RALS 621

APPENDIX 635

CHRONOLOGY 654

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

SIR JOHN GLADSTONE _Frontispiece._

_From a painting by William Bradley._

WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE _to face page_ 86

_From a painting by William Bradley._

CATHERINE GLADSTONE " 223

_From a painting._

HAWARDEN CASTLE " 337

Book I

_1809-1831_

INTRODUCTORY

I am well aware that to try to write Mr. Gladstone's life at all--the
life of a man who held an imposing place in many high national
transactions, whose character and career may be regarded in such various
lights, whose interests were so manifold, and whose years bridged so
long a span of time--is a stroke of temerity. To try to write his life
to-day, is to push temerity still further. The ashes of controversy, in
which he was much concerned, are still hot; perspective, scale,
relation, must all while we stand so near be difficult to adjust. Not
all particulars, more especially of the latest marches in his wide
campaign, can be disclosed without risk of unjust pain to persons now
alive. Yet to defer the task for thirty or forty years has plain
drawbacks too. Interest grows less vivid; truth becomes harder to find
out; memories pale and colour fades. And if in one sense a statesman's
contemporaries, even after death has abated the storm and temper of
faction, can scarcely judge him, yet in another sense they who breathe
the same air as he breathed, who know at close quarters the problems
that faced him, the materials with which he had to work, the limitations
of his time--such must be the best, if not the only true memorialists
and recorders.

Every reader will perceive that perhaps the sharpest of all the many
difficulties of my task has been to draw the line between history and
biography--between the fortunes of the community and the exploits,
thoughts, and purposes of the individual who had so marked a share in
them. In the case of men of letters, in whose lives our literature is
admirably rich, this difficulty happily for their authors and for our
delight does not aris