ecause he was from the first an eager and a powerful athlete. The man
who listening to his adversary asks of his contention, 'Is this true?'
is a lost debater; just as a soldier would be lost who on the day of
battle should bethink him that the enemy's cause might after all perhaps
be just. The debater does not ask, 'Is this true?' He asks, 'What is the
answer to this? How can I most surely floor him?' Lord Coleridge
inquired of Mr. Gladstone whether he ever felt nervous in public
speaking: 'In opening a subject often,' Mr. Gladstone answered, 'in
reply never.' Yet with this inborn readiness for combat, nobody was less
addicted to aggression or provocation. It was with him a salutary maxim
that, if you have unpalatable opinions to declare, you should not make
them more unpalatable by the way of expressing them. In his earlier
years he did not often speak with passion. 'This morning,' a famous
divine once said, 'I preached a sermon all flames.' Mr. Gladstone
sometimes made speeches of that cast, but not frequently, I think, until
the seventies. Meanwhile he impressed the House by his nobility, his
sincerity, his simplicity; for there is plenty of evidence besides Mr.
Gladstone's case, that simplicity of character is no hindrance to
subtlety of intellect.

Contemporaries in these opening years describe his parliamentary manners
as much in his favour. His countenance, they say, is mild and pleasant,
and has a high intellectual expression. His eyes are clear and quick.
His eyebrows are dark and rather prominent. There is not a dandy in the
House but envies his fine head of jet-black hair. Mr. Gladstone's
gesture is varied, but not violent. When he rises, he generally puts
both his hands behind his back, and having there suffered them to
embrace each other for a short time, he unclasps them, and allows them
to drop on either side. They are not permitted to remain long in that
locality before you see them again closed together, and hanging down
before him.[118] Other critics say that his air and voice are too
abstract, and 'you catch the sound as though he were communing with
himself. It is as though you saw a bright picture through a filmy veil.
His countenance, without being strictly handsome, is highly
intellectual. His pale complexion, slightly tinged with olive, and dark
hair, cut rather close to his head, with an eye of remarkable depth,
still more impress you with the abstracted character of his disposition.
The expres