suggestions to be found in his writings and speeches
is small in proportion to the sustained vigour they display. 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 were the work of an
accomplished amateur, who had been too busy to follow the progress of
critical inquiry. His Homeric treatises, the most elaborate piece
of work that proceeded from Mr. Gladstone's pen, are in one sense
worthless, in another sense admirable. Those parts of them which
deal with early Greek mythology, genealogy, and religion, and, in a
less degree, the theories about Homeric geography and 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 conjecture is treated as a fact; then an inference,
possible but not certain, is drawn from this conjecture; a second
possible inference is based upon the first; and we are made to
forget that the probability of this second is at most only half the
probability of the first. So the process goes on; and when the
superstructure is complete, the reader is provoked to perceive how
much dialectical skill has been wasted upon a series of hypotheses
which a breath of common-sense criticism dissipates. If one is
asked to explain the weakness in this particular department of a mind
otherwise so strong, the answer would seem to be that the element
of fancifulness in Mr. Gladstone's intellect, and his tendency to
mistake mere argumentation for verification, were checked in
practical politics by constant intercourse with friends and
colleagues as well as by the need of convincing visible audiences,
while in theological or historical inquiries his ingenuity roamed
with fatal freedom over wide plains where no obstacles checked its
course. Something may also be due to the fact that his philosophical
and historical education was received at a time when the modern
critical spirit and the canons it recognises