his general stature, but also (M169) his influence as a historic force. From the point of view of influence Locke was the origin of the emanc.i.p.atory movement of the eighteenth century abroad, and laid the philosophic foundations of liberalism in civil government at home. Mr.

G. insisted on a pa.s.sage of Hume's which he believed to be in the history, disparaging Locke as a metaphysical thinker.(292) "That may be," said I, "though Hume in his _Essays_ is not above paying many compliments to 'the great reasoner,' etc., to whom, for that matter, I fancy that he stood in pretty direct relation. But far be it from me to deny that Hume saw deeper than Locke into the metaphysical millstone. That is not the point. I'm only thinking of his historic place, and, after all, the history of philosophy is itself a philosophy." To minds nursed in dogmatic schools, all this is both unpalatable and incredible.

Somehow we slid into the freedom of the will and Jonathan Edwards. I told him that Mill had often told us how Edwards argued the necessarian or determinist case as keenly as any modern.

_Tuesday, Dec. 29._-Mr. G. 82 to-day. I gave him Mackail's Greek Epigrams, and if it affords him half as much pleasure as it has given me, he will be very grateful. Various people brought Mr. G. bouquets and addresses. Mr.

G. went to church in the morning, and in the afternoon took a walk with me.... _Land Question._ As you go through France you see the soil cultivated by the population. In our little dash into Spain the other day, we saw again the soil cultivated by the population. In England it is cultivated by the capitalist, for the farmer is capitalist. Some astonis.h.i.+ng views recently propounded by D. of Argyll on this matter.

Unearned increment-so terribly difficult to catch it. Perhaps best try to get at it through the death duties. Physical condition of our people-always a subject of great anxiety-their stature, colour, and so on.

Feared the atmosphere of cotton factories, etc., very deleterious. As against bad air, I said, you must set good food; the Lancas.h.i.+re operative in decent times lives uncommonly well, as he deserves to do. He agreed there might be something in this.

The day was humid and muggy, but the tumult of the sea was most majestic.

Mr. G. delighted in it. He has a pa.s.sion for the sound of the sea; would like to have it in his ear all day and all night. Again and again he recurred to this.

After dinner, long talk about Mazzini, of whom Mr. G. thought poorly in comparison with Poerio and the others who for freedom sacrificed their lives. I stood up for Mazzini, as one of the most morally impressive men I had ever known, or that his age knew; he breathed a soul into democracy.

Then we fell into a discussion as to the eastern and western churches. He thought the western popes by their proffered alliance with the mahometans, etc., had betrayed Christianity in the east. I offered De Maistre's view.

Mr. G. strongly a.s.sented to old Chatham's dictum that vacancy is worse than even the most anxious work. He has less to reproach himself with than most men under that head.

He repeated an observation that I have heard him make before, that he thought politicians are more _rapid_ than other people. I told him that Bowen once said to me on this that he did not agree; that he thought rapidity the mark of all successful men in the practical line of life, merchants and stockbrokers, etc.

_Wednesday, Dec. 30._-A very muggy day. A divine sunset, with the loveliest pink and opal tints in the sky. Mr. G. reading Gleig's _Subaltern_. Not a very entertaining book in itself, but the incidents belong to Wellington's Pyrenean campaign, and, for my own part, I rather enjoyed it on the principle on which one likes reading _Romola_ at Florence, _Transformation_ at Rome, _Sylvia's Lovers_ at Whitby, and _Hurrish_ on the northern edge of Clare.

_Thursday, Dec. 31._-Down to the pier, and found all the party watching the breakers, and superb they were. Mr. G. exulting in the huge force of the Atlantic swell and the beat of the rollers on the sh.o.r.e, like a t.i.tanic pulse.

After dinner Mr. G. raised the question of payment of members. He had been asked by somebody whether he meant at Newcastle to indicate that everybody should be paid, or only those who chose to take it or to ask (M170) for it. He produced the same extraordinary plan as he had described to me on the morning of his Newcastle speech-_i.e._ that the Inland Revenue should ascertain from their own books the income of every M.P., and if they found any below the limit of exemption, should notify the same to the Speaker, and the Speaker should thereupon send to the said M.P. below the limit an annual cheque for, say, 300, the name to appear in an annual return to Parliament of all the M.P.'s in receipt of public money on any grounds whatever. I demurred to this altogether, as drawing an invidious distinction between paid and unpaid members; said it was idle to ignore the theory on which the demand for paid members is based, namely, that it is desirable in the public interest that poor men should have access to the H. of C.; and that the poor man should stand there on the same footing as anybody else.

_Friday, Jan. 1, 1892._-After breakfast Mrs. Gladstone came to my room and said how glad she was that I had not scrupled to put unpleasant points; that Mr. G. must not be s.h.i.+elded and sheltered as some great people are, who hear all the pleasant things and none of the unpleasant; that the perturbation from what is disagreeable only lasts an hour. I said I hoped that I was faithful with him, but of course I could not be always putting myself in an att.i.tude of perpetual controversy. She said, "He is never made angry by what you say." And so she went away, and -- and I had a good and most useful set-to about Irish finance.

At luncheon Mr. G. asked what we had made out of our morning's work. When we told him he showed a good deal of impatience and vehemence, and, to my dismay, he came upon union finance and the general subject of the treatment of Ireland by England....

In the afternoon we took a walk, he and I, afterwards joined by the rest.

He was as delighted as ever with the swell of the waves, as they bounded over one another, with every variety of grace and tumultuous power. He wondered if we had not more and better words for the sea than the French-"breaker," "billow," "roller," as against "flot," "vague," "onde,"

"lame," etc.

At dinner he asked me whether I had made up my mind on the burning question of compulsory Greek for a university degree. I said, No, that as then advised I was half inclined to be against compulsory Greek, but it is so important that I would not decide before I was obliged. "So with me,"

he said, "the question is one with many subtle and deep-reaching consequences." He dwelt on the folly of striking Italian out of the course of modern education, thus cutting European history in two, and setting an artificial gulf between the ancient and modern worlds.

_Sat.u.r.day, Jan. 2._-Superb morning, and all the better for being much cooler. At breakfast somebody started the idle topic of quill pens. When they came to the length of time that so-and-so made a quill serve, "De Retz," said I, "made up his mind that Cardinal Chigi was a poor creature, _maximus in minimis_, because at their first interview Chigi boasted that he had used one pen for three years." That recalled another saying of Retz's about Cromwell's famous dictum, that n.o.body goes so far as the man who does not know where he is going. Mr. G. gave his deep and eager Ah! to this. He could not recall that Cromwell had produced many dicta of such quality. "I don't love him, but he was a mighty big fellow. But he was intolerant. He was intolerant of the episcopalians."

_Mr. G._-Do you know whom I find the most tolerant churchman of that time?

_Laud!_ Laud got Davenant made Bishop of Salisbury, and he zealously befriended Chillingworth and Hales. (There was some other case, which I forget.)

_The execution of Charles._-I told him of Gardiner's new volume which I had just been reading. "Charles," he said, "was no doubt a dreadful liar; Cromwell perhaps did not always tell the truth; Elizabeth was a tremendous liar."

_J. M._-Charles was not wholly inexcusable, being what he was, for thinking that he had a good game in his hands, by playing off the parliament against the army, etc.

_Mr. G._-There was less excuse for cutting off his head than in the case of poor Louis XVI., for Louis was the excuse for foreign invasion.