I did not mean it: Gladstone, Homer and a second chance at Providence
“Perverse mankind! Whose wills, created free, charge all their woes on absolute degree; All to the dooming gods their guilt translate, and are miscall’d the crimes of fate.” - Alexander Pope’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey , Book One, spoken by Zeus. (Or, as Emily Wilson’s recent translation more simply put it, “This is absurd, that mortals blame the gods. They say we cause their suffering, but they themselves increase it by folly.”) My last piece on William Ewart Gladstone explored the earthly reasons he went to Corfu and changed parties in 1858-59. This time I’m exploring Gladstone’s views of potential celestial reasons that these things happened to him: Providence, fate, destiny, predestination, free will and progress. For just before Gladstone left for Corfu, which I argue in the last essay led to his changing parties, he had written a 1,600-page, three-volume book called Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age , in which he analyzed at length his and Homer’s views of...