"The plenitude and variety of Mr. Gladstone's intellectual powers," says G. Barnett Smith, "have been the subject of such frequent comment that it would be superfluous to insist upon them here. On the political side of his career his life has been as unresting and active as that of any other great party leader, and if we regard him in the literary aspect we are equally astonished at his energy and versatility. Putting out of view his various works upon Homer, his miscellaneous writings of themselves, with the reading they involve, would entitle their author to take high rank on the score of industry.... We stand amazed at the infinity of topics which have received Mr. Gladstone's attention."

To solve the problems associated with Homer has been the chief intellectual recreation, the close and earnest study of Mr. Gladstone's literary life. "The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle" possessed for him an irresistible and a perennial charm. Nor can this occasion surprise, for all who have given themselves up to the consideration and attempted solution of the Homeric poems have found the fascination of the occupation gather in intensity. It is not alone from the poetic point of view that the first great epic of the world attracts students of all ages and of all countries. Homer presents, in addition, and beyond every other writer, a vast field for ethnological, geographical, and historical speculation and research. The ancient world stands revealed in the Homeric poems. Besides, almost numberless volumes have been written based upon the equally debatable questions of the Homeric text and the Homeric unity.

Some literary works of Mr. Gladstone have been already noticed. "Studies on Homer and Homeric Age" shows Mr. Gladstone's classic tastes and knowledge as well as his great industry and ability. This work was published in three volumes, in 1858. It is his magnum opus in literature, and exhibits wide and laborious research. "It discusses the Homeric controversy in its broad aspects, the relation of Homer to the Sacred Writings, his place in education, his historic aims, the probable period of the poet's life, the Homeric text, the ethnology of the Greek races, and the politics and poetry of Homer. Among subsequent Greek studies by Mr. Gladstone were his 'Juventus Mundi' and the 'Homeric Synchronism.' There is probably no greater living authority on the text of Homer than Mr. Gladstone, and the Ancient Greek race and literature have exercised over him a perennial fascination."

Mr. Gladstone dwells much on the relation of Homer to Christianity. "The standard of humanity of the Greek poet is different, yet many of his ideas almost carry us back to the early morning of our race; the hours of its greater simplicity and purity, and more free intercourse with God.... How is it possible to overvalue this primitive representation of the human race in a form complete, distinct and separate, with its own religion, stories, policy, history, arts, manners, fresh and true to the standard of its nature, like the form of an infant from the hand of the Creator, yet mature, full, and finished, in its own sense, after its own laws, like some masterpiece of the sculptor's art?" The Homeric scene of action is not Paradise, but it is just as far removed from the vices of a later heathenism.

Mr. Gladstone compares the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," which he believed to be the poems of one poet, Homer, with the Old Testament writings, and observes that "Homer can never be put into competition with the Scriptures as touching the great fundamental, invaluable code of truth and hope;" but he shows how one may in a sense be supplementary to the other. As regards the history of the Greek race, it is Homer that furnishes "the point of origin from which all distances are to be measured." He says: "The Mosaic books, and the other historical books of the Old Testament, are not intended to present, and do not present, a picture of human society or of our nature drawn at large. The poems of Homer may be viewed as the complement of the earliest portion of the sacred records."

Again: "The Holy Scriptures are like a thin stream, beginning from the very fountain-head of our race, and gradually, but continuously, finding their way through an extended solitude into times otherwise known, and into the general current of the fortunes of mankind. The Homeric poems are like a broad lake, outstretched in the distance, which provides us with a mirror of one particular age and people, alike full and marvelous, but which is entirely disassociated by a period of many generations from any other records, except such as are of the most partial and fragmentary kind. In respect of the influence which they have respectively exercised upon mankind, it might appear almost profane to compare them. In this point of view the Scriptures stand so far apart from every other production, on account of their great offices in relation to the coming of the Redeemer and to the spiritual training of mankind, that there can be nothing either like or second to them."

Mr. Gladstone thinks that "the poems of Homer possess extrinsic worth as a faithful and vivid picture of early Grecian life and measures; they have also an intrinsic value which has given their author the first place in that marvelous trinity of genius—Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare."

As to the historic aims of Homer, Mr. Gladstone says: "Where other poets sketch, Homer draws; and where they draw he carves. He alone of all the now famous epic writers, moves (in the 'Iliad' especially) subject to the stricter laws of time and place; he alone, while producing an unsurpassed work of the imagination, is also the greatest chronicler that ever lived, and presents to us, from his own single hand, a representation of life, manners, history, of morals, theology, and politics, so vivid and comprehensive, that it may be hard to say whether any of the more refined ages of Greece or Rome, with their clouds of authors and their multiplied forms of historical record, are either more faithfully or more completely conveyed to us."

Mr. Gladstone fixes the probable date of Homer within a generation or two of the Trojan war, assigning as his principal reason for so doing the poet's visible identity with the age, the altering but not yet vanishing age of which he sings, and the broad interval in tone and feeling between himself and the very nearest of all that follow him. He presents several arguments to prove the trustworthiness of the text of Homer.

In 1877, Mr. Gladstone wrote an article on the "Dominions of the Odysseus," and also wrote a preface to Dr. Henry Schliemann's "Mycenae."

One of his most remarkable productions bore the title of, "The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance; a Political Expostulation." This book was an amplification of an article from his own pen, which appeared October, 1874, in the Contemporary Review. It created great public excitement and many replies. One hundred and twenty thousand copies were sold. Mr. Higginson says: "The vigor of the style, the learning exhibited, and the source whence it came, all contributed to give it an extraordinary influence.... It was boldly proclaimed in this pamphlet that, since 1870, Rome has substituted for the proud boast of semper eadem, a policy of violence and change of faith;... 'that she had equally repudiated modern thought and ancient history;' ... 'that she has reburnished and paraded anew every rusty tool she was thought to have disused,' and 'that Rome requires a convert who now joins her to forfeit his moral and mental freedom, and to place his loyalty and civil duty at the mercy of another.'"

Mr. Gladstone issued another pamphlet, entitled "Vaticanism; and Answers to Reproofs and Replies," He reiterated his original charges, saying: "The Vatican decrees do, in the strictest sense, establish for the Pope a supreme command over loyalty and civil duty.... Even in those parts of Christendom where the decrees and the present attitude of the Papal See do not produce or aggravate open broils with the civil power, by undermining moral liberty, they impair moral responsibility, and silently, in the succession of generations, if not in the lifetime of individuals, tend to emasculate the vigor of the mind."

Mr. Gladstone published in seven volumes, in 1879, "Gleanings of Past Years." The essay entitled "Kin Beyond the Sea" at first created much excitement. "The Kin Beyond the Sea" was America, of which he says: "She will probably become what we are now, the head servant in the great household of the world, the employer of all employed; because her services will be the most and ablest." Again: "The England and the America of the present are probably the two strongest nations in the world. But there can hardly be a doubt, as between the America and the England of the future, that the daughter, at some no very distant time, will, whether fairer or less fair, be unquestionably yet stronger than the mother." Mr. Gladstone argues in support of this position from the concentrated continuous empire which America possesses, and the enormous progress she has made within a century.

In an address at the opening of the Art Loan Exhibition of Chester, August 11, 1879, Mr. Gladstone said: "With the English those two things are quite distinct; but in the oldest times of human industry—that is to say amongst the Greeks—there was no separation whatever, no gap at all, between the idea of beauty and the idea of utility. Whatever the ancient Greek produced he made as useful as he could; and at the same time, reward for work with him was to make it as beautiful as he could. In the industrial productions of America there is very little idea of beauty; for example, an American's axe is not intended to cut away a tree neatly, but quickly. We want a workman to understand that if he can learn to appreciate beauty in industrial productions, he is thereby doing good to himself, first of all in the improvement of his mind, and in the pleasure he derives from his work, and likewise that literally he is increasing his own capital, which is his labor."

In his articles on "Ecce Homo" he expresses the hope "that the present tendency to treat the old belief of man with a precipitate, shallow, and unexamining disparagement, is simply a distemper, that inflicts for a time the moral atmosphere, that is due, like plagues and fevers, to our own previous folly and neglect; and that when it has served its work of admonition and reform, will be allowed to pass away."

The "Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture" is the title of a book by Mr. Gladstone, the articles of which were originally published in The Sunday School Times, Philadelphia.