THE SQUIRE IN POLITICS
The Life of Sir William Harcourt. By A. G. Gardiner. 2 volumes. 8vo. 1276 pages. George H. Doran Company. $12.
IN a copy of Punch just after the resignation of Mr Gladstone in 1895, there appeared a cartoon representing Lord Rosebery mounted and armed cap-à-pie, with Sir William Vernon Harcourt on foot, as his squire. Did the cartoonist see in this strangely assorted pair the revival of the immortal association of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza? Did he in fact see the squire merely changing his service from one Quixote to another? While Sir William Harcourt was remote enough in character from Sancho Panza, he shared with him one trait—that of practical common sense. The essence of Cervantes' comedy was in the association of the dreamer and the realist; and this element gave the touch of comic relief to English politics during Sir William Harcourt's long service under two Quixotes. After the adventure with the carriers Sancho remarks to his master:
"Sir, seeing these disgraces are of the essence of knighthood, I pray you whether they succeed very often, or whether they have certain times limited wherein they befall? For methinks, within two adventures more, we shall wholly remain disenabled for the third, if the gods in mercy do not succour us."
This was the burden of Sir William Harcourt's complaint, expressed with a wit which brightened the House of Commons during so many dull debates, a wit which consisted in touching with precision the discrepancy between the pretensions and the realities, between grandiose conceptions and the means of carrying them out.
William Harcourt entered the House of Commons, after a notable career at the bar, in the election of 1868, which resulted in Gladstone's liberal government. He remained aloof from the ministry in many of its reforming enterprises, though in 1873 he entered the Cabinet as Solicitor General. This elevation called by
