POLITICAL.
Throughout my lengthened spell of life I never was anything of a zealous politician. Well acquainted, as I have been, with many men of all manner of opinions, and having had much the schooling of Ulysses, who had "seen the cities of many men and had known their minds," I know perfectly well that there are in every school of thought good men, and bad men too, whatever may be their alleged principles, and I am quite willing to believe in an honest man, and stand by him if need be. In that spirit, for many years when I was a West Surrey voter (indeed I am so still), I used to give one of my votes to Briscoe, the Whig, and the other to Drummond, the Tory, because I knew and trusted both of them for upright men as well as personal friends, and they sat together as our Parliamentary representatives. As a matter of course, nobody understood my duplex voting,—for they were partisans and I was not,—so in that as in some other matters I have always been a dark horse, quite independent, and of the broadgauge pattern rather than of the narrow. For instance, having known him from youth to age, I do not even yet despair of Gladstone; though I have remained much where we both began, whilst he has gone down lower, step by step, to a zero of—what is it?—inverted ambition, whither I cannot willingly descend with him; and yet, I do not count him an enemy: he follows his conscience, as I do mine. Here was my judgment of the Man thirty years since, printed in No. 53 of my "Three Hundred Sonnets":
"Gladstone, through youth and manhood many a year
My constant heart hath followed thee with praise
As 'good and faithful;' in thy words and ways
Pure-minded, just, and simple, and sincere:
And as, with early half prophetic ken
I hailed thy greatness in my college days,
The coming man to guide and govern men,
How gladly that instinctive prescience then
Now do I see fulfill'd—because, thou art
Our England's eloquent tongue, her wise free hand
To pour, wherever is her world-wide mart,
The horn of plenty over every land;
Because, by all the powers of mind and lip
Thou art the crown of Christian statemanship."
That high praise was once well-deserved, and was cordially given: but since, alas! according to my lights I have seen fit more than once to "palinode." The great man's rock of peril, whereon to wreck both his country and himself, is that fatal eloquence by which all are captured, but (as with birdlime) are captured to their loss. But I will not reproduce invidiously—as if false to a fifty years' friendship—any harsh reproach, however conscientious, whereby I may have publicly withdrawn my praise. Rather will I pass on,—and after my own fashion will here show my ambidextrous muse in a brace of political unpublished lyrics on either side.
"Popularis Aura."
"Liberty! dragg'd from the fetters of kings,
Liberty! dug from the cell of the priest—
Rise to thy height upon zenith-borne wings!
Spread to thy breadth from the west to the east!
Slow, through the ages, unbound limb by limb,
Thou hast been rescued from tyranny's maw,
Only glad service still yielding to Him
Who ruleth in love by the sceptre of law!
"Nations have torn thee by fierce civil strife
From the usurpers who trod them to mud;
Saints at the stake gave up agonised life
That superstitions be drown'd in hot blood!
Theirs was the battle—the conquest is ours—
Free souls and bodies the death-wrestled prize
Won from bad kingcraft, despoiled of its powers,
Wrench'd from false priestcraft in spite of its lies!
"God made the freeman, but man made the slave,
Forcing his brother the shackle to wear;
But all those fetters are loosed in the grave,
King, priest, and serf meeting equally there;
Here, too, and now, in these swift latter days,
Freedom all round is humanity's right;
Thought, speech, and action, enfranchised all ways,
Eager for service in Liberty's might."
That may be truly labelled Liberal: the next, in honour of Beaconsfield, may be fairly ticketed Tory:
I.