W. E. Gladstone

Born: December 29, 1809, Liverpool, England.
Died: May 19, 1898, Hawarden, Flintshire, Wales.
Buried: Westminster Abbey, London, England.

Gladstone, William Ewart, was born at Liverpool, Dec. 29, 1809, died at Hawarden, May 19, 1898, and was buried May 28, 1898, at Westminster Abbey. For the details of his career see his Life by John Morley, 3 vols., 1903. His connexion with Hymnody is slight. Two translations into Latin are noted at pp.632, ii., 972,i., and one into Italian, p. 488, ii. Mrs. Gladstone in 1898 contributed to Good Words, p. 483, a poem on the Holy Communion, beginning, "Lord, as Thy temple's portals close," in ten stanzas, dated May 1836. It gives a most interesting picture of the period and of the devotional feelings of the author. A cento, consisting of sts. iii., iv., v., beginning, “0 lead my blindness by the hand," is in The English Hymnal 1906, No. 322, but it suffers from the loss of the context. [Rev. James Mearns, M.A.]

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, New Supplement (1907)