The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume III Part 42

(M171) _J. M._-Could you call foreign invasion the intervention of the Scotch?

_Mr. G._-Well, not quite. I suppose it is certain that it was Cromwell who cut off Charles's head? Not one in a hundred in the nation desired it.

_J. M._-No, nor one in twenty in the parliament. But then, ninety-nine in a hundred in the army.

In the afternoon we all drove towards Bayonne to watch the s.h.i.+ps struggle over the bar at high water. As it happened we only saw one pa.s.s out, a countryman for Cardiff. A string of others were waiting to go, but a little steamer from Nantes came first, and having secured her station, found she had not force enough to make the bar, and the others remained swearing impatiently behind her. The Nantes steamer was like Ireland. The scene was very fresh and fine, and the cold most exhilarating after the mugginess of the last two or three days. Mr. G., who has a dizzy head, did not venture on the jetty, but watched things from the sands. He and I drove home together, at a good pace. "I am inclined," he said laughingly, "to agree with Dr. Johnson that there is no pleasure greater than sitting behind four fast-going horses."(293) Talking of Johnson generally, "I suppose we may take him as the best product of the eighteenth century."

Perhaps so, but is he its most characteristic product?

_Wellington._-Curious that there should be no general estimate of W.'s character; his character not merely as a general but as a man. No love of freedom. His sense of duty very strong, but military rather than civil.

_Montalembert._-Had often come into contact with him. A very amiable and attractive man. But less remarkable than Rio.

_Latin Poets._-Would you place Virgil first?

_J. M._-Oh, no, Lucretius much the first for the greatest and sublimest of poetic qualities. Mr. G. seemed to a.s.sent to this, though disposed to make a fight for the second _Aeneid_ as equal to anything. He expressed his admiration for Catullus, and then he was strong that Horace would run anybody else very hard, breaking out with the lines about Regulus-

"Atqui sciebat quae sibi barbarus Tortor pararet;" etc.(294)

_Blunders in Government._-How right Napoleon was when he said, reflecting on all the vast complexities of government, that the best to be said of a statesman is that he has avoided the biggest blunders.

It is not easy to define the charm of these conversations. Is charm the right word? They are in the highest degree stimulating, bracing, widening.

That is certain. I return to my room with the sensations of a man who has taken delightful exercise in fresh air. He is so wholly free from the _ergoteur_. There's all the difference between the _ergoteur_ and the great debater. He fits his tone to the thing; he can be as playful as anybody. In truth I have many a time seen him in London and at Hawarden not far from trivial. But here at Biarritz all is appropriate, and though, as I say, he can be playful and gay as youth, he cannot resist rising in an instant to the general point of view-to grasp the elemental considerations of character, history, belief, conduct, affairs. There he is at home, there he is most himself. I never knew anybody less guilty of the tiresome sin of arguing for victory. It is not his knowledge that attracts; it is not his ethical tests and standards; it is not that dialectical strength of arm which, as Mark Pattison said of him, could twist a bar of iron to its purpose. It is the combination of these with elevation, with true sincerity, with extraordinary mental force.

_Sunday, Jan. 3._-Vauvenargues is right when he says that to carry through great undertakings, one must act as though one could never die. My wonderful companion is a wonderful ill.u.s.tration. He is like M. Angelo, who, just before he died on the very edge of ninety, made an allegorical figure, and inscribed upon it, _ancora impara_, "still learning."

At dinner he showed in full force.

(M172) _Heroes of the Old Testament._-He could not honestly say that he thought there was any figure in the O. T. comparable to the heroes of Homer. Moses was a fine fellow. But the others were of secondary quality-not great high personages, of commanding nature.

_Thinkers._-Rather an absurd word-to call a man a thinker (and he repeated the word with gay mockery in his tone). When did it come into use? Not until quite our own times, eh? I said, I believed both Hobbes and Locke spoke of thinkers, and was pretty sure that _penseur_, as in _libre penseur_, had established itself in the last century. [Quite true; Voltaire used it, but it was not common.]

_Dr. Arnold._-A high, large, impressive figure-perhaps more important by his character and personality than his actual work. I mentioned M. A.'s poem on his father, _Rugby Chapel_, with admiration. Rather to my surprise, Mr. G. knew the poem well, and shared my admiration to the full.

This brought us on to poetry generally, and he expatiated with much eloquence and sincerity for the rest of the talk. The wonderful continuity of fine poetry in England for five whole centuries, stretching from Chaucer to Tennyson, always a proof to his mind of the soundness, the sap, and the vitality of our nation and its character. What people, beginning with such a poet as Chaucer 500 years ago, could have burst forth into such astonis.h.i.+ng production of poetry as marked the first quarter of the century, Byron, Wordsworth, Sh.e.l.ley, etc.

_J. M._-It is true that Germany has nothing, save Goethe, Schiller, Heine, that's her whole list. But I should say a word for the poetic movement in France: Hugo, Gautier, etc. Mr. G. evidently knew but little, or even nothing, of modern French poetry. He spoke up for Leopardi, on whom he had written an article first introducing him to the British public, ever so many years ago-in the _Quarterly_.

_Mr. G._-Wordsworth used occasionally to dine with me when I lived in the Albany. A most agreeable man. I always found him amiable, polite, and sympathetic. Only once did he jar upon me, when he spoke slightingly of Tennyson's first performance.

_J. M._-But he was not so wrong as he would be now. Tennyson's Juvenilia are terribly artificial.

_Mr. G._-Yes, perhaps. Tennyson has himself withdrawn some of them. I remember W., when he dined with me, used on leaving to change his silk stockings in the anteroom and put on grey worsted.

_J. M._-I once said to M. Arnold that I'd rather have been Wordsworth than anybody [not exactly a modest ambition]; and Arnold, who knew him well in the Grasmere country, said, "Oh no, you would not; you would wish you were dining with me at the Athenaeum. He was too much of the peasant for you."

_Mr. G._-No, I never felt that; I always thought him a polite and an amiable man.

Mentioned Macaulay's strange judgment in a note in the _History_, that Dryden's famous lines,

"... Fool'd with hope, men favour the deceit; Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay.

To-morrow's falser than the former day; Lies worse, and while it says we shall be blest With some new joys, cuts off what we possest.

Strange cozenage!..."

are as fine as any eight lines in Lucretius. Told him of an excellent remark of -- on this, that Dryden's pa.s.sage wholly lacks the mystery and great superhuman air of Lucretius. Mr. G. warmly agreed.

He regards it as a remarkable sign of the closeness of the church of England to the roots of life and feeling in the country, that so many clergymen should have written so much good poetry. Who, for instance? I asked. He named Heber, Moultrie, Newman (_Dream of Gerontius_), and Faber in at least one good poem, "The poor Labourer" (or some such t.i.tle), Charles Tennyson. I doubt if this thesis has much body in it. He was for Sh.e.l.ley as the most musical of all our poets. I told him that I had once asked M. to get Tennyson to write an autograph line for a friend of mine, and Tennyson had sent this:-

"Coldly on the dead volcano sleeps the gleam of dying day."

So I suppose the poet must think well of it himself. 'Tis (M173) from the second _Locksley Hall_, and describes a man after pa.s.sions have gone cool.

_Mr. G._-Yes, in melody, in the picturesque, and as apt simile, a fine line.

Had been trying his hand at a translation of his favourite lines of Penelope about Odysseus. Said that, of course, you could translate similes and set pa.s.sages, but to translate Homer as a whole, impossible. He was inclined, when all is said, to think Scott the nearest approach to a model.

_Monday, Jan. 4._-At luncheon, Mr. Gladstone recalled the well-known story of Talleyrand on the death of Napoleon. The news was brought when T.

chanced to be dining with Wellington. "Quel evenement!" they all cried.

"Non, ce n'est pas un evenement," said Talleyrand, "c'est une nouvelle"-'Tis no event, 'tis a piece of news. "Imagine such a way," said Mr. G., "of taking the disappearance of that colossal man! Compare it with the opening of Manzoni's ode, which makes the whole earth stand still. Yet both points of view are right. In one sense, the giant's death was only news; in another, when we think of his history, it was enough to shake the world." At the moment, he could not recall Manzoni's words, but at dinner he told me that he had succeeded in piecing them together, and after dinner he went to his room and wrote them down for me on a piece of paper.

Curiously enough, he could not recall the pa.s.sage in his own splendid translation.(295)

Talk about handsome men of the past; Sidney Herbert one of the handsomest and most attractive. But the Duke of Hamilton bore away the palm, as glorious as a Greek G.o.d. "One day in Rotten Row, I said this to the d.u.c.h.ess of C. She set up James Hope-Scott against my Duke. No doubt he had an intellectual element which the Duke lacked." Then we discussed the best-looking man in the H. of C. to-day....

_Duke of Wellington._-Somebody was expatiating on the incomparable position of the Duke; his popularity with kings, with n.o.bles, with common people. Mr. G. remembered that immediately after the formation of Canning's government in 1827, when it was generally thought that he had been most unfairly and factiously treated (as Mr. G. still thinks, always saving Peel) by the Duke and his friends, the Duke made an expedition to the north of England, and had an overwhelming reception. Of course, he was then only twelve years from Waterloo, and yet only four or five years later he had to put up his iron shutters.

Approved a remark that a friend of ours was not simple enough, not ready enough to take things as they come.

_Mr. G._-Unless a man has a considerable gift for taking things as they come, he may make up his mind that political life will be sheer torment to him. He must meet fortune in all its moods.

_Tuesday, Jan. 5._-After dinner to-day, Mr. G. extraordinarily gay. He had bought a present of silver for his wife. She tried to guess the price, and after the manner of wives in such a case, put the figure provokingly low.

Mr. G. then put on the deprecating air of the tradesman with wounded feelings-and it was as capital fun as we could desire. That over, he fell to his backgammon with our host.

_Wednesday, Jan. 6._-Mrs. Gladstone eighty to-day! What a marvel....

Leon Say called to see Mr. G. Long and most interesting conversation about all sorts of aspects of French politics, the concordat, the schools, and all the rest of it.

He ill.u.s.trated the ignorance of French peasantry as to current affairs.

Thiers, long after he had become famous, went on a visit to his native region; and there met a friend of his youth. "Eh bien," said his friend, "tu as fait ton chemin." "Mais oui, j'ai fait un peu mon chemin. J'ai ete ministre meme." "Ah, tiens! je ne savais pas que tu etais protestant."

I am constantly struck by his solicitude for the well-being and right doing of Oxford and Cambridge-"the two eyes of the country." This connection between the higher education and the general movement of the national mind engages his profound attention, and no doubt deserves such attention (M174) in any statesman who looks beyond the mere surface problems of the day. To perceive the bearings of such matters as these, makes Mr. G. a statesman of the highest cla.s.s, as distinguished from men of clever expedients.

Mr. G. had been reading the Greek epigrams on religion in Mackail; quoted the last of them as ill.u.s.trating the description of the dead as the inhabitants of the more populous world:-