" However, others gave the book a heartier
reception. Crabb Robinson writes in his diary: "I went to Wordsworth
this forenoon. He was ill in bed. I read Gladstone's book to him."
December 13, 1838, Baron Bunsen wrote: "Last night at eleven, when I
came from the Duke, Gladstone's book was lying on my table, having come
out at seven o'clock. It is a book of the time, a great event--the first
book since Burke that goes to the bottom of the vital question; far
above his party and his time. I sat up till after midnight, and this
morning I continued until I had read the whole. Gladstone is the first
man in England as to intellectual power, and he has heard higher tones
than any one else in the land." And again to Dr. Arnold he writes in
high praise of the book, but lamenting its author's entanglement in
Tractarian traditions, adds: "His genius will soon free itself entirely
and fly towards Heaven with its own wings."
Sir Henry Taylor wrote to the Poet Southey: "I am reading Gladstone's
book, which I shall send you if he has not.... His party begin to think
of him as the man who will one day be at their head and at the head of
the government, and certainly no man of his standing has yet appeared
who seems likely to stand in his way.
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