Gladstone, in addition to his immense amount of public work, was a voluminous author; the more voluminous because his style, formed by public and _ex tempore_ speaking, though perfectly clear and correct, was certainly diffuse. His biographer shows good judgment by dwelling no more than he can help on this part of the subject. Readers of _Homeric Studies_ and _Juventus Mundi_ must wonder how such things can have been written and given to the press by so great a man. Stranger things have seldom come from any pen than the pages of the Traditive Element in Homeric Theo-Mythology, connecting Latona with the Virgin, Apollo with the Deliverer of mankind, and Ate with the Tempter. All these volumes are full of fantastic and baseless speculation. The fancy that there was an Egyptian epoch in the early history of Greece appears to be partly suggested by an accidental similarity between the name of an Egyptian and that of a Bœotian city. Not on such reasonings were the famous budgets based. I was with Gladstone one day, when, our business having been done, he began to talk of Homer, and imparted to me a theory which he had just woven out of some fancied philological discovery. I felt sure that the theory was baseless, and tried to convince him that it was. But he was never very open to argument. Just as I had succumbed, the door opened and his brother-in-law, Lord Lyttelton, came in. Lord Lyttelton was a first-rate classical scholar, and I felt sure that he would see the question aright and prevail. See the question aright he did; prevail he did not; and the discovery has probably taken its place beside that of the Traditive Element. Before the publication of _Juventus Mundi_, I think it was, there was a Homeric dinner at which, with Cornewall Lewis, Milman, and some other scholars I had the honour of being present. It was a very delightful reunion. No one could be more charming socially than our host. But I doubt whether the critical result was great.