MR. MORLEY'S LIFE OF GLADSTONE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOH.1 Sra,—I had noticed the slightly incorrect inference in your article, but hardly thought it worth referring to till I saw the letter in the Spectator of October Slat. As it has been referred to, may I give my recollection P I was present at the meeting, and the whole thing is vividly before me. Mr. Disraeli, a few days before Mr. Gladstone's meeting, had spoken among his Buckinghamshire constituents of the 1868-74 Government as a Government of blundering and plundering. This gave to one of the gentlemen who assisted in the nomination of Mr. Gladstone the idea of making some rhymes containing the alliteration "floundering and founder- ing," which he applied to the comments of Mr. Disraeli on what had recently been done in the Straits of Malacca. The lines were commonplace, and began somewhat like this— "When Ben mid the farmers of Bucldnghain stood, The beer it was strong and the beef it was good "- and the last couplet rhymed " bacca " with "Malacca," the expression I name having somewhere preceded. It was far too kind of Gladstone to read the lines. I say deliberately "kind," because his iron will would have enabled him to refuse anything. But he so far endorsed them as to leave the subject with these words :—" And there let us leave them, floundering and foundering in the Straits of Malacca." A few days after- wards Disraeli was at Buckingham again. He began his speech with these words :—" I must begin by apologising for addressing you only in prose." No further reference ; and the reference was neat. I recollect feeling at the time that Gladstone made a mistake in reading the lines, and at the same time seeing that without a severe snub it was difficult to avoid reading lines handed up to him by a man who had just made a eulogistic introduction of him.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Blenheim Club. C. S. OAKLEY.
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