William Gladstone was arguably the most significant politician of the 19th century. He dominated the political life of Britain when it was the world's sole superpower, becoming a cabinet minister at 33 and resigning during his fourth term as prime minister at 85. His life spanned the century (1809-98). He was called the Grand Old Man of Victorian England.

Most important, his life reflected the great reconfiguration of English politics caused by the rise of liberalism, dividing people along lines still visible today -- free trade, separation of church and state and individual vs. collective rights. Beginning as a devout Tory, Gladstone moved over time into the liberal camp and by the end of his career became its embodiment.

Gladstone also defined many of the qualities of Victorian England. A deeply religious man all his life, he had considered becoming a priest and often attended two or three services on a Sunday. He inhaled books, reading 20,000 over his lifetime, wrote on subjects ranging from the Anglican Church to poetry, and gained a reputation as the greatest orator of his time (a time of high-flown rhetoric, multiple subordinate clauses and four-hour talks). He walked for miles every day, chopped trees for exercise and swam in the sea, the last two activities being novel in his day. (Lord Randolph Churchill remarked: "The forest laments in order that Mr. Gladstone may perspire.")

And, of course, no tale of Victoriana is complete without sexual repression. Gladstone walked through London at night picking up prostitutes whom he would try to persuade to give up their profession. Whether he was excited by whores or by the prospect of saving them is unclear. What is clear is that while stories of Gladstone's nocturnal activities were well-known, and snickered about, they were regarded by most people as a personal oddity that really didn't affect his reputation as a statesman. (Perhaps we are returning to such a view.)

Roy Jenkins seems the perfect Gladstone biographer. A grand old man himself -- now Lord Jenkins of Hillhead -- he was a Labour Party leader for much of his life. Like Gladstone, he was disillusioned by his party, in this case by its leftward drift, and helped found the Social Democratic Party in 1981, which in many ways saw itself as heir to the 19th-century Liberal Party. Like Gladstone, he is a voracious reader and prolific writer. And they both have a connection to Oxford University: Gladstone represented it in Parliament, Lord Jenkins is now its chancellor.

Mr. Jenkins's "Gladstone" (Random House, 698 pages, $35) is indeed a pleasure to read. He writes fluently and wittily and opines freely. He is at his best when passing judgment on his subject. Was Gladstone Britain's greatest prime minister? Well, he was its "most remarkable," but Mr. Jenkins reminds us that, unlike the two Pitts, Lloyd George and Churchill, Gladstone was never tested in crisis, and thank God, because he did not have the qualities of a wartime leader. Was he a great orator? Not really. His hold on audiences was the result of "his physical magnetism, his flashing eye, and the eagle's swoop of his cadences."

The book, however, is really a series of essays masquerading as a biography. Mr. Jenkins's interventions make for a difficult narrative. He is so eager to opine that he forgets that the reader needs to be told the story. For example, when Gladstone writes to his intended proposing marriage, we learn of the lady's answer only after we are told what Clement Attlee, Britain's prime minister after World War II, thought of the proposal when he read it in a 1954 biography. (Attlee thought it priggish; she said maybe.)

More fundamental is the book's tone. Mr. Jenkins clearly likes Gladstone but finds his views, especially about religion, at best quaint and at times appalling, writing about them with a combination of detachment and scorn. He describes Gladstone's views on marriage, for example, as "unhinged" because Gladstone opposed widening divorce laws. "It was reminiscent of an intoxicated guardsman who could prevent himself from falling over only by standing too rigidly to attention."

Now Mr. Jenkins may be right in many of his judgments, but they help the reader understand Roy Jenkins more than William Gladstone. Gladstone was a man of Victorian earnestness and zeal. He held his views -- on religion, on reform, on Ireland (he favored Home Rule) -- with a fervency almost impossible to convey in today's passionless times. We never really understand why Gladstone became such a raging liberal. Even when Mr. Jenkins agrees with his subject, he does so with a bantering smile. The Grand Old Man might be better served by that species of biographer one usually finds on the western side of the Atlantic: the earnest, dutiful American scholar who spends 10 years in the archives and becomes his subject.

Mr. Jenkins in the meantime should write about another Victorian figure whose slyness, brilliance and sense of irony would match his own: Gladstone's great rival, Benjamin Disraeli.

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