Thundering like ramping hosts of warrior horse
To throw that faint thin line upon the shore.[328]
Nor are things all one way. If we find Mr. Gladstone writing to the Queen of “the excellent parliamentary opening” of this man or that, who made the worst possible parliamentary close, there is the set-off of dull unmarked beginnings to careers that proved brilliant or weighty. If there are a thousand absurdities in the form of claims for place and honours and steps in the peerage, all the way up the ladder, from a branch post-office to the coveted blue riband of the garter, “with no infernal nonsense of merit about it,” [pg 530] there are, on the other hand, not a few modest and considerate refusals, and we who have reasonable views of human nature, may set in the balance against a score of the begging tribe, the man of just pride who will not exchange his earldom for a marquisate, and the honest peer who to the proffer of the garter says, with gratitude evidently sincere, “I regret, however, that I cannot conscientiously accept an honour which is beyond my deserts.” Then the Octagon contains abundant material for any student of the lessons of a parliamentary crisis, though perhaps the student knew before how even goodish people begin to waver in great causes, when they first seriously suspect the horrid truth that they may not after all be in a majority. Many squibs, caricatures, and malicious diatribes, dated in Mr. Gladstone's own hand, find shelter. But then compensation for faintheartedness or spite abounds in the letters of the staunch. And these not from the party politicians merely. Mr. Gladstone stirred different and deeper waters. The famous fighting bishop, Phillpotts of Exeter, then drawing on towards ninety and the realms of silence, writes to him on the Christmas Day of 1863: “A Christian statesman is a rare object of reverence and honour. Such I entirely believe are you. I often remember the early days of my first intercourse with you. Your high principles gave an early dignity to your youth, and promised the splendid earthly career which you are fulfilling. I shall not live to witness that fulfilment.” A whole generation later, General Booth wrote: “Throughout the world no people will pray more fervently and believingly for your continued life and happiness than the officers and soldiers of the salvation army.” Here is Mr. Spurgeon, the most popular and effective of the nonconforming preachers and workers of the time, writing:—
I felt ready to weep when you were treated with so much contumely by your opponent in your former struggle; and yet I rejoiced that you were educating this nation to believe in conscience and truth.... I wish I could brush away the gadflies, but I suppose by this time you have been stung so often that the system has become invulnerable.... You are loved by hosts of us as intensely as you are hated by certain of the savage party.
And when Mr. Gladstone was to visit Spurgeon's tabernacle (Jan. 1882):—
I feel like a boy who is to preach with his father to listen to him. I shall try not to know that you are there at all, but just preach to my poor people the simple word which has held them by their thousands these twenty-eight years. You do not know how those of us regard you, who feel it a joy to live when a premier believes in righteousness. We believe in no man's infallibility, but it is restful to be sure of one man's integrity.
That admirable sentence marks the secret.
All the religious agitations of the time come before us. Eminent foreign converts from the Roman church still find comfort in warning this most unshaken of believers against “a superficial and sceptical liberalism.” Others, again, condemned for heresy hail him as “dear and illustrious master”—with no cordial response, we may surmise. Relying on Mr. Gladstone's character for human-heartedness and love of justice, people submit to him some of the hard domestic problems then and so often forced upon the world by the quarrels of the churches. One lady lays before him (1879) with superabundant detail a case where guardians insisted on the child of a mixed marriage being brought up as a protestant, against the fervid wishes of the surviving parent, a catholic. Mr. Gladstone masters the circumstances, forms his judgment, elaborates it in a closely argued memorandum, and does not evade the responsibility of advising. In another of these instances the tragedy is reversed; the horrid oppression is perpetrated on the protestant mother by the catholic father, and here too it is Mr. Gladstone to whom the sufferer appeals for intercession.
His correspondents have not always so much substance in them. One lady of evangelical strain, well known in her time, writes to him about turbulence in Ireland on the last day of 1880. The private secretary dockets: “Wishes you a blessed new year; but goes on in a very impertinent strain attributing your ‘inaction’ in Ireland to unprincipled colleagues, and to want of heavenly guidance. Encloses suggestions for prayer.” In such instances, even when the appeal [pg 532] came near to raving, Mr. Gladstone whenever he thought the writer's motives sincere, seems to have replied with patience, and at a length very different from the pithy brevity of the Iron Duke upon the like occasions. Sometimes we may assume that the secretary's phlegmatic docket sufficed, as on an epistle thus described: “1. Sends review in —— on his book. 2. Would like you to read —— and —— (his poems). 3. Will send you soon his prose on ——. 4. Hopes you will not overwork yourself. 5. His children call you St. William.” Sometimes we know not whether it is simplicity or irony that inspires the grave politeness of his replies. He seems to be in all sincerity surprised at the view taken by somebody “of the reluctance of public men to hold interviews for unexplained and indefinite purposes, and their preference for written communications.” Somebody writes a pamphlet on points of the ministerial policy, and suggests that each member of the government might order and distribute a competent number of copies. Mr. Gladstone immediately indicates two serious difficulties, first that the ministers would then make themselves responsible for the writer's opinion in detail no less than in mass, and second their intervention would greatly detract from its weight. Even importunity for a subscription never makes him curt: “I am sure you will not misconstrue me, when I beg respectfully to state that your efforts will stand better without my personal co-operation.”
Polygot And Encyclopædic