-Peel, Lord John Russell, and
Disraeli. To some other contemporaries for whom courage might be
claimed, he stoutly denied it. Nobody ever dreamed of denying it to him,
whether parliamentary courage or any other, in either its active or its
passive shape, either in daring or in fortitude. He had even the courage
to be prudent, just as he knew when it was prudent to be bold. He
applied in public things the Spenserian line, '_Be bold, be bold, and
everywhere be bold_,' but neither did he forget the iron door with its
admonition, '_Be not too bold_.' The great Conde, when complimented on
his courage, always said that he took good care never to call upon it
unless the occasion were absolutely necessary. No more did Mr. Gladstone
go out of his way to summon courage for its own sake, but only when
spurred by duty; then he knew no faltering. Capable of much
circumspection, yet soon he became known for a man of lion heart.

MEASURE OF HIS GIFTS

Nature had bestowed on him many towering gifts. Whether Humour was among
them, his friends were wont to dispute. That he had a gaiety and
sympathetic alacrity of mind that was near of kin to humour, nobody who
knew him would deny. Of playfulness his speeches give a thousand proofs;
of drollery and fun he had a ready sense, though it was not always easy
to be quite sure beforehand what sort of jest would hit or miss. For
irony, save in its lighter forms as weapon in debate, he had no marked
taste or turn. But he delighted in good comedy, and he reproached me
severely for caring less than one ought to do for the _Merry Wives of
Windsor_. Had he Imagination? In its high literary and poetic form he
rose to few conspicuous flights--such, for example, as Burke's descent
of Hyder Ali upon the Carnatic--in vast and fantastic conceptions such
as arose from time to time in the brain of Napoleon, he had no part or
lot. But in force of moral and political imagination, in bold, excursive
range, in the faculty of illuminating practical and objective
calculations with lofty ideals of the strength of states, the happiness
of peoples, the whole structure of good government, he has had no
superior among the rulers of England. His very ardour of temperament
gave him imagination; he felt as if everybody who listened to him in a
great audience was equally fired with his own energy of sympathy,
indignation, conviction, and was transported by the same emotion that
thrilled through himse