sun and soil, unhampering institutions, and a deft and intelligent labor class and capitalist class, is bound to scab upon a country less fortunately situated. It is the good fortune of the United States that is making her the colossal scab, just as it is the good fortune of one man to be born with a straight back while his brother is born with a hump.

It is not good to give most for least, not good to be a scab. The word has gained universal opprobrium. On the other hand, to be a non-scab, to give least for most, is universally branded as stingy, selfish, and unchristian-like. So all the world, like the British workman, is 'twixt the devil and the deep sea. It is treason to one's fellows to scab, it is treason to God and unchristian-like not to scab.

Since to give least for most and to give most for least are universally bad,

what remains? Equity remains, which is to give like for like, the same for the same, neither more nor less. But this equity, society, as at present constituted, cannot give. It is not in the nature of present-day society for men to give like for like, the same for the same. And as long as men continue to live in this competitive society, struggling tooth and nail with one another for food and shelter, (which is to struggle tooth and nail with one another for life), that long will the scab continue to exist. His will to live will force him to exist. He may be flouted and jeered by his brothers, he may be beaten with bricks and clubs by the men who by superior strength and capacity scab upon him as he scabs upon them by longer hours and smaller wages, but through it all he will persist, going them one better, and giving a bit more of most for least than they are giving.

Jack London.

MOORE records in his Diary a breakfast at Jeffrey's where Sydney Smith spoke of Sir T. Lawrence having bled to death owing to the ignorance of a servant in not properly adjusting the bandage: "On my remarking the additional ill luck, after such a death, of falling into the hands of such a biographer as Campbell, he started up and exclaimed theatrically, Look to your bandages, all ye that have been blooded; there are biographers abroad!'"

The modern biographer abroad, to say nothing of his lack of skill in dressing wounds, has torn open so many that one commonly experiences a certain involuntary trepidation on taking up a new Life. Nor does the fact that the biography is official necessarily relieve the apprehension. "Literary executors," said Coleridge, "make sad work in general with

their testators' brains." This was probably not a direct prophecy of Froude or Purcell. Even before their day, which Coleridge would have distinctly not rejoiced to see, lives had been taken under the guise of being written. That literary tragedy, however, no man need have feared to see repeated in John Morley's biography of Gladstone. It was certain in advance that nothing but poised judgment, measured estimate, and perfect taste, with fair though pungent phrase and characterization, should we get from the biographer of Cromwell and Cobden, the interpreter of Diderot and Voltaire and Rousseau, of Walpole and of Burke, and, latterly, the political orator whom the best of England hear gladly. His

1 The Life of William Ewart Gladstone. By JOHN MORLEY. In three volumes. New York: The Macmillan Co. 1903.

old chief never gave a better proof that, contrary to the general opinion, he was a good judge of men than in the choice of a literary executor. The appeal to Mr. Morley's discretion, to speak for the moment of that quality alone, was of the slightest from the transparent openness of Gladstone's manner of life. "Nobody ever had fewer secrets." There were no pathological passages in his letters or journals of which to make a public clinic. Even the asterisks denoting omitted sentences in his correspondence, as printed, hide, Mr. Morley assures us, "no piquant hit, no personality, no indiscretion." There will be no place, then, for the future digger-up of the original manuscripts, on scandal bent. We have before us the "real" Gladstone, without that abused word at all possessing its now customary connotation of something derogatory or repellent.

One formidable difficulty obviously confronted Mr. Morley from the start. How was the biographer to disentangle the hero from the history of his time, of which he was so great a part? The life could not be made intelligible apart from its political setting; on the other hand, to make the latter stand out full and clear would be to run the risk of throwing the man himself too much into the shadow. It cannot be said that the bulky volumes wholly escape the double peril. It would be unfair to apply to them what has been said of Professor Masson's Life and Times of Milton, that the Times are to the Life as nine to one; yet there is an undeniable impression, now and then, in this work of Mr. Morley's, of the historian getting the better of the biographer. Even contemporary events in which Gladstone had but a minor rôle such as the FrancoGerman war—are narrated in a way to come near falling between two stools. The history is scamped, the biography overweighted. In the case of such themes as Ireland, the Transvaal, Egypt, the

struggle for Italian unity, the rescue of the bleeding provinces from the Turk, we may well admit the demand for full handling, since with them Gladstone had a militant and fiercely debated connection. Indeed, there is one theory of the function which Mr. Morley may have defined to himself that would justify all his historical longueurs. It is possible that he designed his great work, not precisely as a huge Whig tract" of the Macaulay order, but as a conscious contribution to the propaganda of Liberalism, using that word in no party sense, but as signifying the movement to enfranchise the spirit of mankind. The careful translation of all the citations from Greek, Latin, and even French and Italian, would look as if his volumes were sent out in the hope of being understanded of the common people. Their sale by popular subscription in England points the same way. If the actual aim were to make all plain to short memories and meagre reading, there is constructive excuse for pages which would otherwise be voted both superfluous and tedious.

Thirty years ago, John Morley as the biographer of William Ewart Gladstone would have seemed the most palpable misfit. Even to-day, many have had grave doubt on one point. Would not the Life reveal much less than perfect sympathy between writer and subject on the religious side? How could an avowed agnostic, though of the most grave and weighty cast of mind, possibly hope to portray the ardent theologian, the convinced Churchman, the devout Christian believer, who, as Dean Church said of his personal knowledge of Gladstone, went from his knees to the business of the nation? Mr. Gladstone himself, so Frederic Harrison reminds us, thought Morley's Life of Cobden defective in religious appreciation. In his own case the difficulty would seem vastly greater. But it is vanquished ambulando. Frankly stating that he can only describe from the exterior Gladstone's religious nature

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and activities, Mr. Morley at once rises to serene impartiality of spirit in saying: It was the affinity of great natures for great issues that made Mr. Gladstone from his earliest manhood onwards take and hold fast the affairs of the churches for the objects of his most absorbing interest. He was one and the same man, his genius was one. His persistent incursions all through his long life into the multifarious doings, not only of his own Anglican communion, but of the Latin church of the West, as well as of the motley Christendom of the East, puzzled and vexed political whippers-in, wire-pullers, newspaper editors, leaders, colleagues; they were the despair of party caucuses; and they made the neutral man of the world smile, as eccentricities of genius and rather singularly chosen recreations. All this was, in truth, of the very essence of his character, the manifestation of its profound unity." If that does not echo the emotional sympathy of a brother in the faith, it at least shows us the sound and fair critic. Mr. Morley, in reality, sets forth the churchly and the Christian side of Gladstone with satisfactory clearness, if not with all ecclesiastical amplitude. The most apprehensive Anglican must confess the picture to be faithful. Minuter traits are not overlooked. We are shown Gladstone's Cromwellian habit of being greatly stayed by some verse of Scripture when going forth to oratorical slaughter. If anything is left out it is the laughter, or the mockery, which Mr. Gladstone's consuming religious zeal so often provoked in the ungodly. Their gibes Mr. Morley passes by. Kinglake, for example, was only one of many to call Mr. Gladstone "a good man in the worst sense of the term, conscientious with a disordered conscience." And it was in an "Imaginary Conversation" between Madame Novikoff and Gortchakoff that the same brilliant but bitter writer conveyed wittily the general impression of the way in which Glad

stone's theological flank lay open to attack:

"Gortchakoff: How did you get hold of Gladstone?

"Madame Novikoff: Rien de plus simple. Four or five years ago I asked what was his weak point, and was told that he had two-Effervescence' and Theology.' With that knowledge I found it all child's play to manage him. I just sent him to Munich, and there boiled him up in a weak decoction of Filioque, then kept him ready for use, and impatiently awaited the moment when our plans for getting up the 'Bulgarian atrocities' should be mature," etc.

Whatever might have been dreaded in regard to Mr. Morley's painting of Gladstone the theologian, everybody must have recognized his peculiar advantage in describing Gladstone the statesman. It is the advantage of first-hand acquaintance with the matter. This enables him

not only to understand, but to give those realistic touches of experience which we find, for example, in Condorcet's Life of Turgot, Disraeli's sketch of Bentinck, Rosebery's Pitt, and Schurz's Clay. Saturated for years in politics, himself active in the movements that he describes, an intimate of the men who made the history it is his task to write, Mr. Morley is able to light up his pages with many a flash of personal familiarity. Thus when the mysterious break-up of a certain Cabinet is under discussion, he turns this ray upon the problem, "Perhaps the Ministers had grown weary of each other." That could have occurred to no one who had not himself kissed hands and held a portfolio. Even his journalistic years yield Mr. Morley something, as when, referring to an unhappy attempt to "inspire" a newspaper, he remarks: "Unluckily, it would seem to need at least the genius of a Bismarck to perform with precision and success the delicate office of inspiring a modern oracle on the journalistic tripod."

Mr. Morley is no idolizing biographer.

His critic's eye is not dazzled even by the splendid orb of Gladstone's genius. He sees and points out the flecks in the brilliance. With resolute hand he unveils for us the deep mystery of Mr. Gladstone's complex nature, — simply duplex, his enemies called it. This personal interest is, after all, the most compelling thing in

the 1800 pages. Old political issues Maynooth and the Gorham judgment, distribution bills and budgets, even Bulgaria and Irish Home Rule-seem far away and burned out compared with the perennial charm and vitality of a dominant human personality. In Gladstone there was as extraordinary a union of opposites as ever met in one breast. "Ah,” said a disapproving old Whig, at the time of the 1860 budget, "Oxford on the surface, but Liverpool below." This was but one of the many phrases in which Gladstone's remarkable dualism of character was bodied forth. He was at once the meticulous scholastic theologian, and the prodigious worker in the practical. This strange mingling of qualities, with its resultant perils, Mr. Morley puts fairly before us. A hair-splitting intellect yoked to immense moral enthusiasm was certain to lead its owner into awkward passages, and to lay him open to the charge of sophistry or insincerity. The subtly mediæval tinge of Mr. Gladstone's mind was perceived with marvelous clarity of vision by Walter Bagehot, in that acute analysis of the man which he published as far back as 1860. "His intellect is of a thoroughly scholastic kind. He can distinguish between any two propositions; he never allowed, he could not allow, that any two were identical. If any one on either side of the House is bold enough to infer anything from anything, Mr. Gladstone is ready to deny that the inference is accurate to suggest a distinction which he says is singularly important to illustrate an apt subtlety which, in appearance at least, impairs the validity of the deduction. No schoolman

could be readier at such work. . . . It

must be pleasant to have an argumentative acuteness which is quite sure to extricate you, at least in appearance, from any intellectual scrape. But it is a dangerous weapon to use, and particularly dangerous to a very conscientious man. He will not use it unless he believes in its results; but he will try to believe in its results, in order that he may use it."

Mr. Morley practically acquiesces in this diagnosis. Indeed, confirmation of it rains upon any one who closely follows Gladstone's career, and notes the impression he made upon different men. "He perplexes his chief [Sir Robert Peel]," writes Lord Rosebery of Gladstone, in his little book on Peel, "who complains of sometimes finding great difficulty in exactly comprehending what he means. This recalls a saying of the Pope : "I like, but I do not understand, Mr. Gladstone." It was a complaint which dogged Gladstone from his earliest to his latest years. In 1830 he wrote a long letter to his father urging that he be permitted to give his life to the Church. There were in it sentences of burning and martyr-like devotion, but alongside stand others which leave one uncertain what the youth really wanted. This " vague and obscure "letter is, observes Mr. Morley, "the first definite indication alike of the extraordinary intensity of his religious disposition, and of that double-mindedness, that division of sensibility between the demands of spiritual and of secular life, which remained throughout one of the marking traits of his career." From this involved letter at twenty-one, down to his apparent but Orphic denial that he was to resign the premiership at eighty-five, — though he promptly did it,

Gladstone left behind him an enormous number of letters, articles, and speeches in which lurking qualifications, meaning everything to him, though unperceived by the general, lay as so many snares for the unwary, so many causes of wrath to the plain and blunt Englishman who blurts his whole mind out. No won

der that this trait "sometimes amused friends, but always exasperated foes. . . . His adversary, as he strode confidently along the smooth grass, suddenly found himself treading on a serpent; he had overlooked a condition, a proviso, a word of hypothesis or contingency, that sprang from its ambush and brought his triumph to naught on the spot. If Mr. Gladstone had only taken as much trouble that his hearers should understand exactly what it was that he meant, as he took trouble afterwards to show that his meaning had been grossly misunderstood, all might have been well. As it was, he seemed to be completely satisfied if he could only show that two propositions, thought by plain men to be directly contradictory, were all the time capable on close construction of being presented in perfect harmony."

Along with this tendency to "overrefining in words, a disproportionate impressiveness in verbal shadings without real difference," went an amazing combativeness. This is perhaps a part of the oratorical temperament. Fox was once reproached for disputing vehemently about a trifle. "I must do so," he said; "I can't live without discussion." To quote Bagehot again: "Mr. Gladstone by nature, by vehement overruling nature, longs to pour forth his own belief; he cannot rest till he has contradicted every one else." This made the most peace-loving of statesmen the most pugnacious of debaters. "He can bear a good deal about the politics of Europe; but let a man question the fees on vatting, or the change in the game certificate, or the stamp on bills of lading - what melodious thunders of loquacious wrath! The world, he hints, is likely to end at such observations." Indeed, great as were Mr. Gladstone's oratorical powers in exposition or persuasion, they never blazed so high as in rejoinder. "He is terrible in the rebound," testified Lord Aberdeen. This falls in with what Gladstone himself said, when asked if he were

ever nervous about speaking. ing, yes; in reply, never."

"In open

But this intense nature was not always in the white heat of mighty labor or closejoined debate. He had his lighter, playful side. The bow was sometimes unbent. His wonderful charm in undress conversation, his story-telling, his mimicry, his facile acting-to say nothing of his stores of out-of-the-way knowledge and exhaustless fund of reminiscence built up a strong and enduring tradition of his fascinating personality in private life. But almost all of this part of Gladstone is left in the shadow by Mr. Morley. He asserts its existence, but he illustrates it only in the most meagre way. Presumably, authentic material was lacking. There was no Boswell by, unluckily. Mr. Morley prints twenty-five pages of his own notes of Gladstone's conversation on successive days at Biarritz. It is bookish, glancing, rather superficial; little quotable, nowhere making a deep impression, though showing a great range of reading for a busy public man. In his letters Mr. Gladstone seems never to have overflowed in raillery or anecdote. All was intent on the matter in hand. It was as if the previous question were always on the point of being ordered. Even in the correspondence with his friend of many years, the Duchess of Sutherland, one finds little of that lightsome play of mind which an intellectual woman will call out of a man if he has it in him. This helps us to understand the Queen's complaint that Gladstone always talked to her as if she were a public meeting. The net result is to make his letters uninteresting, except as fixing disputed dates and the true order of his unfolding policy; so that Mr. Morley was wise to publish but a few of the thousands that were turned

over to him. Nor is Gladstone's private diary richer in the asides and leisurely jottings of a full mind. It was strictly business, - a kind of skeleton agenda or adjudicata. It was a record, and records are not lively reading. And yet,