Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]

It is a commoplace with some critics that Mr. Morley made a great mistake when he deserted literature for politics. The criticism is not a very profound one, though it is natural on the part of those who, having no sympathy with Mr. Morley's political views, may very well think that he was less likely to do harm as a man of letters than as a man of affairs. Even so, however, it is rather short-sighted. To begin with, it is very doubtful whether the influence of the writer is less than that of the politician. In the second place, Mr. Morley has always beeen something more than a man of letters. All his serious contributions to literature have been inspired by lofty political ideals. In him the man of letters has always assumed the garb of the political evangelist-the evangelist of a political gospel which is not ours, but which, associated as it is with a literary faculty of rare felicity and power, a breadth of culture rarely attained by 1. The Life of William Ewart Gladstone. By John Morley. Three volumes. London:

millan, 1903.

2. The Life of William Ewart Gladstone. H. W. Paul. London: Smith, Elder, 1901.

Mac

By

3. The Life and Correspondence of the Right

No. 1

politicians, and a personal character which commands the respect of all his opponents, is and has long been a force to be reckoned with in English public life. Besides, Mr. Morley has never entirely deserted literature for politics; he has brought his political training to bear on literature; witness his admirable studies of Sir Robert Walpole and of Oliver Cromwell, books which abound in wise saws and pregnant reflections that could never have been inspired in the study. They are the fine flower of political experience, ripened in the senate and the marketplace, quickened by the habit of dealing directly with men, and perfected by rare literary skill.

But it is by his "Life of William Ewart Gladstone," just published, that Mr. Morley may claim to be finally judged both as a man of letters and as a man of affairs. There are few forms of litrature so difficult to succced in as biography; there are perhaps none so difficult as political biogHon. Hugh C. E. Childers, 1827-1896. By his son, Lieut.-Col. Spencer Childers, C.B. Two volumes. London: Murray, 1901.

4. Studies in Contemporary Biography. By James Bryce. London: Macmillan, 1903.

raphy; and probably no political biography that ever was written was more difficult to write well than that of Mr. Gladstone. Has Mr. Morley written it well? The answer will generally depend in some measure on the point of view and the political and personal prepossessions of the critic. Those who think that Mr. Gladstone's political aims were mischievous and his political conduct flagitious, who regard him as a time-serving demagogue and hypocrite, driven to tortuous courses by the stings of a restless and overmastering ambition, will hardly approve of a biography which represents him throughout as a statesman inspired by a singularly lofty sense of public duty, a man of profound and unimpeachable piety, measuring and judging all his acts by his own high standard of Christian ethics, and seeking to bring the policy of his country into conformity with the same lofty ideals. But no impartial and competent critic, freeing his mind from prejudices and prepossessions which have too often blinded literary judgments, will hesitate to declare that Mr. Morley has discharged his supremely difficult task with consummate skill and discretion. In all his long and brilliant career as a man of letters, he has seldom, perhaps never, written with a more sustained ethical fervor or a more triumphant literary dexterity, with a shrewder insight into motive and character, a defter adjustment of literary and historical "values," or a more judicious handling of materials. Throughout the work he displays a serene and charitable temper, always seeking to do justice to opponents, never imputing unworthy motives to them, and perhaps only in one case that of the Special Commission-giving the rein to a sæva indignatio which it is permissible alike to a good man to feel and to other good men not to share with him. It would

not be fair to the author to attribute this remarkable freedom from party spirit to the influence of Queen Victoria; but it is only right to record, as Mr. Morley does himself, that, when he applied to her Majesty for the use of certain documents not accessible without her sanction, the Queen, in complying with his request,

"added a message strongly impressing on me that the work I was about to undertake should not be handled in the narrow way of party. This injunction,” continues Mr. Morley, "represents my own clear view of the spirit in which the history of a career so memorable as Mr. Gladstone's should be composed. That, to be sure, is not at all inconsistent with our regarding party feeling, in its honorable sense, as entirely the reverse of an infirmity" (Preface, p. vii).

There are three aspects in which Mr. Morley's great work can, and in the long run must, be appreciated-its aspect as a work of literary art; its psychological aspect as a sympathetic appreciation of one of the greatest personalities of his time; its historical aspect as presenting a survey, which must needs be concise without being inadequate, of the long series of political events associated with Mr. Gladstone's career and subjected to his influence. These several aspects are so organically connected in the biographical synthesis that they cannot be wholly dissociated in the critical analysis. No biography which neglects any one of them can be held to attain to the highest order of merit; but, if due allow. ance be made for Mr. Morley's personal sympathies and political prepossessions, never suppressed and yet never obtruded, we shall hardly place Mr. Morley's biography in any class lower than the first. It is a great portrait of a great man.

The biography is long, even as biographies go now; but its length cannot

be said to be excessive, in view of the unusual duration of Mr. Gladstone's public career, the unparalleled fulness of his life, and the wide range of his interests. It has been said that only a syndicate could write the life of such a man, and only an encyclopædia could contain it. Mr. Morley has accomplished the work single-handed; he has completed it in three years; and he has compressed the results into three volumes. Further than this compression could not profitably go. His words are seldom wasted. They are the distilled essence of documents innumerable, the condensed record of one of the most active and many-sided careers in British history, a brief epitome of more than half a century crowded with great political events, unexampled in social and economic change.

Nevertheless, severely as Mr. Morley has condensed his materials, he retains at all times perfect mastery over them. His biography is no mere bald and jejune calendar of incidents, controversies, or events, but an articulated narrative, well proportioned in its parts, instinct with life and movement, in which the rare but necessary documents to be quoted fall naturally into their places as touches conducive to the completeness of the portrait. In style too the book is admirably suited to its subject. The dominant note is a grave and lofty dignity, but lighter tones are not infrequent; and their introduction is well attuned to the spirit of the whole composition. It abounds in felicitous phrases and well chosen epithets; and there is no lack of those pungent apophthegms and pregnant reflections which bespeak the man of letters who has himself handled great affairs. As a single specimen of Mr. Morley's graver manner we may take his description of the scene on the introduction of the first Home Rule Bill.

Of the chief comrades or rivals of the minister's own generation-the strong administrators, the eager and accomplished debaters, the sagacious leaders-the only survivor now comparable to him in eloquence or in influence was Mr. Bright. That illustrious man seldom came into the House in those distracted days; and on this memorable occasion his stern and noble head was to be seen in dim obscurity. Various as were the emotions in other regions of the House, in one quarter rejoicing was unmixed. There, at least, was no doubt and no misgiving. There, pallid and tranquil, sat the Irish leader, whose hard insight, whose patience, energy, and spirit of command, had achieved this astounding result, and done that which he had vowed to his countrymen that he would assuredly be able to do. On the benches round him, genial excitement rose almost to tumult. Well it might. For the first time since the Union, the Irish case was at last to be pressed in all its force and strength, in every aspect of policy and of conscience, by the most powerful Englishman then alive.

More striking than the audience was the man; more striking than the multitude of eager onlookers from the shore was the rescuer with deliberate valor facing the floods ready to wash him down; the veteran Ulysses who, after more than half a century of combat, service, toil, thought it not too late to try a further "work of noble note." In the hands of such a master of the instrument, the theme might easily have lent itself to one of those displays of exalted passion which the House had marvelled at in more than one of Mr. Gladstone's speeches on the Turkish question, or heard with religious reverence in his speech on the Affirmation Bill in 1883. What the occasion now required was that passion should burn low, and reasoned persuasion hold up the guiding lamp. An elaborate scheme was to be unfolded, an unfamiliar policy to be explained and vindicated. Of that best kind of eloquence which dispenses with declamation, this was a fine and sustained example. There was a deep, rapid, steady, onflowing volume of argument, exposition, exhortation. Every hard or bitter stroke was avoided. Now and again a fervid note thrilled

the ear and lifted all hearts. But political oratory is action, not wordsaction, character, will, conviction, purpose, personality. As this eager muster of men underwent the enchantment of periods exquisite in their balance and modulation, the compulsion of his flashing glance and animated gesture, what stirred and commanded them was the recollection of national service, the thought of the speaker's mastering purpose, his unflagging resolution and strenuous will, his strength of thew and sinew well tried in long years of resounding war, his quenched conviction that the just cause can never fail. Few are the heroic moments in our parliamentary politics, but this was one (iii, 311-2).

un

Even the bitterest adversary of the policy here referred to must acknowledge that this is literary work of the highest order. We may follow it up with a few detached quotations illustrating Mr. Morley's felicities of expression and appreciation, premising at the same time that they lose more than half their effect by being detached from their context. Here, for a first example, is a shrewd attempt to explain the baffling antinomies of Mr. Gladstone's personality.

An illustrious opponent once described him, by way of hitting his singular duality of disposition, as an ardent Italian in the custody of a Scotsman. It is easy to make too much of race, but when we are puzzled by Mr. Gladstone's seeming contrarieties of temperament, his union of impulse with caution, of passion with circumspection, of pride and fire with selfcontrol, of Ossianic flight with a steady foothold on the solid earth, we may perhaps find a sort of explanation in thinking of him as a highlander in the custody of a lowlander (i, 18).

Other examples we have noted must, for lack of space, be cited with very As a rule, however, little comment. they speak for themselves. "He soon discovered how hard it is to adjust to the many angles of an English political

party the seamless mantle of ecclesiastical predominance." Is not that an epitome of a certain famous "Chapter of Autobiography"? "There is plenty of evidence, besides Mr. Gladstone's case, that simplicity of character is no hindrance to subtlety of intellect"-a hard saying to those who saw in Mr. Gladstone nothing but a hypocrite, but full of truth and insight nevertheless. "Severer than any battle in Parliament is a long struggle inside a Cabinet"-a pregnant arcanum imperii indeed! This, again, of Mr. Gladstone's famous declaration on the franchise in 1864: "One of the fated words had been spoken that gather up the wandering forces of time and occasion and precipitate new eras." Or this in a largeminded apology for the tactics of Disraeli in 1867:

"We always do best to seek rational explanations in large affairs. . . . The secret of the strange reversal in 1867 of all that had been said, attempted, and done in 1866, would seem to be that the tide of public opinion had suddenly swelled to flood." It is easy, as Mr. Morley says in another context, to label this with the ill-favored name of opportunism. "Yet if an opportunist be defined as a statesman who declines to attempt to do a thing until he believes that it can really be done, what is this but to call him a man of common-sense?"

It cannot be said, however, that Mr. Morley is always successful in defence. Those who blamed Mr. Gladstone's offer in 1874 to do away with the income-tax if the country gave him a majority, Mr. Morley dubs "critics of the peevish school who cry for better bread than can be made of political wheat." He follows up his sally with an enumeration of cases in which other ministers have taken a like course without incurring the same censure. The argument is plausible, but not very cogent, in view of Mr. Gladstone's

« AnteriorContinuar »