The Grand Old Man | Page 8

but he excelled in all these--not only as a statesman,
but as a man of letters and a classical scholar. Neither has held him
exclusively as its own--he belongs to all, or rather they belong to
him--for he explored and conquered them. His literary productions
equal in merit his papers of State, while his knowledge of the classics
would do credit to any scholar.
He possessed the unusual quality of throwing the light of his own mind
on the greatest questions of national and international importance, of
bringing them down to the understanding and appreciation of the
masses of the people, of infusing, by his earnestness, the fire of his own
soul in the people, and of arousing in them the greatest enthusiasm.
In the biography of this wonderful person we propose to set before the
reader the man himself--his words and his deeds. This method enables
him to speak for himself, and thus the reader may study him and know
him, and because thereof be lifted into a higher plane of nobler and
better being. The acts and utterances of such a character are his best
biography, and especially for one differing so largely from all other
men as to have none to be compared with him.
In this record we simply spread before the reader his private life and
public services, connected together through many startling changes,
from home to school, from university to Parliament, from Tory
follower to Liberal leader, from the early start in his political course to
the grand consummation of the statesman's success in his attainment to
the fourth Premiership of this Grand Old Man, and the glorious end of
an eventful life.
We could not do better, in closing this chapter, than to reproduce a part
of the character sketch of William E. Gladstone, from the pen of
William T. Stead, and published in the "Review of Reviews:"
"So much has been written about Mr. Gladstone that it was with some
sinking of heart I ventured to select him as a subject for my next
character sketch. But I took heart of grace when I remembered that the
object of these sketches is to describe their subject as he appears to

himself at his best, and his countrymen. There are plenty of other
people ready to fill in the shadows. This paper claims in no way to be a
critical estimate or a judicial summing up of the merits and demerits of
the most remarkable of all living Englishmen. It is merely an attempt to
catch, as it were, the outline of the heroic figure which has dominated
English politics for the lifetime of this generation, and thereby to
explain something of the fascination which his personality has
exercised and still exercises over the men and women of his time. If his
enemies, and they are many, say that I have idealized a wily old
opportunist out of all recognition, I answer that to the majority of his
fellow-subjects my portrait is not overdrawn. The real Gladstone may
be other than this, but this is probably more like the Gladstone for
whom the electors believe they are voting, than a picture of Gladstone,
'warts and all,' would be. And when I am abused, as I know I shall be,
for printing such a sketch, I shall reply that there is at least one thing to
be said in its favor. To those who know him best, in his own household,
and to those who only know him as a great name in history, my sketch
will only appear faulty because it does not do full justice to the
character and genius of this extraordinary man."
Mr. Gladstone appeals to the men of to-day from the vantage point of
extreme old age. Age is so frequently dotage, that when a veteran
appears who preserves the heart of a boy and the happy audacity of
youth, under the 'lyart haffets wearing thin and bare' of aged manhood,
it seems as if there is something supernatural about it, and all men feel
the fascination and the charm. Mr. Gladstone, as he gleefully remarked
the other day, has broken the record. He has outlived Lord Palmerston,
who died when eighty-one, and Thiers, who only lived to be eighty.
The blind old Dandolo in Byron's familiar verse--
The octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe,
had not more energy than the Liberal leader, who, now in his
eighty-third year, has more nerve and spring and go than any of his
lieutenants, not excluding the youngest recruit. There is something
imposing and even sublime in the long procession of years which
bridge as with eighty-two arches the abyss of past time, and carry us

back to the days of Canning, and of Castlereagh, of Napoleon, and of
Wellington. His parliamentary career extends over