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TALKS WITH MR. GLADSTONE 
 
Talks with Mr. Gladstone 
 
 BY th:?'^ 
 Hon. LIONEL A: TOLLEMACHE 
 
 author of 
 "benjamin jowett," "safe studies," etc. 
 
 Defunctus adJiMC loquitur 
 
 NEW YORK 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 LONDON AND BOMBAY 
 1898 
 
 2nd Co. I , ^ -'- 
 
 139B 
 

 Copyright, 1898 
 By Longmans, Green, and Co. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Press of J, J. Little & Co. 
 Astor Place, New York 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IT will be seen that these Reminiscences, 
 in all their essential parts, were written 
 long ago. I was at first undecided as to the 
 fittest time for giving them to the world. 
 But, on the whole, no time has seemed fitter 
 than shortly after the long-foreseen, long- 
 dreaded event for which we are now sorrow- 
 ing — the not unmixedly sad event, never- 
 theless, which brings a career of such life- 
 long devotion vividly before us, and which 
 enables, nay, constrains us to reflect that 
 the patriotic hero of so many struggles and, 
 alas, the patient victim of so much suffering 
 is resting from his labours, and that his 
 works shall follow him. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction i 
 
 Talks in 1856-1870 , . . .15 
 Talks in 1891-1896 . . . .41 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Quid volui, demens, humeris imponere tantum 
 Ponderis ? 
 
 I SAW something of Mr. Gladstone between 
 1856 and 1870 in England; and, after an 
 interval of twenty years, I saw much of him 
 at Biarritz. In reporting a few of the things 
 that he said to me during the earlier period, 
 I have to trust my memory entirely. His 
 remarks during the later period have been 
 carefully noted down. I am, therefore, 
 confident that those remarks are reported 
 with accuracy. Naturally, however, my 
 attention was concentrated on Mr. Glad- 
 stone's observations ; and I must add that 
 the effort of committing those observations 
 to memory, and likewise of replying to 
 them, was such that I cannot pretend that 
 my own part in the conversation is given 
 
 I 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 with equal exactness. But this, of course, 
 is a matter of minor importance. Another 
 of my Boswellian canons ought, perhaps, to 
 be disclosed. Several times my conversa- 
 tions with Mr. Gladstone were interrupted 
 just when he was entering on an important 
 subject; and I naturally endeavoured, dur- 
 ing one or more subsequent interviews, to 
 draw him out more thoroughly. When the 
 drawing-out process had been completed 
 and I had to make a final report of all that 
 he had said, I had to choose between two 
 alternatives, each of them open to objection. 
 Sometimes I thought it safer to observe 
 strict accuracy by referring the two or more 
 mutually supplementing, not to say over- 
 lapping, conversations to the times when 
 they respectively occurred. But more fre- 
 quently I have consulted the convenience 
 of my readers by following a logical, instead 
 of a chronological arrangement, and by sol- 
 dering together the disunited parts of what 
 was practically a single dialogue. 
 
 In preparing to add to my literary gallery 
 its most conspicuous portrait, I am con- 
 fronted with the question : In order to 
 concentrate attention on the portrait itself, 
 ought not its frame to be as simple as pos- 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 sible? Or, to lay aside metaphor, ought I 
 not to restrict myself to the mechanical 
 office of Boswellising Mr. Gladstone, and to 
 leave the thankless task of criticising him 
 to such biographers as are at once compelled 
 and competent to discharge it? The ques- 
 tion, when thus put, seems to answer itself ; 
 but the matter, in fact, is not so simple as 
 at first sight appears. On the whole, the 
 self-denying ordinance which I am inclined 
 to impose on myself is this, that I should 
 in general not presume to sit in judgment 
 on Mr. Gladstone except in cases where my 
 intercourse with him serves to throw light 
 on some misunderstood parts of his char- 
 acter; or where, on the other hand, some 
 remarks on his character are needed to throw 
 light on my intercourse with him. 
 
 On neither of these two accounts do I feel 
 called upon to say much about him as a 
 statesman. Being forced to spend three- 
 quarters of every year on the Continent in 
 a sort of valetudinarian exile, I have come 
 to regard myself, not certainly as an outlaw, 
 but as what I may call an otctpolitics, — as one 
 who can look on party politics only from the 
 standpoint of a philosophical outsider; so 
 that, for this as well as for other reasons, 
 
 3 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 I abstain from acting the part of a political 
 censor. And this abstinence is, in the pres- 
 ent case, made easier by the fact that the 
 tie which bound him to me and mine was 
 not political, but personal. He was a county 
 neighbour of my Conservative father and of 
 my more Conservative father-in-law (the late 
 Lord Egerton of Tatton). When he and 
 they were in the House of Commons to- 
 gether, he met them on a footing of friendly 
 opposition; and although the political an- 
 tagonism went on increasing, the friendly 
 relations were perhaps not lessened down to 
 the end of the chapter. The result of all 
 this was that, when he extended his friend- 
 ship to my wife and me, he showed a mani- 
 fest disinclination to discuss the politics of 
 the day. He seldom approached burning 
 questions in my presence, and hardly ever 
 in the presence of my wife. I could have 
 wished that he had been less scrupulous; 
 but perhaps, after all, the loss was not very 
 serious. The political Gladstone has long 
 been, and will long continue to be, in every- 
 body's mouth. It is of the non-political 
 Gladstone that people in general need to 
 learn something. 
 
 When I pass on from the public to the 
 
 4 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 private character of Mr. Gladstone, I am 
 only too sensible alike of the difficulty and 
 of the necessity of touching on that most 
 delicate part of my subject. To quote 
 Cicero: " Quid dicam de moribus facillimis, 
 de bonitate in suos, justitia in omnes?" 
 ( What should I say of the easy urbanity of 
 his mannerSy of his goodness to his intimates^ 
 of his justice towards all men f) What, in 
 particular, should I say, or forbear to say, 
 about Mr. Gladstone's great kindness to 
 me? Compliments, however sincere and 
 however well deserved, have nearly always 
 an air of patronage; and, indeed, I have 
 sometimes thought that the step from the 
 sublime to the ridiculous is perhaps less 
 short than the step from an ill-turned or ill- 
 timed compliment to an insult. Those of 
 us who are haunted by any such impression 
 as is here indicated are naturally disposed, 
 in relation to Mr. Gladstone's private vir- 
 tues, to say less than we feel, or rather to 
 keep silence even from good words. Never- 
 theless, it would be churlish in us to refrain 
 altogether from bearing our eye-witnessing 
 testimony to his considerate and uncon- 
 descending graciousness towards such of his 
 juniors as he befriended. And we ourselves 
 
 5 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 are led to do this all the more in order, so 
 to say, to take away the unpleasing taste 
 of the few words of adverse criticism which 
 will perforce make their way into the follow- 
 ing pages. Let it, then, be understood once 
 for all that, however we may have differed 
 from his views both on things present and 
 on things to come, we nevertheless judge 
 him to have exhibited an absolutely unique 
 combination of political sagacity with an un- 
 wavering conviction of the Divine presence 
 and support ; so that we might almost liter- 
 ally apostrophise him in the phrase of the 
 Greek poet — 
 
 *^ drdpwv 6s Ttpc^ror sv rs ^vuq)opaii (3iov 
 Hpivovrei Ev re daijuovoov t,vr aXXay aii,'^^ 
 
 I have mentioned that Mr. Gladstone, in 
 his intercourse with me, seldom penetrated 
 within the recesses of politics. He, how- 
 ever, often led me into what may be called 
 the antechamber of politics. He freely im- 
 parted to me his reminiscences; and those 
 reminiscences were interspersed with sug- 
 gestive comments, and had always, if I may 
 so express it, a quorum pars magna fui 
 flavour about them. When he was disposed 
 to dwell on this interesting subject, I did my 
 
 6 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 best to make him stick to it ; and, on other 
 occasions, I threw the subject in his path. 
 His anecdotical reflections on such men as 
 Canning and Peel, as Lord Palmerston and 
 Disraeli, are reported with the utmost pos- 
 sible minuteness. 
 
 There were, however, subjects on which 
 he conversed with less interest and effect, 
 and in reference to which my duties as a 
 reporter were less clear. Of those less im- 
 portant remarks of his, should any, or 
 should all, be placed before my readers? 
 An example will serve to show the nature 
 of my perplexity. How much am I to 
 record of my impressions of Mr. Gladstone's 
 views on Homer's ethics and theology? My 
 introduction to those views took place in an 
 odd manner. In my Oxford days I heard a 
 lady ask Jowett what he thought of Mr. 
 Gladstone's then recently published book 
 on Homer. " It's mere nonsense," was the 
 brief answer. Without passing so summary 
 a verdict on Mr. Gladstone's work, or pre- 
 suming to speak on the subject as an expert, 
 I am at least aware that, as Juvenal might 
 have said, he made the Syrian Jordan flow 
 into the Scamander: he Catholicised Hellen- 
 ism and almost canonised Homer. Indeed, 
 
 7 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 it was with reference to Hansel's Bampton 
 Lectures and Mr. Gladstone's Homeric 
 speculation that, some forty years ago, the 
 future Bishop Jeune said to Bishop Wilber- 
 force that he " had not expected to see the 
 time when Atheism would be demonstrated 
 from the pulpit of St. Mary's, and when the 
 member for the University of Oxford would 
 advocate the worship of the Pagan divini- 
 ties " {Safe Studies, p. 247). He evidently 
 held, as I also hold, that Mr. Gladstone was 
 utterly at fault when he tried to discover a 
 defaced or rudimentary Trinity amid the 
 debris of the Hellenic Pantheon. And, for 
 myself, I will further maintain that from 
 Mr. Gladstone's initial error in this matter — 
 from his invention, if I may so say, of an 
 Athanasian Iliad — has arisen a false note 
 in many of his utterances on Homer. How 
 much, then, am I to report of such of those 
 utterances as I heard? To this question I 
 reply that, if the intimacy with which he 
 honoured me had been continued and con- 
 tinually renewed through many years, in- 
 stead of being practically confined to a score 
 or so of conversations, I should doubtless, 
 in my report of his sayings about Homer, 
 have used the pruning-knife pretty freely. 
 
 8 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 But, as the case now stands, and as my 
 readers will doubtless wish to see something 
 even of the less interesting aspects of this 
 eminently interesting character, I have 
 thought it better to reduce the pruning 
 process to a minimum. Nor will such an 
 examination of his defective side be unprofit- 
 able. For, in very truth, the saying of Cato 
 that ** wise men learn more from fools than 
 fools learn from wise men," may be supple- 
 mented with a corollary that more is to be 
 learnt front the follies of the wise than from, 
 the com^mon sense of fools. And to the case 
 now before us such a corollary has a special 
 application. For the Homeric hallucination, 
 as I cannot but think it, of Mr. Gladstone 
 was no mere excrescence or (so to say) lusus 
 sapienticBy but was correlated with the rest 
 of his spiritual growth ; it was, in fact, not 
 so much the vagary of a scholar as the sorry 
 refuge of a theologian at bay. Let us see 
 how this is to be explained. The Compara- 
 tive Method or, let us rather say, the Evolu- 
 tionary Principle, when applied to the com- 
 peting religions of the world, tends to bring 
 out what they have in common, to group 
 them all under a single law, and, if I may 
 so say, to lessen the extreme inequality of 
 
 9 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 rank which has hitherto prevailed among 
 them. It is true that to Evolution, inter- 
 preted in this wide sense, Mr. Gladstone 
 would have strongly objected. But none 
 the less is it probable that, without knowing 
 it, he had a sprinkling from the impetuous 
 and ubiquitous " stream of tendency." He 
 caught the evolutionary contagion. He be- 
 came so far a philosophe vtalgrd lui that he 
 more or less levelled up the chief religions, 
 as the alternative to levelling them down. 
 Something of the divine he had to recog- 
 nise in all of them, lest haply he should be 
 constrained to erase the divine from all of 
 them. Thus he gradually came to regard 
 the greatest poets of Hellenism as more or 
 less inspired, not merely in the colloquial 
 and metaphorical, but in something like the 
 theological sense of the word — inspired, one 
 may say vaguely, not merely from Mount 
 Helicon, but from Mount Zion. So that he 
 essayed to hear, and at last imagined that 
 he really heard, the far-off echo of a revela- 
 tion in Homer. 
 
 The general line that I have taken about 
 the indirectly theological views of Mr. Glad- 
 stone may be extended to his directly theo- 
 logical views. But between the two cases 
 
 10 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 there is a difference. Most of my readers 
 will probably agree with me in not attaching 
 much weight to his Homeric speculations. 
 But many of them will attach far more 
 weight than I should to his opinions on the- 
 ology. Therefore, what he said to me on 
 the latter subject is reported almost entire. 
 In conclusion, I need hardly insist that I 
 am entering into no sort of competition with 
 any complete biography of Mr. Gladstone 
 which may have been, or may hereafter be, 
 brought out by one or more distinguished 
 men who have known him intimately both 
 in his public and private character. How, 
 indeed, could I, handicapped as I am, ad- 
 venture on such an unequal race? 
 
 " Quid enim tremulis facere artubus hasdi 
 Consimile in cursu possint et fortis equi vis ? " 
 
 Let me then say, or rather repeat, that 
 my present function is to produce what may 
 be called an ethograph of Mr. Gladstone — a 
 photograph of his moral and social physi- 
 ognomy, exactly as it presented itself to me. 
 Nor can I doubt that, somewhat in the spirit 
 of Cromwell, he would himself have wished 
 that impartial justice should be done to that 
 moral physiognomy, a physiognomy which. 
 
 II 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 like his natural face, had its harsh and un- 
 toward aspects, but which was all the more 
 truly venerable for its wrinkled and, at first 
 sight, repellent grandeur. It is superfluous 
 for me to add that I shall be more than satis- 
 fied if, in the bewildering chapter of acci-. 
 dents, it should be written that even this 
 little book is to contribute its jot and tittle 
 of evidence, at once trustworthy and favour- 
 able, towards the final judgment which will 
 be pronounced on him by posterity. Habent 
 sua fata libelli: singular fates they have 
 sometimes, and such as, when little is ex- 
 pected, are not always disappointing. 
 
 L. A. T. 
 
 NOTE 
 
 Since writing this, I Iiave come across a saying of 
 Tennyson about Mr. Gladstone's Homeric specula- 
 tions, which confirms the view taken in the forego- 
 ing pages: "Very pleasant and very interesting 
 he [Gladstone] was, even when he discoursed on 
 Homer, where most people think him a little hobby- 
 horsical : let him be. His hobby-horse is of the in- 
 tellect and with a grace." This opinion should be 
 compared or contrasted with the opinion entertained 
 by Lake. In a letter of mine, entitled " Dr. Lake 
 
 12 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 at Balliol," which was published in the Spectator 
 (Jan. I, 1898), there is a passage which I am tempted 
 to quote, concluding as it does with a high and just 
 compliment paid by the future Dean of Durham to 
 Mr. Gladstone. It should be mentioned that the 
 conversation referred to occurred in my undergrad- 
 uate days, some forty years ago. " I once found 
 Lake reading Mr. Gladstone's book on Homer, 
 which had then been recently published, and I re- 
 marked to him that, in Jowett's opinion, the distin- 
 guished author had ascribed more to Homer than 
 Homer himself ever dreamt of; was this criticism 
 just? 'Possibly to some extent,' answered Lake, 
 with a grim smile. • But Mr. Jowett would al- 
 low only a minimum. I think there is more in 
 Homer, just as I think there is more in the Bible, 
 than he would acknowledge.' Then, with an evi- 
 dent allusion to my veneration for Jowett, he touched 
 on the propensity of youth towards somewhat pro- 
 miscuous hero-worship. His concluding words have 
 stuck in my memory : * In all my life I have only 
 known three men of commanding greatness — Arnold, 
 Newman, Gladstone.' " 
 
 13 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 1856-1870 
 
" Nee vero ille in luce modo atque in oculis civium 
 magnus, sed intus domique praestantior." 
 
 Cicero. 
 
 " Seen him I have, but in his happier hour 
 Of social pleasure, ill-exchanged for power." 
 
 Pope. 
 
 IT was a proud moment for me when Mr. 
 Gladstone, who was then canvassing the 
 Oxford electors, called on me during my 
 first year of residence at Balliol. Between 
 1856 and 1870 I saw him several times, 
 chiefly in London and during two visits 
 which I paid at Hawarden. But, instead of 
 wearying my readers with the whereabouts 
 and the whenabouts of my interviews with 
 him, I will at once jot down some sayings 
 of his which belong to this first period of 
 our acquaintance. 
 
 My father, not realising to what extent I 
 
 was handicapped by physical drawbacks, 
 
 was continually urging me to go to the Bar. 
 
 At his request, I laid the matter before Mr. 
 
 2 17 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone thought that my 
 extreme nearsightedness would be an almost 
 insuperable obstacle to my success at the 
 Bar. I asked him if I should try diplomacy. 
 His reply was not encouraging. Indeed, he 
 said that he should not wish a son of his to 
 become a diplomatist. He did not give his 
 reasons ; but I suspect that a thought was in 
 his mind similar to that which prompted 
 Macaulay to write : * * Every calling has its 
 peculiar temptations. There is no injustice 
 in saying that diplomatists, as a class, have 
 always been more distinguished by their 
 address, by the art with which they win the 
 confidence of those with whom they have to 
 deal, and by the ease with which they catch 
 the tone of every society into which they are 
 admitted, than by generous enthusiasm or 
 austere rectitude." 
 
 He went on to recommend to me a Parlia- 
 mentary career; Parliamentary work would 
 be less trying to the eyesight than practice 
 at the Bar. He presently spoke of * ' ofificial 
 life. Since he had been in ofifice, he had 
 learnt how much of the business could be 
 deputed to trained subordinates; indeed, 
 he had bestowed some pains on the art of 
 thus working by proxy. Had I ever thought 
 
 i8 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 of trying to get into the House of Commons ? 
 I replied that I had turned Whig, to the 
 no small perturbation of my kinsfolk. My 
 father, who was then in the House of Com- 
 mons, and who was a strong aristocrat and 
 a still stronger autocrat, would never have 
 tolerated my voting against him on any 
 question which he deemed important. Mr. 
 Gladstone seemed surprised, and added that 
 public opinion appeared to him to be in an 
 unhealthy state in regard to the nature and 
 limits of th.^ patria potestas. If a son of his 
 own had differed from him in politics, he 
 would have advised him not to enter public 
 life till he was twenty-six; after that age, 
 the son would be free to take an independent 
 line. Mr. Gladstone thought it monstrous 
 that Lord Stanley (the late Lord Derby), 
 who was then about forty years old, should 
 be practically compelled to join the Con- 
 servative party, in opposition to what were 
 believed to be his private convictions. At 
 the time of this conversation I myself was 
 in my twenty-fifth year. Mr. Gladstone 
 advised me to decide on a profession soon. 
 After twenty-five the mind could not easily 
 take a fresh direction, though it might make 
 great progress in a direction already taken. 
 
 19 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 He did not, let me here repeat, often talk 
 to me about politics ; but I remember his 
 once saying, with great emphasis, that the 
 years which followed the close of the Great 
 War seemed to him to be among the most 
 disgraceful in our history: " The Tory Gov- 
 ernment passed a new Corn Law." 
 
 I asked him whether he did not think that 
 the days of the English aristocracy were 
 numbered. Might not what Tennyson says 
 of religious systems be applied to aristocra- 
 cies: ** They have their day, and cease to 
 be "? In other words, was not De Tocque- 
 ville right in thinking that, by an inexorable 
 law, all things make for democracy? Mr. 
 Gladstone answered that this broad state- 
 ment of De Tocqueville appeared to him to 
 be founded on a hasty generalisation. In 
 particular, he thought that the feudal senti- 
 ment and traditions were deeply rooted in 
 England. He defended his opinion by citing 
 two examples which, I own, did not appear 
 to me very conclusive. One of them I will 
 repeat, as nearly as I can remember it. He 
 told me that a certain peer, who was a friend 
 of his, had recently died. He himself had 
 consulted the man of business as to the 
 choice of an agent who would give satisfac- 
 
 20 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 tion to the tenants. The man of business 
 replied that what would please the tenants 
 most would be the appointment of an 
 agent who could claim kinship with the late 
 lord. 
 
 In July 1864, I was so fortunate as to 
 meet Mr. Mill at breakfast with Mr. Glad- 
 stone.'^ The two eminent men talked about 
 the probable effect of the war between Prussia 
 and Denmark. Mr. Gladstone mentioned 
 that a high financial authority had expressed 
 the opinion that, if Canada were ever an- 
 nexed by the United States, the value of 
 land in Canada would be greatly increased 
 (I think he said " doubled "); and I under- 
 stood Mr. Gladstone to add that, in like 
 
 * Some fragments of the remarks made by Mr. Mill on 
 this, to me, memorable occasion, are indicated in Safe 
 Studies, p. 263, and in the Memoir of Jozvett, p. loi 
 (note). I am tempted here to report another observation 
 which Mr. Mill then made. He told me that his father 
 used to say that all war would speedily be brought to an 
 end if only, in every battle, the soldiers on each side would 
 direct all their efforts towards shooting the commander-in- 
 chief of the opposite party. I asked him whether, if this 
 practice were set on foot, commanders-in-chief would not 
 soon learn, like Ahab at Ramoth Gilead, to resort to the 
 obvious expedient of a disguise. '* Yes," he replied 
 gloomily, ' ' I am afraid that the causes of war lie too deep 
 for so simple a remedy." 
 
 21 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 manner, the value of land in Schleswig- 
 Holstein would be increased by the annexa- 
 tion of those provinces to such an active and 
 progressive nation as Prussia. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone went on to talk of his own 
 somewhat romantic mission to Greece. He 
 appeared to think that the old Greek type 
 of countenance still lingered in Continental 
 Greece more than is commonly supposed. 
 I reminded him of the statement quoted by 
 Gibbon from a Byzantine historian that " all 
 Greece has been slavonised and become 
 barbarous." " Yes," replied Mr. Gladstone, 
 " I remember the passage well ; and does not 
 Gibbon go on to say that the language is as 
 barbarous as the idea?" I have thought 
 this worth recording as serving to show that, 
 little as he sympathised with Gibbon, he yet 
 knew Gibbon's History well. 
 
 He told Mr. Mill that he had never wit- 
 nessed such complete and contented idleness 
 as at Corfu. He related that he had there 
 seen three men leisurely occupied in driving 
 two turkeys along the road. Before pro- 
 nouncing a judgment on this queer otium 
 sine dignitate, one would wish to know what 
 were its antecedent conditions, and how far 
 the instance was a typical one. 
 
 22 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 I well remember a long walk which I took 
 with Mr. Gladstone one Sunday afternoon 
 at Hawarden. In the course of it, I referred 
 to Mill's contention that slave-grown cotton 
 was exhausting the soil of the Southern 
 States, and that, even from a purely com- 
 mercial point of view, emancipation was 
 likely to be a gain ; was Mr. Gladstone of 
 the same opinion? He replied that he ab- 
 horred slavery, but that he nevertheless 
 feared that abolition would, in the first in- 
 stance at any rate, be attended with financial 
 difificulties. 
 
 I went on to ask him how he explained 
 the strong antipathy expressed by nearly all 
 Anglo-Americans for coloured men. The 
 repulsion thus inspired by the typical negro 
 is commonly described as physical and as 
 irremediable, being, in fact, of the nature 
 indicated by Sydney Smith in his famous 
 adaptation of Virgil — 
 
 " Et, si non alium late jactaret odorem, 
 Civis erat." 
 
 Macaulay had said in conversation that, 
 in his opinion, there was much exaggeration 
 in this and kindred statements ; he found it 
 hard to reconcile them with the very close 
 
 23 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 personal relation which not unfrequently 
 subsists between individuals of the two 
 races. Did not Mr. Gladstone also think 
 that the antipathy in question is, in great 
 part, born of imagination? His answer was 
 decidedly in the affirmative. In support of 
 his opinion, he mentioned the case (to which 
 I shall have occasion to revert further on) of 
 a negro gentleman whom he had himself 
 known, and who was, not merely agreeable 
 and accomplished, but distinguished by the 
 refinement of his manners. 
 
 We fell to talking about physiognomy. 
 He gave me the impression of more or less 
 agreeing with Duncan, that there is no art 
 to find the mind's construction in the face. 
 In defence of his view, he cited the example 
 of a distinguished politician who was then 
 in the House of Commons, and who had 
 been one of the pioneers of Free Trade: ** I 
 detest his countenance; but I believe that a 
 more upright and honourable man never 
 lived." There was something "Intense" 
 in Mr. Gladstone's voice as he said this, 
 which was typical of his mode of conversing. 
 His talk was not rhetorical; but it was em- 
 phatically the talk of an orator. In other 
 words, it was not through rounded sen- 
 
 24 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 tences, nor through a spouting, and, so to 
 say, rounding delivery, but through the 
 frequent use of strong phrases vocally itali- 
 cised, and perhaps I should add, through the 
 not infrequent accumulation of nearly syn- 
 onymous epithets where perhaps a single 
 epithet would have sufificed, that the note 
 of the orator was discernible in his discourse. 
 It was, if my memory serves me, on the 
 evening of the same Sunday that Mr. Glad- 
 stone conversed with me about the Classics 
 and likewise about Theology. I asked some 
 questions about the Homeric poems; and 
 when I presently expressed a fear that I was 
 boring him, he very graciously cut short my 
 apology by saying that, after all the tumult 
 and bustle of politics, he felt himself ** in 
 heaven ' ' when he was breathing the pure 
 atmosphere of Homer. He appeared to 
 me, I confess, less to advantage when he 
 passed into the region of Theology. I was 
 so audacious as to make some strictures on 
 the character of David. Were the vindictive 
 and perfidious injunctions given by the dying 
 king to his successor easily reconciled with 
 his claim to be accounted a man after God's 
 own heart? During this part of our conver- 
 sation the late Lord Lyttelton was present, 
 
 25 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 and made the very natural remark that this 
 was an old crux, but that he thought the 
 difficulty could be got over. What surprised 
 me about Mr. Gladstone was that, in this 
 part of the discussion, he seemed to be tread- 
 ing on new ground. Perhaps his mind was 
 preoccupied, or I may have failed to under- 
 stand him ; but he certainly seemed to me 
 to speak as if he was puzzled to make out 
 what I meant, and as if this whole class of 
 objections had never crossed his mind. 
 
 Our controversy on Old Testament ethics 
 was merely an episode in a friendly discus- 
 sion on one of Mr. Gladstone's favourite 
 topics. He said that he had one fault to 
 find with the Oxford Liberals which he could 
 never get over : they made such small ac- 
 count of Bishop Butler. I did my best to 
 clear up the anomaly which so embarrassed 
 and pained him ; but the solution which I 
 offered did not satisfy him. As I shall have 
 occasion to revert to this subject, it may 
 obviate the necessity of further explanation 
 if I state, more explicitly than I ventured to 
 state to Mr. Gladstone, the causes which 
 excite in some Oxford Liberals so strong an 
 antipathy to what he called the ** Butlerian " 
 system. It must be premised that many of 
 
 26 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 those Liberals regard Butler as a less logical 
 Mansel; insomuch that Hansel's Bampton 
 Lectures may be described as Butler's 
 Analogy writ plain. Now, Oxford Liberals 
 of the- class indicated by Mr. Gladstone 
 generally sympathise with what may be 
 termed the Left Centre of Theology, and 
 perhaps, next to that, with the Right 
 Centre. On the other hand, Butler's and 
 Hansel's reasoning is a weapon which the 
 Extreme Right and the Extreme Left com- 
 bine to use against the Right Centre and the 
 Left Centre, but which they are powerless 
 to employ against one another. Nay, we 
 may go the length of saying that the weapon 
 which Catholics employ with such deadly 
 effect against the orthodox Protestant is the 
 self-same Butlerian weapon wherewith he 
 himself is wont, so confidently and so piti- 
 lessly, to transfix all Liberal Protestants — 
 
 " The treacherous instrument is in thy hand, 
 Unbated and envenomed." 
 
 Nor is this all. The argument of the 
 Analogy, if pressed to its conclusions, would 
 interdict the application of our human stand- 
 ard of ethics to any alleged divine revela- 
 tion, and would consequently yield every- 
 
 27 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 thing to the faith which, if the phrase may 
 be allowed, bids highest in miracles. lonce 
 heard Jowett make the admission that, on 
 that principle, a strong case might be made 
 out for Brahminism. At all events, without 
 presuming to award the thaumaturgical palm, 
 his disciples are dismayed when they reflect 
 with what ease and with what fatal results 
 the too accommodating and transferable, or, 
 as Bunyan might have said, facing both ways, 
 logic of Butler could be turned to account 
 by the enemies of religion. For, as viewed 
 from the standpoint of those enemies, the 
 argument of Butler and Mansel amounts to 
 this, " If we are not prepared to believe 
 everything, we must believe nothing. Gar- 
 de z-vous de ce premier pas qui coHte. Give 
 Supernaturalism an inch, and it claims the 
 Universe." 
 
 And now, before proceeding to my later 
 and longer conversations with Mr. Glad- 
 stone, I propose to make one or two of 
 those illustrative comments of which I have 
 already spoken. With this object in view, 
 it will be convenient to go back a little. 
 When preparing myself for my first visit to 
 Hawarden, I had a talk with an able man 
 whose name I will not disclose, but of whom 
 
 28 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 I will say that he knew Mr. Gladstone well ; 
 and I asked him (in effect) so to furbish me 
 up intellectually that I might not be wholly 
 unpresentable when brought face to face with 
 the great man. Especially did I wish to 
 know whether it would be safe to express 
 modern views in his presence. What has 
 already been related may be taken as in 
 some sort answering this question. Never- 
 theless, it may be of use to report the an- 
 swer, or rather the general account of Mr. 
 Gladstone, which my experienced informant 
 gave me. He advised me to beware, during 
 my stay at Hawarden, of expressing heretical 
 opinions before my orthodox host. Mr. 
 Gladstone, he went on to say, was distin- 
 guished by two great qualities, each of which 
 he possessed in an extraordinary degree, 
 and the combination of which he possessed 
 in a degree almost, if not quite, unprece- 
 dented. These qualities were, first, the 
 oratorical faculty, and, secondly, the power 
 of mastering details. But the oratorical 
 faculty has its drawbacks. Being so strongly 
 developed in Mr. Gladstone, it generated in 
 him an abnormal, if not morbid, intensity 
 of purpose. Whatsoever his mind or his 
 head found to do, he did it with his might. 
 
 29 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 The result was that his intellect grew to be 
 like the giant oak, wanting in pliancy by- 
 reason of its massive strength. His difficulty 
 in sympathising with opponents was meas- 
 ured by his unfaltering conviction — a convic- 
 tion as intense as that of St. Paul or of 
 Savonarola — that his own cause was the 
 cause of God. My friend concluded by tell- 
 ing me that the great orator's eager and, as 
 it were, hypnotic absorption in whatever he 
 took up was sometimes apparent even in 
 trivial matters, and that at such times it 
 was apt to become extravagant, and even 
 oppressive: " He will talk about a piece of 
 old china as if he was standing before the 
 judgment-seat of God." 
 
 " I have," said Charles Lamb, ** an almost 
 feminine partiality for old china." Prob- 
 ably this predilection was the only point 
 which Lamb and Mr. Gladstone had in com- 
 mon. And, even in that point of resem- 
 blance, there was a marked difference be- 
 tween the two men. For, in the case of 
 Mr. Gladstone, this " feminine partiality," 
 as it were, put on virility through its contact 
 with his eminently masculine nature. How 
 quixotic, or rather how Quixote-like, how 
 grandly fantastic he was in that infatuation, 
 
 30 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 even as in his infatuation about Helen of 
 Troy ! I never ceased to be grateful to the 
 late Lady de Tabley who, one evening when 
 she and I were guests of the Gladstones, 
 espied me nescio quid meditantem nugarum 
 in a distant corner, and hurried me across 
 the room just in time to see Mr. Gladstone 
 holding up a piece of old china, and to take 
 note of the flashing eye and the Rhadaman- 
 thine solemnity with which the great enthu- 
 siast was winding up his discourse. 
 
 Passing on to a less quaintly trivial mat- 
 ter, I will add another example of the way 
 in which Mr. Gladstone, in what may be 
 termed his intellectual paintings, was apt to 
 lay on the colours too thick. A distinguished 
 Liberal told me, many years ago, that he 
 had asked Mr. Gladstone if he did not think 
 it a matter of regret that the young men of 
 the time seemed to take little interest in the 
 debates in the House of Commons. Mr. 
 Gladstone laid his hand on my friend's arm, 
 and explained with awe-inspiring emphasis 
 that the indifference thus shown by the 
 rising generation appeared to him to be a 
 ** plague-spot " in the body politic. My 
 informant, though himself a very earnest 
 man, evidently thought that Mr. Gladstone, 
 
 31 
 
Talks With Mr, Gladstone 
 
 by his vehement and, so to say, Apocalyptic 
 use of language, showed a certain want of 
 moral perspective* 
 
 It will now be understood what Walter 
 Bagehot meant by saying of him : — 
 
 " He is interested in everything he has to do with, 
 and often interested too much. He proposes to put 
 a stamp on contract notes with an eager earnestness 
 as if the destiny of Europe here and hereafter de- 
 pended upon its enactment. . . . The oratorical 
 impulse is a disorganising impulse. The higher 
 faculties of the mind require a certain calm, and the 
 excitement of oratory is unfavourable to that calm." 
 
 The latter part of this extract may seem 
 irrelevant ; but I quote it as leading up to 
 a matter on which I wish to touch briefly. 
 I had a talk with Jowett about Mr. Glad- 
 stone some forty years ago, that is to say, 
 before he had begun to entertain the antip- 
 athy for him which he freely expressed in 
 later years. What, I asked, did he make 
 of the fact that this most religious of our 
 politicians was often charged with being 
 dishonest ? His answer was on this wise: 
 ** Gladstone is not dishonest; but it is nat- 
 ural that persons who do not understand 
 him should think him dishonest." He went 
 on to make some explanatory and other 
 
 32 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 general remarks ; but the only one of those 
 remarks that I can distinctly recall is, that 
 he expressed a better opinion of Mr. Glad- 
 stone than of Bishop Wilberforce. His 
 explanation, however, left certain vague 
 impressions on my mind ; and I have often 
 felt a wish, as an architect might say, to 
 restore that explanation, or rather to give 
 shape to the general impression which I my- 
 self have derived from this and from more 
 direct sources. How came it about, let me 
 repeat, that this conspicuously upright and 
 conscientious statesman was so grievously 
 misunderstood? Such a misunderstanding, 
 if not accounted for as founded on some 
 plausible error, is thought to warrant the 
 suspicion of being founded on fact; and 
 therefore, without pretending wholly to 
 clear up the misconstruction under which 
 Mr. Gladstone laboured, I feel bound, after 
 enjoying the privilege of his friendship, to 
 throw out one or two explanatory sugges- 
 tions. 
 
 Let me, then, begin by observing that the 
 faults of a great and good man always stand 
 out conspicuously in relief. Not only are 
 they conspicuous because he is conspicuous, 
 and because they are seen in broad contrast 
 3 33 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 to his virtues, but also because the high 
 ideal which he sets up is a standing rebuke 
 to the self-complacent mediocrity of his 
 neighbours, and tempts them to indemnify 
 themselves by means of reprisals ; insomuch 
 that to the saint or hero as well as to the 
 Pharisee — to him who, holding high and, as 
 it were, reproachful ideals, strives to act up 
 to them, as well as to him who does not — 
 should the Divine caution be addressed : 
 ** With what measure ye mete it shall be 
 measured to you again." Mr. Gladstone, 
 in particular, stood in need of this caution. 
 Being an orator, he was wont to think and 
 to speak with his emotions at red heat, and 
 to give utterance to burning and provocative 
 words when he passed censure on folly and 
 sin. Also, he laid himself open to attack by 
 his political change of front. No doubt this 
 transition of his, in an age of transition, was 
 in a sense appropriate, and furnished one of 
 the many proofs of his conscientiousness. 
 ** To live is to change," says Newman, 
 ** and to be perfect is to have changed 
 often." There is some truth in this obser- 
 vation, though it is too broadly expressed, 
 and though it comes oddly from an upholder 
 of the most unbending of creeds. But, at 
 
 34 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 any rate, to rank changefulness of this kind 
 as a virtue is to set up a counsel of imper- 
 fection. " Unstable as water," says the 
 Scripture, "thou shalt not excel"; and 
 assuredly the man of many changes, the 
 sort of man whom Aristotle would have 
 called a chameleon, cannot hope to inspire 
 confidence. He is liable to excite an appre- 
 hension that (if I may so express myself) he 
 may one day become a re-turncoat^ or else 
 may be, not a turncoat only, but a turn 
 waistcoat as well; in other words, he may 
 either go back, or else go forward too fast 
 and too far. Thus it was that, being at 
 once an orator and (in the literal sense) a 
 renegade, Mr. Gladstone was severely han- 
 dled, and ran the risk of being overwhelmed 
 by a flood of invectives. In fear of such 
 submersion, he caught at straws, and per- 
 suaded himself that they were solid planks. 
 To lay aside metaphor, he was subtle and 
 even sophistical in his explanations of his 
 devious courses. Yet in giving these ex- 
 planations he was perfectly sincere. 
 
 Sincerity under these conditions would 
 have been impossible to a philosopher; but 
 it came easily to such a typical orator as 
 Mr. Gladstone. For the typical orator, in 
 
 35 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 whom, as in women, feeling is believing, 
 resembles women likewise in their perilously 
 convenient capacity for self-deception. But 
 the hallucinations of the orator, those veri- 
 table eidola fori, are just what Philistines 
 cannot, and political opponents will not, 
 understand. Nor can it be denied that on 
 that ground the opponents of Mr. Gladstone 
 could build up a plausible case. Thus, when 
 Disraeli said of him that ** he was inebriated 
 with the exuberance of his ov/n verbosity," 
 it must be admitted that in that eminently 
 Disraelitish phrase — itself not conspicuous 
 for the simplicity of its diction — there was 
 the element of truth that Mr. Gladstone 
 was sometimes not the master but the ser- 
 vant of his emotions, and even of his meta- 
 phors. The result of all this was that, in 
 the popular imagination, his subtlety of 
 reasoning came to be associated with that 
 moral indirectness which the word subtlety 
 often connotes. Indeed, his unconscious 
 special pleading was at last mistaken for 
 deliberate insincerity. Hence it appears 
 that the dishonesty of which he has often 
 been accused, resolves itself into the seem- 
 ing dishonesty of an orator who is also a 
 man of action, or (let us say) of a statesman 
 
 36 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 who often unwittingly has recourse to com- 
 promises such as he has often eloquently 
 denounced ; it is, in fact, dishonesty simulated 
 by impassioned honesty. For, in very truth, 
 a saintly enthusiast, seeking to practise all 
 that he has preached, is trying to maintain 
 himself on a level too high for human nature 
 {ceratis ope Daedalea Nititur pennis). ^ 
 
 With this intensity^ born of oratorical 
 sensibility, was closely connected another 
 aspect of Mr. Gladstone's mind, which must 
 be mentioned as throwing light on certain 
 parts of his conversations with me. He was 
 not affected or afflicted with that need of 
 laughing to prevent weeping, with that 
 mingled sense of world-humour and of world- 
 pathos — in short, with that appetite for the 
 incongruous — which is a characteristic prod- 
 uct of decadence, and which, like a fair 
 
 ' The difficulty of keeping aloft, during a long period, 
 at the enthusiastically moral, or rather at the apostolic, 
 level is set forth by Renan forcibly, though doubtless with 
 some exaggeration. Referring to the protracted and 
 checquered career of Mahomet, and apparently making at 
 the same time an indirect allusion to the early death of 
 One greater than Mahomet, he observes : " L'homme est 
 trop faible pour porter longtemps la mission divine, et 
 ceux-14 seuls sont immacules que Dieu a bientot decharges 
 du fardeau de I'apostolat." 
 
 37 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 plant springing up from a manured soil, 
 derives much of its sustenance from the 
 noisome tragedies of life. Indeed, he had 
 no toleration — I had almost said no compre- 
 hension — of that Epicurean and, so to say, 
 Renanesque quality which French writers 
 call * ' ironie ' ' and Bagehot has called * ' pleas- 
 ant cynicism." Perhaps I should be merely 
 expressing the same thought in other words 
 if I were to say that, himself demanding 
 much from human nature, he had no sym- 
 pathy or patience with those who demanded 
 little from it. In short, he would not, like 
 Pope, have declared the ** ninth beatitude " 
 to be " Blessed is he who expects nothing, 
 for he shall never be disappointed. ' * Rather 
 would he have agreed with Kingsley in call- 
 ing that a " devil's beatitude." It is not 
 necessary to dwell further on this side of Mr. 
 Gladstone's character. Suffice it to say that 
 his rooted aversion to cynicism and scepti- 
 cism of all sorts may serve to explain the tone 
 of some of his observations recorded in the 
 sequel. Especially may it account for the 
 severity with which he spoke to me of Talley- 
 rand, and even of Matthew Arnold, and for 
 his earnest exhortation to keep alive the 
 sense of sin. 
 
 38 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 Dean Swift, hearing someone described as 
 ** a fine old man," petulantly exclaimed: 
 ** A fine old man? There is no such thing. 
 If the man you speak of had either a mind 
 or a body worth a farthing, they would have 
 worn him out long ago." Could such an 
 inhuman outcry of despair have proceeded 
 from anyone who had known our wise orator 
 and statesman when the mellowing hand of 
 time had passed upon him, and who had 
 felt, when the news came that he too had 
 gone to his rest in the eternal, how sad was 
 the loss, not to his friends only, but to his 
 country? 
 
 Personally, I have often thought that the 
 noble, if somewhat invidious, tribute of 
 praise which was originally bestowed on 
 Tiresias, and which Cato applied to the 
 younger Scipio, could be transferred to 
 the veteran Gladstone — 
 
 '''OiG? TCETCvvdOaz, roi 8e duiai diddovdivj^^ 
 
 For truly in this estimable but mediocre 
 generation of ours — this generation so pro- 
 lific of talent, but so barren of genius — he 
 
 * Translated in North's Plutarch — 
 " This only man right wise reputed is to be ; 
 All other seem but shadows set, by such wise men as he." 
 
 39 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 stood forth, during the closing years of his 
 life, as a monumental relic of a mightier age 
 which has passed away. To those closing 
 years I now transport my readers. Our 
 scene is transferred from England to Biarritz, 
 at the same time that our drama (after the 
 manner of the Winter s Tale) overleaps a 
 score of years. Let me add that hencefor- 
 ward the report of the dialogues will be in a 
 quasi-dramatic, or, to speak more exactly, 
 in a Boswellian and diaristic form. 
 
 40 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 1891-1896 
 
II 
 
 " Sideris instar 
 Emicuit Stilichonis apex, et cognita fulsit 
 Canities." 
 
 Claudian. 
 
 {Paraphrased) 
 
 " A Grand Old Man." 
 
 H6tel d'Angleterre, Biarritz. 
 
 December 1891. — Mr. Gladstone called on 
 us. He complained that Butler is not cared 
 for on the Continent. Kant had been in- 
 fluenced by him, and acknowledged it; 
 Lotze also spoke in high terms of him. 
 Mr. Gladstone was slow in seeing what I 
 meant when I said that the argument of 
 Butler's Analogy is many-sided: that, if it 
 disables human reason from dealing with the 
 moral anomalies of one religion, it gives 
 the like negative support to all religions; 
 and that, in fact, it may as easily be used 
 in defence of the massacre of St. Bartholo- 
 mew, and even of Thuggee, as in defence of 
 
 43 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 Joshua's massacres and Jael's treachery. 
 He said that he did not remember that 
 Butler referred to these, but afterwards 
 admitted that his argument might be so 
 applied. I said that Catholics might think 
 that Butler's argument told more for them 
 than for us. He hardly seemed to see my 
 point, but said that Catholicism seemed to 
 be the only subject on which Butler lost his 
 usual impartiality and became violent. He 
 said that Lotze and others valued Butler 
 mainly as a theologian; he himself valued 
 him even more as a philosopher; he called 
 him ''the guide through the perplexities of 
 thought and conduct in modern life." On 
 the side of the importance of Butler, unwill- 
 ing testimony, he said, was given by Mark 
 Pattison: ** The pains that he took to de- 
 throne my idol are significant." He also 
 quoted Miss Hennell, who wrote a pamphlet 
 called On the Sceptical Tendencies of Butler s 
 ^^ Analogy'' He thought that this pamphlet 
 had not received the attention it deserved. 
 Miss Hennell, while attacking Butler, ex- 
 presses her strong admiration for him. He 
 thought that the neglect of Butler was a 
 blot upon Oxford. 
 
 He said that his only complaint against 
 44 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 Biarritz was that the society was too exclu- 
 sively English. On my saying that I chiefly 
 complained of its want of intellectuality, he 
 went off on the subject of the great intel- 
 lectual progress made by women. He had 
 written an article in the Speaker on the great 
 number of poetesses who were scarcely 
 known as they deserved to be. He spoke 
 of Mrs. Browning as the only exception. 
 I referred to George Eliot; but he would 
 not admit her claim. He mentioned Miss 
 Constance Naden, Emily Bronte, Lady 
 Charlotte Eliot, and Mrs. Clive, the author- 
 ess of " X Poems by V." He referred 
 especially to her poem on " Invitations to 
 the Queen's Ball," as dealing with an un- 
 promising subject, but showing powerful 
 imagination. He had talked on the subject 
 of these overlooked poetesses with Tenny- 
 son, who agreed with him. 
 
 Referring to Charles Austin, he spoke 
 with disappointment of his having done so 
 little in after life. I asked whether he did 
 not think that men, not very strong phys- 
 ically, sometimes overstrained themselves 
 when young, and that then, like the flower- 
 ing aloe, they were completely exhausted. 
 He admitted this, and added that a career 
 
 45 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 like that of Charles Austin was especially 
 open to objection, as withdrawing very able 
 men from leaving anything of permanent 
 value. ^ I asked whether he was referring 
 to the Bar in general or to the Parliamentary 
 Bar in particular. He replied that he meant 
 the latter, and instanced Hope Scott. 
 
 I accompanied him to the Grand Hotel, 
 where he was staying. He characteristically 
 remarked that this hotel has seven gates, 
 and that he called it inrocTtvXoi Qijfiai. 
 
 Dece^nber 23, 1891. — I dined Avith Mr. 
 Armitstead and the Gladstones. Mr. Glad- 
 stone said that the science of " pre-history " 
 is quite new ; and he went on to remark that 
 the Basques pay greater respect to women 
 now than anyone in Europe paid to them 
 in the Middle Ages. 
 
 He spoke of the English literature of the 
 nineteenth century as " quite extraordi- 
 nary." He thought this strange, ** because 
 of the EHzabethan outburst." He said that 
 there had been practically continuity, and 
 
 * When commenting on my Recollections of Charles A us- 
 tin, Fitzjames Stephen applied to Austin's ineffectual life 
 the lament of Carlyle : "Oh, the Bar, the Bar ! I look on 
 it as just a great devouring gulf that eats up all the sturdy 
 fellows that might help us in our sorrows." 
 
 46 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 that this was very rare, and was, moreover, 
 a great disadvantage to living poets. No 
 book nowadays produces an excitement at 
 all equal to that caused by Walter Scott's 
 novels. The nearest approach was the inter- 
 est shown in Tennyson's last poems; but 
 this was not at all equal to the interest awak- 
 ened by Scott. 
 
 A young lady present sprung a mine by 
 saying that Scott was dull, and adding that 
 she got more pleasure from Thackeray and 
 George Eliot. She was more flattered than 
 provoked by the half angry earnestness with 
 which Mr. Gladstone said, " We shall never 
 agree about novels." The young lady then 
 said that she would recognise Maggie Tulliver 
 if she spoke to her, but that she would not 
 recognise one of Scott's heroines. Scott's 
 queens seemed to her, like a child's notions 
 of a queen, and to have nothing distinctive. 
 " What, does he make no difference between 
 Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth?" he 
 asked indignantly. She inquired what mod- 
 ern novels he admired. He replied by call- 
 ing Mr. Baring Gould's Mahalah a very 
 powerful novel; but he seemed to think 
 that novels are now too much the rage. He 
 spoke of the late Lord de Tabley as having 
 
 47 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 written good poetry which is not read, and 
 bad novels which are read. 
 
 We went on to discuss the general ques- 
 tion of how far Scott's heroes and heroines 
 are lifelike. It seemed to me that this ques- 
 tion could be illustrated by referring to the 
 more extreme case of epic and tragic heroes. 
 For example, the Homeric ^neas, after 
 challenging Achilles, inflicted on him a 
 somewhat irrelevant versified discourse; and 
 (stranger still) the great Achilles, although 
 in a hurry to kill as many Trojans as pos- 
 sible, listened patiently to his enemy's tedi- 
 ous harangue, instead of vanquishing him at 
 once. So, likewise, Shakespeare represents 
 Prince Arthur, after taking his fatal leap 
 from the Tower, as breathing out his soul 
 in a rhyming couplet. In view of such in- 
 stances of untimely versification, one was 
 tempted jocularly to say that the heroes of 
 poetry combined the eccentricities of mos- 
 quitoes and of swans : they sing before they 
 'molest, and they sing before they die ! Seri- 
 ously, if those inopportunely poetical heroes 
 are called natural and lifelike, what poetical 
 heroes can be called unnatural? Do not 
 these considerations apply literally to the 
 heroes of Scott's poems? and do not similar 
 
 48 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 considerations apply, though of course in a 
 far less degree, to the somewhat rhetorical 
 and tall-talking heroes and heroines of 
 Scott's novels? 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's reply was, in effect, that 
 Scott's writings are in " the grand style." 
 He compared them to the paintings of 
 Raphael and of the Old Masters generally; 
 and he went on to say that the pictures of 
 the Royal Academy recall more exactly the 
 men and women in modern novels and life. 
 He added that you have no right to like a 
 book better because you are in sympathy 
 with it ; on that principle, you would prefer 
 the Royal Academy to the National Gallery. 
 He might have gone a step further. " I 
 know nothing of painting, and detest it," 
 writes Byron, " unless it reminds me of 
 something I have seen or think it possible 
 to see." Probably the great majority of the 
 persons who saunter through picture galleries 
 would, if they had Bryon's candour, avow 
 that they share his sentiments. These for- 
 malists and art-pretenders, while they feel 
 bound (as the phrase is) to ** do " the Na- 
 tional Gallery, really derive more pleasure 
 from the Royal Academy; and, mutatis 
 mutandis^ they correspond to the startlingly 
 4 49 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 large class of readers who prefer novels 
 descriptive of common life to the novels of 
 Scott. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone was evidently not well up 
 in Browning; but he said that it was plain 
 that Browning must be a remarkable man: 
 he had got hold of the reading public; the 
 existence of Browning Societies showed how 
 much trouble people would take to learn 
 the "grammar" of his language. Passing 
 on to Mr. George Meredith, he said that one 
 of his daughters had made him begin Diana 
 of the Crossways ; but he evidently stuck 
 in it. 
 
 He thought that Scott was the greatest 
 delineator of human character next to Homer 
 and Shakespeare. He remarked that in 
 Italy there had been a revival of poetry in 
 Leopardi and others. 
 
 He maintained that there was a want of 
 " harmony " in George Eliot's novels: " she 
 makes such absurd people marry one an- 
 other. Why did Adam Bede marry Dinah ? ' * 
 Is it, one cannot but ask, an objection to a 
 novel that it makes the wrong people marry? 
 If it is, does not the objection apply as much 
 to Kenilworth or The Bride of Lammermoor 
 as to Adam Bede? Surely in all such cases 
 
 50 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 the novehst is simply realistic. He is seek- 
 ing to embody in fiction the Horatian senti- 
 ment which is only too often justified by 
 experience — 
 
 "Sic visum Veneri, cui placet impares 
 Formas atque animos sub juga agnea 
 Sasvo mittere cum joco." ^ 
 
 After talking of American novelists and 
 contrasting them with Scott, Mr. Gladstone 
 said that an American had declared that he 
 did not suppose that there were ten men in 
 Boston equal to Shakespeare. This reminds 
 me that I was once assured by an old Indian 
 judge that he had himself heard a Baboo 
 student ingenuously declare that he had 
 been reading Shakespeare and Milton, and 
 hoped soon to produce a poem which would 
 combine the merits of both ! 
 
 Mr. Gladstone went on to mention some 
 curious ** survivals." In Yorkshire are two 
 places, Boston and Appleton, called by 
 people on the other side of a ridge Bosby 
 and Appleby. In the same neighbourhood 
 the same family was called indiscriminately 
 ** — ton" and*' — by." He regarded this as 
 
 * " Thus it hath seemed good to Venus, who loveth with 
 cruel jest unequally to yoke together forms and minds un- 
 meet." 
 
 51 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 a survival of an old state of things. He 
 spoke of an odd tenure in land in the High- 
 lands, the land not being held in common, 
 but divided periodically, he thought annu- 
 ally. 
 
 Referring to a report in the newspapers 
 that the Comte de Paris acquiesced in the 
 Republic, he said he was glad of it. A 
 few years ago especially, when there were 
 so many claimants to the French throne, 
 the conduct of those claimants was ** not 
 mischievous merely, but ridiculous." He 
 thought that the Franco-German War was 
 almost entirely the act of the Emperor. 
 The heads of departments had been asked 
 about the general feeling in their own dis- 
 tricts, and had in almost each instance an- 
 swered that it was unfavourable to war; and 
 even in the exceptional instances the feeling 
 for war was described as lukewarm. One of 
 the guests rejoined that he himself had been 
 in Paris when the war was declared, and that 
 then the feeling for it seemed to be very 
 strong. Mr. Gladstone replied that Paris 
 no doubt was more warlike than the prov- 
 inces, but that it was very easy for the Gov- 
 ernment to excite a seeming enthusiasm. 
 He referred to a caricature which appeared 
 
 52 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 at the time, and which represented the 
 words " Ferme jusqu* a la prise de Berlin " 
 as written over the shop of a cobbler who 
 had opposed the war. I asked about plM- 
 scites. He replied: ** The plMscite was a 
 mere imposture, an enemy to liberty. No 
 alternative to the Empire was proposed; so 
 that those who voted for the Empire were 
 choosing between it and anarchy." 
 
 I asked about the unpopularity of the 
 Emperor Frederick and the Empress. He 
 said that she tried too ostentatiously to 
 Anglicise Germany; and that Frederick, 
 during his three months, had not time to 
 accustom the Germans to a complete change 
 of policy. Mr. Gladstone knew from ex- 
 perience how little can be done in three 
 months. He added that the Germans have 
 had no history of their own for a long time, 
 and this makes them extra-sensitive about 
 foreign innovations. Might not this argu- 
 ment of his be turned the other way? Would 
 not a nation with a satisfactory history have 
 at least as good a cause to complain of im- 
 ported institutions? 
 
 I spoke of the unexpectedly friendly atti- 
 tude which had recently been adopted by 
 the young Emperor towards England. Mr. 
 
 S3 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 Gladstone seemed not over confident about 
 this. I asked about the fall of Bismarck. 
 
 Gladstone. — ** According to English no- 
 tions, Bismarck was clearly wrong; he in- 
 sisted on his subordinates not communicating 
 with the Emperor, except through him." 
 
 Tollemache. — " Would it make much dif- 
 ference in England if this were done? " 
 
 G. — " Immense; but I find it difficult to 
 give the reason. The working of the English 
 Cabinet can hardly be understood ab extra. 
 It grew by degrees, and its history is unre- 
 corded. The best account of it is in Morley's 
 monograph on Sir Robert Walpole. " 
 
 He explained that he did not mean that 
 the subordinate Ministers could appeal to 
 the Crown against the Prime Minister. If 
 they differed from him, of course they would 
 have to resign; but, in the ordinary dis- 
 charge of their official duties, they could not 
 be expected to submit all despatches to him. 
 He said that in the Life of the Prince Consort 
 a great exception is recorded. He thought 
 that this occurred in 185 1. Lord John Rus- 
 sell, then Prime Minister, insisted on seeing 
 Lord Palmerston's despatches. Mr. Glad- 
 stone regretted that he had never cross-ques- 
 tioned Lord John about this. Lord John 
 
 54 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 was well up in constitutional law and cus- 
 tom ; and Mr. Gladstone supposed that he 
 meant his conduct to be regarded as entirely- 
 exceptional and pro re nata. I asked him 
 what he thought of Lord Palmerston as a 
 speaker. 
 
 G, — ** He had a happy faculty of making 
 his words exactly fit his meaning. This 
 does not sound a very uncommon thing; 
 but it really is so. People are apt to say 
 more than they mean. Parnell is another 
 striking instance of the same guardedness 
 of expression." 
 
 T, — ** My father was much struck by the 
 speaking of Mr. Lowe." 
 
 G. — " In 1866 Lowe was quite at the top 
 of the tree." 
 
 January 2nd, 1892. — Mr. and Mrs. Glad- 
 stone dined with us. 
 
 I said the old grace, Benedictus benedicat, 
 and added that Charles Austin used always 
 to say it. Mr, Gladstone remarked that it 
 was adopted in the Nonconformist College 
 at Oxford. He expressed great satisfaction 
 at there being such a College, or rather two 
 such; and he wished there was a Roman 
 Catholic one. He said that Newman and 
 
 55 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 the more liberal Catholics wished for 
 one. 
 
 He regarded the reputed Editor of the 
 Spectator (Mr. Hutton) as being, at least 
 since Matthew Arnold's death, the first of 
 our critics. Since his own policy had been 
 each week attacked in the Spectator, he had 
 left off taking it in. He said that this was 
 due to his great regard for the Editor: " I 
 found that reading those weekly attacks 
 tended, to use a vulgar term, to establish a 
 raw. 
 
 I told the story that Matthew Arnold, 
 when asked what he thought of Robert Els- 
 mere J replied, ** No Arnold could ever write 
 a novel. Otherwise / should have written 
 one!" 
 
 G. — ** I have been told that Arnold did 
 not consider that Robert Elsmere went far 
 enough." 
 
 T. — " Arnold's theology, I should say, 
 was more negative than Robert Elsmere's. 
 But he clung to the Church as the symbol 
 of his spiritual life ; he was less of a Theist, 
 but more of a Christian. He was a Neo- 
 Christian, or rather a Neo-Anglican.'* 
 
 G. — " I understand that Matthew Arnold 
 considered himself so far an Anglican so to 
 
 56 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 take part in the discussions in Sion Col- 
 lege." 
 
 T. — " I know that he used to take the 
 Sacrament." 
 
 Being asked what he thought of Lord 
 Rosebery's Life of Pitt, he said that he 
 agreed with the first part of that work, but 
 not with the second. He considered him- 
 self a Pittite in regard to the first part of 
 Pitt's career, but a Foxite in regard to the 
 second part. 
 
 I expressed some surprise at Lord Hol- 
 land's having protested against Napoleon's 
 being sent to St. Helena. 
 
 G. — " I believe that Napoleon narrowly- 
 escaped being shot, and I understand that 
 Wellington was in favour of his execution- 
 But I am glad that his life was spared." 
 
 T. — ** I believe that this was also the wish 
 of Bliicher. How was it that, if the two 
 generals were thus agreed. Napoleon es- 
 caped? " 
 
 G. — " The Emperor of Austria was nat- 
 urally opposed to the execution of his own 
 son-in-law; and I believe that, in spite of 
 all that Russia had suffered, the Czar was 
 of the same mind." 
 
 T. — ** Charles Austin would not have 
 57 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 minded if Napoleon had been shot after 
 Waterloo. The bloodshed after the return 
 from Elba was more due to Napoleon than 
 to Ney or Laboudoyere.'* 
 
 G. — ** I amx not defending the execution 
 of Ney. At the same time, I think that 
 much might have been urged in favour 
 of Austin's view. But the evils of the 
 French Revolution, and even of the First 
 Empire, should in great part be laid to 
 the account of Louis XIV. and XV., and 
 even of Richelieu. These destroyed the 
 sense of duty and of public spirit among 
 Frenchmen. The Terrorists were merely 
 the funguses which sprung up in the cor- 
 rupt soil.'* 
 
 In regard to this reasoning I am tempted 
 to object that, if it may be pleaded in excuse 
 for Robespierre and Napoleon that their 
 misdemeanours were in some sort the out- 
 come of previous conditions, may not the 
 same plea be urged on behalf of Richelieu 
 and the Bourbons? In fact, the shield of 
 Philosophical Necessity should be cast over 
 everyone, or over no one. Especially should 
 we bear in mind that the tyrannical acts of 
 rulers bear some sort of relation to the 
 passivity of the masses. The guilt of Pha- 
 
 58 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 laris, when he roasted shipwrecked mariners 
 alive in his sonorous bull, was to some degree 
 shared by his subjects, who tolerated, if they 
 did not enjoy, the pastime of the vjuros 
 aviAvoGv, of the hideous melody of murder. 
 A less extreme example of the solidarity 
 that subsists between rulers and ruled is well 
 indicated by Cassius in Julius Ccesar — 
 
 " And why should Caesar be a tyrant then ? 
 Poor man ! I know he would not be a wolf, 
 But that he sees the Romans are but sheep : 
 He were no lion, were not the Romans hinds." 
 
 G. — " Napoleon at St. Helena used to 
 protest against being compared with Crom- 
 well ; he used to say that he had not cut off 
 his king's head, but had merely appeared 
 as the Saviour of Society. Well, it was the 
 Allied Powers, and especially the English, 
 who, by making war on the French, frus- 
 trated every attempt of the Republic to set 
 up a durable Government. And in the 
 meantime the English labourer was impover- 
 ished. In 1 812 he was ten times worse off 
 than he now is. He received only half his 
 present wages, and he had to pay five times 
 as much for bread. At one time corn rose 
 to 21S. a bushel; while now, or at least dur- 
 
 59 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 ing the past few years, and until quite lately, 
 he had only to pay 4s. a bushel." 
 
 Mr. Gladstone urged me to read the 
 Memoirs of Marbot, who had unusual oppor- 
 tunities of seeing Napoleon at close quarters. 
 He admitted, indeed, that Marbot some- 
 times drew the long-bow, as when he de- 
 scribed himself as more than a match for 
 three Englishmen. I compared this with 
 the complete victory won by three French- 
 men over three Englishmen in Les trots 
 Moiisquetaires. Mr. Gladstone more appro- 
 priately contrasted it with the assertion in 
 Henry F., that one Englishman is a match 
 for three Frenchmen. Charles Kean had 
 told him that, before Magenta and Solferino, 
 the gallery always clapped this passage. 
 After those French victories the clapping 
 ceased. Mr. Gladstone quoted this as speak- 
 ing well for the good sense and fairness of 
 the English people. 
 
 Is there anything to be urged on the oppo- 
 site side of the question? At any rate, I 
 am tempted to supplement Mr. Gladstone's 
 view by quoting, for what it is worth, an 
 extract from one of Chesterfield's Letters: 
 ** That silly, sanguine notion, which is firmly 
 entertained here, that one Englishman can 
 
 60 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 beat three Frenchmen, encourages, and has 
 sometimes enabled,one Englishman in reality 
 
 to beat two." 
 
 The conversation passed on to English 
 politics and lawyers. 
 
 J, " My uncle, Lord Mount Temple, used 
 
 to tell me that lawyers generally fail in Parlia- 
 ment. Was not Cockburn an exception? " 
 
 G,— ' Cockburn 's reputation in Parlia- 
 ment was founded on a single speech, in 
 defence of Lord Palmerston. Take the case 
 of another great lawyer. Sir George Jessel 
 discussed legal questions with beautiful clear- 
 ness, but became a mere partizan when dis- 
 cussing politics." 
 
 7; *♦ Lord Lansdowne once told Charles 
 
 Austin that he thought Bright, as an orator, 
 fully equal to Charles Fox." This seemed 
 to surprise Mr. Gladstone. I referred to 
 Sheridan's" Begum Speech " as having been 
 
 ill reported. 
 
 Q^ ♦* The speeches in Parliament are ill 
 
 reported even now. Questions asked before 
 debate are accurately given ; but, as for the 
 rest, I can only apply to the reports what 
 Kingsley said to the friend who consulted 
 him about his poems, ' They are not good, 
 but bad. ' This is creditable to the reporters 
 
 61 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 as men." He apparently meant that the 
 reporters thus show that they take a human 
 interest in what they hear and write. 
 
 G. — " The very same reporters would do 
 their work much better in the country. It 
 takes me twice as long to correct a speech 
 in Parliament as to correct one of equal 
 length in the country." He even com- 
 plained of the accuracy of the reports of 
 speeches in the Times; but other M.P. *s 
 have spoken to me far more favourably of 
 these reports in the Times. They think 
 that Mr. Gladstone's difficulty in getting 
 his speeches well reported, arose from the 
 fact that at this time of his life he had, 
 except when strongly excited, lost somewhat 
 of his clear articulation. 
 
 G. — " Canning's speeches, as published in 
 their collected form, are very different from 
 what they were as originally reported." 
 
 I asked him if he had heard Canning's 
 famous speech which was delivered in 1826, 
 when the independence of the Spanish Colo- 
 nies in the West was acknowledged by Great 
 Britain, and which contained the exultant 
 phrase, " I called the New World into ex- 
 istence to redress the balance of the Old." 
 
 G, — ** No. I did not hear that speech; 
 62 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 but I heard two earlier ones. One was at 
 Liverpool in 1822. It was called the * Red 
 Lion ' speech. In this speech Canning satir- 
 ised those who made reform a panacea, by 
 comparing them to the painter who could 
 paint nothing but red lions. In boudoirs 
 small red lions were painted, in drawing- 
 rooms bigger ones. Personally, I feel some 
 sympathy with the people thus satirised. 
 Another speech of Canning which I heard, 
 contained a prediction of the future great- 
 ness of Lord John Russell ; it was (in effect): 
 * I doubt not that the noble lord will become 
 great, and that his principles will triumph ; 
 but, for myself, I am proud to be on the 
 losing side.' " 
 
 I quoted Victrix causa dels placuit, sed 
 victa Catoni, and might more appropriately 
 have quoted the exclamation of Brutus after 
 the battle of Philippi — 
 
 " I shall have glory by this losing day. 
 More than Octavius and Mark Antony 
 By this vile conquest shall attain unto."^ 
 
 ^ I am sorry that I did not repeat, in this relation, the 
 lines from Addison's Cato, which Mr. Gladstone's hero, 
 Sir Walter Scott, when taking up ineffectual arms against 
 a sea of troubles, manfully applied to himself — 
 " 'Tis not in mortals to command success, 
 But we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it." 
 
 63 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 Mr. Gladstone spoke of Bethel and New- 
 man as the two most subtle masters of Eng- 
 lish prose of our time. He said that, in 
 the affair of Sir John Bowring, the Govern- 
 ment consulted its law officers as to Sir 
 John's conduct towards China. Wortley, 
 the Solicitor-General, seemed to think the 
 case doubtful; but Bethel declared that Sir 
 John had not a leg to stand upon. After- 
 wards he was called upon in Parliament to 
 defend the Government, and so acute an 
 observer as Sir Erskine May expressed an 
 opinion that he had made out a strong case. 
 
 I remarked that the view taken of Lord 
 Lyndhurst by Miss Martineau and Walter 
 Bagehot was anything but flattering; and I 
 mentioned the incident which was afterwards 
 recorded in my article called ** Lord Tolle- 
 mache and his Anecdotes." ** Charles Aus- 
 tin related a fact illustrative of the bitter 
 indignation which prevailed among the 
 Whigs when Copley, like another Strafford, 
 suddenly * ratted ' and turned Tory. So 
 extreme was this resentment that Denman 
 told his servant that, if his old friend called, 
 he was not to be admitted. In spite of the 
 servant, the future Lord Lyndhurst made 
 his way to the door of Denman's chambers, 
 
 64 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 and shouted from outside, * Let me at least 
 beg that, if you are asked about my change 
 of opinions, you will say that it was honest.' 
 * If I am asked about your change of opin- 
 ions,' was the reply from within, * I will say 
 that you say it was honest. ' " ^ 
 
 Mr. Gladstone cautiously replied that Lord 
 Lyndhurst was something of a statesman, 
 and that he understood that his legal deci- 
 sions carried weight. 
 
 T.— ' My father told me that he had 
 heard Peel speak with high praise of what 
 he termed Cobden's * unadorned elo- 
 quence. ' ^ I only once heard Cobden speak, 
 and he seemed to me then to be very want- 
 ing in fluency; he could not hit upon the 
 right word. But this was shortly before he 
 died ; and my father afterwards told me that 
 he had never before known him to be so 
 unsuccessful." 
 
 G, — ** I never knew Cobden pause for a 
 
 ^Fortnightly Review, July 1892, p. 74. 
 
 ' The classical reader will be reminded of the praise 
 bestowed by Cicero on Caesar's eloquence, which he de- 
 scribes as bare of all ornament, like an undraped human 
 figure {tanquam veste detractd). I am tempted to quote 
 in this place the actual words employed by Peel about 
 Cobden's eloquence : " It is the more to be admired be- 
 cause it is unaffected and unadorned." 
 5 65 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 word ; it must have been most exceptional. 
 But he was wanting in quickness of percep- 
 tion. I remember his making a speech 
 shortly before the Repeal of the Corn Laws ; 
 and on that occasion Peel, who seldom be- 
 stowed high praise, muttered, * This is ad- 
 mirable.' But in this very speech Cobden 
 went on to make use of a very unfortunate 
 illustration: * My honourable friend, the 
 member for Rochdale, manufactures long 
 yarns at a low price ! ' " 
 
 We talked about Bright ; and I mentioned 
 that I had heard his very fine speech at the 
 dinner given to Mr. Garrison after the conclu- 
 sion of the American Civil War. Mr. Glad- 
 stone rejoined that Bright approved of the 
 American War, and seemingly of that war 
 only. Bright had seen that, although the 
 Northern States were not in the first instance 
 consciously fighting against slavery, the 
 practical result of the war would be to abol- 
 ish slavery; and he had seen this when 
 hardly anyone else did. 
 
 T, — ** Do you suppose that the condition 
 of the slaves was as bad as might be gath- 
 ered from Uncle Tom' s Cabin f ' ' 
 
 G. — ** So far as physical suffering is con- 
 cerned, I think the picture is too darkly 
 
 66 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 coloured, Mrs. Beecher Stowe has com- 
 bined all the worst details which were re- 
 ported in various quarters. I will not say 
 that she was morally to blame for this ex- 
 aggeration; it was probably necessary for 
 artistic effect. But I hold the great evil of 
 slavery to have been, not physical suffering, 
 but moral debasement. It degrades God's 
 human creatures below the hmnaji level, ** He 
 also spoke of the bad effect on the masters, 
 who were sinking lower and lower. I men- 
 tioned Chief Justice Shea, U.S.A., as having 
 told me that the negroes are now becoming 
 more and more helpless. Mr. Gladstone, 
 after earnestly recapitulating the chief evils 
 of slavery, such as the separation of families, 
 etc., said that there was no doubt that it 
 furnished some beautiful examples of faith- 
 ful devotion. He confirmed the Chief Jus- 
 tice's opinion as to the present condition of 
 the negroes, by the example of San Do- 
 mingo, where they are reported (he believed 
 on good authority) to be sinking into brutal 
 idolatry, and even cannibalism. He said 
 that evidence bearing in the same direction 
 had been given him by a coloured President 
 of the Liberian Republic. I reminded him 
 that, twenty-eight years before, he had told 
 
 67 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 me of some coloured man who had struck 
 him, not merely by his intelligence, but also 
 by his refined manners. He replied that 
 this was probably the very man. He then 
 suddenly looked startled, and exclaimed, 
 " A formidable memory! " He went on to 
 ask whether it was ** a naturally strong 
 memory which had been hardened and stimu- 
 lated by practice.*' I compared it to a 
 strong current which is made stronger by 
 being forced to run in a narrow channel. 
 My eyesight, I explained, limits the range 
 of my reading, and cuts me off from the 
 newspapers, and from many sources of ob- 
 servation. Thus my memory is concen- 
 trated upon a few subjects. 
 
 G. — ** Archbishop Benson remarked to me 
 in conversation, that most men's memories 
 are much impaired by the daily practice of 
 reading the newspapers, and of skimming 
 over a variety of unconnected subjects." 
 
 I asked him whether it was true that he 
 ascribed his own good health to the practice 
 of masticating his food twenty times. He 
 said that, when his children were young, he 
 told them that, when eating, they should 
 think of four bars of common time written 
 in quavers; by which, as he explained to 
 
 68 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 liiy unmusical ear, he meant that they were 
 to bite each mouthful thirty-two times ; but 
 he looked upon this as a counsel of perfec- 
 tion. He ate very slowly. I was surprised 
 by this, as he talked so much. Montaigne, 
 who never reached old age, had to increase 
 mastication when he had passed middle life, 
 and found it a bar to talking. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone added that he had other 
 rules for the preservation of health. He 
 felt the importance of Sunday rest. I asked, 
 Did he get rest in listening to long sermons? 
 He interrupted, "They are not often long 
 now; but I do not like to hear more than 
 one sermon which makes me think." He 
 also found that a change of subjects was 
 rest. He had acquired the power of keep- 
 ing his mind off politics after he was in bed. 
 When Bright was ill, he mentioned this to 
 him. Bright rejoined, " This is just when 
 I think of my speeches." He said that 
 Bright's imprudence about health had been 
 "abominable!" He thought that men of 
 active minds and of a certain age would do 
 well to consult some first-rate London doctor 
 by way of taking preventive measures: " I 
 do not say any doctor in particular; but let 
 it be a first-rate one." I cross-questioned 
 
 69 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 him further about Bright. He told me that 
 Andrew Clarke, when Bright went to con- 
 sult him, asked, ** To what do I owe the 
 honour of seeing you?" Bright answered, 
 " Mr. Gladstone made me come. He would 
 give me no peace." After consulting An- 
 drew Clarke, he had no more of his nervous 
 attacks. Mr. Gladstone added that he him- 
 self, under orders, had given up bitter beer, 
 which he called a "divine drink" (deiov 
 Ttorov). 
 
 I asked about Dizzy, and quoted this 
 phrase, once used by him about the Liberal 
 leaders when their Government had been 
 beaten : '* I see before me a range of extinct 
 volcanoes." ^ 
 
 G. — " Dizzy did not show at his best dur- 
 ing the last twenty years of his life. But he 
 
 * I reported this incident to Mr. Gladstone as it had been 
 told to me by a living statesman, who, I understood, had 
 been present. Hayward gives a different account of it. 
 He quotes the following extract from a speech delivered 
 by Disraeli at Manchester : " As I sat opposite the Treas- 
 ury bench, the Ministers reminded me of one of those 
 marine landscapes not very unusual on the coasts of South 
 America. You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. 
 Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest. But the situa- 
 tion is still dangerous. There are occasional earthquakes, 
 and ever and anon the dark rumbling of the sea." Can 
 Dizzy have used this metaphor twice ? 
 
 70 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 showed great ability when attacking Peel. 
 Mind, I am not weighing his sayings in the 
 moral scales; but they certainly showed 
 great ability." 
 
 T, — ** I understand that Shell spoke of 
 the falling off of Disraeli's eloquence after 
 Feel's deaths and compared him to a dissect- 
 ing surgeon without a corpse." 
 
 G, — " I will give one or two examples of 
 his witty attacks on Peel. Speaking of the 
 Maynooth Grant, he said of Peel : * To what 
 end is it that he thus convulses the country,^ 
 That the Maynooth students may lie two in 
 a bed instead of lying three in a bed.'^ I 
 will not deny that Maynooth was pauperised. 
 But I will pass on to another example: Dis- 
 raeli charged Peel with tracing the steam- 
 engine back to the tea-kettle ! " 
 
 I suppose that by this illustration Dizzy 
 meant that Peel was too much in the habit 
 of discussing political questions on first 
 principles. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone went on to express surprise 
 that the steam-engine was so long in being 
 
 ' Can Dizzy, when he used this metaphor, have been 
 thinking of the son of the Vicar of Wakefield, who, being 
 fain to embark on a tutorial career, was advertised of 
 divers inconveniences of usherdom ? " ' Can you lie three 
 in a bed ? ' ' No ! ' ' Then you won't do for a school.' " 
 
 71 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 invented. I found that he did not know 
 that there was a toy steam-engine in the 
 Alexandrine Museum. He asked its date. 
 I looked the question up, and afterwards 
 informed him that Hero of Alexandria, in 
 his Pneumatica (B.C. 130), says that he in- 
 vented a steam apparatus for opening and 
 shutting the great doors of a temple, and a 
 toy globe which revolved by reaction from 
 escaping steam. 
 
 He wanted to ask mxe about Butler, but 
 remarked, with a smile, " I fear that the time 
 is short, as the question comprises the whole 
 of conduct. I don't wish to speak disre- 
 spectfully of a great critic ; but, when Mat- 
 thew Arnold speaks of conduct as comprising 
 75 per cent, of life, he seems to me to have 
 spoken sheer nonsense." 
 
 T. — " Surely he did not intend it to be 
 taken quite seriously." 
 
 G. — " Probably not; but, if he had not 
 meant something, he would hardly have 
 said it." 
 
 T. — '* Do you mean that, in assigning 
 three-quarters of life to conduct, he assigned 
 too much or too little? " 
 
 G. — " Too little. Conduct comprises the 
 whole of life." 
 
 72 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 7". — " He divides the other quarter of life 
 between Science and Art. Surely, there- 
 fore, when speaking of conduct, he uses the 
 word in a technical sense as equivalent to 
 moral conduct ; he is referring to le Men as 
 opposed to le beau and le vrai. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone said that this was probably 
 so; but he did not seem satisfied. He com- 
 plained of my having spoken in Stones of 
 Stumbling of Nature as being neither moral 
 nor immoral, but " outside morality"; and 
 asked how I applied this to the formation of 
 good and bad habits. I said that the nat- 
 ural capacity of forming good habits, and 
 the advantage resulting from their formation, 
 may have been what Matthew Arnold had 
 in view when he defined God as ** the Eter- 
 nal, not ourselves, that makes for righteous- 
 ness." Mr. Gladstone seemed to dissent 
 from that definition. Returning to the ob- 
 jection which he had made to my statement, 
 that Nature is non-moral, I quoted Horace's 
 well-known lines to the effect that piety 
 grants no delay to wrinkles and old age. I 
 insisted that, in regard to such visitations as 
 earthquakes, and indeed to all agencies lying 
 beyond human control. Nature is callously 
 impartial in her treatment of good and bad 
 
 73 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 men. The readers of the Record are, on an 
 average, a more pious and praying class than 
 the readers of the Times; and yet, after 
 carefully studying the advertisements in 
 these two journals, Mr. Francis Galton has 
 discovered that the proportion of still births 
 to ordinary births announced in the two jour- 
 nals is exactly the same ; which is the more 
 noteworthy as expectant mothers, in pro- 
 portion as they are religious, are wont to 
 be especially diligent in praying that their 
 offspring may live. Mr. Gladstone's answer 
 to me was on this wise: " Notwithstanding 
 the apparently irregular distribution of tem- 
 poral goods in this world, it is, I suppose, 
 undeniable that godliness hath the promise 
 of the life that now is, so far at least that 
 good men, on the whole, have a happier lot 
 than bad ones. If, in reply, we say that 
 there are unexplained and grievous inequal- 
 ities notwithstanding, may not the rejoinder 
 be: (i) Philosophically, that it is unreason- 
 able to suppose that the entire scheme 
 of God's government would be within the 
 comprehension of beings such as the 
 generality of men, or even of the most 
 considerable; (2) morally, in the words of 
 Dante — 
 
 74 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 ' Or tu chi sei, che vuoi sedere a scranna, 
 Per giudica da lungi mille miglia 
 Con la veduta corta d'una spanna ? ' 
 
 There is a very startling passage quoted by 
 Southey from John Wesley, in his Life, 
 where Wesley predicts that his followers, 
 converted from vice and ignorance to be 
 sober and regular in life, will infallibly be- 
 come well-to-do, and will thereby fall into a 
 new set of dangers and temptations. Were 
 any man able humbly and intelligently to 
 say that he had been treated worse than he 
 deserved, this might be supposed to set up 
 a case for him. But I am not such a man, 
 having been treated, not worse, but far bet- 
 ter ; so that I cannot travel by his road, even 
 supposing it to be passable. The general 
 experience of mankind seems to offer a firmer 
 basis for indubitable argument than a com- 
 parison of the advertisements in the Record 
 or the Times. And, as regards the nee pietas 
 moranty surely it is undeniable that what we 
 call the virtuous man most commonly lives 
 longer than those of opposite character." 
 
 In this and other discussions with my re- 
 vered friend, I was naturally often the victim, 
 not exactly of an argumentum ad verecun- 
 diaMy but of a silentium ob verecundiam. But 
 
 75 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 naturally, also, my dim religious awe of him 
 has abated with time; and I will therefore 
 comment on one portion of what I cannot 
 but regard as his inconclusive reasoning. In 
 what sense can a man be treated by Provi- 
 dence "worse'* or "better" than he de- 
 serves? The needs of society compel us to 
 annex suffering, not to all sins, but to 
 crimes, as a punishment, or rather as a de- 
 terrent ; but, apart from social needs, sin and 
 suffering are incommensurable quantities. 
 Is it not, therefore, as unmeaning to talk 
 of an absolute relation between so much sin 
 and so much suffering, or between so much 
 virtue and so much happiness, as to talk of 
 the distance between the 1st of January and 
 Westminster Bridge? 
 
 Present politics, it will be seen, have been 
 hitherto barely touched upon. But, as Mr. 
 Gladstone without present politics seems 
 like the play without the part of Hamlet, I 
 will here add that he afterwards expressed 
 his conviction to one of my guests that at no 
 distant time, not only will Home Rule in 
 Ireland have been carried, but people will 
 have a difificulty in understanding the state 
 of mind which postponed the carrying of it 
 so long. 
 
 76 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 I asked Mr. Gladstone again about Mar- 
 bot's Memoirs ; and we fell to talking of the 
 first Napoleon, for whom he entertained a 
 quasi-admiration which took me by surprise. 
 An Epicurean God, if he had deigned to 
 bestow a thought on the inhabitants of our 
 planet, would doubtless have regarded Napo- 
 leon as the Goliath of Lilliput, as the biggest 
 ant in the ant-hill, and, in a word, as some- 
 what less insignificant and contemptible than 
 his fellows. Such sages as Bacon and Goethe 
 would have shared this view to the extent 
 of thinking that, in our estimate of human 
 achievements generally, as in our estimate 
 of architecture, mere bulk must count for 
 something. But a saint or a stern moralist 
 would naturally have looked upon the great 
 conqueror as a murderer on a huge scale, 
 who ought to have been executed when con- 
 victed of his first crime. It was, therefore, 
 very interesting to me to observe that Mr. 
 Gladstone seemed to feel — what nearly all 
 men of imagination sometimes feel — an odd 
 sort of sympathy even with such greatness 
 as Napoleon's : with greatness divorced from 
 goodness, with force which not merely makes 
 history exciting {ut pueris placeas) but also 
 stirs up the stagnant pools of civilisation. 
 
 77 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 I quoted to Mr. Gladstone the exclamation 
 reported by Wellington as having been ut- 
 tered by Talleyrand when someone, on hear- 
 ing of Napoleon's death, called out, *' Quel 
 ^venement!" " Ce n'est plus un ^vene- 
 ment," replied the master of epigram; " Ce 
 n'est qu'une nouvelle. " Mr. Gladstone did 
 not like this saying, which he criticised as 
 follows: — -** Your anecdote about Talleyrand 
 is singularly illustrative of the man, and of 
 the blinding power of a cynical habit of mind. 
 See how this nouvelle struck Manzoni, who 
 thus describes the blank left in the world by 
 the departure of that Giant : — 
 
 *Ei f u ; Siccome immobile, 
 Dato il mortal sospiro, 
 Stette la spoglia immemore 
 Orba di tanto spiro, 
 Cosi percossa, attonita^ 
 La terra al nunzio sta ; 
 Muta pensando all' ultima 
 Ora deir uom fatale, 
 N6 sa quando una simile 
 Orma di pi^ mortale 
 La sua cruenta polvere 
 A calpestar verrS..* 
 
 This is the noble beginning of Manzoni*s 
 noble ode called the Cinque Maggio.*' ^ 
 
 ^ This ode was translated by Mr. Gladstone. 
 
 78 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 This ode of Manzoni on the death of 
 Napoleon Mr. Gladstone pronounced to be 
 the best thing that was written on the sub- 
 ject. He thought Byron's ode a failure; 
 and, on my demurring, he said it was cer- 
 tainly not equal to Manzoni's. Goethe had 
 paid Manzoni the compliment of translating 
 the ode into German; but the translation 
 was not equal to the original. At this point 
 I cannot forbear asking: Was Talleyrand's 
 exclamation really cynical? In saying that 
 Napoleon's death, occurring when it did, 
 was merely une nouvelle^ he was speaking the 
 exact truth. Was it ungenerous of him to 
 give utterance to that truth? Or should we 
 not rather say that he was pointing the 
 finger, not at Napoleon in exile, but at 
 the contrast between Napoleon in exile and 
 Napoleon in power, and at the caprice of 
 Fortune by which the bewildering change 
 had been brought about? In fact, he was 
 laying stress on the tragic pathos of the 
 great Emperor's career, and indirectly at 
 the fragility of human greatness {Insigncm 
 attenuat Deus). So that, when he thus 
 contemplated 
 
 *'The Desolator desolate, 
 The Victor overthrown," 
 
 79 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 or, if you will, Finein animce quce res humanas 
 miscuit oliniy he was only expressing, in re= 
 gard to Napoleon, the sentiment which 
 Juvenal expressed about Hannibal, Johnson 
 about Charles XII., and Scott about Rich- 
 ard I. — 
 
 "He left a name at which the world grew pale, 
 To point a moral or adorn a tale." 
 
 January 2nd, 1893. — The Gladstones dined 
 with us. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone never saw such a grand sea 
 and such sheets of foam as on the shore of 
 Biarritz; and he thought that, if Tennyson 
 had seen it, he would have written about it. 
 
 He is of opinion that Professor Bryce, in 
 his account of the social aspects of America, 
 has not dwelt enough on the influence of 
 wealth. He thinks that the * * era of wealth, ' ' 
 i.e, of colossal fortunes, is setting in ; and he 
 regrets it. He spoke of Mr. A as re- 
 ported to have two and a half millions a 
 year: ** The Duke of Westminster is a pau- 
 per to him! " He expected that in a cen- 
 tury's time the chief landed estates in Eng- 
 land would still be intact. He spoke of one 
 of his own farmers as beginning with a small 
 farm and borrowing money to work it, and 
 
 80 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone. 
 
 as now being able to pay his way. An Essex 
 farmer had sent to Mr. Gladstone jars of jam 
 in token of gratitude. 
 
 I spoke of genius as being often one- 
 sided. 
 
 G. — " No. Talent is; genius is not." 
 
 Seeing that I looked unconvinced, he 
 asked me for an example of lopsided genius. 
 I put the case of Milton. 
 
 G. — " Oh, he is an exception to all 
 rules. He is an enigma — quite inexpli- 
 cable." 
 
 He spoke in extremely strong terms 
 against Milton's ideas of divorce which 
 suited so ill with his Puritanism. He ob- 
 jected to the assertion in Paradise Regained 
 that the Greeks had borrowed everything 
 from the Jews. I remarked that even the 
 greatest men are under the influence of the 
 traditions of their time. 
 
 G. — ** I cannot admit that about Milton. 
 If he had consistently kept to those tradi- 
 tions, I would. But when he broke loose 
 from them completely by writing as he did 
 on divorce, he can no longer be excused on 
 that ground." 
 
 I cited Shelley as a one-sided man of 
 genius; but Mr. Gladstone declined to admit 
 6 8i 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 the validity of this instance, on the ground 
 that Shelley, dying young, never quite 
 ** broke loose from the eggshell." 
 
 I was at the time preparing my article on 
 *' Sir Richard Owen and Old World Memo- 
 ries," which was afterwards published in 
 the National Review {^\x\y 1893). Mr. Glad- 
 stone furnished me with a few reminiscences 
 of Owen, which were inserted in the article 
 by his kind permission. It is enough for my 
 present purpose to mention that he said to 
 me, in reference to Owen, that seldom, if 
 ever, had any man of science left on his mind 
 such an impression of genius— not talent 
 merely, but genius. Darwin had struck 
 him in the same sort of way; but Darwin 
 he had only met once in society. And he 
 went on to explain that on the comparative 
 merits of the two men of science he offered 
 no opinion; but that, so far as his personal 
 observation was concerned, Owen was the 
 one who seemed to him to bear the stamp 
 of genius most unmistakably. 
 
 T. — * * Would you not also say that Huxley 
 is unmistakably a man of genius? " 
 
 G. — " Certainly not. Huxley has talent 
 to any amount, but not genius. One of the 
 younger men of science, Romanes, has struck 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 me a good deal. I should say that he has 
 genius." 
 
 With the greatest possible respect for 
 Romanes, I was certainly startled at finding 
 him (like the Prince Consort in the Albert 
 Memorial) thus exalted over the heads of his 
 fellows. The orthodox tendency of his later 
 years may partly explain his being set above 
 Huxley; but why did his distinguished critic 
 prefer him even to those scientific men who 
 were of the same way of thinking? May not 
 this preference have been in some measure 
 due to the fact that Mr. Gladstone regarded 
 Romanes as, not merely a Christian, but as 
 a proselyte, nay, as a reconverted pervert? 
 In a word, is it not probable that there is 
 joy among Anglicans over one heretic that 
 recanteth more than over ninety and nine 
 orthodox persons who need no recantation? 
 Perhaps, after all, a recanting heretic is 
 especially interesting because he is thought 
 to be not quite safe, — to be, as it were, a 
 hr d^nd pluckable from the burning. 
 
 It may be worth adding in this connexion 
 that I once heard Jowett express a doubt 
 whether Mr. Gladstone himself could prop- 
 erly be called a man of genius. An orator 
 of genius, he said, utters many words and 
 
 83 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 phrases which linger in men's memory, and 
 hardly any word or phrase so lingering has 
 been uttered by Mr. Gladstone. Surely this 
 is too narrow a test. The faculty of phrase- 
 making is no more the touchstone of genius 
 than is many-sidedness of mind in the sig- 
 nification of which Mr. Gladstone would 
 have attached to that term, a signification 
 which somehow recalls the satirical saw, 
 Sapiuntj quia sentmnt 'inecum. 
 
 But, after all, was not Jowett's criticism 
 unjust to Mr. Gladstone in another way? 
 Were all, or nearly all, the orator's charac- 
 teristic sayings writ in water ? Perhaps I 
 am paradoxical ; but I am inclined to think 
 that the very popularity of some of his epi- 
 grammatic sallies may have lessened the 
 permanent credit which he has obtained for 
 them. It may be said of epigrams, as of 
 marriageable daughters, that the cleverer and 
 more pleasing they are, the sooner are they 
 likely to be dissociated from the author of 
 their being. At any rate, the most widely 
 applicable and widely circulated epigrams of 
 a talker or orator, as distinguished from those 
 of a writer, are liable to be thus de-personal- 
 ised. This may account for the fact that so 
 many of Mr. Gladstone's phrases have, to 
 
 84 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 employ the familiar hyperbole, become Iliads 
 without a Homer; or rather they have be- 
 come Iliads with a not universally identified 
 Homer. My meaning may be more or less 
 appropriately illustrated by his phrase, " the 
 sorrowful evidence of indisputable fact " ; by 
 his (variously reported) assertion to the 
 effect that Political Economy has now been 
 relegated to the planet Saturn ; and perhaps, 
 too, by his allegation that a notorious event 
 had brought a needful reform " within the 
 range of present politics." How many per- 
 sons there are who, when they quote these 
 and similar sayings of Mr. Gladstone, have 
 no notion that it was he who uttered them ! 
 The division of the population into the 
 *' classes " and the ** masses " is said to have 
 been popularised, but not originated, by 
 him. Its real author is apparently unknown. 
 So that here we have a wholly de-personal- 
 ised epigram ; it has paid for its popularity 
 by anonymity. Let me add that Mr. Glad- 
 stone's own expression that England is 
 guarded by a ** streak of silver sea " is often 
 fathered on the Shakespearean John of 
 Gaunt. This patriotic exclamation, or, as 
 St. Paul would have said, this " confident 
 boasting" of his, may suggest another re- 
 
 85 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 flection. It is obvious to remark that the 
 watery bulwark which he so highly valued 
 would be, metaphorically as well as literally, 
 undermined by the Channel Tunnel for 
 which, as we shall see presently, he was so 
 eager. Indeed, it must be understood, once 
 for all, that I am not raising the question 
 whether the Gladstonian apothegms to which 
 I have referred were wisely and seasonably 
 uttered. All I insist on is that they are 
 " such stuff" as proverbs are made of; in 
 other words, they have something about 
 them which has brought them into social 
 currency; and they have continued in circu- 
 lation, not because of the famous image and 
 superscription which they originally bore, but 
 even after that image and superscription had 
 been gradually effaced.^ 
 
 Mr. Gladstone said that the Church of 
 England took its form from Henry Vlll., 
 Elizabeth, and Laud. He thought little of 
 Cranmer on account of his moral weakness; 
 and not much of Latimer. He said that 
 
 ' I have lately come across a remarkable passage which 
 gives independent, if somewhat indirect, support to the 
 general view set forth in this paragraph. " A writer," 
 says Johnson, " who obtains his full purpose loses himself 
 in his own lustre. ... Of an art universally practised, 
 the first teacher is forgotten." 
 
 86 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 Latimer, when a Catholic, preached a ser- 
 mon while a man was being roasted on a 
 slow fire. 
 
 G. — * * I have a weakness for Latimer, all 
 the same." 
 
 Thinking this too little praise for Latimer, 
 I gave him (as the phrase goes) " a strange 
 bed-fellow," by saying that I had a weak- 
 ness for Charles I. 
 
 G. — " So have I, although he was unfor- 
 tunately such a liar! " 
 
 I remarked that Shakespeare, if it had 
 been his supreme misfortune to be one of 
 the Stuart kings, might have found no open- 
 ing for his dramatic genius, and might now 
 be remembered only as uniting the faults of 
 Charles I. and Charles II. The indifference 
 with which he refers to Prince John's treat- 
 ment of the rebels in Henry IV. Part IL 
 shows that he had some sympathy with the 
 view that no engagement was binding be- 
 tween a king and rebel subjects. 
 
 G. — '* I quite agree with you; indeed, I 
 will go further. Shakespeare seems to me to 
 have been a worshipper of the Tudor despot- 
 ism. I say this with deep regret. The three 
 great poets of the world would, I think, 
 generally be admitted to be Homer, Dante 
 
 87 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 and Shakespeare ; the Germans would add 
 Goethe. The morality of Dante is always 
 pure and good. Homer, too, seems always 
 to throw our sympathies on the right 
 side." 
 
 I demurred, and mentioned the case of 
 Dolon. 
 
 G. — ** That was a night march, and it was 
 necessary to meet stratagem by stratagem.'* 
 
 T. — ' * Diomed and Ulysses virtually prom- 
 ised Dolon his life, and should have spared 
 him." 
 
 G. — " We must make allowance for the 
 morality of Homer's day, and the little value 
 that was then set on human life." 
 
 To me it seems that the principle that he 
 thus called to his aid is of such wide applica- 
 tion that, if it proves anything, it proves 
 more than he intended. Either men of 
 genius are bound to rise above the moral 
 standard of their age, or they are not. If 
 they are, why excuse Homer? If they are 
 not, why condemn Shakespeare? 
 
 Mr. Gladstone said that Sir Henry Tay- 
 lor, in his Correspondence, spoke of Walter 
 Scott's moral judgments as being sound, but 
 feeble. In explanation of this, Mr. Glad- 
 stone added that, while setting the power of 
 
 88 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 delineating character above any other, he 
 himself thought that it tended to give such 
 ** objectivity " to the view of moral and im- 
 moral conduct as to weaken the sense of sin. 
 He promised to send me the reference to 
 the passage in Taylor's Correspondence ; and, 
 as will be seen further on, he kept his word. 
 In return, I drew his attention to the fol- 
 lowing observations of Ruskin : — 
 
 "It was necessary he [Shakespeare] should lean 
 no way ; that he should contemplate with absolute 
 equality of judgment the life of the court, cloister, 
 and tavern, and be able to sympathise so completely 
 with all creatures as to deprive himself, together 
 with his personal identity, even of his conscience, as 
 he casts himself into their hearts. He must be able 
 to enter into the soul of Falstaff or Shylock with no 
 more sense of contempt or horror than Falstaff or 
 Shylock themselves feel for or in themselves. He 
 must be utterly without anger, utterly without pur- 
 pose ; for if a man has any serious purpose in life, 
 that which runs counter to it, or is foreign to U, will 
 be looked at frowningly or carelessly by him." 
 
 T,—'' Do you not call this passage inter- 
 esting?" 
 
 G,— ' I call it, not interesting merely, but 
 
 wonderful." 
 
 I spoke of Tennyson's admiration for the 
 89 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 passage in Paradise Lost about ** Tammuz/* 
 and for the line — 
 
 " Of Abana and Pharphar, lucid streams." 
 
 In regard to this line, Mr. Gladstone agreed 
 with Tennyson, and he went on to quote 
 with sonorous enthusiasm his favourite line 
 in the Odyssey — 
 
 and spoke of this as specially fine, because 
 the sentiment is expressed by a woman. 
 Clearly, however, the sentiment is not Pen- 
 elope's, but Homer's. Would there not 
 have been more point in Mr. Gladstone's 
 remark if he had agreed with Mr. Samuel 
 Butler in thinking that the Odyssey was 
 written by a woman? 
 
 He never quite forgave Walter Scott for 
 the part he took about Queen Caroline's 
 trial, or for his somewhat servile loyalty to 
 "that creature George IV," Also he re- 
 garded Scott's Toryism as " silly." I asked 
 whether such Toryism was not inevitable in 
 such an admirer of antiquity. In reply, he 
 expressed a wish that modern Conservatives 
 had a greater love of antiquity. Lord Salis- 
 bury had broken too much from old tradi- 
 
 90 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 tions in being at once Prime Minister and 
 Foreign Secretary, and also in making Hux- 
 ley a Privy Councillor. Mr. Gladstone would 
 have preferred some other form of distinction 
 for the great biologist. He was angry with 
 the Conservatives for distributing G.C.B.'s 
 broadcast before leaving office, among men 
 who had no claim to them, and did not ex- 
 pect them. He said that the Liberals were 
 equally wanting in respect for antiquity ; but 
 this was excusable in them — such a defect 
 was their besetting sin. 
 
 I dined with Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone. 
 
 I quoted the Basque proverb, that " the 
 needle, which clothes others, remains naked 
 itself"; and applied it to France, which, 
 while herself subject to Louis Napoleon, 
 gave free institutions to Italy. He approved 
 of the comparison, and went on to speak of 
 the dangers of the Republic. But he re- 
 marked that each form of government since 
 the Revolution had lasted longer than the 
 one before. (He cannot have counted the 
 Republic of 1848.) I said that Charles Aus- 
 tin used to maintain that France had lost 
 her best chance of good government when 
 she got rid of Louis Philippe. Mr. Glad- 
 
 91 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 stone said that he was inclined to judge 
 Louis Philippe severely, as having been 
 narrow-minded. I spoke of his Ministers, 
 and asked whether they were not responsible 
 for the faults of his reign. Mr. Gladstone 
 thought that they had acted under royal 
 pressure, and that if Leopold had been their 
 king the course of French history might 
 have been different. 
 
 I asked him what value he attached to the 
 study and composition of Latin and Greek 
 verses. I told him that Goethe advised 
 everyone to repeat a few stanzas of good 
 poetry daily, and added that I myself re- 
 peated one of Horace's Odes daily. He 
 advised me to set about translating them 
 into English verse. He had done so quite 
 recently. 
 
 A friend of Bagehot's once said of Mr. 
 Gladstone, '* He may be a good Christian, 
 but he is an atrocious pagan." The word 
 "pagan" is here used in a good sense. 
 And, when it was denied that Mr. Gladstone 
 was a good pagan, it was meant that he was 
 not marked, as most Englishmen and phi- 
 losophers of all countries are marked, by 
 that dislike of extremes, and by those self- 
 sufiicing and self-restraining qualities which 
 
 92 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 go to make up the " magnanimous man " 
 portrayed by Aristotle. He was no doubt 
 open to this charge; yet even in him the 
 wholesale pagan ingredient was not quite 
 wanting. His continued study of Horace 
 proves this. To study Horace is to learn 
 nil ad7nirari ; and the prolonged effort of 
 translating him must serve to dilute Chris- 
 tian with pagan modes of feeling. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone found that he could write 
 Latin verses at least as well at sixty as when 
 he was a young man. But he had since 
 given it up. He was in favour of keeping up 
 Latin verses, but was not eager for compul- 
 sory English verses. He spoke of Charles 
 Wesley as having written 120,000 lines of 
 English verse — more than all the great epic 
 poems of the world put together. He said 
 there was a difference of opinion about how 
 much Wesley had written ; but he thought 
 that 4,000 hymns was a low estimate, and 
 each of them he computed at thirty lines on 
 an average. He thought him a much over- 
 rated writer, ** Wrestling Jacob" being the 
 only one he cared for. 
 
 Does ** Wrestling Jacob," I would ask, 
 deserve the praise it so often receives? Does 
 not this versified allegory, even more than 
 
 93 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 the doxology after the Psalms, impress one 
 as a sort of Vandalism, or, at least, as a jar- 
 ring anachronism, by engrafting the highly- 
 developed Catholic theology on one of the 
 very oldest and rudest of Israelitish stocks? 
 I mentioned that it was my habit to repeat 
 Tennyson's " St. Agnes' Eve," and the 
 canto of " In Memoriam ' ' beginning * * O yet 
 we trust," on Sundays. This canto ex- 
 presses my religious aspirations better than 
 anything else. He asked me, evidently with 
 an implied negative (equivalent to the Latin 
 Num) discernible in his voice, whether I 
 thought Tennyson a philosopher. I replied 
 that our aspirations point to the conclusion 
 that all evil may be educative. He hinted 
 at the difificulty involved in the pain suffered 
 by the lower animals, and said that he con- 
 sidered ** the existence of evil inexplicable." 
 I could not help calling to mind the con- 
 siderations commonly adduced to prove the 
 indispensability of evil — considerations to the 
 effect that '* the rays of happiness, like those 
 of light, are colourless when unbroken," 
 and that even the horticulture of Eden would 
 have grown wearisome without the snake. 
 Or perhaps it would be a juster as well as a 
 more pleasing metaphor to say that the 
 
 94 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 world, like the water of Bethesda, has to be 
 troubled in order that its latent virtue may 
 be drawn out. But I felt that every such 
 supposition must, at bottom, rest on the 
 assumption that the Deity is limited in 
 power, and that to Mr. Gladstone's mind 
 the notion of such Divine limitation would 
 be abhorrent. 
 
 I asked him what he thought of Professor 
 Mivart's article in the Nineteenth Century^ 
 called " The Happiness in Hell." 
 
 G. — " If a man begins by being tipsy 
 sometimes, and ends by being dead drunk 
 daily, — if he begins by beating his wife, and 
 ends by killing her, I see no reason to think 
 he will begin to improve as soon as he dies." 
 
 I remarked that Dives is represented as 
 testifying, when in ** torments," a sympathy 
 with his surviving kinsfolk ; but I added that 
 I did not pretend to draw from this expres- 
 sion of sympathy the hopeful conclusion 
 that many Broad Churchmen draw, namely, 
 that he was not in Hell, but in Purgatory. 
 
 G. — " I look upon Dives as a very mild 
 instance. As landlords go, he was above 
 the average ; he did let Lazarus have of his 
 superfluities." 
 
 Mr. Gladstone went on to hint that his 
 95 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 case was not represented as beyond hope. 
 I said that surely the text about the impass- 
 able gulf suggested the idea that Dives' 
 doom was final ; but Mr. Gladstone was not 
 convinced. His last words about it were, 
 " I will give you something to think over — 
 Have time and space any existence outside the 
 hwpnan intelligence ? '' ** Unquestionably, " 
 I replied, " they exist for the animal intelli- 
 gence." He said that he regarded that as 
 the same thing on a small scale. And then 
 came the final "God bless you." 
 
 I had a talk with Mr. Gladstone in which 
 he told me that he wished above all things 
 to keep up righteous indignation. I replied 
 that anyone who studied heredity, and felt 
 how much some people are handicapped in 
 the moral race, can hardly keep up an acute 
 sense of sin ; and on that account I excused 
 the deficiency of that sense in Shakespeare 
 and Scott. He said that he did not see that 
 Shakespeare and Scott were students of 
 heredity, or that Shakespeare, at any rate, 
 seemed at all conscious of the moral diffi- 
 culties connected with it. I could not help 
 thinking that, in speaking thus, he went too 
 far. In Antony and Cleopatra, Lepidus says 
 
 96 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 of Antony's faults that they are " hereditary 
 rather than purchased; what he cannot 
 change, than what he chooses." So, too, 
 Hamlet cites the case of certain men having 
 
 " Some vicious mole of nature in them, 
 As in their birth (wherein they are not guilty, 
 Since nature cannot choose his origin)." 
 
 But it should be observed that, in these 
 passages, Shakespeare seems to limit the 
 plea of heredity to the case of venial faults, 
 and that he fails to realise the full force of 
 the difficulty. On the other hand, Tenny- 
 son felt the difficulty in its widest scope, as 
 is shown in the following passage, which he 
 puts into the mouth of the cultivated villain 
 in " The Promise of May " :— 
 
 " He was only 
 A poor philosopher who called the mind 
 Of children a blank page, a tabula rasa. 
 There, there, is written in invisible ink 
 Lust, Prodigality, Covetousness, Craft, 
 Cowardice, Murder — and the heat and fire 
 Of life will bring them out, and black enough. 
 So the child grew to manhood." 
 
 I reminded Mr. Gladstone of the story 
 that Baxter, seeing a criminal on his way to 
 execution, exclaimed, ** There, but for the 
 7 97 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 grace of God, goes Richard Baxter!" I 
 remarked that I had heard a Hke saying 
 ascribed to Sir Matthew Hale. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone believed that its date was 
 farther back, and that its author was Brad- 
 ford, the martyr under Queen Mary. The 
 saying points to the conclusion that men 
 are to a great extent the creatures of cir- 
 cumstance. Our conversation was thus 
 brought back to the perennial suit in the 
 Court of Morality, which m.ay be designated 
 as the case of Necessity versus Responsi- 
 bility. Mr. Gladstone had once significantly 
 exhorted me to be careful not to blunt my 
 sense of sin ; and I thought that he scarcely 
 understood the process by which the ** smil- 
 ing toleration ' ' commended by Goethe forces 
 itself upon some naturally rigid moralists in 
 their own despite. I was anxious to illus- 
 trate clearly my point of view ; and I there- 
 fore (in biblical phrase) " took up my par- 
 able " as follows: Let us start with the 
 supposition — no matter how extravagant — 
 that a band of Anarchists, incensed against 
 their leading countrymen, revenge them- 
 selves by kidnapping m.any infant sons of 
 bishops, statesmen, and even princes; that 
 the poor children, captured too young to 
 
 98 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 retain any recollection of their home and 
 parentage, are brought up to prefer evil to 
 good ; and that their corruptors, by dexter- 
 ous lying, inoculate them with a rancorous 
 hatred against peaceful, and especially 
 against rich citizens. Let it be also as- 
 sumed that the bereaved parents suppose 
 that their lost ones have been accidentally 
 killed in some manner (as by drowning in 
 the sea), which would account for the dis- 
 appearance of their bodies, and that they 
 are gradually consoled by reflecting that 
 some at least of their other sons bid fair to 
 earn credit and distinction. Let us now skip 
 twenty or thirty years, and imagine that, 
 just when those early promises of credit and 
 distinction are beginning to be realised, some 
 atrocious murders are brought home to 
 youths who look as if Nature had designed 
 them for better things ; and that, as soon as 
 sentence of death has been passed on the 
 offenders, the original kidnappers, from some 
 safe hiding-place, let it be known that those 
 felons of aristocratic mien are the sons of 
 distinguished parents, and are kinsmen — in 
 a few instances, perhaps, twin-brothers — of 
 some of the most rising men in the country. 
 The law would presumably be left to take 
 
 99 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 its course ; but the irresponsible murderers 
 (so to call them) would excite compassion 
 rather than indignation. They would be 
 thought to have sinned, and to be about 
 to suffer, as it were by accident. Nor would 
 compassion be limited to these particular 
 offenders. Presently, what may be called 
 the intellectualising but demoralising ques- 
 tion would begin to be asked: May not 
 many of our worst criminals be men who, 
 but for a caprice of fortune, would have 
 given proof of possessing true hearts and 
 ** hands that the rod of empire might have 
 swayed "? And thus life would come to be 
 regarded as a cruel farce, in which the play- 
 ers act by compulsion, and every player who 
 has to act a villain's part is punished for the 
 villain's crimes. Thus, we seem to be in a 
 vicious circle from which there is no escape. 
 If we acknowledge with Madame de Stael 
 that ** Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardon- 
 ner," we are bound to add " Tout par- 
 donner, c'est ^teindre la morale." 
 
 After first listening with exemplary pa- 
 tience to what may be termed these para- 
 bolic reflections, and then expressing a doubt 
 whether Madame de Stael meant her mot to 
 be taken quite literally, Mr. Gladstone went 
 
 lOO 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 on to say: "I will go the length of admit- 
 ting that, even in the extreme case of pro- 
 nouncing the sentence of death, a judge, if 
 he is really a Christian man, will be liable to 
 say to himself, * God knows how much that 
 man has been tempted, and though for the 
 sake of Society I am bound to punish him, 
 he may on the Judgment Day be preferred 
 
 before me.' " 
 
 I rejoined that many modern thinkers 
 would hold that, if full allowance were made 
 for heredity, education and temptation, then 
 judge, criminal, and everyone else would 
 stand exactly on a level. When a man has 
 been thoroughly worsted by another in the 
 moral •race, may we not assume that he has 
 laboured under a corresponding disadvan- 
 tage? nay, that the extent of the defeat is 
 exactly measured by the amount of the 
 handicap? 
 
 G.—'' No; I cannot admit that." 
 In illustration of the view to which he was 
 opposed, I am tempted to mention that, in 
 one of the most "modern" of Lucian's 
 Dialogues, the ghost of an outrageous crim- 
 inal, after being condemned to the most 
 varied and unremitting tortures that the 
 nether regions can provide, sets up the plea 
 
 lOI 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 that he was throughout the victim of Des- 
 tiny; and Minos is at his wits' end to know 
 how to deal with him. 
 
 Reverting to a topic referred to in a former 
 conversation, I spoke about the immense 
 popularity which was at the time achieved 
 by Sheridan's Begum Speech, and which 
 modern readers find it hard to understand. 
 Can that speech have been well reported? 
 
 G. — " Has any speech of that time, any 
 speech (for example) of either of the Pitts, 
 been well reported? The younger Pitt is 
 chiefly known, as an orator, for his happy 
 quotations. When taunted with his youth, 
 he applied to himself Horace's 
 
 * probamque 
 Pauperiem sine dote quaero * — 
 
 the preceding clause, * mea Virtute me in- 
 volvo,' being conspicuous by its omission. 
 He applied most unjustly to Ireland and 
 England the lines about being under equal 
 laws ; and there was also the quotation from 
 Virgil which he introduced into his speech 
 against the slave trade." ^ 
 
 * " He [Pitt] burst as it were into a prophetic vision of 
 the civilisation that shall dawn upon Africa, and recalled 
 the not less than African barbarism of heathen Britain ; 
 exclaiming, as the first beams of the morning sun pierced 
 
 I02 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 I reminded him that Pitt quoted the 
 stanza, beginning Duris ut ilex, in reference 
 to the attempts made by Napoleon to 
 weaken Great Britain by injuring her colo- 
 nies and her trade. He regretted that no 
 such quotations are given or would be under- 
 stood now. 
 
 He said that he was " suffused with 
 shame" about the conduct of the EngHsh 
 in regard to the Channel Tunnel. It used 
 to be said that the opposition to it came 
 from one man, namely, Lord Palmerston. 
 But then the panic arose. At the request 
 of the English Government, the French took 
 great trouble to make inquiries as to the 
 practicability of the scheme. 
 
 G. — " We English plume ourselves on our 
 common sense, and are never tired of laugh- 
 ing at the frivolity and vacillation of the 
 French. But, since the Norman Conquest, 
 
 the windows of Parliament, and appeared to suggest the 
 quotation : — 
 
 ' Nos . . . primus equis Oriens afflavit anhelis, 
 lUic sera rubens accendit lumina Vesper.' " 
 
 Lord Rosebery's Pitt. 
 
 The point of comparison seems to have been that the 
 blessing of freedom was granted to the English at the 
 dawn of their history, but that it was being vouchsafed to 
 the negroes only at the eleventh hour. 
 
 103 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 the EngHsh have invaded France at least ten 
 times as often as the French have invaded 
 England. And yet the English now raise 
 this outcry about the risk of a French inva- 
 sion." 
 
 I put in a word about the French conscrip- 
 tion, and about their army being now much 
 stronger than ours. 
 
 " From your speaking in that way/' he 
 said, with a smile, ** I see what line you are 
 disposed to take about the tunnel." 
 
 The orator in him came out when he made 
 the somewhat extravagant statement, that 
 Pius IX. was more ignorant than he thought 
 any educated man could be; for his Holi- 
 ness had said that there were half a million 
 of Catholics in Glasgow. I imagine that his 
 Holiness, if Mr. Gladstone rightly under- 
 stood him, must have confounded the num- 
 ber of Catholics in Glasgow with that of the 
 entire population. Mr. Gladstone surprised 
 me by knowing accurately the population of 
 Liverpool, and the number of Catholics 
 there. He appeared to think that, if the 
 Scotch Kirk were disestablished, the result 
 might be a fusion of the three Presbyterian 
 bodies. 
 
 He seemed irritated with the German 
 104 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 writers, who taught that the IHad and the 
 Odyssey were made up, as he said, " of a 
 fortuitous concourse of atoms." Goethe 
 never favoured this view. Mr. Gladstone 
 went on to advert to the extreme clumsiness 
 of German prose, always excepting that of 
 a few great writers. He spoke of German 
 prose as being " worthy of African savages.** 
 Being asked how he explained this, he com- 
 pared the German prose of the present day 
 to the English prose of two or three centu- 
 ries ago. I said that Matthew Arnold spoke 
 of the function of the eighteenth century in 
 England as being to create a prose literature. 
 He replied that he did not know that Mat- 
 thew Arnold had said this ; but that he quite 
 agreed. 
 
 A propos of modern views on eternal pun- 
 ishment, he pronounced the besetting sins 
 of rationalistic writers to be " negation and 
 timidity." I objected that in Mr. John 
 Morley and others we find negation, but 
 certainly not timidity. He said that he was 
 not speaking of such men, and did not use 
 the word ''negation" in that sense. He 
 seemed to use the word as equivalent to 
 a conscious or unconscious moral scepti- 
 cism. 
 
 105 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 He again gave utterance to the opinion 
 expressed by him in a former conversation, 
 that Matthew Arnold ought to have rep- 
 resented conduct as comprising, not only 
 three-quarters of life, but the whole of it. 
 In vindication of the great critic, I reminded 
 Mr. Gladstone that he himself in his Ro- 
 manes Lecture had ranked Bacon among 
 those of whom Cambridge ought to be proud. 
 Now, if conduct comprises the whole of life, 
 every man ought to be judged by an exclu- 
 sively moral standard ; and, if Bacon were so 
 judged, Cambridge would have no cause to 
 be proud of him. His title to admiration 
 is based on that portion — Matthew Arnold 
 would say that fourth part— of life which 
 lies outside the domain of morality. This 
 "wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind" 
 is more praised for his wisdom and bright- 
 ness than he is condemned for his meanness. 
 As a schoolboy might say, he obtained more 
 marks for his Philosophical papers and his 
 Essays, than his virtuous contemporaries 
 obtained for their good conduct. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone replied that he had only 
 been assigning to Bacon his rank in respect 
 of ability. But I could not see that this 
 met the difficulty. Cambridge would not 
 
 io6 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 have cause to be proud of having produced 
 a very able conspirator or traitor. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone went on to say that, when 
 he gave the Romanes Lecture, he thought 
 that before this century Cambridge had had 
 the distinct advantage in regard to poets; 
 but Mr. Arthur Galton had given instances 
 of Cambridge poets who took a disHke to 
 Cambridge, and in some cases preferred 
 Oxford. He said that Dryden spoke, in 
 this relation, of going from Thebes to 
 Athens ; and he wondered, if, in thus giving 
 the palm to Oxford, Dryden was a liar, or, 
 as he expressed it, "a rogue." He ex- 
 pressed great admiration for Dryden *s power 
 of arguing in verse, as shown in '* The Hind 
 and Panther." He spoke of Thomas Crom- 
 well as a wonderful man, though ** some- 
 thing of a rogue." He had never heard the 
 famous answer in an examination to the 
 question, " What do you know of Oliver 
 Cromwell?" " He cut off his king's head, 
 and usurped the kingdom. Afterwards he 
 was filled with remorse, and exclaimed, when 
 dying, * Would that I had served my God 
 as I have served my king ! ' " 
 
 The conversation passed on to the subject 
 of Malapropisms, which seemed to amuse 
 
 107 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 Mr. Gladstone. Someone mentioned that 
 a lady friend, observing that one of her 
 horses was in much better condition than 
 his mate, was told by the groom, ** This one 
 domesticates his food better than the other." 
 This was capped by the true story of the 
 lady, who, having complained to her butcher 
 that the meat he had sent her was high, was 
 met with the surprised and surprising re- 
 joinder, ** You putrefy me with amaze- 
 ment ! " 
 
 I called Mr. Gladstone's attention to a 
 line in Milton's translation of the Ode Quis 
 mult a gracilis — 
 
 " Who, always vacant, always amiable, 
 Hopes thee " : 
 
 and I expressed an opinion that an inverted 
 sentence of this kind is less plain in English 
 than in Latin. This led on to Mr. Glad- 
 stone's saying that he was in favour of orig- 
 inal classical compositions ; but he owned to 
 having some misgivings. 
 
 He regarded with " mingled jealousy and 
 admiration " the purity of Bright's English, 
 but said that Bright had once fallen into one 
 of the " worst of vulgarisms " ; Bright used 
 the verb "to transpire" in the sense of 
 
 io8 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 '' to occur." Mr. Gladstone remarked that 
 " transpire " properly meant '* to ooze out." 
 I reminded him that "to perspire " in French 
 was '* transpirer," and was surprised to find 
 that this was news to him. 
 
 He was struck by the way in which some 
 eminent scholars who were also masters of 
 English, such as Roundell Palmer, showed 
 no classical flavour in their English composi- 
 tions. Lowe was a great exception to this. 
 
 G. •* If people went into an extreme 
 
 about Classics, the last half of the nineteenth 
 century has gone into just as great an ex- 
 treme about modern languages. I believe 
 that science will be the great instrument of 
 education in the future. You may find 
 something to suit all intellectual needs in 
 the various sciences from Astronomy to — 
 what shall I say?" 
 
 T,— ' To Gastronomy?" 
 G, {smiling)—'" No— to Embryology." 
 He said that he had called Mill the ** Saint 
 of Rationalism," and gave as an example of 
 his saintliness that, when a rather bitter 
 attack had been made on him by Lowe in a 
 debate on reform, he attempted no retort, 
 but merely confined himself to the point at 
 issue. I referred to the lady who, after talk- 
 
 109 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 ing to Littr^, said, ** Je viens de parler k un 
 saint qui ne croit pas en Dieu." Mr. Glad- 
 stone laughed and said, " Yes; but I have 
 the advantage of priority. This is not a 
 case of Per e ant qui nostra ante nos dixerint. 
 How trying that sort of thing is ! " 
 
 T. — * * Per e ant qui nostra post nos dixerint. 
 This seems to me to represent a state of 
 things more trying still; — when one has 
 originated an idea, and some more conspicu- 
 ous person cribs it, and gets the credit for 
 it." 
 
 December ^otk, 1893. — It may be conven- 
 ient here to insert some notes of a conversa- 
 tion with Mr. Gladstone with which a learned 
 divine, who lives near Biarritz, has kindly 
 furnished me: — 
 
 ** Mr. Gladstone talked a little on the 
 general principles of Political Economy. 
 On the actual distribution of wealth he felt 
 uneasy, and he thought that the irresponsi- 
 bility in the condition of holding wealth 
 nowadays, especially in the United States, 
 and the difficulty or impossibility of bring- 
 ing home to men the responsibility of riches 
 held under their present conditions, was the 
 black spot in the future. 
 
 no 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 ** The history of Ireland, he said, was un- 
 like that of any other nation. The oppres- 
 sion of it by England had not been the op- 
 pression of a race who had once been con- 
 querors or dangerous ; like that of the Poles 
 by Russians, or of the Moors by Spaniards. 
 The Irish had done nothing to warrant the 
 oppression ; they were only reclaiming that 
 of which they had been gratuitously de- 
 prived, and we owe them restoration of the 
 theft. 
 
 " He told me about the difificulty which 
 he felt in making his ecclesiastical appoint- 
 ments; he had always endeavoured in par- 
 ishes to find the best man to carry on the 
 work on the general lines of his predecessor. 
 He was anxious not to appoint a High 
 Churchman to a Low Church parish, nor 
 vice versd. But it was very difficult to tell 
 how a man would be received, or how he 
 might turn out. He instanced his appoint- 
 ment of Dr. L to the parish of . 
 
 He thought that he had got the very man 
 to follow a good evangelical, with hearty 
 services. To his surprise he received a depu- 
 tation, with the late incumbent at the head, 
 and a petition with 2,000 signatures, pro- 
 testing against the appointment. He ap- 
 
 III 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 pealed privately to Dr. L to resign, 
 
 promising some compensatory post, and 
 offering pecuniary indemnity for his ex- 
 penses. But Dr. L said that he had 
 
 gone too far to retire with honour, and that 
 his friends in the neighbourhood assured 
 him that the opposition was factitious, and 
 that the majority of the parish was not 
 averse to him. So Mr. Gladstone yielded. 
 A year afterwards he found the Doctor most 
 popular, with a crowded church, hearty ser- 
 vices, and not above twenty malcontents in 
 the parish. 
 
 " He spoke much of the superficiality of 
 popular writing on Theology, and of the 
 ordinary sermons, especially those of the 
 Low Church school. The teaching was so 
 loose and vague ; it gave nothing to do, no 
 rule of conduct, * Only believe all is right 
 with you, and all will somehow come right 
 at the last. ' Many High Churchmen preached 
 more really evangelical sermons than the 
 Low Churchmen did. The popular teach- 
 ing on Eschatology was most superficial. 
 He praised Mr. Oxenham's book on the 
 subject much, and called it logical and con- 
 vincing. Universalism really implied dual- 
 ism ; and it was no vindication to say that 
 
 112 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 in the final casting up of accounts the bal- 
 ance would be found on the side of good. 
 Annihilation could not be the end. The 
 real problem was that of the origin and 
 existence of evil, not its extinction ; and this 
 problem was wholly insoluble by man. The 
 unfallen angels and spirits showed that evil 
 was not a necessity, or a necessary condition 
 of created existence. 
 
 ** He agreed that all human knowledge 
 was relative ; religious knowledge being no 
 more absolute than any other. Newman 
 was not great as a philosopher; but in spir- 
 itual matters, and in the knowledge of and 
 the power of probing the human heart. He 
 spoke indignantly of the prosecutions of 
 Ritualists by the Church Association. They 
 were a failure always, whether won or lost. 
 They provoked reaction, and produced what 
 they were intended to stop. He hoped that 
 there would be no more of them, and that 
 the bishops would stop them by their veto. 
 In answer to a suggestion that there should 
 be Standing Committees of Convocation 
 something like the Congregations and the 
 Holy Office at Rome, not to judge individ- 
 uals, but to decide on the questions and 
 abstract cases submitted to them, he said 
 8 113 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 that the difficulty would be to find a body 
 of theologians in the English Church whose 
 decisions or opinions would inspire sufficient 
 respect. 
 
 ** He was asked if he had observed the 
 singular absence of the sense of sin in the 
 works of American divines of all schools. 
 * Ah/ said he slowly, * the sense of sin — that 
 is the great want in modern life ; it is want- 
 ing in our sermons, wanting everywhere!' 
 This was said slowly and reflectively, almost 
 like a monologue. 
 
 ** Then he talked of Driver's criticism of 
 the 51st Psalm to the effect that it could 
 not be by David because of the verse, 
 'Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned.' 
 He had injured Uriah and Bathsheba. 
 
 ** G. — * Where sin against God is really 
 felt, that absorbs the other. Any sin against 
 man is light in comparison of the sin against 
 God.' 
 
 " He agreed that Againt Thee, etc., is the 
 correlative of Who can forgive sins but God 
 only ? 1 
 
 ** Mr. Gladstone's attention was next 
 
 ^ Is not more conclusive evidence of the post-Davidic, or 
 rather post-Exilian, date of the Psalm furnished by the 
 phrase, " Build Thou the walls of Jerusalem " ? (L. A. T.) 
 
 "4 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 called to D. G. Azcarates' Discurso in Span- 
 ish at the Ateneo of Madrid. The writer 
 speaks of Mr. Gladstone as crowning his 
 unparalleled career by bringing home the 
 responsibilities of wealth to Londoners. 
 Mr. Gladstone said that this is not so much 
 needed in London as in the United States: 
 in London they are becoming aware of the 
 responsibility attaching to riches." 
 
 The friend who has supplied me with the 
 foregoing materials concludes with this com- 
 ment: — 
 
 ** My impressions of last year as to Mr. 
 Gladstone's earnest piety, immense range of 
 thought and learning, and wonderful phys- 
 ical power, and of the persuasive manage- 
 ment of his voice, were but heightened this 
 year. He would have* been a great theo- 
 logian if he had not been so great a states- 
 man." 
 
 January 2\th, 1894. — Mr. and Mrs. Glad- 
 stone dined with us. 
 
 I said that I supposed that there were 
 more means for the endowment of research 
 in Germany than in England. Mr. Glad- 
 stone rejoined that he thought that the 
 collective sum from which such men as 
 
 115 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 Wordsworth and Tennyson received pen- 
 sions was ;^30,ooo a year. I called atten- 
 tion to the increased endowment of research 
 at Oxford. He spoke of it as strange that 
 in no other country were there such large 
 sums for the endowment of education, and 
 I yet there is no country where education is 
 so expensive. He believed that Eton was 
 more expensive now than in his younger 
 days, and that Harrow was more expensive 
 still. In the case of Eton, the modus oper- 
 andi of the change was through the masters 
 more and more encroaching on the dames. 
 Being asked whether he did not think that 
 the reason was that it was wished to make 
 public schools the especial resort of gentle- 
 men's sons, he said, ** No, no; it is very 
 disgraceful, but not quite so bad as that." 
 I quoted Renan's saying to the effect that 
 there is no second-rate University in Ger- 
 many, with its ** Professeurs haves et fam^- 
 liques," which has not done more for intel- 
 lectual progress than the great aristocratic 
 University of Oxford, ** avec ses revenues 
 immenses, ses colleges splendides, ses Fel- 
 lows paresseux." He did not agree. ** I 
 don't believe a word of it," he said. In 
 confirmation, however, of Renan's opinion, 
 
 ii6 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 which was also Mark Pattison's, I will quote 
 a passage from Bagehot, who considered the 
 Saturday Review, whose contributors in his 
 time were mainly University men, to be a 
 sort of thermometer indicating the moral 
 temperature of our English Universities. 
 He says of that Journal: — 
 
 " We may search and search in vain 
 through this repository of the results of 
 * University teaching ' for a single truth 
 which it has established, for a single high 
 cause which it has advanced, for a single 
 deep thought which is to sink into the mind 
 of its readers. We have, indeed, a nearly 
 perfect embodiment of the corrective scepti- 
 cism of a sleepy intellect." 
 
 Mr. Gladstone quoted a saying of Napo- 
 leon from Taine's posthumous volume: ** Je 
 ne crois pas aux religions ; mais qui a fait 
 tout ceci? . . . les pretres valent mieux 
 que les Cagliostro, les Kant, et tous les 
 reveurs d'AUemagne. " He chuckled over 
 the reference to Kant. He said: ** When 
 next I see Lord Acton, I mean to quote this 
 to him. He is a great admirer of Kant's 
 writings, and it will be good for him to be 
 told what Napoleon thought of them ! Gen- 
 erally, when I try to surprise him by a 
 
 117 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 quotation, he tells me exactly where it 
 comes from." 
 
 He repeated a passage from another French 
 writer in reference to Napoleon: '* Nous 
 avons assez entendu parler du Fils de 
 r Homme; mais Napoleon ^tait 1' Homme 
 lui-meme." 
 
 G. — " He put him far above our Saviour." 
 
 The book increased Mr. Gladstone's sense 
 of Napoleon's supreme greatness, but did 
 not raise his view of the Emperor's moral 
 character. 
 
 He spoke of Pearson's National Life and 
 Character. He seemed especially interested 
 in the author's statement that the crowding 
 of men in big towns may force on State 
 Socialism ; but he agreed with me that 
 Pearson's own sympathies were in favour 
 of Individualism, State Socialism being at 
 best a necessary evil. I objected to Pear- 
 son's notion that Western Europe would 
 ever allow itself to be encroached upon and 
 practically overwhelmed by immigrants from 
 the yellow races. Would not our descend- 
 ants defend themselves by arms? They 
 might vindicate such a summary proceeding 
 by saying (in dog Latin) sahis civilisationisy 
 suprema lex. Mr. Gladstone, however, 
 
 ii8 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 laughed at the idea of our descendants tak- 
 ing refuge in strong measures: ** If the 
 cultivated races cannot defend themselves 
 without appealing to brute force, God help 
 them!" 
 
 I said that I used to write in preference 
 books, that I wished that my lot could have 
 been thrown in the distant future, but that 
 now I am satisfied with the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 G. — " I should have chosen the time of 
 Homer." 
 
 We spoke of the conservative tendency of 
 such pessimistic views as Pearson's ; and Mr. 
 Gladstone went on to say that he thought 
 he remembered the account that I had given 
 of my own views in my article on my father 
 a year or two earlier,^ but he was afraid of 
 misquoting me. I replied that I thought 
 that he was paying me the greatest possible 
 compliment in remembering anything about 
 it. He seemed not to approve of my Whig- 
 gism. I explained that by education, tradi- 
 tion and temperament I am strongly Con- 
 servative; but that I call myself " Conserva- 
 tive," not a Conservative. He admitted 
 
 '"Lord Tollemache and His Anecdotes," Fortnightly 
 Review^ July i8g2. 
 
 119 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 that he also was Conservative in a certain 
 sense. I spoke of the Conservative influ- 
 ence of ladies' society. He demurred to 
 the implied statement that women are more 
 Conservative than men. He should rather 
 describe them as *' more emotional." He, 
 however, agreed that they are more under 
 the influence of the clergy. I spoke of 
 women's influence at municipal elections and 
 at elections for the school board. He 
 doubted whether their influence is Con- 
 servative in either of these cases. But he 
 said that the women chosen are scarcely 
 typical women. I quite agreed ; but I ex- 
 plained that I was referring to the influence 
 of the many women who vote at these elec- 
 tions, and not of the few who are elected. 
 
 From clever women in general, the con- 
 versation passed on to George Eliot. Mr. 
 Gladstone considered her rather a man 
 than a woman. Silas Marner is the work of 
 hers that he most admired. But he com- 
 plained that her novels ** were out of tune." 
 I remarked that at the end of the seventh of 
 the eight parts in which Middlemarch first 
 appeared, one hoped that Dorothea would 
 marry Lydgate. Mr. Gladstone intimated 
 his assent. 
 
 I20 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 He told me that his great admiration for 
 Scott was tempered by regret that he was 
 weighed down by so much inferior work. 
 A similar criticism he applied to Shake- 
 speare, though in a less degree. I spoke 
 of Lord Lytton's portraiture (in the Last of 
 the Barons) of Gloucester (Richard III.), and 
 especially of Warwick, as more lifelike than 
 Shakespeare's. To my surprise Mr. Glad- 
 stone seemed not to know who the last of 
 the Barons was. He pleaded that it was 
 doubtful whether the latter part of Henry VI. 
 was by Shakespeare, but admitted that there 
 is something very arbitrary In the way In 
 which critics decide by internal evidence 
 what Is Shakespeare's and what is not. 
 
 He said that his favourites among Scott's 
 novels were Kenilworth and the Bride of 
 Lammermoor. I asked whether he did not 
 find the bad endings of these two novels 
 depressing. 
 
 G, — " I don't mind that In such works of 
 art as these." 
 
 I told him that the Bride of Lammermoor 
 was also Jowett's favourite. 
 
 G. — " I am very glad to hear It; and I 
 will quote the statement on your authority." 
 He went on to say that the three novels of 
 
 121 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 Scott which are generally the most popular 
 are Ivanhoe, Old Mortality and Waverley. 
 He ranked those next to the two others. 
 Returning to George Eliot, he surprised me 
 by saying that he had never read Daniel 
 Deronda. Something was said about George 
 Eliot's enthusiasm for the Jews, which at 
 last became almost as vehement as Disraeli's. 
 Both these writers sometimes leave the im- 
 pression of looking forward to the restora- 
 tion of the old Hebrew Monarchy. Might 
 they not (adapting Virgil) have taken for 
 their motto : Jam redit et David, redeiint 
 Solo7nonia regna f 
 
 Hence we drifted into the Germans' hatred 
 of the Jews. 
 
 G. — ** I used to think the Irish the most 
 oppressed people on earth ; but now I think 
 that the Jews have been even more op- 
 pressed. I believe that Dollinger wrote in 
 favour of the Jews; and I thought it very 
 creditable of him to do so. I understand 
 that the kings in the Middle Ages, including 
 even King John, often took the part of the 
 Jews against the nobles. Was it because 
 they wished to save the Jews from oppres- 
 sion? Nothing of the sort. But they con- 
 sidered that the right to torture a Jew and 
 
 122 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 to extort money from him ought to be a 
 monopoly of their own." He did not deny 
 that the Jews had their faults. After prais- 
 ing Finlay's History in high terms, he said 
 that he had there learnt that towards the end 
 of the Middle Ages the Greek Christians had 
 a bad time of it ; for, while the Mahometans 
 hated them as infidels, and the Catholics 
 hated them as heretics, the Jews took ad- 
 vantage of their weakness to settle old scores 
 with them. 
 
 G. — " Lord Acton is writing a history of 
 Liberty, and I shall be anxious to see how 
 he will treat the question of the Jews." 
 
 T. — " In writing such a work, is he not 
 likely to get into trouble with the Roman 
 authorities? " 
 
 G. — " His work may be put on the Index ; 
 but that is all. They will never excom- 
 municate an English Peer. I always say 
 that, if Lord Acton had written what Bol- 
 linger has written, and vice versd, it would 
 still have been the Professor who would have 
 got into trouble, while the Peer would have 
 escaped scot free." 
 
 We talked about the old Greeks. 
 
 G. — ** I am a great admirer of the old 
 Olympian religion, as it was set forth by the 
 
 123 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 supreme genius of Homer. It was quite 
 different in the hands of the later Greeks; 
 and the mythology of the Roman poets 
 serves as an opaque curtain which hides it 
 from us. Do the Romans mark the differ- 
 ence between Venus and Diana, as the 
 Greeks do between Aphrodite and Artemis? 
 Look at the contrast between Virgil and 
 Homer! " 
 
 T. — " Surely Virgil does not write much 
 about Diana? *' 
 
 G. — " He has the line: 
 
 ' Tergeminamque Hecaten, tria virginis ora Dianas.' 
 
 See, too, how Horace confounds Diana with 
 Proserpine in the passage : 
 
 ' Infernis neque enim tenebris Diana pudicum 
 Liberal Hippolytum.'" 
 
 I suggested that in this instance Horace 
 seemed to me to refer to Diana, not as 
 identical with Proserpine, but as the god- 
 dess whom Hippolytus especially wor- 
 shipped. Mr. Gladstone frankly said that 
 this was a new idea to him, but that he 
 would think it over. 
 
 He supposed that Horace, though his 
 Odes were Greek in form, was the best 
 
 124 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 authority for the state of Roman society in 
 classical times. But the discrepancies in his 
 account are a puzzle. Sometimes he writes 
 in glowing language; at other times he 
 speaks of the state of society as hopelessly 
 corrupt. Mr. Gladstone could not accept 
 the common interpretation of 
 
 "O utinam nova 
 Incude diffingas retusam in 
 
 Massagetas Arabasque ferrum." 
 
 This he explained to mean: " Break up our 
 corrupt civilisation, and remould us after the 
 fashion of barbarous tribes." I demurred 
 to this explanation ; but, in support of it, I 
 reminded him of the Arva beata^ etc., which 
 seems to have partly suggested the passage 
 in Locksley Hall, beginning — 
 
 " Ah, for some retreat 
 Deep in yonder shining Orient." 
 
 Another passage which he thought wrongly 
 interpreted is — 
 
 " Nee fortuitum spernere caespitem 
 Leges sinebant." 
 
 G. — ** I do not think there is any point in 
 the rendering * chance turf.' What would 
 
 125 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 they do with it? Not build. Conington 
 suggests that they might make their roofs 
 of it. I know that they so construct their 
 roofs in Iceland and elsewhere, where it is 
 hard to get wood. But otherwise I do not 
 think that they would make their roofs of 
 turf alone. I think it refers to the enclosure 
 of commons, and so it touches on a question 
 which has lately been coming to the front." 
 
 I asked how he explained ** spernere. " 
 He said that it meant '* to disregard the 
 laws which forbid the appropriation of the 
 ager publicusJ' But he admitted that his 
 view was not free from difidculty. 
 
 I said that we probably learn as much 
 about Roman society from Juvenal, though 
 his account must be taken as a caricature; 
 and I added that, as Matthew Arnold says, 
 we gather from Marcus Aurelius that there 
 must have been a large portion of Italian 
 life free from the corruption which Juvenal 
 describes. Mr. Gladstone quite agreed. 
 
 We talked about Mr. Gladstone's Ro- 
 manes Lecture. I told him that in that 
 lecture he appeared to me to ignore the 
 great progress in jurisprudence made by 
 the Romans under the Empire; and that, 
 on the other hand, he laid too great, or at 
 
 126 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 any rate too exclusive, stress on their prog- 
 ress in arms. He replied by calling my 
 attention to the military achievements of 
 Belisarius and Narses. But I confess that 
 he seemed to me to be ascribing to progress 
 in the military art what was rather due to 
 the military genius of a few individuals. I 
 quoted what Maine, in his Ancient Law, 
 said about the great development of juris- 
 prudence under the Roman Empire. 
 
 Q^ «* I give way on this point to the 
 
 authority of such an expert as Maine. But 
 in the lecture I was trying to insist that life 
 had departed from the Roman civilisation. 
 What remarkable men did that civilisation 
 
 produce? " 
 
 I mentioned Claudian. 
 
 G.—'' Yes, but that is not saying much. 
 I think that the decline of paganism has 
 never been sufficiently explained. Gibbon's 
 account is too one-sided. I wish it could 
 have been discussed by such a writer as 
 Hallam." He spoke in praise of Beugnot's 
 Decadence du Paganisme en. Occident. Beu- 
 gnot also wrote a Decadence en Orient, but it 
 was not so good. The former book was 
 Couronn^e par V Academic francaise in 1826. 
 " This is not much of a distinction now, but 
 
 127 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 it was then." He spoke of the long resist- 
 ance offered by Paganism to Christianity. 
 
 G. — " Probably many of the * pagani * were 
 devout pagans, and there seem to have been 
 also some devout pagans among the edu- 
 cated classes. But these latter were few; 
 and Beugnot traces the different causes, such 
 as historical and family traditions, and more 
 interested motives, which prolonged the life 
 of dying Paganism." 
 
 T. — *' Besides the believers in Paganism, 
 were there not many who bore to Paganism 
 the same sort of relation that Matthew 
 Arnold bore to Christianity? I refer to 
 such men as Marcus Aurelius, who thought 
 it important that the masses should have a 
 religion, and who held that the best religion 
 for them was the religion of the State. Such 
 men would probably have wished to purify 
 the national religion of some of its coarser 
 elements; but, in general, they would be 
 afraid, to use Bright's metaphor, of tinkering 
 an old institution." 
 
 G. — " Very likely there were a good num- 
 ber of these; and the position of Marcus 
 Aurelius may in some respects have been 
 like that of Matthew Arnold. But Marcus 
 Aurelius did not write about his religion in 
 
 128 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 the patronising way in which Matthew Ar- 
 nold writes about Christianity. I know 
 nothing that jars me more than the tone he 
 takes." 
 
 T, — ** Was not that partly the peculiar 
 manner of the man? " 
 
 G. — ** It may have been ; but I often wish 
 that he would make his bow and walk on 
 the other side. To come back to my Ro- 
 manes Lecture: my object was to combat 
 Pattison's statement that the extinction of 
 the Pagan civilisation by the Church was a 
 great calamity." 
 
 T, — " I suspect that Pattison, if pressed, 
 would have explained his words to mean 
 that it is deplorable that human nature is 
 such a poor thing that it cannot maintain its 
 civilisation on a rational and progressive 
 footing, and that it is forced from time to 
 time to fall back on supernaturalism.** 
 
 January 2gtk, 1894. — I dined with Mr. 
 Gladstone. He expressed great interest in 
 the customs of the Basques, and in the un- 
 solved riddle of the origin of their race and 
 language. Had not Scaliger satirically ex- 
 claimed : ** The Basques say that they under- 
 stand one another, but they lie ! " Mr. Glad- 
 9 129 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 stone seemed especially taken with the 
 popular myth explanatory of the high 
 morality common among them: ^'The Devil 
 took seven years trying to learn Basque^ and 
 at last gave it up as a bad job. ' ' A saying of 
 Basque origin seemed equally quaint, though 
 in a different fashion: ** Our Lord promised 
 to give St. Peter a horse if he would repeat 
 the Lord's prayer without pause or inter- 
 polation. Whereupon St. Peter began: 
 * Pater noster qui es in ccelis ' — And, Lord, 
 will he have a saddle? " 
 
 Mr. Gladstone had been reading a lecture 
 on the sanitary rules followed by the Jews. 
 I said that I had been told that in England 
 they were less long-lived than Christians. 
 His impression was the other way. He said 
 that they had a special immunity from tuber- 
 cular disease. Reference was made to a 
 quondam Professor whose too catholic antip- 
 athies were especially directed against the 
 Jewish race and modern Liberals; and one 
 of the party reported that this Ishmael, on 
 being told that the Jews had a remarkable 
 immunity from cholera, drily exclaimed, 
 ** That is the worst thing I have heard of 
 the cholera! " 
 
 G. {smiling) — " He hates the Jews as much 
 130 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 as he hates me." The genial tone of this 
 remark may serve to show that Mr. Glad- 
 stone was not as abnormally sensitive to 
 adverse criticism as he was often said to be. 
 
 He did not take the same high view that 
 many take of the old Hebrew literature, 
 regarded merely as literature. He had been 
 struck by a statement of Professor Max 
 Miiller to the effect that the Jewish intellect 
 made a sudden start after being brought in 
 contact with the Aryan intellect. (Surely 
 Isaiah was an exception.) He did not think 
 much of the old biblical heroes, except 
 Moses. I hinted at a scepticism about Moses 
 being a real person. He said that he thought 
 that, if there had been no historical Moses, 
 the Hebrew imagination would not have 
 been equal to the task of creating one. And 
 then he went off to his favourite subject. 
 
 G. — ** Those who think it too great a 
 miracle that there should have been a Homer 
 who wrote both the Iliad and the Odyssey, 
 are substituting for it a miracle yet greater 
 and yet harder of belief." 
 
 I remarked that, if the word a}xv}xoov really 
 means ** blameless," it seems very odd that 
 in the beginning of the Odyssey this epithet 
 is applied to ^gisthus. He replied that 
 
 131 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 " blameless " is a very inadequate rendering 
 of the word. It may sometimes mean this; 
 but sometimes also it connotes high birth ; 
 ** just as we apply the word * illustrious ' to 
 princes — to such princes as the sons of 
 George III. There are other expressions 
 in Homer which we were taught to translate 
 either incorrectly or in too narrow a sense ; 
 for instance, at Eton, Edward Coleridge 
 insisted on our translating ava^ avSp^Vy 
 " king of men." 
 
 I asked Mr. Gladstone why he had not 
 ranked Rob Roy with those novels of Walter 
 Scott which he placed in the first rank. He 
 thought that Rob Roy and Guy Mannering 
 ran them very hard. He was surprised when 
 I mentioned that Lowe had ranked St, 
 Ronans Well with the Bride of Lammer- 
 moor. He agreed with me that this was an 
 instance of the peculiar limitation which is 
 so often found in men of strong individ- 
 uality. I asked whether he admired Miss 
 Austen much. 
 
 G. — ** Certainly. But I am not so enthu- 
 siastic about her as some people are. An 
 old friend of mine, Rio (he is long since 
 dead), complained that Macaulay 'can neither 
 dive nor soar.' This is true of Jane Austen. 
 
 132 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 Someone said of Randolph Churchill (it was 
 only true of him in his earlier days), that ' he 
 was a first-rate actor in a third-rate piece.* 
 This also might be said of Miss Austen." 
 
 T. — ** Walter Scott has spoken of himself 
 as successful in the bow-wow strain, while 
 Miss Austen excelled in the representation 
 of everyday life." 
 
 G. — " That is Walter Scott's modest way 
 of putting things. He was generosity itself. 
 In all those volumes of his there is a com- 
 plete absence of self-laudation. After all, 
 Miss Austen was parochial, while Scott was 
 world-historical — Welt-historisch, as the Ger- 
 mans would say." 
 
 I complained that some of Miss Austen's 
 characters seemed to me wooden ; they con- 
 trast in that way with some of Miss Ferrier's. 
 
 G. — "Which of Miss Ferrier's have you 
 read?" 
 
 T.— ' Marriage:' 
 
 G. — ** You should read her Inheritance, 
 It is far her best. She had the great advan- 
 tage of writing in the interval between 
 the earlier and the later school of novel- 
 ists." 
 
 Mr. Gladstone ranked Disraeli as the 
 greatest master of parliamentary wit that 
 
 133 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 had ever been. He looked upon his char- 
 acter as a great mystery, and it pained him 
 to feel that the mystery will never be solved. 
 He quoted Bright's remark on the repre- 
 sentation of minorities: ** If the member for 
 a minority dies, will the minority have the 
 power of electing his successor? " This Mr. 
 Gladstone thought a perfectly fair criticism, 
 well expressed. He said that Disraeli dis- 
 liked the idea of representation of minorities ; 
 but he introduced it into his Reform Bill as 
 a sop to political doctrmaires. Afterwards, 
 when the House of Lords amended his Re- 
 form Bill and made it practically a nominal 
 measure, Disraeli threw out all their amend- 
 ments with the exception of this one, which, 
 though he disliked it, he thought compara- 
 tively unimportant. Mr. Gladstone thought 
 that the wittiest thing which Bright ever 
 said was when he spoke of the party which 
 formed the Cave of Adullam as being like a 
 Skye terrier: " it was so covered with hair 
 that you could not tell its head from its 
 tail. "^ The leading members of the Cave 
 
 ^ It is well known that the christening of the party as 
 " The Cave of Adullam " was also due to Bright ; but it 
 is less well known that, in making the comparison, he was in 
 a manner anticipated by Mr, Gladstone's favourite novelist : 
 " The Baron of Bradwardine, being asked what he thought 
 
 134 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 were Lowe and Horsman, the latter of whom 
 Mr. Gladstone described as " a mere wind- 
 bag." He added that Bright meant to im- 
 ply that both these members uttered such 
 platitudes that those of Lowe were on a par 
 with those of Horsman. Mr, Gladstone 
 spoke of Lowe's inability to defend him- 
 self. 
 
 G. — " The power of self-defence is im- 
 planted in the meanest of all creatures (I 
 don't know whether it exists in rabbits). 
 But at anyrate it was absent in Lowe. He, 
 who had attacked our Reform Bill so power- 
 fully, was quite helpless when such an in- 
 ferior man as attacked him. Dizzy 
 
 quite cut him to pieces. In one way this 
 told morally in his favour. A member of a 
 Government is bound to defend his col- 
 leagues as much as himself; and, as Lowe 
 did not defend his colleagues, it told in his 
 favour that he also did not defend him- 
 self." 
 
 of these recruits, took a long pinch of snnff, and answered 
 drily, that he could not but have an excellent opinion of 
 them, since they resembled precisely the followers who 
 attached themselves to the good King David at the cave of 
 Adullam ; videlicet^ everyone that was in distress, every- 
 one that was in debt, and everyone that was discontented, 
 which the Vulgate renders bitter of soul" 
 
 135 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 The wittiest thing that Mr. Gladstone ever 
 heard in Parliament was a retort of Lord 
 John Russell. Sir Francis Burdett had been 
 a strong Radical; and, as is well known, he 
 got into trouble about it. After some years, 
 he became a Conservative. Mr, Gladstone 
 doubted whether his inconsistency was as 
 great as it seemed to be. But at anyrate 
 it brought him into opposition with his old 
 colleagues. He made a rather violent speech, 
 in which he said there was nothing he hated 
 so much as the " cant of patriotism." Lord 
 John Russell got up and said that, for him- 
 self, there was one thing that he hated worse, 
 and that was ** the recant of patriotism." 
 
 The best thing said in Parliament in this 
 century was, Mr. Gladstone thought, a sen- 
 tence of Canning. Pitt had been a Free 
 Trader; but in his later life he took a line 
 which naturally made the Tories claim him 
 as a Protectionist. Canning was thoroughly 
 devoted to his old master, and used to say 
 that his allegiance was with Pitt in his tomb. 
 He said of those Protectionists who appealed 
 to the authority of Pitt: "They are like 
 those savages who pay no honour to the sun 
 when he is in his meridian splendour, but 
 who, when he is under a momentary eclipse, 
 
 136 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 come forth with cymbals and dances to adore 
 him."^ 
 
 Canning was an adept in such rhetorical 
 outbursts. Some forty years ago, I heard 
 an old gentleman, in a speech at an agricul- 
 tural dinner, quote with great admiration the 
 following sentence which in his youth he had 
 heard from Canning's own lips : — " The same 
 sun which lighted Lord Wellington into 
 Madrid and which grew pale at the confla- 
 gration of Moscow, has yielded us the most 
 luxuriant harvest that has ever blessed man- 
 kind." Surely this rhetoric is overstrained. 
 If it is not mere verbiage, it implies that the 
 stars in their courses had fought against 
 Napoleon ; and it seems to postulate such a 
 belief in the anthropomorphic and anthropo- 
 
 ^ A few days later Mr. Gladstone, at my request, most 
 kindly repeated his version of Canning's metaphor, and 
 then let me repeat it to him ; so that my account of that 
 version is certainly correct. It differs slightly from the 
 ordinary version, which is as follows: "Such perverse 
 worship is like the idolatory of barbarous nations, who can 
 see the noonday splendour of the sun without emotion, 
 but, when he is in eclipse, come forward with their hymns 
 and cymbals to adore him." Mr. Gladstone's version, 
 however, delivered as it was in a voice far more sonorous 
 and rhetorical than was his wonted conversation, seems to 
 me interesting and characteristic ; it is, as it were, Canning 
 Gladstonised. 
 
 137 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 centric — I had almost said Anglo-centric — 
 government of the physical worid as is in 
 nowise warranted by science. 
 
 I reminded Mr. Gladstone of the saying 
 of Burke about Warren Hastings, which 
 Macaulay has thus recorded: ** It was said 
 that at Benares, the very place at which the 
 acts set forth in the first article of impeach- 
 ment had been committed, the natives had 
 erected a temple to Hastings; and this story 
 excited a strong sensation in England. 
 Burke's observations on the apotheosis were 
 admirable. He saw no reason for astonish- 
 ment, he said, in the incident which had 
 been represented as so striking. He knew 
 something of the mythology of the Brah- 
 mins. He knew that, as they worshipped 
 some gods from love, so they worshipped 
 others from fear. He knew that they erected 
 shrines, not only to the benignant deities of 
 light and plenty, but also to the fiends who 
 preside over small-pox and murder. Nor 
 did he at all dispute the claim of Mr. Hast- 
 ings to be admitted into such a Pantheon." 
 
 G. — " Did Burke say that on the spur of 
 the moment? " 
 
 T. — " I do not know; but probably he 
 did not." 
 
 138 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 G, — " That makes all the difference. If I 
 am asked who is the greatest speaker that 
 I have known in Parliament, I answer that 
 it depends on what you mean by a great 
 speaker. No one was equal to Bright when 
 he had time to prepare a subject. But he 
 was not strong as a debater, though I once 
 remember his being very successful in de- 
 bate. I think it was about Ireland ; but I 
 am not sure. I once had an odd experience. 
 It was found convenient that I, as leader of 
 the party, should make a speech from 
 Bright's notes. I will mention another small 
 experience that I had. Ayrton was often a 
 very troublesome opponent in debate. I 
 remember once that at three o'clock in the 
 morning he was going to attack me. I saw 
 him go out of the House to eat an orange, 
 and knew that probably meant an hour's 
 speech. This was too much, and I beat a 
 prudent retreat. As you take an interest in 
 these Parliamentary reminiscences, I will 
 give you another. The Conservatives ap- 
 pointed Lord Glenelg to a high official posi- 
 tion. He was thoroughly honourable, but 
 was supposed to be inefficient, and had a 
 way of falling asleep during debates. In the 
 course of a very exciting debate. Brougham 
 
 139 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 in the House of Lords expressed regret that 
 he and his party had deprived the noble 
 Lord of so many sleepless days. I reminded 
 Brougham of this afterwards, and was glad 
 to find that he had quite forgotten it. It 
 showed that his wit was so abundant that he 
 could afford to forget particular instances 
 of it.'* 
 
 T, — "In fact, he was, in Tennyson's 
 phrase, * Like wealthy m.en who know not 
 when they give.' " 
 
 I asked Mr. Gladstone about Peel ; he did 
 not seem to have left on record many witty 
 sayings. 
 
 G. — " No; Peel was not a phrase-maker, 
 like Disraeli or Bright. There were two 
 things especially conspicuous about him. 
 One was his overmastering sense of public 
 duty; this never deserted him. The other 
 thing was his sense of measure. He had 
 generally an exact sense of the proportion 
 between one Bill, and the general policy of 
 the Government ; also of the proportion be- 
 tween the different parts of the same Bill; 
 and of the relation in which the leaders of 
 his party stood to their followers. What I 
 mean by this sense of measure will be under- 
 stood if I give an instance in which such tact 
 
 140 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 was conspicuously wanting. Shortly (I think) 
 after the Reform Bill, the Conservative 
 leaders had got the party into a state of 
 what seemed hopeless confusion. So much 
 so that one night they were preparing to 
 send in their resignation. Fortunately for 
 them, Lord Grey made an attack on the 
 party as a whole. This so irritated the fol- 
 lowers that they rallied under their leaders, 
 and the party held its ground." 
 
 I asked Mr. Gladstone whether Peel was 
 not very unsociable in private life. An old 
 M.P. once told me that, when he dined with 
 Peel, Peel used to beset him with questions, 
 and to give out nothing in return. 
 
 G.—" Quite right too. If Peel had to do 
 with someone from whom useful information 
 could be got, he was quite right to try and 
 get it. If he was wanting in sociability, the 
 reason was that his mind was too full of the 
 public interest to be able to occupy itself 
 with smaller matters. " 
 
 T. — ** But surely he might have given out 
 something on non-political matters ; for ex- 
 ample, on literature or history." 
 
 G, — " He sometimes did. I remember 
 his praising to me Hallam as a historian. 
 Also, I heard him express a low opinion of 
 
 141 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 Fox. So far as Fox's private character is 
 concerned, Peel may have been right ; but, 
 as a public man, Fox had certainly a remark- 
 able power of grasping general principles." 
 
 At first these examples of Peel's com- 
 municativeness seemed to me conspicuous 
 by their slightness; but I afterwards reflected 
 that, according to Professor Goldwin Smith, 
 *' For personal recollections twenty-three 
 years are Lethe * ' ; and that twice that in- 
 terval divided us from the point of time to 
 which Mr. Gladstone was reaching back. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone thought that there was a 
 certain resemblance between Rome under 
 Augustus and France under Louis Napoleon. 
 I called attention to the resemblance between 
 the two Caesars in their relation to one 
 another, and the two Napoleons. 
 
 G, — ** Yes. The resemblance is remark- 
 able in many ways ; though Augustus was 
 much wiser in his generation than Louis 
 Napoleon." 
 
 71 — *'* Was not Louis Napoleon wise in 
 his generation during the earlier part of his 
 career?" 
 
 G. — ** Certainly not from the time of the 
 Mexican expedition. But what I am insist- 
 ing on as a point of resemblance between the 
 
 142 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 two despots is that, while Louis Napoleon 
 put down freedom of speech and of writing 
 in general, he allowed a certain freedom to 
 men of letters who were not likely to influ- 
 ence the public. And I suspect it was the 
 same sort of thing with Augustus. So long 
 as Horace made a low bow to the established 
 Government, he was allowed in an indirect 
 way to show his sympathy with his old com- 
 rades of Philippi." 
 
 T. — ** In the one stanza, Olint Philippos^ 
 there are two phrases which the admirers of 
 Horace try to explain away. Turpe solum 
 tetigere mento, and relicta non bene parmula. 
 It is said that no Roman soldier would have 
 made the latter admission. But surely he 
 meant that he had been so insignificant an 
 enemy, that the conquerors could afford to 
 overlook his youthful folly." 
 
 G. — ** That is what I meant by the low 
 bow. I believe that Louis Napoleon was 
 often indulgent to Orleanist men of letters 
 who veiled their meaning." 
 
 T. — ** Did you personally see enough of 
 Louis Napoleon to form an impression of his 
 ability?" 
 
 (7.—** No. I dined with him in the Tui- 
 leries. But he was most of the time cross- 
 
 143 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 questioning me about English finance." 
 (He said this with a smile which seemed to 
 mean, If Louis Napoleon t litis cr oss- ex amine dy 
 why should not Peel?) " The conversation 
 was in English, which he spoke very well. 
 I saw him again during his exile. But I 
 found him then a broken man, and could 
 not judge of his ability.*' 
 
 We spoke about Froude^ and the question 
 was raised whether, after all, it had been a 
 mistake to confer on him the Professorship 
 of History. Was not such a style as Froude's 
 a supreme merit in a Professor? His facts 
 might be often inaccurate; but they were 
 certainly far less so than the facts introduced 
 into Scott's novels; and yet Scott's novels 
 are valued as carrying a picturesque concep- 
 tion of the past into quarters where other- 
 wise there would be no conception of it at 
 all. Scott's Richard I. is more of a per- 
 manent possession, more of a living person, 
 than Hume's. Is it not possible that, in 
 like manner, some of Froude's historical 
 portraits will survive Freeman's? 
 
 Mr. Gladstone spoke severely of the pecul- 
 iar bias shown by Froude with regard to 
 Henry VIII. We got on the charm of 
 Froude's diction as contrasted with Grote's, 
 
 144 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 and I mentioned the substance of Charles 
 Austin's comment on Grote, which is thus 
 reported in Safe Studies : "He feared that 
 the History of Greece lost much of its value 
 through the attempt to whitewash Cleon and 
 the other demagogues. He also regretted 
 that Mr. Grote had bestowed so little pains 
 on his style ; an inattention which seemed 
 to Mr. Austin all the more strange as the 
 historian was keenly alive to the grace and 
 charm of the classical writings. He was 
 afraid that, in consequence of these two 
 defects, the history of Greece still remains 
 to be written." 
 
 Mr. Gladstone said that he had heard 
 Grote find fault with the English of John 
 Mill. I said that I thought that Grote may 
 have been very particular in avoiding slip- 
 shod sentences. 
 
 6^.—" But are there any such sentences in 
 Mill?" 
 
 Z".— " I should think very few; but I re- 
 member seeing one or two quoted by Pro- 
 fessor Hodgson in his Errors in the Use of 
 English,'' 
 
 Mr. Gladstone did not seem to have heard 
 of this book. I mentioned that its author 
 had marshalled a long array of blunders from 
 lo 145 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 various writers, great and small ; and I told 
 Mr. Gladstone of two instances given by 
 Hodgson of the wrong collocation of words: 
 - — " Erected to the memory of John Phillips 
 accidentally shot as a mark of affection by 
 his brother;" and " A piano for sale by a 
 lady about to cross the Channel in an oak 
 case with carved legs." Mr. Gladstone 
 seemed much amused by these examples. 
 In reference to the general question, he 
 thought that a sentence ought not to bear 
 more than one construction, and he quoted 
 the familiar Aio te, j^acide, Romafios vincere 
 posse. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone spoke playfully of a lady 
 as his step-great-niece; and asked what I 
 made of such a relation. I said in a like 
 tone that, Queen Charlotte having been god- 
 mother of my mother-in-law, I have some- 
 times spoken of George III. as my step-god- 
 grand-father-in-law. 
 
 G. {with a smile), — *' I was going to say 
 that I wished you a better step-god — I for- 
 get the rest ; — but I draw a distinction. 
 George III. in his private character shows to 
 advantage when compared with Charles II. 
 or George II. But, if George III. had suc- 
 ceeded in repressing freedom and parlia- 
 
 146 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 mentary government, we should have had 
 a Revolution, not probably so bad as the 
 French, but resembling it in kind. From 
 such a catastrophe we were preserved by 
 that unworthy representative of good prin- 
 ciples, Wilkes." 
 
 We referred to Macaulay's praise of Wil- 
 liam III., and to his speaking less severely 
 of William's private faults than of those of 
 James II. 
 
 G. — '* Of course it was as a public man 
 that Macaulay praised William ; but I have 
 no doubt that Macaulay's bias in favour of 
 William extended to everything about him." 
 
 While admiring many points in Miss Chol- 
 mondeley's Diana Tempest, Mr. Gladstone 
 found fault with that clever novel, first, be- 
 cause he thought that a novel with an abnor- 
 mal plot requires very exceptional skill ; and, 
 secondly, because the authoress throws satire 
 broadcast on the clergy and other representa- 
 tives of tradition. He did not object to 
 Robert Elsmere on this ground, because the 
 orthodox Catherine is represented as narrow 
 perhaps, but on the whole an ideal character. 
 
 We spoke of the Revised Translation of 
 the Bible. He said that he had advised the 
 translators (or some of them) to bring out, 
 
 147 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 at an early stage, a few specimens of their 
 work and to let the critics say their say about 
 them. To anyone versed in the usages of 
 the House of Commons such an expedient 
 would not seem unnatural. But the trans- 
 lators utterly refused to suffer their unfin- 
 ished work to be blown on by Xh.Q poptilaris 
 or a of inexperts: ** They laughed me to 
 scorn ; and the result has been that the 
 Revised Version died almost at its birth." 
 
 I think it was on this occasion that Mr. 
 Gladstone made a remark to -me which has 
 been treasured up in my memory. Taking 
 my arm as we left the dining-room, he said, 
 ** Your memory makes you formidable; but 
 you are so good-natured that one does not 
 feel afraid of you." At first the word 
 ** afraid " employed by the great Statesman 
 fairly took my breath away ; I felt disposed 
 to say, " Quid enim contendat hirundo 
 Cycnis? " But, on second thoughts, I inter- 
 preted the hyperbolical compliment to mean, 
 ** I am sure that, if you Boswellize me, you 
 will set down nought in malice." In other 
 words, he more than suspected that I was 
 taking notes of our conversations. It is as 
 throwing light on this point that his observa- 
 tion seemed to me worth recording. 
 
 148 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 January I'^th, 1896. — Mr. and Mrs. Glad- 
 stone and Mrs. Drew dined with us. 
 
 He remarked on our being in the same 
 rooms as before. 
 
 7".-—" You see I have strong Conservative 
 instincts." 
 
 G,- — ** So have I. In all matters of cus- 
 tom and tradition, even the Tories look 
 upon me as the chief Conservative that is." 
 
 T.— " Two years ago a Conservative M.P. 
 spoke of you as the strongest Conservative 
 influence in Parliament. This being so, I 
 wondered why, in the interests of Conser- 
 vatism, he did not join your party." 
 
 Mr. Gladstone smiled and seemed pleased. 
 
 I note, in passing, that my Conservative 
 friend probably regarded Mr. Gladstone as 
 the best controller and moderator of the 
 political changes which have become inevit- 
 able ; insomuch that the English Government 
 under his guidance might be compared to 
 the Athenian Government under the guid- 
 ance of Pericles: "it was nominally a de- 
 mocracy, but in reality the supremacy of the 
 first citizen" {Xoycp /Atv drjuoxparia epyo) 
 dd vno tov TtpGDTOv avdpoi apxv)- 
 
 He spoke with high praise of Purcell's Life 
 of Manning, He said it was the " history 
 
 149 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 of a soul and the dividing of bone and mar- 
 row. " He had read no biography for some 
 time " which showed so much impartiahty 
 and insight." I asked him what he thought 
 of Manning as an orator. He said that he 
 had heard some striking sermons of Man- 
 ning's while Manning was still in the Church 
 of England. He evidently thought much 
 more highly of Newman as a master of Eng- 
 lish; but he called Manning "a great Ec- 
 clesiastical Statesm.an." I asked him about 
 Cardinal Vaughan. 
 
 G, — " Oh, he is an infinitel}^ smaller man. 
 I am reminded of Canning's lines." ^ 
 
 This suggested the appointment of Alfred 
 Austin as successor to Alfred Tennyson. 
 
 J". — " Was it not a pity appointing a new 
 laureate? The office is now altogether some- 
 thing of an anachronism; why could it not 
 have a grand euthanasia in Tennyson?" 
 
 G. — " At any rate I should have waited 
 until someone of Tennyson's calibre had 
 turned up. I felt a special difficulty in 
 recommending a successor to Tennyson, 
 because by far the greatest of our English 
 poets is practically out of the running." 
 
 * ' ' Pitt is to Addington 
 
 As London to Paddington." 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 He went on to give reasons for this latter 
 opinion, and spoke of some lines in which 
 the great living poet to whom he referred 
 had touched on the death of the late Czar. 
 I expressed surprise that the difficulty about 
 Mr. William Morris' political opinions could 
 not be got over. 
 
 G. — " Would you place him as a poet 
 anywhere near Swinburne?" 
 
 T. — " The two are so unlike that they can 
 hardly be compared. But I confess that I 
 admire much of the Earthly Paradise and of 
 The Life and Death of Jason. ' ' 
 
 I expressed surprise at the extremely high 
 praise which Matthew Arnold and others 
 bestow on Wordsworth. Mr. Gladstone re- 
 plied that he was also surprised; but he 
 added that he had heard that the late Sir 
 Francis Doyle, whose critical faculty he 
 valued highly, took the same view as Mat- 
 thew Arnold. Neither Mr. Gladstone nor 
 I could understand why Matthew Arnold 
 ranked Wordsworth so much above Tenny- 
 son. I quoted single lines of Wordsworth 
 which Matthew Arnold praised highly. 
 Matthew Arnold seemed to regard the line — 
 
 " Who can tell us what she sings ? " 
 and the line — 
 
 151 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 " And never lifted up a single stone," 
 as so admirable in themselves that, even 
 when severed from their context, they fur- 
 nish a sort of touchstone which may help us 
 to discriminate between good poetry and 
 bad. Would Dr. Arnold have thought so 
 highly of either of these lines if they had been 
 written by a Rugby boy? 
 
 I added that Matthew Arnold speaks con- 
 temptuously of Macaulay's Lays. 
 
 G. — * * I admire the Lays very much. Tkey 
 will live. 
 
 I called Mr. Gladstone's attention to the 
 extraordinary passage in which Matthew 
 Arnold hazards the opinion that Shelley's 
 letters may outlive his poems. Mr. Glad- 
 stone seemed to agree with me that criticisms 
 of this kind tend to shake one's faith in the 
 critic's judgment. 
 
 I asked Mr. Gladstone what he thought 
 of Macaulay as a speaker. He gave an ac- 
 count of two famous speeches of Macaulay's 
 and of the effect that they produced ; but he 
 admitted that it was only on very rare occa- 
 sions that Macaulay achieved such results. 
 
 I asked him whether he thought Bright 
 the finest speaker he had ever heard in Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 152 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 G. — " That is very hard to answer. There 
 is so much that goes to make a great orator. 
 But I will say that there were certain pass- 
 ages in Bright's speeches which I never heard 
 equalled." 
 
 T, — " Had not these been carefully pre- 
 pared?" 
 
 G. — " They were said to be." 
 T. — " Was Peel a great orator? " 
 G. — " Not at all in the same way." 
 Mr. Gladstone seemed to think that Peel's 
 reputation as a statesman stands somewhat 
 too high. He did not remember to have 
 read Mr. Thursfield's Life of Peel. But he 
 had spoken to the eminent author about Sir 
 Robert Peel ; and he expected that the book 
 would exactly represent his own views. 
 
 G, — " The great virtue of Peel was that 
 he had such an enormous conscience. Con- 
 science, they say, is a very expensive thing 
 to keep. Peel certainly kept one." 
 
 T. — ** But you will remember that Peel 
 was compared (I think by Disraeli) to the 
 Turkish admiral who treacherously steered 
 the fleet under his command into the enemy's 
 harbour; and, exaggeration apart, I suppose 
 you would say that, on the two great occa- 
 sions of Catholic Emancipation and Free 
 
 153 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 Trade, other men laboured and he entered 
 into their labours." 
 
 G. — " Yes. But, when he had finally made 
 up his mind, he stuck to it unflinchingly. 
 His great failure was in regard to Ireland. 
 He thought that he could cobble up the Irish 
 difficulty by endowing Maynooth and estab- 
 lishing what the strong Protestants call god- 
 less Colleges. In one instance he, from most 
 conscientious motives, did the Irish a great 
 injury. He passed the Encumbered Estates 
 Act. It is fair to say that, when the cottiers 
 improved their land, the old landlords did 
 not tread on the heels of the improvement. 
 But, after the passing of Peel's Act, when 
 any land came to be sold, the buyer naturally 
 wanted to get the full value of his money; 
 and so the poor tenant lost all the value of 
 his improvement. One thing may amuse 
 you. In the new National Biography only 
 fifteen pages are given to Peel, and twenty 
 pages to Parnell. " 
 
 T. — ** You once told me that Parnell's 
 speeches reminded you of Lord Palmerston's 
 in their way of expressing exactly what the 
 speaker meant to say. But of course you 
 would call Parnell a pigmy compared with 
 Lord Palmerston." 
 
 154 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 G. — " I should not call him anything of 
 the sort. He had statesmanlike qualities; 
 and I found him a wonderfully good man to 
 do business with, until I discovered him 
 to be a consummate liar." 
 
 T. — " What sort of a place, then, would 
 you assign to Lord Palmerston? " 
 
 G. — " Taking our former standard of meas- 
 urement, I should say that, if Peel has fifteen 
 pages of the Biography, Palmerston should 
 have ten or twelve. Palmerston had two 
 admirable qualities. He had an intense love 
 of Constitutional freedom everywhere; and 
 he had a profound hatred of negro slavery. 
 One signal service he rendered to Ireland. 
 He appointed the * Devon Commission,* 
 which collected facts proving the Irish to 
 be the most oppressed, the most miserable 
 and the most patient population in Europe. 
 But he did not make any practical use of 
 this knowledge. I should not ascribe to him 
 the overpowering conscientiousness which I 
 ascribe to Peel." 
 
 I quoted as accurately as I could the pass- 
 age in Bacon's essay " Of Goodness, and 
 Goodness of Nature, ' ' in which, after describ- 
 ing certain not very benevolent or trust- 
 worthy characters, he says of them: " Such 
 
 155 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 dispositions are the very errors of human 
 nature ; and yet they are the fittest timber 
 to make great politicks of; like to knee tim- 
 ber, that is good for ships that are ordained 
 to be tossed, but not for building houses that 
 shall stand firm." I suggested that in this 
 passage absolute honesty is recommended to 
 ordinary men, but that a certain amount of 
 dissimulation is conceded to statesmen. 
 Does not this recall Tacitus's remark on 
 Galba's refusal to temporise? To that high 
 standard, he tells us, jam non pares sumus. 
 
 G. — ** It is only with great hesitation that 
 I should differ from anything that Bacon 
 says in those Essays of his. But surely knee 
 timber is not a thing which bends as an un- 
 scrupulous man's conscience bends. It is 
 chosen because it is in the shape best suited 
 to ships." 
 
 T. — " I suppose that Bacon meant that it 
 is naturally crooked, just as some men's 
 consciences are naturally crooked." 
 
 G. — " Well, I should not say this of 
 Palmerston's conscience. An illustration 
 will best show the fault that I find with 
 him. When the troubles were arising be- 
 tween Prussia and Denmark, Palmerston 
 said that, if the Danes were attacked, they 
 
 156 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 would not stand alone. They were attacked ; 
 they did stand alone ; and Palmerston did 
 not resign." 
 
 T. — '* Of course, when he said that, he 
 thought that the cause of Denmark would 
 be warmly supported by England." 
 
 G. — * * He had no business to think. There 
 was an Eaton master, named Heath, who 
 had an odd sort of dry humour. When he 
 was going to send a boy up to be flogged, 
 and the boy began to make excuses, saying 
 * I thought so-and-so,' he used to say, * No 
 boy has any business to think until he gets 
 to the Upper Division.' And so Palmerston 
 had no business to think until he had learnt 
 what the country was prepared to do." ^ 
 
 Something was said about flogging in 
 public schools ; and I told the story of how 
 Dr. Vaughan was once flogging a young 
 nobleman, who, not being used to such 
 rough treatment, presently got up and asked 
 the headmaster how many more cuts he was 
 going to give. Vaughan replied in his most 
 
 ^ This may recall a passage in The Rivals : — 
 
 Lydia. — " Madam, I thought you once " — 
 
 Mrs. Malaprop. — " You thought, Miss ! I don't 
 
 know any business you have to think at all — thought does 
 
 not become a young woman. " 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 mellifluous voice, " That is for me to decide, 
 Lord F. ; kneel down again." A lady told 
 the story of an assistant master sending 
 Keate a list of boys to be confirmed. Keate 
 thought they were to be flogged, and flogged 
 them accordingly. I called Mr. Gladstone's 
 attention to the phrase he had used, ** dry- 
 humour," remarking that, according to the 
 etymology, it would signify dry-wetness. 
 Wishing to draw him out about wit and 
 humour, I mentioned that Matthew Arnold 
 says that Moli^re ought to be ranked with 
 Shakespeare, Milton, and Goethe. 
 
 G. — " Does he indeed say that? I should 
 not call Moliere a poet." 
 
 T. — *' I once expressed some surprise to 
 
 our friend J ■ M at so high a place 
 
 being assigned to Moliere; but he agreed 
 with Matthew Arnold. He said that Mo- 
 liere had written two plays, which fell only 
 just below the greatest dramas of the world ; 
 and he also spoke very highly of U Avare^ 
 and also praised the Boiirgois Gentilho^mne," 
 
 G. — ** Well, I suppose that the Misan- 
 thrope and the Tartuffe were the two great 
 plays that he meant. I have been reading 
 them lately, and I should call them both 
 third-class plays. I once asked Dollinger 
 
 158 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 whom he considered the two wittiest men 
 that ever lived. He at once answered, 
 * Aristophanes and Shakespeare.* This is 
 just what I should have said myself. I am 
 very old now, and cannot hope to learn 
 much more. But I do want to learn what 
 the difference is, which people are so fond 
 of talking about, between wit and humour." 
 
 I quoted Jowett's saying {Memoir, p. 32) 
 that wit consists in a number of points, while 
 humour is continuous. 
 
 G, " I don't see how he would have 
 
 applied that to individual cases. One of 
 the best things ever said was the remark 
 of Falstaff, who, being called on to pay for 
 the satin which he had purchased, said that 
 Bardolph should be his surety.^ Was this 
 wit or humour? " 
 
 T. " At any rate, there can be no doubt 
 
 that most of Sidney Smith's good sayings 
 were witty rather than humorous. Take 
 the familiar example of the young lady who 
 said to him, * We want to bring this pea to 
 perfection ' ; Sidney Smith, giving her his 
 
 ^ The reference is to Henry IV., Part II. Act i. Scene 2.. 
 But I failed to detect in this scene any quotable passage 
 which would not disappoint my readers, after the praise 
 bestowed by Mr. Gladstone. 
 
 159 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 arm, replied, ' Let me bring perfection to 
 the pea.' " 
 
 G. — * ' Yes, that was wit. By the way, I am 
 told that one of the Pollocks was the author 
 of a saying which I had always supposed to 
 be by Sidney Smith — the saying addressed 
 to the child who tried to please the tortoise 
 by stroking its shell: * You might as well 
 stroke the Dome of St. Paul's to please the 
 Dean and Chapter. ' The Y\t\\^ gamins some- 
 times say very good things. Someone who 
 applied to us for a clerkship told us that he 
 had already applied to become a clerk to an 
 undertaker in Fetter Lane — not a very lively 
 occupation. But what can have been his 
 feelings when, on going to the office, he 
 found two hundred other applicants? But 
 the unkindest cut of all was when he saw 
 two small gamins pointing at them, and say- 
 ing, * Look at all those clerks; they are go- 
 ing there to be measured for their coffins.' 
 I will give you another instance. A very 
 tall friend of mine was staring up at the 
 Obelisk. He heard one of the gamins say, 
 * If you were to lie on the ground, you would 
 be half-way home.' " 
 
 T. — " I know a case of a very tall, gaunt, 
 and plain English lady in Spain, to whom a 
 
 i6o 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 rude little Spanish boy said, * You are as 
 long and as ugly as a lawsuit.' " 
 
 May not, I am tempted to ask, the differ- 
 ence between wit and humour be illustrated 
 by Sidney Smith's definition of wit? " The 
 feeling of wit," he says, " is occasioned by 
 those relations of ideas which excite surprise, 
 and surprise alone." Now, it is manifest 
 that the limitation contained in this last 
 clause would not be required in a definition 
 of humour. Nay, it represents the very 
 opposite of what is required in such a defini- 
 tion. The emotional quality which (accord- 
 ing to Sidney Smith) wit lacks, all humour 
 must possess. Why, then, should not hu- 
 mour be defined as Wit touched by emotion ? 
 
 The conversation drifted to English litera- 
 ture. 
 
 T.—'' I find it hard to think that Carlyle's 
 extreme popularity will last very long." 
 
 G, {smiling)—'' I find it hard to be impar- 
 tial; for Carlyle did not at all like me." 
 
 J".—" Also, he did not at all like Disraeli, 
 at least before Disraeli offered him a knight- 
 hood." 
 
 G,—"" Yes, I know that he did not like 
 Dizzy ; but, with regard to myself, the hard 
 thing was that I had a long, interesting, and, 
 II i6i 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 as it seemed to me, amicable conversation 
 with him at Mentone; and then, to my 
 amazement, I found, when Froude's life of 
 him came out, this very conversation is men- 
 tioned in it, and I am described as utterly 
 contemptible and impermeable to new ideas. 
 I don't look upon Carlyle as a philosopher. 
 Tennyson once said to me a very good thing 
 about him. He said, * Carlyle is a poet, to 
 
 whom Nature has denied the faculty of 
 
 » » > 
 verse. 
 
 T. — " This reminds me of what Tennyson 
 said to a friend of mine about Walt Whit- 
 man. He said, ' The first requisite of a 
 singer is that he should sing. Walt Whit- 
 man has not this requisite ; let him speak in 
 prose.' " 
 
 G. — -** Does not this seem rather incon- 
 sistent with what he said to me? " 
 
 T, — ** I think not. He seemingly regarded 
 both Carlyle and Walt Whitman as poetical 
 torsos, as poets without the faculty of verse. 
 This being so, he blamed Walt W^hitman for 
 attempting verse. He would doubtless have 
 commended Carlyle for never (or hardly 
 ever) attempting it." 
 
 G. — ** Are you a great admirer of Car- 
 lyle?" 
 
 162 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 T. — " At Harrow I became a great ad- 
 mirer of Macaulay's directness and plainness, 
 and I often wish that Carlyle would not write 
 Carlylese." 
 
 G. {smiling)—' I suppose that it is hardly 
 possible for the same man to be a great ad- 
 mirer both of Macaulay and of Carlyle." 
 
 The conversation passed on to politics. 
 
 T, — " I don't want to embark on too wide 
 a subject; but I am tempted to ask in the 
 words of Jehoram, ' Is it peace, Jehu?' In 
 other words, are you at all afraid of war, 
 especially with Germany? " 
 
 G,— ' Not in the least." 
 
 T. — '* Are you not afraid of our small 
 army being attacked by their huge army?" 
 
 Q^ — '* How are they to cross the Chan- 
 nel without ships? They would get very 
 wet ! ' ' 
 
 Mrs. T.—'' Might they not use a great 
 number of the German Lloyd steamers to 
 transport their army? " 
 
 (7. — '* We should have twenty ships to 
 
 their one." 
 
 7; — " I suppose that some English com- 
 panies might be induced to supply them 
 with ships and arms." 
 
 G,— ' Oh yes. For filthy lucre they 
 163 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 would supply arms to the rebel angels against 
 Heaven." 
 
 T, — " This reminds me of the case of the 
 Alabama.'* 
 
 G. — '* The case of the Alabama is a very 
 difficult and complicated one." 
 
 T. — " I suppose that you consider the 
 award was extravagantly high. " 
 
 G. — "It was enormous." 
 
 He went on to mention, if I understood 
 him rightly, a case in which we were mulcted 
 of a large sum through the act of one of our 
 colonies. 
 
 T. — " What a strong view Froude takes 
 in Oceana about the importance of colonies 
 to the Mother Country! " 
 
 G. — " What reason does he give? " 
 
 T. — " I think he says that in England the 
 race tends to become enfeebled through be- 
 ing crowded into large towns. He wishes 
 more and more emigrants to be sent off to 
 Australia and the other colonies, so that 
 they or their posterity may return with re- 
 cruited vigour to do service in England." 
 
 G, — ** Does he propose bringing another 
 Australia into being? The conditions which 
 he seems to have desired exist already, and 
 I cannot see how he expected to improve 
 
 164 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 them. No, I have always maintained that 
 we are bound by ties of honour and con- 
 science to our colonies. But the idea that 
 the colonies add to the strength of the 
 mother country appears to me to be as 
 dark a superstition as any that existed in 
 the Middle Ages." 
 
 It may not be amiss to compare this with 
 a remark made in conversation many years 
 ago by the late editor of the Times (Mr. 
 Chenery) in regard to the colonies: " They 
 are not feeders, but suckers." 
 
 In justice to Froude I feel bound to say 
 that I understand his contention to be that 
 the colonies must be made to feel that the 
 mother country really regards them as her 
 children, and that she opens her doors to 
 them, and is willing (in Academic phrase) 
 to grant to those who distinguish themselves 
 an ad iundefn degree on her own soil ; and 
 that, this being clearly understood, the tie 
 between mother country and colonies will 
 gradually become closer, especially as quick- 
 ened locomotion cuts short distance. 
 
 Later on, when Mr. Gladstone and I were 
 left alone, he called my attention to the 
 question raised in my Memoir of Jowett as 
 to whether Socrates had much sense of sin. 
 
 i6S 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 T, — " Do you remember the passage at 
 the end of the Republic where Socrates speaks 
 of the tremendous and seemingly everlasting 
 punishments which await tyrants in the other 
 world? Does this not show that he had a 
 strong sense of the heinousness of their 
 sms? 
 
 G. — ** I do not doubt that Socrates felt 
 strongly the obligation of his moral code. 
 But he regarded vice and crimes as offences 
 against the social order, rather than as 
 infractions of a law given by God. Of sin, 
 in the latter sense, I think that there is no 
 trace in Plato ; and I am confident that there 
 is none in Aristotle. Even the moral code 
 of the Greeks in the time of Socrates was so 
 elastic as to press very gently on the vice 
 mentioned in the Symposium.'' 
 
 T. — ** It is certainly strange that there is 
 nothing about that vice in Homer." 
 
 G. — "Yes; Homer had some remains of 
 the sense of sin in his araaBaXirf. But 
 among the Greeks this sense of sin almost 
 died out with Homer." 
 
 I recalled the declaration of ^Eschylus, 
 which gathers solemnity from its very vague- 
 ness, and to which no translation can do 
 justice — the half indignant, half incredulous 
 
 i66 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 declaration or admission that ** someone 
 denied" that the gods take any heed of 
 mortals; and I asked whether -^schylus 
 had not a deep sense, if not of sin, at any 
 rate of the appalling seriousness of human 
 life. 
 
 G. — " Yes, there are some remains of the 
 sense of sin in .^schylus. In Homer the 
 Eumenides are passionless beings dispensing 
 impartial justice. In later times they are 
 Furies inflamed by the worst passions. 
 Take, for example, the phrase: Atra flagel- 
 lum Tisiphone qiiatit exult ans. In ^schylus 
 you have both conceptions together." 
 
 I could not agree with him in thinking 
 the Homerica gods by any means models 
 of virtue. An example is furnished by the 
 fight of the gods, and the attitude taken by 
 the Supreme Father — 
 
 [ " Jove as his sport the dreadful scene descries, 
 And views contending gods with careless eyes." 
 
 In this couplet, it should be added. Pope 
 has hardly done justice to the frank and 
 refreshing brutality of the original, where 
 the spiteful amusement of the Deity seems 
 to be taken as a matter of course — 
 
 ** hyEXa66i ds oi (piXov rjrop 
 yrfBodvvy o9' oparo Beovi eptSi dvviovraiy 
 
 167 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 May not, after all, this divine or diabolic 
 mirth have been flavoured with a Chauvin- 
 istic ingredient — with the sweet but unwhole- 
 some condiment of Dividantur et imperabo? 
 
 Mr. Gladstone went on to say that, among 
 the Hebrews in the time of Christ, the belief 
 in the heinousness of sin had struck as deep 
 root as the belief in the Unity of God; 
 Christ himself did not insist on it, because 
 He knew that His hearers did not dispute it. 
 
 On the general question I offered this 
 comment: " I quite feel that the word * sin,* 
 in the theological sense, implies the infrac- 
 tion of a divine law. But is not this word, 
 like some other theological terms (such as 
 inspiration), gradually modifying its mean- 
 ing? The distinction that we now want to 
 mark, is the distinction between persons 
 who have, and persons who have not, a 
 strong capacity for righteous indignation. 
 This capacity is not always coincident with 
 a sense of sin (strictly so called). Rabelais, 
 Montaigne, Shakespeare, Moliere, and La 
 Fontaine probably believed — they certainly 
 professed to believe — in the delivery of the 
 law from Sinai. On the other hand, Vol- 
 taire, the two Mills, Mr. Francis Newman 
 and Mr. John Morley have rejected that be- 
 
 i68 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 lief; and yet, strange to say, the capacity 
 for righteous indignation is far stronger in 
 them than in the earlier writers whom I have 
 named ; and therefore, I should say that, in 
 the modern acceptation of the term, they 
 have a stronger sense of the heinousness 
 
 sm. 
 
 In connection with this subject I called 
 Mr. Gladstone's attention to a tremendous 
 passage in Newman's Apologia. * * The Cath- 
 olic Church holds it better for the sun and 
 moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to 
 fail, and for all the many millions on it to die 
 of starvation in extremest agony, as far as 
 temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, 
 I will not say, should be lost, but should 
 commit one venal sin, should tell one wilful 
 untruth, or should steal one poor farthing 
 without excuse." Commenting on this ex- 
 tract, I admitted that Newman's view might 
 be defended by very plausible arguments; 
 but I could not forbear testing it by a 
 homely example. Suppose that a boy, from 
 sheer love of mischief, told his parents falsely 
 that his sister had been drowned. On dis- 
 covering the falsehood, the parents would 
 doubtless punish the boy well ; but in their 
 hearts they would rejoice. In other words, 
 
 169 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 they would prefer that a small sin should 
 have been committed, rather than that a 
 calamity should occur which would be as 
 dust in the balance when compared with the 
 calamity imagined by Newman. Would not 
 even Newman himself have sympathised 
 with such parents in their sense of relief? 
 Mr. Gladstone made no comment on what 
 I urged, probably thinking that the interval 
 between our respective standpoints was too 
 wide to be bridged over by argument. But 
 he helped on the discussion in another way. 
 He gave me the extract (having himself most 
 kindly copied it out) from Sir Henry Tay- 
 lor's Correspondence, which he had mentioned 
 to me in a former conversation as ascribing 
 to Walter Scott a somewhat blunted capacity 
 for moral indignation. The passage occurs 
 in a letter: — " The defect which you men- 
 tion is attributable to the defect of moral 
 force in Scott's character; invariable can- 
 dour and moderation in judging men is gen- 
 erally accompanied by such a defect. Scott 
 seems to be always disposed to approve of 
 rectitude of conduct, and to acquiesce in the 
 general rules of morality, but without any 
 instinctive or unconquerable aversion from 
 vice — witness his friendship for Byron. 
 
 170 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 Power of the imagination in conceiving and 
 depicting strongly a great variety of char- 
 acters seems scarcely compatible with a 
 strong individuality of character in the per- 
 son possessing that power. It is some sim- 
 ple, headstrong qualities which make a strong 
 character. Universality of opinions, and 
 especially of sympathies, the one generally 
 arising out of extended knowledge, the other 
 out of the poetic sensibilities, are compatible 
 enough with the power of conceiving a strong 
 character, but not with that of being it." 
 Mr. Gladstone added this comment: " Scott 
 is one of my idols; but I cannot deny that 
 there is force and depth in Taylor's doctrine. 
 It is probably the only hard thing that can 
 be, and has to be, said of Scott with truth. 
 With this drawback, he was a great bene- 
 factor to mankind." 
 
 I could not forbear replying, " I own that 
 Taylor seems to me hard on Scott. I can- 
 not ascribe moral weakness to one who un- 
 derwent such sacrifices, in order to pay off 
 his creditors. As to his deficiency in the 
 power of moral indignation, is not this found 
 in almost all persons who write novels, or 
 indeed who contemplate human nature from 
 the outside? I could no more reproach such 
 
 171 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 persons with taking an indulgent view of 
 the moral infirmities of our poor human 
 nature than I could blame a surgeon for 
 guarding himself against feeling excessive 
 sympathy for his patients, and for taking 
 what is called d^professional view of even the 
 gravest disorders." And, in confirmation 
 of my opinion, I called Mr. Gladstone's 
 attention to a passage which tends to show 
 that biographers as well as novelists are apt 
 to take a professional view of moral short- 
 comings. The passage occurs in Plutarch's 
 Lives of Agis and Cleomenes^ where, after 
 making mention of the extraordinary moral 
 lapse which dishonoured the old age of 
 Aratus, the biographer goes on to say: 
 " This that we have written of Aratus (who 
 was indued with many noble virtues, and a 
 worthy Grsecian) is not so much to accuse 
 him, as to make us to see the frayelty and 
 weakenes of man's nature : the which, though 
 it have never so excellent vertues, can not 
 yet bring forth such perfit frute, but that it 
 hath ever some mayme and bleamishe." 
 {North's Plutarch.) 
 
 Going back to Homer, Mr. Gladstone con- 
 tended that in the Iliad the Greeks were never 
 charged with doing anything very wrong. 
 
 172 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 T. — ** What do you say of the vindictive- 
 ness of Achilles? " 
 
 Mr. Gladstone went through the story of 
 Achilles from the beginning, and thought 
 that Hector might have procured the res- 
 toration of Helen. 
 
 G. — " The Greeks were finer characters 
 than even some of the Hebrew patriarchs. 
 They would never have consented to such 
 an act as the selling of Joseph to the Egyp- 
 tians. Homer marks his strong disapproval 
 of the abduction of Helen by using the 
 word rjpTtaaav.'" 
 
 T. — ** You will remember that Herodotus 
 uses the same word, and yet he thought that 
 the Greeks were altogether in the wrong. ' * 
 
 Mr. Gladstone seemed surprised, so I 
 quoted in the original the passage, which 
 says of such women as Helen: ** It is plain 
 that, if they had not wished it, they would 
 not have been carried oflF," remarking that 
 this sentence seemed to me very quaint. 
 
 G, — ** Yes, of course, she consented to 
 some extent, as is shown by the deep con- 
 trition which she expresses in the Odyssey. 
 But was she worse that Bathsheba? " 
 
 Referring to ^\xt\er' s Analogy , he said that 
 he thought Dr. James Martineau had, in 
 
 173 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 some respect, unconsciously misrepresented 
 Butler. I replied that Jowett is reported to 
 have described Butler's work as a " tissue of 
 false analogies " ; and I quoted what he had 
 said to me, namely, that he recoiled from the 
 notion of attributing to a deliberate judicial 
 act of the Deity moral anomalies similar to 
 those which may be inseparable from the 
 scheme of nature. Mr. Gladstone could not 
 at all see the point of Jowett's objection. 
 He said that there was one ** audacious" 
 passage in which Butler seemed to hint that 
 this world may have been made as nearly 
 perfect as the necessity of things permit- 
 ted. 
 
 Something was said of the contemptuous 
 way in which most Catholics seemed to 
 regard Anglo-Catholics. Mr. Gladstone men- 
 tioned a Catholic Peer who compared Ritual- 
 ism to mock-turtle, and who added that he 
 preferred the real turtle. I rejoined that the 
 antipathy felt by Romanists for what they 
 regard as the sham Rome on the banks of 
 the Isis reminds me of the pathetic melan- 
 choly with which Claudian contemplated the 
 new Rome on the shores of the Bosphorus — 
 
 ** Cum subiit par Roma mihi, divisaque sumpsit 
 ^quales Aurora togas." 
 
 174 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 Mr. Gladstone seemed to like this com- 
 parison. 
 
 Reverting to the Life of Manning, Mr. 
 Gladstone expressed surprise that the Car- 
 dinal had said that at Harrow he had learnt 
 many things imperfectly ; and Mr. Gladstone 
 added the amazing statement that, when he 
 was at Eton, it was possible either to learn 
 or not to learn, but that, if you learnt at all, 
 you had to learn thoroughly. He wished 
 that a good life of Busby could be written. 
 It was of Busby that the story was told that 
 he begged to be excused from uncovering 
 before Charles II., because if the boys once 
 saw him owning his inferiority to mortal 
 man, they would lose all respect for him. 
 
 G. — " He seems to have been the parent 
 of our public schools system ; and, if that 
 system were removed, it would be like knock- 
 ing a front tooth out of our English social 
 life. I am glad to have been at Eaton, and 
 especially to have been there under Keate. 
 Keate was a very short man, and was con- 
 scious of thus being at a disadvantage in 
 inspiring the boys with awe. He resorted 
 to two expedients for counteracting this 
 defect. First, he wore a cassock and flow- 
 ing robes ; and, secondly, he gave the boys 
 
 175 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 the impression of always being in a pas- 
 sion." 
 
 With Mr. Gladstone's description of Keate 
 it may be worth while to compare that given 
 by Kinglake: — 
 
 " Anybody without the least notion of drawing 
 could still draw a speaking, nay scolding, likeness of 
 Keate. If you had no pencil, you could draw him 
 well enough with the poker, or the leg of a chair, or 
 the smoke of a candle. He was little more (if more 
 at all) than five feet in height, and was not very 
 great in girth, but within this space was concentrated 
 the pluck of ten battalions. He had a really noble 
 voice, and this he could modulate with great skill ; 
 but he had also the power of quacking like an angry 
 duck, and he almost always adopted this mode of 
 communication in order to inspire respect. He was 
 a capital scholar, but his ingenuous learning had not 
 'softened his manners,' and had ' permitted them to 
 be fierce' — tremendously fierce. He had such a 
 complete command over his temper — I mean, over 
 his g'ood temper, that he scarcely ever allowed it to 
 appear : you could not put him out of humour — that 
 is, out of the ///-humour which he thought to be fit- 
 ting for a head-master. His red shaggy eyebrows 
 were so prominent, that he habitually used them as 
 arms and hands for the purpose of pointing out any 
 object towards which he wished to direct attention ; 
 the rest of his features were equally striking in their 
 way, and were all and all his own. He wore a fancy 
 dress, partly resembling the costume of Napoleon, 
 
 176 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 and partly that of a widow woman. I could not 
 have named anybody more decidedly differing in 
 appearance from the rest of the human race." 
 
 I quoted Vaughan's sa3nng (reported to 
 me on direct authority), viz. that it was a 
 great advantage to him as a schoolmaster 
 that, when he was most angry with a boy, 
 he seemed most calm and self-possessed. 
 
 G, — " There was one excellent institution 
 at Eaton in my time. About once a week 
 Keate summoned the boys and gave them a 
 lecture about things in general. Whenever 
 they were displeased they called out * 00, 
 00, 00,' without moving their lips, so that 
 Keate could not tell which boys were mak- 
 ing the noise. There was something Homeric 
 in this. When the Trojans murmured, it is 
 said that they KeXadrfday^ whereas Homer 
 applies a more respectful word to the ap- 
 plause of the Achseans." 
 
 He did not say whether the choice of these 
 words, as of some of the Homeric epithets, 
 may not have been due to the exigencies of 
 metre. 
 
 G, — ** I am sorry to learn that this good 
 old Eton custom has died out." 
 
 T.—** Vaughan would certainly not have 
 tolerated it at Harrow." 
 12 177 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 G. — " What could he have done? If he 
 had left off giving the lectures, it would have 
 been a triumph for the boys." 
 
 T, — " He sometimes deprived the whole 
 school of a half-holiday for less offences than 
 that. By the way, the compliment you paid 
 to Busby startled me. Do you not consider 
 Arnold the great reformer of modern public 
 schools?" 
 
 G, — ** I doubt whether much of his influ- 
 ence reached Eton. I consider the three 
 men who have recently done most for the 
 religious improvement of Eton to have been 
 Hawtrey, Selwyn (afterwards the well-known 
 bishop), and the Duke of Newcastle, who 
 founded the Newcastle Scholarship." 
 
 T. — " How has the Newcastle Scholarship 
 promoted the religious improvement of 
 Eton?" 
 
 G, — ** There are some divinity questions; 
 and the competition stimulates the candi- 
 dates to learn the rudiments of theology in 
 a way in which they would not learn them 
 otherwise." 
 
 Jan. iSt/i. — Mr. Gladstone came to tea. 
 G. — ** In my younger days I was a great 
 deal in Scotland, and looked upon Presby- 
 
 178 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 terianism as of all religions the least suscept- 
 ible of change. But all is now different. 
 The Free Church has taken up the traditions 
 of Presbyterianism, and indirectly, if it has 
 not devitalised the Established Kirk, has at 
 least deprived it of some of its essential 
 characteristics. The Established Kirk is in 
 some particulars approaching the Church of 
 England. I believe that its congregations 
 sometimes sing Newman's hymn, ** Lead, 
 kindly Light," which would have been 
 Anathema in my youth ; and there is even 
 some talk of their having bishops." 
 
 In illustration of the state of opinion that 
 prevailed in Scotland during his youth or 
 middle life, he mentioned that in a Scotch 
 town (I think Perth) he once saw a proces- 
 sion of choristers, and had the curiosity to 
 ask another Scotch boy what those boys 
 were. ** They are Puseyites." ** And what 
 are Puseyites?" ** Next door to Papists." 
 I told the story that in my younger days a 
 captain of militia, when enlisting a recruit, 
 asked what was his religion. ** Are you a 
 Protestant?" ** Noa." "Then are you a 
 Catholic ? " * * Noa. " " Then what the devil 
 are you? — Are you a heathen?" ** Noa, 
 Tm a Puseyite." The captain, after ascer- 
 
 179 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 taining what this latter term meant, decided 
 that he should be sent to the Catholic service 
 in the morning, and to the Protestant in the 
 afternoon. 
 
 G. {laughing) — ** Was that in England?" 
 
 T. — '*Yes; in Chester. The story was 
 told me at the time by one of the captains." 
 
 Mr. Gladstone spoke a good deal about 
 Manning, whom he regarded with very mixed 
 feelings. He still had the remains of an 
 ardent personal affection for the Cardinal, 
 and an admiration for his statesmanlike 
 abilities. But the feelings were tempered 
 by a dislike of his policy, and (as he ex- 
 pressed it) of his " craft." He had the 
 strongest aversion to the Ultramontane 
 movement. I said that a Catholic priest of 
 liberal tendencies rejoiced at the decree of 
 the Vatican Council in 1870, on the ground 
 seemingly that the Pope — that is, the Church 
 — is now released from the trammels of the 
 past, and can embark on a career of progress. 
 
 G. — " That means that he prefers personal 
 to constitutional authority. Would he have 
 liked the government of the Tudors better 
 than the government of the Plantagenets? " 
 
 Personally, I should have thought that, if 
 compelled to choose between living under 
 
 180 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 the Plantagenets on the one hand, and, on 
 the other hand, living either at the beginning 
 of the reign of Henry Vll. or at the end of 
 the reign of Elizabeth, — that is, during those 
 portions of the Tudor regiine which were 
 comparatively exempt from religious trou- 
 bles, — most of us would have given a decided 
 preference to the England of the Tudors. 
 
 At the risk of appearing at once cynical 
 and captious, I will offer another comment 
 on the opinion expressed by Mr. Gladstone. 
 In our view of nations, as of individuals of 
 all sorts, it is not alwa3^s by their periods 
 of perfect sanity and soundness that we are 
 most attracted. Assuredly the aloe is not 
 in a healthy state when it flowers, any more 
 than is the legendary swan when it sings. 
 But I had rather contemplate either of those 
 living things in its brief moribund glory, 
 than during its protracted spell of salubrious 
 dulness. And, for a like reason, I feel a 
 greater interest in the Roman Republic as 
 it was in the age of Cicero and of Lucretius, 
 than as it was in the robuster epoch of Scipio 
 and of Fabius ; thus, too, mutatis mutandis^ 
 even were I to grant all that Mr. Gladstone 
 claimed for the orderly sway of the Planta- 
 genets, I should still be more drawn towards 
 
 i8i 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 the England of Shakespeare, and of Raleigh, 
 even than towards the England of Chaucer. 
 
 I mentioned a fact related by the aforesaid 
 priest, and quoted in my Memoir of Jowett. 
 It is there stated (p. 27) that the priest wrote 
 to me: — 
 
 ** Did I ever tell you of a saying of Car- 
 dinal Manning on the hell question? A 
 friend suggesting that it was a place of eter- 
 nal suffering eternally untenanted, he an- 
 swered : * If one did not hope that it was so, 
 who could endure life ? ' " According to this 
 ingenious theory, impenitent sinners are in- 
 directly suggestive of Dryden's hind; for 
 they are doomed to hell, but fated not to burn. 
 But Mr. Gladstone did not see his way either 
 to granting them an escape from the nether 
 fires, or to investing them with the insensi- 
 bility of the salamander. And indeed, when 
 the Cardinal's merciful special pleading was 
 reported to him, he emphatically replied that 
 the report seemed to him hard to believe. 
 He went on to speak of an article which he 
 had written about Butler's chapter on a 
 future life. He had no sympathy with the 
 belief in natural immortality. That belief, 
 he contended, was upheld only by Plato and 
 a few other philosophers in pagan times. It 
 
 182 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 is nowhere to be found in the Bible; and 
 Origen was, he believed, the earliest Chris- 
 tian writer who adopted it; afterwards it 
 became so widespread, if not universal, that 
 Servetus, when accused, amongst other 
 things, of the heresy of attacking that be- 
 lief, openly declared: ** If ever I said that, 
 and not only said it, but published it, and 
 infected the whole world, I would condemn 
 myself to death." 
 
 G. — " Do you believe in natural immor- 
 tality?" 
 
 T. — " I certainly wish to believe it. I am 
 naturally disposed in favour of any form of 
 the belief in immortality which does not 
 involve the belief in final retribution." 
 
 G. — ** But the belief in natural immor- 
 tality is not inconsistent with the belief in 
 final retribution." 
 
 In strict theory, I suppose that he was 
 right. But, practically, the scientific objec- 
 tions to the belief in natural immortality are 
 so formidable that this belief is obliged in 
 self-defence to throw itself, as it were, on 
 our highest aspirations; and those aspira- 
 tions undoubtedly point to the elevating 
 hope that good will be the final goal of ill. 
 Probably Lord Sherbrooke had some such 
 
 183 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 thought in his mind when he said, in con- 
 versation, *' I utterly refuse to believe in a 
 God who is worse than I am." Whereto 
 he might have added as a corollary: " I 
 utterly refuse to believe in a future life 
 which is worse than the present life." Yes j 
 this is the universal postulate of enlightened 
 theology : De Diis nil nisi bonum. 
 
 Wishing to see what Mr. Gladstone would 
 make of the obvious objections to the belief 
 in personal immortality, I expounded them 
 as clearly as I could ; and, with that view, 
 I gave him the substance of a conversation 
 which had taken place between Professor 
 Tyndall and myself, and which has so much 
 intrinsic interest that I will venture to repeat 
 it here : — 
 
 In 1886 (or thereabouts) I remarked to Professor 
 Tyndall that Dr. Maudsley somewhere speaks of Mind 
 as "a function of brain, or rather of organisation." 
 " Do you suppose," Tyndall asked, laughing, " that 
 Maudsley is the only man who says that ? " He 
 clearly regarded the point as one on which rational 
 biologists are agreed. I then inquired whether he 
 did not find it hard to reconcile this opinion with the 
 belief in immortality. " If the brain is the organ, 
 and consciousness is merely the function, is it not 
 contrary to all analogy to expect that, in this instance, 
 the function will outlast the organ r Is it not like 
 
 184 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 imagining that the fire will go on burning when the 
 fuel is exhausted ? Huxley would doubtless agree 
 with you on the general principle ; and therefore I 
 am puzzled to find him taking a purely Agnostic at- 
 titude on the question. He says, in effect, that, if 
 people tell him that they believe in immortality, he 
 asks them on what they ground their belief; and, if 
 they tell him that they disbelieve in it, he asks them 
 on what they ground their disbelief." In reply, Tyn- 
 dall took exception to my illustration drawn from 
 fire and fuel. He said that there is no evidence that 
 consciousness, like heat or electricity, is a mode of 
 motion ; but he spoke of consciousness as "depend- 
 ent " on organisation. 
 
 Tol.—" Does not the word ' dependent ' involve 
 the whole issue ? " 
 
 Tyn, {after a pause)—'* Do you suppose that, if 
 Huxley had been in this room now, and you had 
 pressed him as you have pressed me, he would seri- 
 ously maintain that the balance lies evenly between 
 the two opposite hypotheses ? " 
 
 He went on to make it quite clear that, in his 
 opinion, the view of Lucretius that 
 
 " animi natura nequit sine corpore oriri 
 
 Sola, neque a nervis et sanguine longiter esse," 
 
 is in all probability correct. Presently Tyndall 
 added, with a smile, " Huxley does sometimes throw 
 sops to Cerberus "—meaning, doubtless, that this 
 economy of truth or economy of logic, was practised 
 unconsciously. That such a comment should have 
 been made by Tyndall, even playfully, on his ad- 
 mired and admirable friend, will surprise some 
 
 185 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 readers more, perhaps, than it surprised me. In ex- 
 planation of what he said, I will add that, long be- 
 fore this conversation had taken place, and indeed 
 shortly after Huxley had published his essay on 
 " Administrative Nihilism," I called Tyndall's atten- 
 tion to one or two of Huxley's unexpected utterances, 
 utterances which, though certainly not orthodox, had 
 something dogmatically and aggressively anti-ma- 
 terialistic in their tone. " His mind," replied Tyn- 
 dall, " is a pendulum which has been going into one 
 extreme, and now inclines towards the opposite one." 
 
 After hearing what I had to say, Mr. 
 Gladstone expressed strong disagreement 
 with Tyndall. *' Scientific men," he ex- 
 claimed, " talk a great deal too confidently 
 about many points ; and this is one of them. ' ' 
 When I insisted that, according to Tyndall, 
 mind is a function of the brain, just as sight 
 is the function of the eye, he interrupted 
 me: " I beg your pardon, sight is not the 
 function of the eye." 
 
 7". — " At anyrate, you will admit that 
 the eye is the organ of sight." 
 
 G. — ** Strictly speaking, the eye is the 
 carrier of sight." I confess that this objec- 
 tion of his seemed to me very hypercritical, 
 all the more so because, so far as it goes, it 
 rather strengthens than weakens the case 
 for what is called Materialism. Let us grant 
 
 i86 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 that the brain is the organ of sight, and that 
 the eye is the mere servant of the brain. 
 The decomposition of the eye extinguishes 
 sight. What vital function, then, will be 
 left when the brain is decomposed? To 
 speak broadly: If the death of the servant 
 puts a stop to his peculiar form of service, 
 what form of service would be possible when 
 the master and all the servants have perished 
 together? I was casting about for some 
 safer topic when, suddenly remembering 
 what had recently passed between us about 
 wit and humour, I stumbled on the highly 
 original observation that Charles Lamb 
 seemed to me humorous rather than witty! 
 But Mr. Gladstone, of course, held the rud- 
 der; and, after drily assenting to what may 
 be termed my leading platitude, he turned 
 our course away from the smooth water and 
 steered straight towards the Day of Judg- 
 ment. He began by saying that the Chris- 
 tian doctrine of immortality was that of 
 union with God ; and, by way of illustration, 
 he quoted the text, " As Thou, Father, art 
 in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be 
 one in us." He then repeated his convic- 
 tion that natural immortality is not to be 
 found in the New Testament. I pointed 
 
 187 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 out, on the Hnes laid down by Renan, the 
 difference between the Platonic view of Im- 
 mortality and the Christian view of the 
 Resurrection of the Body. I repeated what 
 Renan says to the effect that there are at 
 least two distinct views of Immortality. 
 There is the Greek view, which divides man 
 into two parts, body and soul, and which 
 represents the soul as surviving without the 
 body; this view seems to be entertained by 
 the author of Ecclesiastes, who says, " Then 
 shall the dust return to the earth as it was: 
 and the spirit shall return unto God, who 
 gave it." On the other hand, there is the 
 distinctively Christian view of the Resurrec- 
 tion of the Body, which does not assign to 
 the soul an independent existence, but pro- 
 nounces that soul and body together shall 
 be raised at the last day. Mr. Gladstone 
 seemed to agree; but, on my saying that 
 one or two texts are not so easily reconciled 
 with this opinion, he asked, " Which texts? " 
 I quoted the words addressed to the dying 
 thief; and added that this text certainly im- 
 plied that the thief's soul would be in heaven 
 while his body was decomposing in the 
 earth. 
 
 G. — ** Oh, there is no doubt that the New 
 1 88 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 Testament teaches throughout that the souls 
 of the righteous will go to heaven imme- 
 diately after their death.** 
 
 T, — " If the righteous are to be severed 
 from the wicked immediately after death, 
 what need will there be for a Day of Judg- 
 ment? Would it not be a strange anomaly 
 that the dying thief and Dives should be 
 called upon at the last day to make their 
 defence before the Tribunal of God, if each 
 of them, the former in Paradise and the lat- 
 ter in * torments,' has already learnt by ex- 
 perience what the final sentence on him is 
 to be? Would not the condemned be entitled 
 (adapting a famous line) to say of such a 
 proceeding: * 'Tis like a trial after execu- 
 tion '? " 
 
 I fear that I cannot have made my reason- 
 ing plain to Mr. Gladstone; for he answered 
 with unusual heat, " I really cannot answer 
 such questions. The Almighty never took 
 me into His confidence as to why there is to 
 be a Day of Judgment." I felt it was im- 
 possible to press the matter further, and 
 merely said something to the effect that the 
 expectation of the immediate end of the world 
 probably deterred the apostles from laying 
 much stress on the condition of the dead in 
 
 189 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 the interval before the general Resurrec- 
 tion. 
 
 Sir John Seeley somewhere, while express- 
 ing his strong wish to retain the belief in 
 immortality, has spoken of the belief in the 
 Day of Judgment as indicating a certain 
 want of culture in those who maintain it. 
 He was of course referring to his own con- 
 temporaries; and his remark would not have 
 applied to persons who, like Mr. Gladstone, 
 were a quarter of a century older. In Mr. 
 Gladstone's mind this unsightly and withered 
 branch of the popular theology was as fixed 
 as in the mind of the Evangelical preacher 
 who, in the days of my youth, edified his 
 congregation by exclaiming: " In what form 
 the Angel will appear I know no more than 
 of what metal his trumpet will be made!" 
 Shall I be thought disrespectful if I remark 
 that this and one or two other sayings of 
 Mr. Gladstone remind me of Walter Bage- 
 hot's epigrammatic assertion that, " A Con- 
 stitutional Statesman is in general a man of 
 common opinions and uncommon abilities — r 
 of the powers of a first-rate man and the 
 creed of a second-rate man "? 
 
 Mr. Gladstone rose to depart. I was 
 always anxious in my conversations with him 
 
 190 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 to refresh myself with a sort of old-world 
 bath by hearing his recollections of his youth 
 and middle life ; and I was disappointed that 
 in this instance the conversation had drifted 
 from the past and present to the future. 
 As I walked with him to his hotel, I ob- 
 served that, as Miss Gladstone had been so 
 long at Newnham, he had probably often 
 considered the question of the higher edu- 
 cation of women and of their future demands. 
 He replied that he had considered the ques- 
 tion very often ; he was disposed to open 
 the professions to them, but to exclude them 
 from the franchise ; if they were once given 
 the franchise, it would be hard to prevent 
 their having everything else. 
 
 T. — ** What do you mean by * everything 
 else ' ? Do you mean that they would want 
 to become Members of Parliament?" 
 
 G. — '* Yes, and to become judges and 
 generals." 
 
 T. — " But surely, if they want to become 
 generals, they would be told that they were, 
 owing to physical causes, unfit for the army. 
 
 G. — ** Oh, but they would answer that, if 
 they were physically unfit to become gen- 
 erals, they never would or could become 
 generals." 
 
 191 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 T. — **Yes; this is the kind of argument 
 which Mill illustrated by saying that no law 
 was ever passed forbidding men with weak 
 arms to become blacksmiths." 
 
 G. — " One concession, however, I would 
 make to them. It seems to me perfectly 
 scandalous that, out of the vast incomes of 
 our two Universities, not a sixpence has ever 
 been given to a woman." 
 
 T, — " Would you have women made pro- 
 fessors?" 
 
 G. — " There might be difficulties about 
 that. But they might be helpful in other 
 ways. As compared with men, they are 
 handicapped in the race of life; and they 
 certainly ought to have their share of the 
 University revenues. I remember urging 
 this on Lightfoot at the time of the Uni- 
 versity Commission ; but he thought that it 
 would be too fundamental a change." 
 
 January Zth, 1896. — Dined with Mr. 
 Armitstead and the Gladstones; Lord and 
 Lady Cranbourne were present. Mr. Glad- 
 stone, speaking of the learned divine whose 
 reminiscences of him I have quoted above, 
 regretted that so excellent a man was obliged 
 by weak health to live abroad. 
 
 192 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 G, — ** He would probably have risen to 
 the highest distinction in the Church." 
 
 T. — " Surely very many able clergymen, 
 for various reasons, do not gain ecclesiastical 
 preferments." 
 
 G. — " No doubt that used to be the case. 
 At the time of the Newmanite movement, 
 every clergyman who took part in that move- 
 ment was rigorously placed under a bann. 
 But things are changed now." 
 
 I spoke of Jowett as a very distinguished 
 clergyman, who never received ecclesiastical 
 preferment ; and the conversation drifted to 
 Jowett's Sermon on Discourse. I said that 
 on that occasion he chose a very odd text. 
 A sermon is generally supposed to bear some 
 relation to the text in its original sense ; and 
 in this instance the selection of " Man shall 
 not live by bread alone, but by every word 
 that proceedeth out of the mouth,'' ^ suggests 
 the notion that the dialogue with the Arch- 
 fiend in the wilderness had turned on the 
 best mode of being agreeable in society. 
 Mr. Gladstone smiled, and acknowledged 
 that sometimes Jowett's texts were cer- 
 tainly peculiar; but, on the whole, the ser- 
 mons seemed to him to be very interesting 
 * The text is thus truncated by Jowett. 
 13 193 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 and striking. He then came up to me with 
 his edition of Butler's Analogy, and said, 
 ** This is my Butler." As I have to wear 
 very peculiar spectacles, the field of my 
 vision is limited; and Mr. Gladstone hap- 
 pened to hold the book outside that field. 
 I therefore did not see the book; but, 
 chancing to see a gentleman in evening 
 dress advancing towards me, I imagined 
 that this must be the butler, who was in all 
 probability bringing me my handkerchief, 
 which I might have dropped on the staircase. 
 This trivial incident is worth recording, as 
 the mistake would scarcely have been made 
 but for that peculiar inelastic and, so to say, 
 stereotyped earnestness of manner which 
 made it hard sometimes to tell whether Mr. 
 Gladstone was speaking on a grave or on 
 a light topic. 
 
 At dinner the conversation began with the 
 rainfall at Biarritz ; and I took the oppor- 
 tunity of raising the question whether a dry 
 or a damp climate is the more favourable to 
 longevity. 
 
 G. — ** There are some very curious facts 
 about longevity. I will mention one. The 
 proportion of centenarians in Scotland is 
 about double of what it is in England, and 
 
 194 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 in Ireland it is about double of what it is in 
 Scotland." 
 
 I asked whether that might not be due to 
 the exaggeration of very old people. Were 
 the registers as carefully kept in Ireland and 
 Scotland as in England? 
 
 G. — " I am speaking of the most recent 
 returns." 
 
 I asked whether the registers were kept 
 with equal care in all three countries a hun- 
 dred years ago, and reminded Mr. Gladstone 
 of the difficulty which arises when one child 
 dies and another, born some years later, is 
 called by the same name. 
 
 G.—'' I know that; but I think that this 
 cause of error would exist equally in the 
 three countries. The result seems to me 
 very remarkable indeed." He went on to 
 talk about Sir G. Cornwall Lewis, for whose 
 judgment, except on matters of " finance," 
 he had the highest respect ; but in his scepti- 
 cism about centenarianism he was, in Mr. 
 Gladstone's opinion, simply wrong. I ad- 
 verted to my conversation with Sir G. Corn- 
 wall Lewis (reported in Safe Studies, pp. 
 37-43), which occurred only a few weeks be- 
 fore his death, and in which he admitted that a 
 few cases of centenarianism were established. 
 
 195 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 G. — ** It appears, then, that, like the 
 vaccinators, he changed his ground." 
 
 T, — ** How have vaccinators changed their 
 ground? " 
 
 G. — " They began by saying that, if you 
 are once vaccinated, you will never have 
 small-pox ; then they said that you must be 
 vaccinated twice ; and then that you must 
 be vaccinated once in seven years! " 
 
 T. — ** But I suppose that nearly all doc- 
 tors are in favour of vaccination." 
 
 G. — ** Yes; ninety-nine out of every hun- 
 dred. But at one time medical opinion was 
 in favour of inoculation. Indeed, they were 
 very nearly making inoculation compulsory; 
 whereas now it is penal." ^ 
 
 T. — " But does not vaccination greatly 
 diminish small-pox?" 
 
 G. — ** Yes; but it has greatly increased 
 the tendency to zymotic diseases. When- 
 ever there is a zymotic tendency in the child 
 from which the lymph is taken, that disease 
 is transmitted to the vaccinated child. I 
 
 ^ There is a passage in She Stoops to Conquer which, 
 even when allowance is made for comic exagg-e ration, 
 shows how prevalent, in Goldsmith's day, was the belief in 
 the beneficial effects of inoculation, " I vow," says Mrs. 
 Hardcastle, "since inoculation began, there is no such 
 thing to be seen as a plain woman." for tuna tcB nimium ! 
 
 196 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 should have been afraid to tell my old friend, 
 Sir Andrew Clarke, that I always feel a 
 strong repulsion to seeing the clear, pure 
 skin of a child made to break out into pus- 
 tules." 
 
 T. — " But are you opposed to vaccina- 
 tion?" 
 
 (9. — "No; but I dislike the idea of its 
 being compulsory. I don't like the notion 
 of the State stepping in between parent and 
 child when it is not absolutely necessary. 
 The State is generally a very bad nurse." 
 
 T. — " If vaccinators have made a change 
 of front, so, too, have thought-readers and 
 clairvoyants. At one time it was said that, 
 if you could hypnotise me, I might be able 
 to inform you on topics previously unknown 
 either to you or to me. It is now, I under- 
 stand, merely said that what is in your mind 
 may through some mysterious process be 
 passed on to mine." 
 
 G. — ■' I keep my judgment in suspense 
 about thought-reading. I don't let myself 
 be entangled in the belief in it ; but I am 
 not violently opposed to it. There seems 
 to be very strong evidence for the stories of 
 second sight at the moment of death." 
 
 He then gave an account of an old and 
 197 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 faithful servant of his own, who took to 
 drinking, suddenly decamped, and after- 
 wards destroyed himself. On the morning 
 after his disappearance Mr. Gladstone 
 thought that he saw him waiting at the 
 breakfast-table, and asked the butler whether 
 he was not there. Mr. Gladstone had no rea- 
 son to think that this occurred at the mo- 
 ment of the servant's death; but he said it 
 was the only occasion on which he remem- 
 bered himself to have been the victim of an 
 ocular delusion. One or two instances bear- 
 ing on the question of second sight were told 
 by a lady at table ; and she was advised by 
 him to submit the facts to the Psychical 
 Society. I told the story of a lady whose 
 son died in Australia. She gave me the 
 following account of what occurred : Though 
 she knew that he was at the Antipodes, she 
 suddenly heard his voice calling " Mother," 
 and mentioned the fact to her daughter. 
 They took a note of the time, which was 
 5 p.m., and they afterwards learnt that " at 
 that very moment he died. ' ' I presently led 
 her on to say that it was at 5 p.m. that he 
 had died. So she evidently had not made 
 allowance for the difference between English 
 and Australian time. On my subsequently 
 
 198 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 cross-questioning the daughter, I learnt that 
 the mother's attention had been called to 
 this difference, but that she persisted in tell- 
 ing the story in the old way. Also, to the 
 best of the daughter's recollection, it was a 
 mere hallucination of her mother's that she 
 had mentioned the fact at the time to her. 
 If, under the influence of strong emotion, 
 the wish to believe could produce actual be- 
 lief in this somewhat extreme instance, might 
 not the same cause be expected to produce 
 belief in other instances? The sorrowing 
 friends who tell such tales are in a mytho- 
 poeic, and, as Burns would have said, 
 " ghaist-alluring " frame of mind; and for 
 obvious reasons it is generally hard, if not 
 impossible, to cross-question them. Mr. 
 Gladstone listened; but evidently thought 
 that my explanation would not cover all the 
 cases. 
 
 T, — " Suppose that the watchword, after 
 being given to a sentinel, was discovered by 
 the enemy, and that there was no possible 
 way of accounting for the discovery except 
 on the hypothesis either of treachery or of 
 thought-reading. 
 
 G. [^smiling) — ** If I was the General, I 
 should have the sentinel shot." But he said 
 
 199 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 nothing about the significance of such a case 
 as a sort of negative evidence against thought- 
 reading. 
 
 He reverted to what was then his engross- 
 ing topic, Mamii7igs Life. 
 
 G. — " The worst of nearly all biographers 
 is that they contain hardly anything but 
 praise." 
 
 T. — ** Is not that inevitable? The facts 
 must be furnished by the family of the de- 
 ceased, and the biographer feels bound to 
 consider their feelings." 
 
 G. — '* This may explain the unfortunate 
 rule, but only adds value to such an excep- 
 tion as Purcell's Life of the Cardinal. An- 
 other great exception is Froude's Life of 
 Carlyle. 
 
 T. — " Some would say that Froude went 
 into the opposite extreme. Do you not 
 think Trevelyan's Life of Macaulay is an 
 excellent piece of work? " 
 
 G. — " Yes ; but he had no great difHculties 
 to contend with. By the way, I once asked 
 Dollinger, whose literary discernment im- 
 pressed me more than that of any other 
 man, what he thought of Macaulay's very 
 peculiar style. I wanted to know how that 
 style would strike a foreigner. Dollinger 
 
 200 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 did not seem to see the exact point of my 
 question, but answered : * I should admire 
 Macaulay more if I was quite sure that he 
 was not misleading me.' " I quoted Charles 
 Austin's candid- friendly remark to Macau- 
 lay: ** You always have by you some white 
 and some black paint ; when you describe a 
 Tory, you put on the black paint ; and, 
 when you describe a Whig, the white.** 
 
 G. — " I am sure that Macaulay was not 
 consciously unfair ; but he was not impartial, 
 like Hallam." 
 
 T, — " You will remember what Macaulay 
 said about Sir James Macintosh and Hallam. 
 He thought that they were both eminently 
 impartial; but that Macintosh was always 
 inclined to indulgence, whilst Hallam was a 
 hanging judge." 
 
 G. — " Perhaps Hallam 's judgments are a 
 little severe; but, on the whole, they are 
 wonderfully just." 
 
 T. — " Did you ever read the very touch- 
 ing words which he wrote on the tomb of 
 his son Arthur? " 
 
 G. — " Did he not use an Italian phrase? " 
 
 T. — " I was thinking of the Latin epi- 
 taph." And I proceeded, as nearly as I 
 could remember, to quote the words : 
 
 201 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 " Vale, dulcissime, 
 
 Vale, dilectissime desideratissime, 
 
 Requiescas in pace, 
 
 Pater ac Mater hie posthac requiescamus tecum 
 
 Usque ad tubam." 
 
 T. — " Charles Austin was surprised at 
 Hallam's use of such very orthodox phrase- 
 ology as that contained in the last three 
 words." 
 
 G. — ** Charles Austin may have been sur- 
 prised but I am not. Hallam was a thor- 
 ough Christian." 
 
 T. — " You knew Arthur Hallam ; did you 
 not?" 
 
 G. — " Very well indeed. He was my 
 greatest friend at Eton. Though we lived 
 at some distance from each other, we used 
 to breakfast each with the other on alternate 
 weeks. He was quite the most rising man 
 that I knew. He was so much above and 
 beyond all the rest of us" — here he lifted 
 up his arm with a symbolical gesture — *' that 
 I wondered how he could manage to deal 
 with us." 
 
 I asked what was Arthur Hallam's age at 
 the time of his death; and Mr. Gladstone 
 showed how fresh everything about him was 
 in his own memory by stating the month 
 
 202 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 when he was born and the month when he 
 died. 
 
 T. — ** I suppose that you are a great 2.6,- 
 raircv oi In Memoriam.'* 
 
 (9.—" Yes. It is obscure in parts; but, 
 on the whole, I admire it very much." 
 
 Something was said about Tennyson's 
 extreme sensitiveness. Mr. Gladstone ad- 
 mitted that he was sensitive ; but he added 
 that, for all that, Tennyson did not mind 
 telling a story against himself. The poet 
 himself had mentioned that long ago a friend 
 of his, going to Freshwater, asked a rustic 
 to tell him who were the chief inhabitants. 
 On the names being mentioned of several 
 persons not known to fame, the stranger 
 inquired about Mr. Tennyson. " We don't 
 think much of him," was the reply; "he 
 keeps only one man-servant, and he sleeps 
 out ! " I capped this anecdote by mention- 
 ing that Tennyson had rather enjoyed telling 
 the following story against Carlyle. Carlyle 
 had gone to Cambridge during the long 
 vacation, and, finding a stray undergraduate, 
 asked him the names of some of the Col- 
 leges. The young man kindly acted as 
 cicerone, and did the honours of Cambridge. 
 On parting, Carlyle said to him, " Thank 
 
 20.^ 
 
Talks With Mr, Gladstone 
 
 you, young man. Perhaps you may like to 
 know that you have rendered a service to 
 Thomas Carlyle ! " Looking somewhat sur- 
 prised, this Verdant Green, jun., answered 
 affably, ** Indeed, Mr. Thomas Carlyle, I 
 am very glad to show Cambridge to a gentle- 
 man who has never seen it before." One 
 would like to have seen, or (better still) to 
 have thought-read, Carlyle when the simple- 
 minded undergraduate said that. Mr. Glad- 
 stone remarked that he thought that '* Gui- 
 nevere " was the one of Tennyson's poems 
 that he liked best, and asked which was my 
 favourite. After mentioning ** St. Agnes' 
 Eve," ** QEnone," and the " Passing of 
 Arthur" as the shorter poems which par- 
 ticularly attract me, I said that it seems to 
 me very interesting to contrast the tone of 
 the earlier and of the later " Locksley 
 Hall." 
 
 G. — '* The second * Locksley Hall * ap- 
 pears to me to make too gloomy a forecast. 
 I wrote a criticism of it in the Nineteenth 
 Century. " 
 
 T. — " Are you not inclined to take a thor- 
 oughly sanguine view of the prospects of this 
 very reforming age?" 
 
 G. — " Not altogether. The future is to 
 204 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 me a blank. I cannot at all guess what is 
 coming." 
 
 T, — ** Do you mean that you are afraid 
 that Democracy may bring everything to a 
 dead level, or that Science is too hastily 
 moving the old theological landmarks? ** 
 
 G. — ** I am not so much afraid either of 
 Democracy or of Science as of the love 
 of money. This seems to me to be a grow- 
 ing evil. Also, there is a danger from the 
 growth of that dreadful military spirit." 
 
 I asked him if he thought that, as is often 
 said, the perfecting of the art of war will 
 make wars more terrible, and therefore more 
 dreaded; so that Suis et ipsa bella viribus 
 ruent. He seemed uncertain. 
 
 T. — ** Is not the moral standard of public 
 men higher than it used to be?" 
 
 G. — ** I should say that in England the 
 change has been all the other way. About 
 the Continent I am not so sure. {After a 
 pause, ^ Since the retirement of Bismarck, 
 Crispi would probably rank as the first of 
 continental statesmen. I am no great ad- 
 mirer of the public career either of Castle- 
 reagh or of Metternich. But, judging as a 
 moralist, I should say that the careers of 
 Castlereagh and of Metternich would com- 
 
 205 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 pare favourably with those of Bismarck and 
 Crispi." Being asked by another of the 
 party what he thought of Bismarck, he re- 
 pHed, ** He is a very big man, but very 
 unscrupulous." 
 
 When Mr. Gladstone thus acknowledged 
 that statesmanship had declined, the admis- 
 sion seemed to me suggestive and signifi- 
 cant. Was there not also a gradual decline 
 of political ability during the great century 
 of Athens? Were not the politicians of the 
 time of Cleon smaller men than those either 
 of the time of Themistocles or of the time 
 of Pericles? And may not the deterioration 
 of Athenian statesmanship in the fourth cen- 
 tury B.C., and that of European statesman- 
 ship in the nineteenth century A.D., be due 
 in part to the same cause, namely, the ad- 
 vance of Democracy? Or, to speak more 
 precisely, do we not commonly find a good- 
 lier fellowship of heroes and patriots when 
 aristocracy and democracy are militant than 
 when either aristocracy or democracy is 
 triumphant? And, after all, are we not thus 
 brought face to face with one of the aspects 
 of the too familiar question whether, just as 
 each one of us must expect his own physical 
 strength, sooner or later, to dwindle and 
 
 206 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 decay, even so the time must come to every 
 civilised nation when the advancing tide of 
 scepticism will bring destruction on public 
 confidence, and indeed on belief in ideals of 
 all sorts? 
 
 q)BivEi juev idxvi "/TJi, tpBivEi de dGo^arCs, 
 Qvi'/dHEi di 7tidTi<3, /3A.adrdvei 5', aTtidria. 
 
 But, though such reflections obtruded them- 
 selves upon me, I feared to embark on deep 
 and stormy controversies, — ne parva Tyr- 
 rhenum per cequor vela darem, — and I kept 
 my musings to myself. Presently Mr. Glad- 
 stone concluded with the melancholy ob- 
 servation: ** Nowhere does the ideal enter 
 so little as into politics ; nowhere does human 
 conduct fall so far below the highest ethical 
 standard. I did not always think this ; but 
 I am convinced of it now." It is note- 
 worthy that Mr. Gladstone's great rival has 
 given utterance to an opinion which, though 
 differently expressed, is seemingly of like 
 import. ** There is nothing," says Disraeli, 
 ** in which the power of circumstance is 
 more evident than in politics." After the 
 ladies left the room, the conversation turned 
 on the Premiership of Disraeli and on the 
 ethical questions involved in Lord Salis- 
 
 207 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 bury's acceptance of office under him, and 
 in the late Lord Derby's resignation. From 
 this part of our discourse I will only select 
 one remark. ** I am convinced," said Mr. 
 Gladstone, '* that acceptance of office is apt 
 to be less sharply criticised than resignation. 
 The motives which induce a man to resign 
 are more severely scrutinised than those 
 which induce a man to accept." The con- 
 versation passed on to the art of oratory. 
 One of the party mentioned that Sheridan 
 is said to have put off preparing the Begum's 
 speech to the last, and then to have devoted 
 three nights to it. Surely this was not the 
 way to be in trim for a great speech. 
 
 G. — " No. Of course it was a fault; but 
 the fault was on the right side. I have never 
 found it succeed to prepare a speech long 
 before. A speech so prepared is sure to lack 
 freshness ; and freshness is a great element 
 of success.'* 
 
 Mr. Gladstone did not want the number 
 of lawyers in the House of Commons to be 
 increased: "They are too fond of putting 
 their hands into the public purse. The chief 
 exception to this rule was Jessel the Jew! " 
 
 February Zth. — Mr. Gladstone liked the 
 208 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 review of his Butler in the AthencBum. His 
 critic sought to discredit the chronology of 
 the Bible. He himself tried to defend it by- 
 speaking of that of the Septuagint as prob- 
 ably based on more trustworthy MSS. than 
 those from which the Hebrew text is de- 
 rived. He made the odd remark that, not 
 merely the Hebrews, but the Chinese and 
 Hindoos, did not claim millions of years for 
 the antiquity of man. He tried to distin- 
 guish biblical man from geological man. It 
 seemed to him not merely an ** error," but 
 ** nonsense," on the part of men of science 
 to affirm that the Greeks had descended from 
 any race as low as the Esquimaux. I replied 
 that, holding this opinion, he must presum- 
 ably think it still greater nonsense for men 
 of science to afifirm that the old Greeks could 
 have been descended from such a creature 
 as the ourang-outang. He answered vaguely 
 that he was not prepared to deny that the 
 Greeks might have ultimately come from 
 protoplasm. What he complained of was 
 that men of science were so confident in their 
 assertions about the Ascent of Man. He 
 passed on from this to the development of 
 the colour sense. He reminded me that he 
 had often contended that this sense was very 
 
 209 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 imperfect in Homer. Homer had such an 
 exquisite sense of the beauty of form, but 
 seems strangely confused when speaking of 
 colour. An eminent Jewish Rabbi had told 
 him that the colour sense was also deficient 
 amongst the old Hebrews. In the text in 
 Psalm Ixiii. 13, " Yet shall ye be as the wings 
 of a dove covered with silver, and her feath- 
 ers like yellow gold," the concluding words 
 should be ''green leaflets of gold." 
 
 T. — *' Macaulay, in the introduction to 
 one of his Lays, remarks that in our early 
 national songs all the gold is red. The 
 primitive colour blindness, if such it was, 
 seems to have taken a variety of forms." 
 
 G, — ** Undoubtedly. And yet my opin- 
 ions on this subject drew on me the anathe- 
 mas of Darwinian orthodoxy. Did you 
 know there was such a thing as Darwinian 
 orthodoxy? " 
 
 T. — ** I am not sure. But, by way of 
 parallel, I may mention that, many years 
 ago, a near kinswoman of Cobden com- 
 plained to me of Mill's unorthodoxy; and 
 that, on my saying to her something vague 
 about the unorthodox views of many mod- 
 ern philosophers, she startled me by the 
 interruption, * Oh, I am not referring to un- 
 
 210 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 orthodoxy of that sort. I mean that he is 
 unorthodox in Political Econo^ny. 
 
 G. {smiling) — " That may illustrate what 
 I mean. Some German Evolutionists said 
 that I must be wrong, because some of the 
 lower animals can be shown to have a well- 
 developed sense of colour; and what they 
 have, man must have." 
 
 T, — ** Those Evolutionists talk great non- 
 sense. They might as well say that, as 
 birds and butterflies have wings, man must 
 have them too. The answer would, of 
 course, be that the organs in question had 
 been atrophied by disuse. I am reminded 
 of Pope's couplet — 
 
 * Why has not man a microscopic eye ? 
 For this plain reason — man is not a fly.' 
 
 Goethe had said — no doubt, speaking meta- 
 phorically — that the prolonged use of either 
 the telescope or the microscope interferes 
 with the normal use of the eye. And so 
 likewise, if man had microscopic vision or 
 any faculty utterly alien to his ordinary 
 requirements, those ordinary requirements 
 would tend to be neglected." 
 
 G. — ** The controversy about the colour 
 sense is still going on in Germany; but in 
 
 211 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 fairness I must say that the majority of Ger- 
 man writers do not seem to agree with me. 
 I may mention one fact. I went into a 
 children's hospital, and, observing that they 
 were dressed in bright colours, I asked why 
 this was, and was told that they preferred 
 bright colours. I then asked at what age 
 they began to show the preference, and was 
 told that they showed it before they were a 
 twelvemonth old." 
 
 The conversation turned on the Jews, on 
 their comparative immunity from certain 
 diseases, and on the contradictory accounts 
 of the comparative longevity of Jews and 
 Gentiles. Mr. Gladstone thought highly of 
 the Jews, and said that Sir Andrew Clarke, 
 who had many Jewish patients, thought well 
 of them morally. Mr. Gladstone had at one 
 time gone into the question of the feeling 
 entertained against pork by many Orientals. 
 He consulted the two most learned men of 
 his acquaintance, Dollinger and Lord Acton ; 
 but these could tell him nothing about it. 
 At last he thought he had obtained a clue. 
 Whenever Homer speaks about the eating 
 of pigs, it is always in connection with some 
 Orientals. Pigs were eaten wholesale by the 
 suitors of Penelope; but Mr. Gladstone con- 
 
 212 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 sidered that the Ithacans were of Oriental 
 or, as Homer would have said, of Phcenician 
 descent. Indeed, he thought it significant 
 that Homer had made his two Protagonists, 
 Achilles and Odysseus, the former of Hel- 
 lenic, the latter of Phoenician descent. Two 
 things struck Mr. Gladstone about Orientals 
 in reference to the pig. Their laws were 
 constantly forbidding them to eat it; and 
 they were constantly breaking those laws. 
 
 T. — " Why are these two conditions found 
 more among early Orientals than among 
 early Europeans?" 
 
 G. — ** Eating pork seems to be more liable 
 to produce trichinosis in the East than in 
 the West. On the other hand, Orientals 
 found a pig diet very economical and con- 
 venient. " 
 
 T. — ** Why did not Europeans find it 
 equally convenient?" 
 
 G. — *' I don't know whether at that early 
 time the domestic pig was common in Eu- 
 rope, though the wild boar seems to have 
 been known. The cat, likewise, does not 
 seem to have made its way into Europe in 
 the earliest times. With regard to the Jews, 
 I am inclined to believe, with Max Miiller, 
 that their great intellectual development did 
 
 213 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 not occur until after they had been brought 
 into contact with Aryan influences, that is, 
 not until after the writing of the Septua- 
 gint." _^ 
 
 T. — " How, then, do you account for the 
 genius of Isaiah? " 
 
 G. — ** You must remember that Isaiah 
 wrote under very peculiar conditions. I 
 could give an e^^ample, within my own ex- 
 perience, of the wonderful intellectual results 
 which strong excitement may bring about. 
 The prophets wrote under spiritual excite- 
 ment of the strongest kind, which was, in 
 fact, what we call inspiration. Many pass- 
 ages in their Avritings and many of the Psalms 
 have the greatest possible fascination for me, 
 but I am confident that none of these old 
 Hebrew writers could have produced the 
 poems of Homer or the plays of yEschylus." 
 
 Personally, I should have thought that the 
 difference between the two forms of literary 
 excellence was a difference rather of kind 
 than of degree; Homer could no more have 
 written like Isaiah than Isaiah could have 
 written like Homer. I own I was much sur- 
 prised at finding myself in this instance (so 
 to say) more on the side of the Bible than 
 Mr. Gladstone was. Did not his words in 
 
 214 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 this instance seem to indicate a natural, as 
 opposed to a supernatural, view of inspira- 
 tion ? Was it not remarkable that the Greeks, 
 without supernatural aid, could write better 
 than the Hebrews with supernatural aid? 
 
 I begged Mr. Gladstone to tell me the 
 personal experience to which he had referred. 
 He replied that he had been member for 
 Newark at the time of the passing of the 
 Poor Law in 1834. The new law aroused 
 the strongest antagonism. He heard some 
 of the people say, '* I would rather clem 
 [starve] than go to the workhouse." One 
 day he saw in the Nottingham newspaper a 
 tragic account of the murder of four children 
 by their father. The father confessed his 
 guilt, and explained how he had strangled 
 them all to prevent the risk of their having 
 to end their days in the workhouse. The 
 poor man, in describing the feelings which 
 had led him to commit this atrocious act, 
 was animated by such an intensity of pas- 
 sion, and used such burning words, that Mr. 
 Gladstone was at the timxe reminded of the 
 description of Ugolino in Dante, a passage 
 which he regarded as the finest in the In- 
 ferno, if not in the entire Divina Commedia. 
 I called his attention to what seemed to 
 215 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 me the most conspicuous of all examples of 
 the way in which an extraordinary stimulus 
 may be given to literature and art. The 
 literary glory of Athens maybe roughly said 
 to have been confined to the century and a 
 half after the battle of Marathon. It is hard 
 to think that, during that period, the natural 
 and hereditar}^ qualities of the Athenians 
 were much superior to those of other Greeks. 
 
 G, — * * Can that be so ? Surely an Athenian 
 child was far better endowed by nature than 
 a Spartan child." 
 
 T. — " If an Athenian child received from 
 nature far higher qualities than a Spartan or, 
 let us say, a Boeotian child, how are we to 
 account for the fact that before the fifth 
 century B.C. Bceotia had produced at least 
 two poets of the first order, while Attica had 
 apparently not produced even one?" 
 
 Mr. Gladstone admitted that he could not 
 solve this difficulty. He merely remarked 
 that, in his opinion, too little notice was 
 taken of some of the earlier Greek poets; 
 and thus he presently was led back to his 
 favourite. Homer. He quoted the familiar 
 Latin line about the seven cities which con- 
 tended for the honour of having been 
 Homer's birthplace: ''Smyrna, Rhodos, 
 
 216 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 Colophon, Salamis, Chios, Argos, Athense,'* 
 and he also repeated Heywood's couplet — 
 
 " Seven cities warred for Homer being dead, 
 Who living had no roofe to shrowd his head." 
 
 G. — " Homer, like Shakespeare, towered 
 so completely above all his contemporaries 
 that there is no understanding how his age 
 can have produced him. Do those Germans 
 who doubt whether there was a Homer, at 
 all remove the difficulty? Take the most 
 moderate of the sceptics, the chorizontes. 
 Does it help matters to say that one Homer 
 may have produced the Iliad and another 
 may have produced the Odyssey? It is hard 
 enough to conceive how early times can have 
 brought forth one Homer; but it would be 
 harder still to suppose that they could have 
 brought forth two. It is as if some critic, 
 observing certain differences between Ham- 
 let and Macbeth, were to declare that the 
 Elizabethan age must have produced two 
 Shakespeares. Really, the incredulity of 
 sceptical critics astonishes me less than their 
 credulity." 
 
 I had been reading Bourget's Outre Mer 
 where, along with democracy and science, 
 the sentiment of race, of nationality, is 
 
 217 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 spoken of as one of the great dangers of 
 modern cIviHsation. I remarked to Mr. 
 Gladstone that this feeling of nationality is 
 sometimes thought to have been called into 
 activity by Louis Napoleon, who, in fact, 
 raised the cry, ** Italy for the Italians." 
 Mr. Gladstone shook his head, and said that 
 he was inclined to think that this sentiment 
 was one of the legacies that we owe to the 
 French Revolution, which certainly main- 
 tained the principle of ** France for the 
 French." He, however, acknowledged that 
 this legacy of the Revolution was a long 
 time in coming into active operation. 
 
 T. — " Do you not think that the great 
 armaments on the Continent are the indirect 
 results of the improvement in the art of 
 war? 
 
 G. {smiling) — *' I am amused at your 
 patriotic reservation. Why do you say, 
 * on the Continent'? It might be con- 
 tended that the sum of money spent on the 
 army and navy in England is, as compared 
 with the population, equal to that spent in 
 foreign countries. In England, of course, 
 more is expended on the navy; and the 
 sums spent on the building of ships must be 
 taken into account." 
 
 218 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 I then reverted to my original point, and 
 asked whether the improvements in the art 
 of war do not oblige adjacent countries to 
 keep their forces in readiness against each 
 other. In former times, a country whose 
 forces were not so kept was, no doubt, at a 
 disadvantage at the beginning of a cam- 
 paign. But in those times the disadvantage 
 was of a kind which generally admitted of 
 being afterwards remedied. In the wars of 
 the present day, on the other hand, the 
 consequences of the delay would probably 
 be fatal. Mr. Gladstone agreed that there 
 was probably a good deal in this explana- 
 tion ; but he added that, not being a mili- 
 tary man, he was not prepared to say 
 whether other causes may not have been 
 at work. I remembered that Bourget fears 
 that perils may be in store for America from 
 the exotic element, — that is to say, from the 
 great and increasing numbers of German and 
 other immigrants who are not bound to 
 America by any patriotic tie, and who in 
 many instances are Socialists, if not Anar- 
 chists; did Mr. Gladstone think that there 
 is any risk of a disruption of the Union? 
 
 G. — " I think none whatever. At the 
 time of the American Civil War, the Union 
 
 219 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 was subjected to a tremendous strain. There 
 was a threefold antagonism ; there was the 
 opposition between the interests of some 
 individual States and that of the Federation ; 
 between emancipation and slavery; and be- 
 tween Free Trade and Protection. Over 
 these three dangers the Union triumphed; 
 and I can see no dangers of equal magnitude 
 to which it is now exposed." 
 
 I went on to speak of the Venezuelan dis- 
 pute; and I remarked that an American 
 politician, at once very distinguished and 
 very friendly to England, had lately said, 
 in a private letter, that this dispute seemed 
 to him merely a symptom of a widespread 
 animosity felt towards England in the States. 
 
 G. — ** I very much fear that it is so. And 
 unfortunately this is not all. We seem to 
 be unpopular all over the world. The 
 French dislike us. The Dutch hate us, 
 and naturally. The Germans showed what 
 their feelings were by the way in which they 
 seconded the monstrous and preposterous 
 demand of thair Emperor. Now, when an 
 individual is disliked by all his neighbours, 
 one naturally asks whether he has not done 
 something to deserve his unpopularity. 
 And, in the same way, I cannot help won- 
 
 220 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 dering whether, when England is so much 
 disliked, it may not be to a great extent her 
 own fault. Have you remarked that Eng- 
 land has several times, of late years, sub- 
 mitted an international dispute to arbitra- 
 tion, and that the decision has generally 
 been against her? This is to me a very 
 unpleasant subject of reflection. The Eng- 
 lish are a very strange people. They have 
 very great qualities; but also they have 
 great faults." 
 
 He made a further comment on the Ger- 
 man Emperor, which it is unnecessary to 
 repeat. Suffice it to say that it was abun- 
 dantly clear that he would fain have bestowed 
 on his Majesty the Sophoclean benedic- 
 tion : — 
 
 GO Ttai, ysvoio Ttarpdi evrvx^^Tspo? 
 
 As he was dilating on the unpopularity of 
 the English, a thought passed through my 
 mind resembling one which I have since 
 come across in a letter of Jowett's: — " I do 
 not think Europe has any deep hatred of us; 
 only a petty jealousy of our sleek, well-fed 
 appearance, and satisfaction with ourselves.'* 
 
 ^"O child, may'st thou be more fortunate than thy 
 father, but in other respects be like him ! " 
 
 221 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 But, without embarking on this wide ques- 
 tion, I asked Mr. Gladstone whether he 
 meant that the typical Englishman is apt to 
 flaunt the " Civis Britannicus sum" in the 
 presence of foreigners, and to walk about 
 the Continent (in the manner alleged against 
 him) as if, wherever he was, the whole place 
 belonged to him. 
 
 G. — " Yes. That is what I mean. The 
 English are arrogant." 
 
 T. — ** But is not the narrow insularity of 
 John Bull gradually broadening as he sees 
 more of his neighbours? " 
 
 G. — ** I trust that it is; but your political 
 friends are doing all that they can to arrest 
 the improvement." 
 
 T. — " Who are my political friends? Liv- 
 ing abroad as I do, I try to keep outside 
 politics, though no doubt I am biassed by 
 my Conservative education and traditions." 
 
 G. (smiling) — " I remember your once call- 
 ing yourself a Whig; and I know by experi- 
 ence that nowadays men who call themselves 
 Whigs are nearly always supporters of the 
 Salisbury Government ! Goodbye. God 
 bless you." 
 
 Yes; I feel, and shall always feel, the 
 effects of my Conservative education. And 
 
 222 
 
Talks With Mr. Gladstone 
 
 yet, now that I was bidding farewell to the 
 great Reformer, and could not shake off 
 the foreboding that he and I might never 
 meet again, I asked myself whether impartial 
 history may not judge him worthy of as 
 splendid a eulogy as that which Ovid be- 
 stowed on a far less moral hero, whom at 
 the time all classes delighted to honour : 
 
 "Sancte Pater Patriae, tibi plebs, tibi curia nomen 
 Hoc dedit, hoc dedimus nos tibi nomen eques." 
 
 " Holy Father of thy Country ! This title the Senates 
 and the Commons, this title we, the Knights, have con- 
 ferred on thee. ' ' {A ddressed to the Emperor A ugustus. ) 
 
 223