part in the affairs they relate to, and as embodying vividly the
opinions and aspirations of the moment, less frequently in respect
of permanent lessons of political wisdom, such as one finds in
Machiavelli or Tocqueville or Edmund Burke. Like Pitt and Peel, Mr.
Gladstone had a mind which, whatever its original tendencies, had
come to be rather practical than meditative. He was fond of
generalizations and principles, but they were always directly
related to the questions that came before him in actual politics;
and the number of general maxims or illuminative suggestions to be
found in his writings and speeches is not large in proportion to
their sustained intellectual vigor. Even Disraeli, though his views
were often fanciful and his epigrams often forced, gives us more
frequently a brilliant (if only half true) historical apercu, or
throws a flash of light into some corner of human character. Of the
theological essays, which are mainly apologetic and concerned with
the authenticity and authority of Scripture, it is enough to say
that they exhibit the same general characteristics as the treatises
dealing with Homer, which were the most serious piece of work that
proceeded from Mr. Gladstone's pen. These Homeric treatises are in
one sense worthless, in another sense admirable. Those parts of
them which deal with early Greek mythology and religion, with
Homeric geography and genealogy, and in a less degree with the use
of Homeric epithets, have been condemned by the unanimous voice of
scholars as fantastic. The premises are assumed without sufficient
investigation, while the reasonings are fine-drawn and flimsy.
Extraordinary ingenuity is shown in piling up a lofty fabric, but
the foundation is of sand, and the edifice has hardly a solid wall
or beam in it. A clever conjecture is treated as a fact; an
inference possible but represented as probable is drawn from this
conjecture; a second inference is based upon the first; we are made