Mr. Gladstone, in responding on behalf of " Literature "
on Saturday, at the dinner of the Savage Club, made some terse and amusing remarks on the tendency of any special life, like the political, to temper the cunning of those who led it to its own sphere, and unfit it for any other sphere. He had been told by a great oculist, Mr. Alexander, that when invited to play in a cricket-match he had decidedly refused, and refused on the ground that it would cost him £5,000 a year. To accustom his hand to handling the bat and driving the ball, would have been to unfit it for removing cataract, or performing those other deli- cate operations in which success depends on the most exquisite delicacy of touch. And so it was also in a different world; the rough play of politics demoralised a man for the finer departments of literature. Mr. Gladstone might have carried his illustration of the manner in which the division of labour unfits one kind of labour for competition with another, much further. A writer of Treatises soon becomes incompetent to compress his ideas into a Quarterly article. A contributor to a Quarterly is like a fish out of water, when he has to mould himself to the limits of a Monthly magazine ; and the ablest hand on a Monthly magazine finds his mind inefficient, when asked to pro- duce a telling article for a Daily or Weekly newspaper. Many a writer accustomed to one style of rhetoric, such as that of the Times, is bewildered if he has to shine with the " dry light " and passionless sobriety of the Economist. Literary power passes with as much difficulty from one to another correlated form as the most delicate manual skill itself.
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