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242 FRIENDS ·[ClU.P. xvn
Duke of Devonshire, who would state his opponent's case
not ouly with fairness but wiJ;h sympathy, and then give
the exact reasons for his own opposite opinion. That
was real persuasiveness. Did anyone ever hear Gladstone
allow real weight to an opponent's view 1 From the
moment the other side began to be stated we never felt
sure we were listening to his real convictions ; the
" eristic " instinct dominated him forthwith. It is £rue
that his most sophistical arguments were seldom. repeated,
which indicates that he saw through . them
afterwards ; but at the time he was heart and soul a
believer in tht!m ; and any criticism was liable to rivet
them deep into his mind. Say nothing and they might
evaporate.
In connexion with this trait, how curiously it sounded
when he spoke of J. H. Newman at the time of his death:
" I never could admire him ; there was a deplorable
element of sophistry in his mind " ! Then he added :
" I wrote to him when ' The Dream of Gerontius ' came
out, saying, ' This is the finest sacred poetry since the
Paradiso of Dante.' Well, Newman wrote back to me,
making no allusion to Dante, and I don't believe he
knew enough Italian to read him."
Again, in giving the reason for a statement or opinion
about some small matter within the compass of our in-'
telligence he was strangely prone to support his view by
some remark which struck his hearers as ever so much
more subtle and clever than convincing. There are scores
of men who on their own subjects give one a reason for
their view, which is plainly stamped with truth and leaves
nothing further to be said. I can't recall any sucli instance
in his talk. ·His mind seemed to swerve away,
from any opinion which smacked in the least of the··.
commonplace, or, as his adversaries would have said, of
common sense. He loved the recondite, the unexpected,
the academic, the irrelevant; because it gave him the
joy of defending it to the last-- joy which waxed as
the opposing forces grew more stubborn.