TWO ORATORS

AMONG the younger members of the famous Literary Club, some ten years after its foundation, was a muscular, swarthy young fellow1 -full of wit and humor, a great friend of Burke's until the bitterness of politics parted them; shy of approaches to Dr. Johnson, with whom he differed on almost all points; a man known now in literary ways only by the fragment of British History which he wrote, but known in his own times as the most brilliant of debaters, most liberal in his politics, and always an ardent friend of America. This was Charles James Fox, who could trace back his descent-if he had chosen-through a Duchess of Gordon, to Charles II., and who was a younger son of a very rich Lord Holland, owner and occupant of that famous Holland House, which with its remnant of evergreen garden (in whose alleys we found Addison walking) still makes a venerable breakwater

1

Charles James Fox, b. 1749; d. 1806. Elected to club membership in 1774. His great-great-grandmother was the Duchess of Portsmouth; and the Lord Holland so well known for his entertainments at Holland House, early in this century, was a nephew of Charles James Fox. Life by George Otto Trevelyan.

against the waves of brick and mortar which are piling around it.

Lord Holland was over-indulgent to this son of his, allowing him, when a boy on his first visit to Bath, five guineas a night to “risk” at cards; and the boy took with great kindness to that order of training, sending home to his father, when he came to travel (after a brief career at Oxford) vouchers, and honest vouchers too, for gaming debts of one hundred thousand dollars from the city of Naples alone. And he matched these losses, and larger ones, at Brooks's in London. Old stagers said that he was so sagacious and brilliant at whist, that he could easily have won his five thousand a year; but he took to hazards at dice that brought him losses on one occasion at least-of four times as much in a night. It is a wonder he ever became the man in Parliament that he was, after such dandling as befell him in the lap of luxury. Yet he was an accomplished Greek scholar; loving the finesse of the language, and loving more the exquisite tenderness of such lamentations as that of Alcestis; his sympathies all alive indeed, in youth and manhood, to humane instincts-the pains and pleasures of the race touching his heart-strings, as winds touch an Eolian harp. Study of exact sci

ences put him to sleep; he loved the game of Probabilities better than the certainties of mathematics-gambling away great estates, and put to keenest endeavor by the tears of a woman; speaking with his heart on his tongue -too much there indeed-carrying the comradery of the clubs into public life; sharp as a knife to those who had done him, or his, injury; but unbosoming himself with reckless freedom to those who had befriended him; never un-ready in debate; warming easily into an eloquence that charmed men. But there must have been much in the voice and eye to explain the force of speeches which now seem almost dull;1 the best elocutionist cannot read the magnetism into them which electrified the Commons, and which made Burke declare him the "most brilliant debater the world ever saw."

Indeed we can only account for his great successes as an orator, his amazing repute, and his exceptional popularity, when we sum up a half score of contributory causes, which lie outside of the cold print of the Parliamentary record; among these, we count-his Holland

1Instance, speech on French affairs and the question of making peace with Napoleon-just then elected First Consul. Date of February, 1800.

wealth and training, his environments of rank and luxury, his picturesque bearing, his bonhomie, his scorn of the rank he held, his accessibility to all, his outspoken, democratic sympathies, that warmed him into outbursts of generous passion, his fearlessness, his bearding of the king, his earnestness whenever afoot, his very shortcomings too, and the crowding disabilities that grew out of his trust-his simplicities his lack of forethought, his want of moneyed prudence, his free-handedness, his little, unfailing, every-day kindnesses-these all backed his speeches and put a tender undertone, and a glow, and a drawing power in them, which we look for vainly in the rhetoric or the argumentation. He was often in Parliament-sometimes in the Ministry; but his disorderly and reckless life (gaming was not his worst vice) made his fellow-politicians wary, and put a bar to any easy confidences between himself and the old-fashioned, sobersided, orderly George III. We must think of him as an accomplished, generous-hearted, impulsive, dissolute wreck of a man.

If I mention Pitt,' it is only because you will

'William Pitt, b. 1759; d. 1806. Younger son of the Earl of Chatham. He entered Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, 1773.

find in your historical reading, his name always coupled with that of Fox; but he never went to our Literary Club; had little companionship with literary men; yet he had keen scholarship within a somewhat limited range -and an insatiate ambition. He was tall, spare, pale-faced, haughty, with a contempt for sentiment, and a contempt for money; and of intellect all compact. At an age when many are still at college, he had made amazing speeches in Parliament; not profuse, not swollen with words, not rhetorical-but clear, sharp, polished, strenuous, with now and then the glitter of some apt and resonant line from his classics.1

His perspicuous and never-failing flow of language was due, not a little, to an early habit

1Wraxall in his Memoirs (p. 344) cites special instance in the speech, where he deprecates new alliance between North and Fox-alluding to personal results to himself:

"Fortuna sævo læta negotio et(leaving out the mea virtute) then pounding on the table, and adding with oratorical vim

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-probamque

Pauperiem sine dole quæro."

Here (says Wraxall, who was an auditor) he cast his eyes down-passing his handkerchief across his lipsto recover breath only. Certainly he was grandly clear of anything like avarice; no great statesman of England (unless Gladstone) ever thought so little of money.