]
Mr. Chamberlain has not a wide range of ideas, and his small stock has
not been increased by anything like extensive reading. The House was
relieved to find after his return to Westminster on the 10th of April
that he had just begun to read Tennyson. It is always easy to know when
Mr. Chamberlain is making the acquaintance of an author for the first
time. Strictly business-like in even his reading, he apparently first
thinks of reading a book when he has somewhere seen a quotation from it
which might be worked into a speech; the next and almost immediate
process is to transfer it to one of his speeches. This is one of the
many differences between him and the exhaustless brain and universal
reading of Mr. Gladstone. It was, therefore, not much of a surprise to
those who had watched Mr. Chamberlain for years, to see that he was
making a very bad and poor speech on the second reading of the Home
Rule Bill--a speech certainly far inferior to that which he had
delivered on the first reading. He had exhausted the poor soil; he had
really no more to say. He was unfortunately helped by Mr. Gladstone,
who, instead of listening in silence to attacks grown stale by their
infinite repetition, attempted to correct some of Mr.
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