POLITICAL AMBITION 63

There is one aspect of his career which requires
delicate handling and which yet cannot be passed
over in silence, I refer to his political ambition.
The ascent to high office is, as Bacon has reminded
us in that notable essay " Of Great Place/* often
" by a winding stair." And not only by a winding
stair but sometimes by a secret one. Of one of his
own colleagues Lord Morley himself quoted with
scornful approval the criticism of Campbell-Banner-
man, "he is always creeping in velvet slippers up
the back stairs." Did Lord Morley himself never
choose that tortuous mode of ascent ? Was he as
indifferent as he seemed to the aits by which men
rise ? Were there in his career no abjurations of
early faiths ? In politics men rise only too often
to higher, but not greater, things " on their dead
selves as stepping-stones " in a sense quite other
than that which the poet of In Memoriam intended.
This is a question which has to be faced. If
Lord Morley's ban on biography had succeeded
in silencing all posthumous criticism, the matter

only think myself unlucky in not having read your piece before
I printed my own book. It would have been a far worthier
performance. I expect that some day we may come back to
the same ground, and then what you say will press me along.
Meanwhile, I owe you my warmest thanks, not only for the
trouble of writing the article but for the encouragement without
which the little volume would never have gone to the printers.
The breadth and compass of your criticisms, and that you were
brought into so wide a field by my small book will [be] in itself no
second-hand testimonial, you being known for entire competence
in the range of its matter. Your pages abound in Actonian
dicta. . . . Your familiarity with the * decided cases * of the
day Is a great advantage. The ordinary reader and journalistic
writer^ misses these important things. Haldane has read your
article^ with much interest. ... I recognize * Ulysses * on the
last page, but do not recall the poet on p. 551 ? " (March i, 19x4).