One is
baffled, as his political opponents were baffled fifty years ago.
The soft serpent coils harden into quick strength that has
vanished, leaving only emptiness and perplexity behind. Speech
was the fibre of his being; and, when he spoke, the ambiguity of
ambiguity was revealed. The long, winding, intricate sentences,
with their vast burden of subtle and complicated qualifications,
befogged the mind like clouds, and like clouds, too, dropped
thunder bolts. Could it not then at least be said of him with
certainty that his was a complex character? But here also there
was a contradiction.
In spite of the involutions of his intellect and the contortions
of his spirit, it is impossible not to perceive a strain of
naivete in Mr. Gladstone. He adhered to some of his principles
that of the value of representative institutions, for instance
with a faith which was singularly literal; his views upon
religion were uncritical to crudeness; he had no sense of humour.
Compared with Disraeli's, his attitude towards life strikes one
as that of an ingenuous child. His very egoism was simple-minded;
through all the labyrinth of his passions there ran a single
thread. But the centre of the labyrinth? Ah! the thread might
lead there, through those wandering mazes, at last. Only, with
the last corner turned, the last step taken, the explorer might
find that he was looking down into the gulf of a crater.
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