When Mr. Gladstone made his debut as an author, he locked horns with Macaulay in the characteristic paper 'Church and State' (1837). He published his 'Studies in Homer and the Homeric Age' in 1858, 'Juventus Mundi' in 1869, 'Homeric Synchronism' in 1857. In 1879 most of his essays, political, social, economic, religious, and literary, written between 1843 and 1879, were collected in seven volumes, and appeared under the title of 'Gleanings of Past Years.' He has published a very great number of smaller writings not reprinted. From that time to the present, neither his industry nor his energy has abated; but he is probably at his best in the several remarkable essays on Blanco White, Bishop Patterson, Tennyson, Leopardi, and the position of the Church of England. The reader spoiled for the Scotch quality of weight by the "light touch" which is the graceful weapon of the age, wonders, when reading these essays, that Mr. Gladstone has not more assiduously cultivated the instinct of style,—sentence-making. Milton himself has not a higher conception of the business of literature; and when discussing these congenial themes, Mr. Gladstone's enthusiasm does not degenerate into vehemence, nor does he descend from the high moral plane from which he views the world. It is the province of the specialist to appraise Mr. Gladstone's Homeric writings; but even the specialist will not, perhaps, forbear to quote the axiom of the pugilist in the Iliad concerning the fate of him who would be skillful in all arts. No man is less a Greek in temperament, but no man cherishes deeper admiration for the Greek genius, and nowhere else is a more vivid picture of the life and politics of the heroic age held up to the unlearned. While the critic may question technical accuracy, or plausible structures built on insufficient data, the laity will remember how earnestly Mr. Gladstone insists that Homer is his own best interpreter, and that the student of the Iliad must go to the Greek text and not elsewhere for accurate knowledge. But Greek literature is only one of Mr. Gladstone's two passions, and not the paramount one. That he would have been a great theologian had he been other than Mr. Gladstone, is generally admitted. And it is interesting to note that while he glories in the combats of the heroes of Hellas, his enthusiasm is as quickly kindled by the [Pg 6361] humilities of the early Church. He recognizes the prophetic quality of Homer, but he bows before the sublimer genius of an Isaiah, and sees in the lives and writings of the early Fathers the perfect bloom of human genius and character. MACAULAY From 'Gleanings of Past Years'