When all has been said of a man's gifts, the critical question still stands over, how he regards his responsibility for using them. Once in a conversation with Mr. Gladstone, some fifty years from the epoch of this present chapter, we fell upon the topic of ambition. 'Well,' he said, 'I do not think that I can tax myself in my own life with ever having been much moved by ambition.' The remark so astonished me that, as he afterwards playfully reported to a friend, I almost jumped up from my chair. We soon shall reach a stage in his career when both remark and surprise may explain themselves. We shall see that if ambition means love of power or fame for the sake of glitter, decoration, external renown, or even dominion and authority on their own account—and all these are common passions enough in strong natures as well as weak—then his view of himself was just. I think he had none of it. Ambition in a better sense, the motion of a resolute and potent genius to use strength for the purposes of strength, to clear the path, dash obstacles aside, force good causes forward—such a quality as that is the very law of the being of a personality so vigorous, intrepid, confident, and capable as his.
FOOTNOTES:
[112] Hawarden Grammar School, Sept. 19, 1877.
[113] Mr. Gladstone on Lord Houghton's Life; Speaker, Nov. 29, 1890.
[114] Gleanings, vii. p. 133.
[115] Homeric Studies, vol. iii.
[116] Book ii. § 89, 363.
[117] Non enim solum acuenda nobis neque procudenda lingua est, sed onerandum complendumque pectus maximarum rerum et plurimarum suavitate, copia, varietate. Cicero, De Orat., iii. § 30.
[118] The British Senate, by James Grant, vol. ii. pp. 88-92.
[119] Anatomy of Parliament, November 1840. 'Contemporary Orators,' in Fraser's Magazine.