iary in 1835, on turning over the _Miscellany_, 'in perusing my own
(with few exceptions) execrable productions.' Certainly his
contributions have no particular promise or savour, no hint of the
strong pinions into which the half-fledged wings were in time to expand.
Their motion, such as it is, must be pronounced mechanical; their phrase
and cadence conventional. Even when sincere feelings were deeply
stirred, the flight cannot be called high. The most moving public event
in his schooldays was undoubtedly the death of Canning, and to Gladstone
the stroke was almost personal. In September 1827 he tells his mother
that he has for the first time visited Westminster Abbey,--his object,
an eager pilgrimage to the newly tenanted grave of his hero, and in the
_Miscellany_ he pays a double tribute. In the prose we hear sonorous
things about meridian splendour, premature extinction, and inscrutable
wisdom; about falling, like his great master Pitt, a victim to his proud
and exalted station; about being firm in principle and conciliatory in
action, the friend of improvement and the enemy of innovation. Nor are
the versified reflections in Westminster Abbey much more striking:--

Oft in the sculptured aisle and swelling dome,
The yawning grave hath given the proud a home;
Yet never welcomed from his bright career
A mightier victim than it welcomed here:
Again the tomb may yawn--again may death
Claim the last forfeit of departing breath;
Yet ne'er enshrine in slumber dark and deep
A nobler, loftier prey than where thine ashes sleep.

Excellent in feeling, to be sure; but as a trial of poetic delicacy or
power, wanting the true note, and only worth recalling for an instant as
we go.

III

FRIENDS

As nearly always happens, it was less by school work or spoken addresses
in juvenile debate, or early attempts in the great and difficult art of
written composition, than by blithe and congenial comradeship that the
mind of the young Gladstone was stimulated, opened, strengthened. In
after days he commemorated among his friends George Selwyn, afterwards
bishop of New Zealand and of Lichfield, 'a man whose character is summed
up, from alpha to omega, in the single word, noble, and whose high
office, in a large measure, it was to reintroduce among the anglican
clergy the pure heroic type.' Another was Francis Doyle, 'whose genial
character supplied a