CURRENT LITERATURE
A MEMOIR OF LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH. By
Lady Frances Balfour. (Hodder and Stoughton. 12s. 6d.) LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH does not offer a very good sub- ject for biography. He was a reserved man, reserved even about his own reticence ; for of ostentatious silence and histrionic inscrutability he knew nothing. ." His intellect," Lady Frances Balfour tells us, "was neither subtle nor imaginative." He had no taste for "the intellectual delights of conversational controversy. If women were present he pre- ferred the exchange of banter and story-telling ; if they were not he was not interested in the mind of another. Perhaps he knew his patience had its very narrow limits and preferred to keep it all for the affairs of life." He answered every letter, by return of post—a habit which almost precludes intimate '...,orrespondence. "His life," we read, "was hidden in it sanctities and in that of my lady." All of which proves that Lady Frances Balfour has undertaken a very difficult task. She has obviously not the material for a light memoir. Just now and then we come across a sentence which seems for a. second to reveal the man's nature and attitude of mind. Take, for instance, the following : "When he was asked lightly why he did not play golf upon a Sunday his answer was characteristic of his whole life : "Because I do not wish to turn my back upon my past." But, although Lord Balfour's life does not provide the material of light biography he deserves to be remembered with profound gratitude and respect for his unceasing services to Great Britain, and to Scotland in particular. He was a "glutton for work," to which he brought not only untiring industry but an honesty of character that was never impugned by the keenest opponent. His clear common sense, backed by an always widening eicperienee of life and politics, gave to his opinions a value second to none. The country availed itself fully of his services; in offide, on innumerable commissions and elsewhere. The Spectator was particularly proud and glad to find itself in alliance with him time after time, as in the Unionist Free Trade struggle over twenty years ago, his championing of individual liberty against Socialism, or when he introduced into the House of Lords his Poll of the People Bill.
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