For, indeed, there was
something in his nature which invited --which demanded-- the
clashing reactions of passionate extremes. It was easy to worship
Mr. Gladstone; to see in him the perfect model of the upright
man--the man of virtue and of religion-- the man whose whole life
had been devoted to the application of high principles to affairs
of State; the man, too, whose sense of right and justice was
invigorated and ennobled by an enthusiastic heart. It was also
easy to detest him as a hypocrite, to despise him as a demagogue,
and to dread him as a crafty manipulator of men and things for
the purposes of his own ambition.
It might have been supposed that one or other of these
conflicting judgments must have been palpably absurd, that
nothing short of gross prejudice or wilful blindness, on one side
or the other, could reconcile such contradictory conceptions of a
single human being. But it was not so; 'the elements' were 'so
mixed' in Mr. Gladstone that his bitterest enemies (and his
enemies were never mild) and his warmest friends (and his friends
were never tepid) could justify, with equal plausibility, their
denunciations or their praises. What, then, was the truth? In the
physical universe there are no chimeras. But man is more various
than nature; was Mr. Gladstone, perhaps, a chimera of the spirit?
Did his very essence lie in the confusion of incompatibles? His
very essence? It eludes the hand that seems to grasp it.
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