RT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P.

RT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P.

Biographical sketch of William Ewart Gladstone

c. 1884

Frederick George Stephens (1828-1907), author and editor

F. G. Stephens, Artists at Home, photographed by J. P. Mayall and reproduced in facsimile by photoengraving on copper plates; edited, with biographical notes and descriptions, by Frederick George Stephens (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington; New York: Appleton & Co., 1884), pp. 93-95.

Gladstone, William Ewart, The Right Honorable (1809-1898), Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Professor of Ancient History in the Royal Academy

August 1884

No copyright recorded.

A Liverpudlian born on December 29, 1809, Gladstone was most famously known as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for four terms ranging from 1868-1874, 1880-1885, 1886-1886, and 1892-1894. He was elected Professor of Ancient History at the Royal Academy in 1875 and was also inducted as an Honorary Member. An established author on politics and a renowned public speaker, Gladstone’s eclectic span of interests even included collecting ancient and bric-à-brac art.

“Some Fine Art Books.” The Graphic, issue 788, Jan. 3, 1885. "Part VI. of 'Artists at Home' (S. Low and Co.), contains the portraits of five very opposite characters—E. J. Poynter, R.A., T. O. Barlow, R.A., Macbeth and Storey, A.R.A.’s, and Mr. Gladstone. The volume fully sustains the promise of the earlier numbers, the photo engravings are excellent, and the letterpress brief and to the point. The Premier as an artist would be a novelty for which few would be prepared. Luckily, however, the notice appended to his portrait explains that besides being a considerable collector of bric-à-brac, Mr. Gladstone has for some nine years been Professor of Ancient History in the Royal Academy, and that it is as such that his portrait is here introduced. The office is one without duties and without salary, a condition to which Oliver Goldsmith, upon whom the honour was first conferred, humorously referred when he wrote to acquaint his brother of his new dignity. The notes in connection with the office from then to now are as interesting as anything in the volume."

W. E. Gladstone, Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age (1858)

W. E. Gladstone, Ecce Homo! (1868)

W. E. Gladstone, Juventus Mundi and Homeric Synchronism (1876)

Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield (1766)

Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire  (1776)

Fanny Burney, Diary and Evelina (1778)

The online edition of this work in the public domain, i.e., not protected by copyright, has been produced by the National Gallery of Art.

NGA_Gladstone.pdf

Department of Image Collections, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Omeka record contributed by Vanessa Pike

September 29, 2016

December 9, 2016

THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P., ETC.

HONORARY MEMBER, AND PROFESSOR OF ANCIENT HISTORY

IN THE ROYAL ACADEMY.

IT is not needful here to offer an account at large of the varied and energetic political career of the present Prime Minister, whose statesmanship and scholarship in letters are not only beyond question, but beyond our province.  Suffice it that he was born at Liverpool on the 29^th of December, 1809, was educated at Eton, and Christ Church, Oxford, and in 1832 entered Parliament as a Conservative of well-marked opinions.  Having held various political and administrative offices, he, still a Conservative, became M.P. for his Alma Mater in 1847.  In 1851 he seceded from the part with which he had previously acted, and, for a time, appeared as a member of a transitional Cabinet under Lord Aberdeen.  In 1859 he was for the first time Chancellor of the Exchequer, and took a leading part in procuring the repeal of the Paper Duties and promoting the Commercial Treaty with France.  Among his later political achievements were the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, the passing of the Irish Land Acts of 1870 and 1881, the payment of the claims of the United States’ Government on account of the captures made by the Alabama, the carrying of the Army Regulation Act, the Judicature Act, the Ballot Act, and similar measures.

            Renowned for oratory, his indefatigable elocution has often astonished as much as it has moved the House of Commons.  His written political dissertations have usually been conveyed in pamphlets and articles in reviews and magazines.  His literary discourses have generally occupied more time and space.  Among the latter are “Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age,” 1858; “Ecce Homo!” 1868; “Juventus Mundi,” and “Homeric Synchronism,” 1876.

            In respect to art, it is understood that Mr. Gladstone has collected examples of ancient design and later bric-à-brac.  He has done this, it is said, on a scale which, although intrinsically considerable, is small in comparison with the doings of other cognoscenti.  In 1875, on the death of Bishop Thirlwall, of St. David’s, he was elected Professor of Ancient {94} History in the Royal Academy.  By this means he became an honorary member of that body, and received a distinction which, if it entailed no duties, was of a very honourable nature.  If the present Prime Minister has done nothing in this capacity, it is certain that he was not expected to do anything.  This post without an office was distinguished by the saying of Oliver Goldsmith, its first occupant, who wrote to his brother in Ireland: “The King (George III.) has lately (in 1770) been pleased to make me Professor of Ancient History in a Royal Academy of Painting which he has just established, but there is no salary annexed, and I took it rather as a compliment to the institution than any benefit to myself.  Honours to one in my situation are something like ruffles to a man that wants a shirt.”

            This sardonic declaration may be understood in more ways than one.  Possibly Goldsmith said, “a compliment from the institution.”  It was well, perhaps, that the Royal Academy did not expect very profound studies from its original Professor of Ancient History.  With Goldsmith were appointed Dr. Johnson, as Professor of Ancient Literature, and Richard Dalton as Antiquary; Joseph Baretti had already been made Secretary for Foreign Correspondence.  Goldsmith’s post is thus reverentially referred to by Mr. William Sanby, the historian of the Academy:  “Yet, if the honour conferred no emolument, it at all events gave the Professor of Ancient Literature (should have been “Ancient History”) a place at the Annual Festival, which was first held in the following year within the walls of the Academy—a privilege to be esteemed at all times for the sake of the distinguished company which is then assembled, but especially grateful to one with the feelings and in the untoward circumstances of the author of ‘The Vicar of Wakefield.’”  For the honour of Mr. Gladstone’s illustrious predecessor, it is but fair to say that Mr. Sanby was exceedingly mistaken in respect to the character and social position of Dr. Goldsmith, who, at the worst, would have been able to dispense with at least one dinner in a year, and, having the love and respect of Reynolds, Johnson, Garrick, and Burke, needed not have lamented too bitterly the loss of an annual occasion for meeting “the distinguished company which is then assembled.”

            Oliver Goldsmith held the post, which for him had neither shirt nor ruffles, just four years—that is, until his death in 1774.  He was succeeded in the seat of nothingness by the Rev. D. T. Franklin, an author better fitted than Goldsmith to perform what duties might have been attached to the distinction which he held until 1784, and in which, after a three years’ vacancy of the post, he was succeeded by one whose tenure was sufficient to cast lustre on all the other holders of this nominal chair, i.e. Edward Gibbon, the illustrious writer of “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” who remained professor till his death, in 1794, when after an interval extended till 1818, a man of honourable name succeeded him in the person of William Mitford, of classical renown, who remained in the post till 1835, when Henry Hallam, of “accurate” renown and ample scholarship, was appointed and remained {95} in trust till he died in 1859.  The next Professor of Ancient History was, appropriately, George Grote, who was chosen in 1860; to him succeeded the Bishop of St. David’s, another author of noble histories.  The present Professor thus appears in no ignoble place.

            As I have mentioned the other Honorary Members of the Royal Academy, it may be well to name them all: --Dr. Johnson was succeeded as Professor of Ancient Literature by Bennet Langton, well known to the readers of Boswell; after this, the sequence was, Dr. Charles Burney, brother of Fanny Burney, the authoress of the “Diary,” and “Evelina;” Dr. Howley, Bishop of London and Archbishop of Canterbury; Bishop Coplestone, of Llandaff; the Right Hon. T. B. Macaulay (Lord Macaulay); Dean Milman; Dean Stanley; and the present Dean of Christ Church.  The Secretaries for Foreign Correspondence were J. Baretti, James Boswell (Johnson’s “Boswell”), Mr. Prince Hoare, Sir George Staunton, Sir Henry Holland, and Sir W. Stirling Maxwell.  The present holder of the chair is Lord Houghton.  The Chaplains have been the Rev. W. Peters, R.A.; Bishop Bernard, of Killaloe and Limerick; Bishop Fisher, of Exeter and Salisbury; Bishop Legge, of Oxford; Bishop Blomfield, of Chester and London; Bishop Wilberforce, of Oxford; and the Bishop of Winchester. The present holder is the Archbishop of York.  The Antiquaries in the Royal Academy have been, R. Dalton, S. Lysons, Sir H. Englefield, Sir Walter Scott, Sir R. H. Inglis, and Earl Stanhope.  The present holder is Mr. C.T. Newton, of the British Museum.

            On the shelf behind the head of the premier is a cast in bronze of one of Mr. Woolner’s medallion portraits of the Poet Laureate.

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