Autograph letter signed : Box Hill, Dorking, to [George] Stevenson, 1887 Apr. 21.

Discussing the effects of ill health on his work: "I have been forced to discontinue prose, owing to indigestion and nerves. Verse does not tax me so heavily. Even letters have to be postponed." He goes on to criticize a speech by Gladstone: "We Liberals, Radicals, practical Christians, are going through a gloomy time....It is...distressing to observe one's countrymen befuddled by their alarums and selfish temporary interests. On Tuesday night I was...introduced to Gladstone...and heard a speech from him enough to make a cock robin droop his head despondently. We want a young leader [the word "leader" underlined]. This valiant, prodigiously gifted, in many respects admirable, old man is, I fear me, very much an actor. His oratory has the veteran rhetorician's artifices--to me painfully perceptible when I see him waiting for his effects, timing those to follow...the majority, to judge of them by their temper, would stone him...."