The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume I Part 6

When Gladstone sat down, one of his contemporaries has written, 'we all of us felt that an epoch in our lives had occurred. His father was so well pleased with the glories of the speech and with its effect, that he wished to have it published. Besides his speech, besides the composition of st.u.r.dy placards against the monstrous bill, and besides the preparation of an elaborate pet.i.tion[51] and the gathering of 770 signatures to it, the ardent anti-reformer, though the distance from the days of doom in the examination schools was rapidly shrinking, actually sat down to write a long pamphlet (July 1831) and sent it to Hatchard, the publisher. Hatchard doubted the success of an anonymous pamphlet, and replied in the too familiar formula that has frozen so many thousand glowing hearts, that he would publish it if the author would take the money risk. The most interesting thing about it is the criticism of the writer's shrewd and wise father upon his son's performance (too long for reproduction here). He went with his son in the main, he says, 'but I cannot go all your lengths,' and the language of his judgment sheds a curious light upon the vehement temperament of Mr. Gladstone at this time as it struck an affectionate yet firm and sober monitor.

HEARS HIS FIRST DEBATE

In the autumn of 1831 Mr. Gladstone took some trouble to be present on one of the cardinal occasions in this fluctuating history:--

_October 3rd to 8th._--Journey to London. From Henley in Blackstone's chaise. Present at five nights' debate of infinite interest in the House of Lords. The first, I went forwards and underwent a somewhat high pressure. At the four others sat on a round transverse rail, very fortunate in being so well placed. Had a full view of the peeresses. There nine or ten hours every evening. Read Peel's speech and sundry papers relating to King's College, which I went to see; also London Bridge. Read introduction to Butler. Wrote to Saunders. Much occupied in order-hunting during the morning. Lord Brougham's as a speech most wonderful, delivered with a power and effect which cannot be appreciated by any hearsay mode of information, and with fertile exuberance in sarcasm. In point of argument it had, I think, little that was new. Lord Grey's most beautiful, Lord G.o.derich's and Lord Lansdowne's extremely good, and in these was comprehended nearly all the oratorical merit of the debate. The reasoning or the attempt to reason, independently of the success in such attempt, certainly seemed to me to be with the opposition. Their best speeches, I thought, were those of Lords Harrowby, Carnarvon, Mansfield, Wynford; next Lords Lyndhurst, Wharncliffe, and the Duke of Wellington. Lord Grey's reply I did not hear, having been compelled by exhaustion to leave the House. Remained with Ryder and Pickering in the coffee-room or walking about until the division, and joined Wellesley and [illegible] as we walked home. Went to bed for an hour, breakfasted, and came off by the Alert. Arrived safely, thank G.o.d, in Oxford. Wrote to my brother and to Gaskell. Tea with Phillimore and spent the remainder of the evening with Canning. The consequences of the vote may be awful. G.o.d avert this. But it was an honourable and manly decision, and so may G.o.d avert them.

This was the memorable occasion when the Lords threw out the Reform bill by 199 to 158, the division not taking place until six o'clock in the morning. The consequences, as the country instantly made manifest, were 'awful' enough to secure the reversal of the decision. It seems, so far as I can make out, to have been the first debate that one of the most consummate debaters that ever lived had the fortune of listening to.

V

READING FOR THE SCHOOLS

Meanwhile intense interest in parliament and the newspapers had not impaired his studies. Disgusted as he was at the political outlook, in the beginning of July he had fallen fairly to work more or less close for ten or twelve hours a day. It 'proved as of old a cure for ill-humour, though in itself not of the most delectable kind. It is odd enough, though true, that reading hard close-grained stuff produces a much more decided and better effect in this way, than books written professedly for the purpose of entertainment.' Then his eyes became painful, affected the head, and in August almost brought him to a full stop. After absolute remission of work for a few days, he slowly spread full sail again, and took good care no more to stint either exercise or sleep, thinking himself, strange as it now sounds, rather below than above par for such exertions. He declared that the bodily fatigue, the mental fatigue, and the anxiety as to the result, made reading for a cla.s.s a thing not to be undergone more than once in a lifetime. Time had mightier fatigues in store for him than even this. The heavy work among the ideas of men of bygone days did not deaden intellectual projects of his own. A few days before he went to see the Lords throw out the Reform bill, he made a curious entry:--

_October 3rd, 1831._--Yesterday an idea, a chimera, entered my head, of gathering during the progress of my life, notes and materials for a work embracing three divisions, Morals, Politics, Education, and I commit this notice to paper now, that many years hence, if it please G.o.d, I may find it either a pleasant or at least an instructive reminiscence, a pleasant and instructing one, I trust, if I may ever be permitted to execute this design; instructive if it shall point while in embryo, and serve to teach me the folly of presumptuous schemes conceived during the buoyancy of youth, and only relinquished on a discovery of incompetency in later years. Meanwhile I am only contemplating the gradual acc.u.mulation of materials.

The reading went on at a steady pace, not without social intermissions:--

_Oct. 11th and 12th._--Rode. Papers. Virgil. Thucydides, both days. Also some optics. Wrote a long letter home. Read a chapter of Butler each day. Hume. Breakfasted also with Canning to meet Lady C[anning]. She received us, I thought, with great kindness, and spoke a great deal about Lord Grey's conduct with reference to her husband's memory, with great animation and excitement; her hand in a strong tremor. It was impossible not to enter into her feelings.

Then comes the struggle for the palm:--

_Monday, November 7th to Sat.u.r.day 12th._--In the schools or preparing. Read most of Niebuhr. Finished going over the _Agamemnon_. Got up Aristophanic and other hard words. Went over my books of extracts, etc. Read some of Whately's rhetoric. Got up a little Polybius, and the history out of Livy, decade one. In the schools Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday; each day about six and a half hours at work or under. First Stratford's speech into Latin with logical and rhetorical questions--the latter somewhat abstract. Dined at Gaskell's and met Pearson, a clever and agreeable man. On Thursday a piece of Johnson's preface in morning, in evening critical questions which I did very badly, but I afterwards heard, better than _the rest_, which I could not and cannot understand. On Friday we had in the morning historical questions. Wrote a vast quant.i.ty of matter, ill enough digested. In the evening, Greek to translate and ill.u.s.trate. Heard cheering accounts indirectly of myself, for which I ought to be very thankful.... Dined with Pearson at the Mitre. Very kind in him to ask me. Made Sat.u.r.day in great measure an idle day. Had a good ride with Gaskell. Spent part of the evening with him. Read about six hours. _Sunday, November 13th._--Chapel thrice. Breakfast and much conversation with Cameron. Read Bible. Some divinity of a character approaching to cram. Looked over my shorter abstract of Butler. Tea with Harrison. Walk with Gaskell. Wine with Hamilton, more of a party than I quite liked or expected. Altogether my mind was in an unsatisfactory state, though I heard a most admirable sermon from Tyler on Bethesda, which could not have been more opportune if written on purpose for those who are going into the schools. But I am cold, timid, and worldly, and not in a healthy state of mind for the great trial of to-morrow, to which I know I am utterly and miserably unequal, but which I also know will be sealed for good....

Here is his picture of his _viva voce_ examination:--

_November 14th._--Spent the morning chiefly in looking over my Polybius; short abstract of ethics, and definitions. Also some hard words. Went into the schools at ten, and from this time was little troubled with fear. Examined by Stocker in divinity. I did not answer as I could have wished. Hampden [the famous heresiarch] in science, a beautiful examination, and with every circ.u.mstance in my favour. He said to me, 'Thank you, you have construed extremely well, and appear to be thoroughly acquainted with your books,' or something to that effect. Then followed a very clever examination in history from Garbett, and an agreeable and short one in my poets from Cremer, who spoke very kindly to me at the close. I was only put on in eight books besides the Testament, namely Rhetoric, Ethics, _Phaedo_, Herodotus, Thucydides, _Odyssey_, Aristophanes (_Vespae_), and Persius. Everything was in my favour; the examiners kind beyond everything; a good many persons there, and all friendly. At the end of the science, of course, my spirits were much raised, and I could not help at that moment [giving thanks] to Him without whom not even such moderate performances would have been in my power. Afterwards rode to Cuddesdon with the Denisons, and wrote home with exquisite pleasure.

HIS DOUBLE FIRST CLa.s.s

I have read a story by some contemporary how all attempts to puzzle him by questions on the minutest details of Herodotus only brought out his knowledge more fully; how the excitement reached its climax when the examiner, after testing his mastery of some point of theology, said: 'We will now leave that part of the subject,' and the candidate, carried away by his interest in the subject, answered: 'No, sir; if you please, we will not leave it yet,' and began to pour forth a fresh stream. Ten days later, after a morning much disturbed and excited he rode in the afternoon, and by half-past four the list was out, with Gladstone and Denison both of them in the first cla.s.s; Phillimore and Maurice in the second; Herbert in the fourth.

Then mathematics were to come. The interval between the two schools he pa.s.sed at Cuddesdon, working some ten hours a day at his hardest, riding every day with Denison, and all of them in high spirits. But optics, algebra, geometry, calculus, trigonometry, and the rest, filled him with misgivings for the future. 'Every day I read, I am more and more thoroughly convinced of my incapacity for the subject.' 'My work continued and my reluctance to exertion increased with it.' For the Sunday before the examination, this is the entry, and a characteristic and remarkable one it is:--'Teaching in the school morning and evening.

Saunders preached well on "Ye cannot serve G.o.d and Mammon." Read Bible and four of Horsley's sermons. Paid visits to old people.'

On December 10th the mathematical ordeal began, and lasted four days.

The doctor gave him draughts to quiet his excitement. Better than draughts, he read Wordsworth every day. On Sunday (December 11th) he went, as usual, twice to chapel, and heard Newman preach 'a most able discourse of a very philosophical character, more apt for reading than for hearing--at least I, in the jaded state of my mind, was unable to do it any justice.' On December 14th, the list was out, and his name was again in the first cla.s.s, again along with Denison. As everybody knows, Peel had won a double-first twenty-three years before, and in mathematics Peel had the first cla.s.s to himself. Mr. Gladstone in each of the two schools was one of five. Anstice, whose counsels and example he counted for so much at one epoch in his collegiate life, in 1830 carried off the same double crown, and was, like Peel, alone in the mathematical first cla.s.s.

It was an hour of thrilling happiness, between the past and the future, for the future was, I hope, not excluded; and feeling was well kept in check by the bustle of preparation for speedy departure. Saw the Dean, Biscoe, Saunders (whom I thanked for his extreme kindness), and such of my friends as were in Oxford; all most warm. The mutual hand-shaking between Denison, Jeffreys, and myself, was very hearty. Wine with Bruce.... Packed up my things.... Wrote at more or less length to Mrs. G. [his mother], Gaskell, Phillimore, Mr. Denison, my old tutor Knapp.... Left Oxford on the Champion.

_December 15th._--After finding the first practicable coach to Cambridge was just able to manage breakfast in Bedford Square. Left Holborn at ten, in Cambridge before five.

Here he was received by Wordsworth, the master of Trinity, and father of his Oxford tutor. He had a visit full of the peculiar excitement and felicity that those who are capable of it know nowhere else than at Oxford and Cambridge. He heard Hallam recite his declamation; was introduced to the mighty Whewell, to Spedding, the great Baconian, to Smyth, the professor of history, to Blakesley; renewed his acquaintance with the elder Hallam; listened to glorious anthems at Trinity and King's; tried to hear a sermon from Simeon, the head of the English evangelicals; met Stanhope, an old Eton man, and the two sons of Lord Grey; and 'copied a letter of Mr. Pitt's.' From Cambridge he made his way home, having thus triumphantly achieved the first stage of his long life journey. Amid the manifold mutations of his career, to Oxford his affection was pa.s.sionate as it was constant. 'There is not a man that has pa.s.sed through that great and famous university that can say with more truth than I can say, I love her from the bottom of my heart.'[52]

VI

THOUGHTS ON FUTURE PROFESSION

Another episode must have a place before I close this chapter. At the end of 1828, the youthful Gladstone had composed a long letter, of which the ma.n.u.script survives, to a Liverpool newspaper, earnestly contesting its appalling proposition that 'man has no more control over his belief, than he has over his stature or his colour,' and beseeching the editor to try Leslie's _Short Method with the Deists_, if he be unfortunate enough to doubt the authority of the Bible. At Oxford his fervour carried him beyond the fluent tract to a personal decision. On August 4th, 1830, the entry is this:--'Began Thucydides. Also working up Herodotus. [Greek: exertumenos]. Construing Thucydides at night. Uncomfortable again and much distracted with doubts as to my future line of conduct.

G.o.d direct me. I am utterly blind. Wrote a very long letter to my dear father on the subject of my future profession, wis.h.i.+ng if possible to bring the question to an immediate and final settlement.' The letter is exorbitant in length, it is vague, it is obscure; but the appeal contained in it is as earnest as any appeal from son to parent on such a subject ever was, and it is of special interest as the first definite indication alike of the extraordinary intensity of his religious disposition, and of that double-mindedness, that division of sensibility between the demands of spiritual and of secular life, which remained throughout one of the marking traits of his career. He declares his conviction that his duty, alike to man as a social being, and as a rational and reasonable being to G.o.d, summons him with a voice too imperative to be resisted, to forsake the ordinary callings of the world and to take Upon himself the clerical office. The special need of devotion to that office, he argues, must be plain to any one who 'casts his eye over the moral wilderness of the world, who contemplates the pursuits, desires, designs, and principles of the beings that move so busily in it to and fro, without an object beyond the finding food for it, mental or bodily, for the present moment.' This letter the reader will find in full elsewhere.[53] The missionary impulse, the yearning for some apostolic destination, the glow of self-devotion to a supreme external will, is a well-known element in the youth of ardent natures of either s.e.x. In a thousand forms, sometimes for good, sometimes for evil, such a mood has played its part in history. In this case, as in many another, the impulse in its first shape did not endure, but in essence it never faded.

His father replied as a wise man was sure to do, almost with sympathy, with entire patience, and with thorough common sense. The son dutifully accepts the admonition that it is too early to decide so grave an issue, and that the immediate matter is the approaching performance in the examination schools. 'I highly approve,' his father had written (Nov.

8th, 1830), 'your proposal to leave undetermined the profession you are to follow, until you return from the continent and complete your education in all respects. You will then have seen more of the world and have greater confidence in the choice you may make; for it will then rest wholly with yourself, having our advice whenever you may wish for it.' The critical issue was now finally settled. At almost equal length, and in parts of this second letter no less vague and obscure than the first, but with more concentrated power, Mr. Gladstone tells his father (Jan. 17th, 1832) how the excitement has subsided, but still he sees at hand a great crisis in the history of mankind. New principles, he says, prevail in morals, politics, education. Enlightened self-interest is made the subst.i.tute for the old bonds of unreasoned attachment, and under the plausible maxim that knowledge is power, one kind of ignorance is made to take the place of another kind. Christianity teaches that the head is to be exalted through the heart, but Benthamism maintains that the heart is to be amended through the head. The conflict proceeding in parliament foreshadows a contest for the existence of the church establishment, to be a.s.sailed through its property. The whole foundation of society may go. Under circ.u.mstances so formidable, he dares not look for the comparative calm and ease of a professional life. He must hold himself free of attachment to any single post and function of a technical nature. And so--to make the long story short--'My own desires for future life are exactly coincident with yours, in so far as I am acquainted with them; believing them to be a _profession_ of the law, with a view substantially to studying the const.i.tutional branch of it, and a subsequent experiment, as time and circ.u.mstances might offer, on what is termed public life.' 'It tortures me,' he had written to his brother John (August 29th, 1830), 'to think of an inclination opposed to that of my beloved father,' and this was evidently one of the preponderant motives in his final decision.

In the same letter, while the fire of apostolic devotion was still fervid within him, he had penned a couple of sentences that contain words of deeper meaning than he could surely know:--'I am willing to persuade myself that in spite of other longings which I often feel, my heart is prepared to yield other hopes and other desires for this--of being permitted to be the humblest of those who may be commissioned to set before the eyes of man, still great even, in his ruins, the magnificence and the glory of Christian truth. Especially as I feel that my temperament is so excitable, that I should fear giving up my mind to other subjects which have ever proved sufficiently alluring to me, and which I fear would make my life a fever of unsatisfied longings and expectations.' So men unconsciously often hint an oracle of their lives.

Perhaps these forebodings of a high-wrought hour may in other hues have at many moments come back to Mr. Gladstone's mind, even in the full suns.h.i.+ne of a triumphant career of duty, virtue, power, and renown.

MEDITATIONS

The entry in his diary, suggested by the return of his birthday (Dec.

29, 1831), closes with the words, 'This has been my debating society year, now, I fancy, done with. Politics are fascinating to me; perhaps too fascinating.' Higher thoughts than this press in upon him:--

Industry of a kind and for a time there has been, but the industry of necessity, not of principle. I would fain believe that my sentiments in religion have been somewhat enlarged and untrammelled, but if this be true, my responsibility is indeed augmented, but wherein have my deeds of duty been proportionally modified?... One conclusion theoretically has been much on my mind--it is the increased importance and necessity and benefit of prayer--of the life of obedience and self-sacrifice. May G.o.d use me as a vessel for his own purposes, of whatever character and results in relation to myself.... May the G.o.d who loves us all, still vouchsafe me a testimony of His abiding presence in the protracted, though well nigh dormant life of a desire which at times has risen high in my soul, a fervent and a buoyant hope that I might work an energetic work in this world, and by that work (whereof the worker is only G.o.d) I might grow into the image of the Redeemer.... It matters not whether the sphere of duty be large or small, but may it be duly filled. May those faint and languis.h.i.+ng embers be kindled by the truth of the everlasting spirit into a living and a life-giving flame.

Every reader will remember how, just two hundred years before, the sublimest of English poets had on his twenty-third birthday closed the same self-reproach for sluggishness of inward life, with the same aspiration:--

Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow, It shall be still in strictest measure even To that same lot however mean or high, Towards which time leads me and the will of heaven.

All is, if I have grace to use it so, As ever in my great taskmaster's eye.

Two generations after he had quitted the university, Mr. Gladstone summed up her influence upon him:--

Oxford had rather tended to hide from me the great fact that liberty is a great and precious gift of G.o.d, and that human excellence cannot grow up in a nation without it. And yet I do not hesitate to say that Oxford had even at this time laid the foundations of my liberalism. School pursuits had revealed little; but in the region of philosophy she had initiated if not inured me to the pursuit of truth as an end of study. The splendid integrity of Aristotle, and still more of Butler, conferred upon me an inestimable service. Elsewhere I have not scrupled to speak with severity of myself, but I declare that while in the arms of Oxford, I was possessed through and through with a single-minded and pa.s.sionate love of truth, with a virgin love of truth, so that, although I might be swathed in clouds of prejudice there was something of an eye within, that might gradually pierce them.

FOOTNOTES:

[34] Charles Wordsworth's _Annals_.

[35] After Peel had begun his career, Jackson gave him a piece of advice that would have pleased Mr. Gladstone:--'Let no day pa.s.s without your having Homer in your hand. Elevate your own mind by continual meditation on the vastness of his comprehension and the unerring accuracy of all his conceptions. If you will but read him four or five times over every year, in a half a dozen years you will know him by heart, and he well deserves it.'--Parker's _Life of Sir R. Peel_, i. p. 28.

[36] On the four periods of Aristotelian study at Oxford in the first half of the century see Pattison's Essays, i. P. 463.

[37] _Ibid_, i. p. 465.

[38] Reprinted from the _Edingburgh Review_ in _Discussions on Philosophy and Literature_, pp. 401-559. (1852.)

[39] Tupper (_My Life_, etc., p. 53, 1886) mentions that he beat Mr.

Gladstone for the Burton theological essay, 'The Reconciliation of Matthew and John'; but Gladstone was so good a second that Dr. Burton begged that one-fifth of the prize money, might be given to him as solatium.

[40] Anstice was afterwards professor of Cla.s.sics at King's College, and was cut off prematurely at the age of thirty. See below, p. 134.

[41] _Gleanings_, vii. p. 141.

[42] _Ibid._ ii, p. 1.