Author: 
    
            
                    [William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898), Liberal prime minister; Sir Robert Joseph Phillimore (1810-1885), judge and Liberal MP]        
         
 
      Publication details: 
    
            
                    Undated transcription. The poem dated 'Christmas 1867.'        
         
 
Typescript (folio, 2 pp), with a couple of manuscript corrections. Fair, on aged paper, with light marks from a paperclip at head. Thirty-six line poem, in heroic couplets, with 'W E G. Christmas 1869' at end, beginning 'Happy the gamester, on whose earliest throw, | Grim Fortune frowns, and cuts his treasure low; | But hapless he, whom luck shall onward lure, | She only means to make his ruin sure.' Made for Sir Robert Joseph Phillimore, of the Courant, Henley on Thames, judge, Liberal MP and lifelong friend of Gladstone's.