DISRAELI ON GLADSTONE
In these electioneering days political opponents are saying sonic hard things about one another, but no one has yet risen to the wordy vigour of Disraeli in describing Gladstone as “ a sophisticated rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent, or to glorify himself.”
To Disraeli and to Lord Sherbrooke (Robert Lowe) has been credited by biographers a witty remark which neither of them made. It concerns the deaf member of the House of Commons who used an ear trumpet, and made a practice of changing his seat in order to get as near as possible to each successive speaker. It was said of him that “ no man had over so neglected his natural advantages.” ft was Sir Henry Lucy, the parliamentary journalist, who coined this witticism, which first appeared in ‘ The Diary of Toby, M.P.’ which Lucy contributed regularly to ‘ Punch.’
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Evening Star, Issue 23693, 28 September 1940, Page 3
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169DISRAELI ON GLADSTONE Evening Star, Issue 23693, 28 September 1940, Page 3
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