say, I mean no person now in being; but if we can suppose such a one, can there be imagined a greater disgrace to human nature than such a wretch as this?'

He was far from disdainful of imagery or classical illustration. Thus, in the debate on the Peerage Bill of 1719, enacting that the English peerage should not be enlarged beyond six above the present number, nor, except upon failure of male issue, be supplied by new creations:

Among the Romans, the wisest people upon earth, the temple of Fame was placed behind the temple of Virtue, to denote that there was no coming to the former without going through the other. But if this bill should pass into law, one of the most powerful incentives to virtue would be taken away, since there would be no coming to honour but through the winding-sheet of an old decrepit lord and the grave of an extinct noble family.'

It was in 1736, five years before the fall of Walpole, that the voice of the great commoner,' heard for the first time within the walls of Parliament, in which he had sat silent for a session, elicited the well-known remark of the great minister, 'We must muzzle that terrible cornet of horse.' He was rather unmuzzled than muzzled by being deprived of his cornetcy in the Blues; for all members of either service (like the bishops within living memory) were prescriptively bound to vote with the ministers. When, in a preceding reign, several persons holding commissions from the Crown had gone out in a division against the Court, a Secretary of State, Lord Middleton, went down to the Bar to reproach them as they came in, and thus addressed a Captain Kendal, who was one of them: Sir, have you not a troop of horse in his Majesty's service?' 'Yes, my lord, but my brother died last night and has left me 7007. a year.'

Pitt's character was admirably drawn by Grattan, who says of his eloquence that it was an era in the

senate that it resembled sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music, of the spheres. Judged by its effects or according to the action-action-action theory, he must be deemed the greatest of English orators. No one ever came near him in the sway which he exercised over his audience, whilst the spell of his voice, his eye, his tones, his gestures, was upon them: as when he fixed upon Mr. Grenville the appellation of The Gentle Shepherd, or (as already mentioned) struck terror into the Chief Justice of Chester. It is related that once, in the House of Commons, he began a speech with the words, Sugar, Mr. Speaker and then,

observing a smile to pervade the audience, he paused, looked fiercely around, and with a loud voice, rising in its notes and swelling into vehement anger, he pronounced again the word 'Sugar!' three times; and having thus quelled the House, and extinguished every appearance of levity or laughter, turned round and disdainfully asked, 'Who will laugh at sugar now?' 1 Several other instances are well known. It was his perfect acting that carried him through: without it some of his most applauded bursts would have been failures. No one else could have hazarded the apostrophe to the tapestried figure of Lord Howard of Effingham, with its overstrained application to the argument:

From the

'I invoke the genius of the Constitution. tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble lord frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his country. In vain did he defend the liberty, and establish

1 Boswell tells a story of Dr. Johnson's exercising a similar power over a distinguished company at Mrs. Garrick's, who presumed to smile at his saying that 'the woman had a bottom of good sense.' 'He glanced sternly round and called out in a strong tone, “Where's the merriment?" Then collecting himself, and looking awful, and as it were searching his mind for a still more ludicrous word, he slowly pronounced, "I say the woman was fundamentally sensible," as if he had said, Hear this word, and laugh if you dare. We all sat composed as at a funeral.'

the religion of Britain, against the tyranny of Rome, if these worse than Popish cruelties and inquisitorial practices are endured among us.'

The crutch in his hands became an instrument of oratory, and he would with equal effect have idealised the dagger which Burke flung on the floor of the House, producing nothing but a smothered laugh and a joke from Sheridan: The gentleman has brought us the knife, but where is the fork?' Chatham shone and impressed by boldness, vehemence, intensity, dignity, and grace. His imagination was not of the richest order. There is only one really fine and original image amongst the splendid fragments that have been preserved of him: America, if she falls, will fall like the strong man; she will embrace the pillars of the State, and pull down the Constitution along with her.' The very next sentence contains a commonplace and even coarse metaphor: Is this your boasted peace-to sheathe the sword, not in its scabbard, but in the bowels of your countrymen?' He relied as much as Danton on l'audace, as when he said, 'I rejoice that America has resisted;' or (stronger still), 'I hope some dreadful calamity will befall the country that will open the eyes of the King.' On being called to order, he went on, What I have spoken I have spoken conditionally, but I now retract the condition. I speak it absolutely, and I hope that some signal calamity will befall the country.'

He bore down all by his intensity, by reiterating blow upon blow as on an anvil: I say we must necessarily undo these violent, oppressive Acts. They must be repealed. You will repeal them. I pledge myself for it that you will in the end repeal them. I stake my reputation on it. I will consent to be taken for an idiot if they are not finally repealed. Avoid, then, this humiliating, degrading necessity.'

Two of his best speeches were fortunately reported

by Hugh Boyd, and one of these (Nov. 18, 1777) supplies examples of each description of excellence that distinguished him. His grace and felicity of transition are displayed in the exordium:

'I rise, my lords, to declare my sentiments on this most solemn and serious subject. It has imposed a load upon my mind, which, I fear, nothing can remove; but which impels me to endeavour its alleviation, by a free and unreserved communication of my sentiments.

In the first part of the address, I have the honour of heartily concurring with the noble Earl who moved it. No man feels sincerer joy than I do; none can offer more genuine congratulations on every accession of strength to the Protestant succession: I therefore join in every congratulation on the birth of another princess, and the happy recovery of her Majesty. But I must stop here, my courtly complaisance will carry me no further: I will not join in congratulation on misfortune and disgrace: I cannot concur in a blind and servile address, which approves, and endeavours to sanctify, the monstrous measures that have heaped disgrace and misfortune upon us-that have brought ruin to our doors. This, my lords, is a perilous and tremendous moment! It is no time for adulation. The smoothness of flattery cannot now avail-cannot save us in this rugged and awful crisis. It is now necessary to instruct the throne in the language of truth. We must dispel the delusion and the darkness which envelope it; and display, in its full danger and true colours, the ruin that is brought to our doors.

"You may swell every expense, and every effort, still more extravagantly; pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow; traffic and barter with every little German Prince, your efforts are for ever vain and impotent-doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your enemies -to overrun them with the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder; devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms-never-never-never.

In a just and necessary war, to maintain the rights or honour of my country, I would strip the shirt from my back to support it. But in such a war as this, unjust in its principle, impracticable in its means, and ruinous in its consequences, I would not contribute a single effort, nor a single shilling. I do not call for vengeance on the heads of those who have been guilty; I only recommend to them to make their retreat; let them walk off; and let them make haste, or they may be assured that speedy and condign punishment will overtake them.'

The simplicity of the language is no less remarkable than its strength. The swell and pomp are in the manner and the thought. He was wont to recommend the assiduous study of Barrow's Sermons for style.

If a cultivated American were asked to name the greatest American orator, he would name Patrick Henry, whom Jefferson declared to be the greatest orator that ever lived. If a cultivated Frenchman were asked to name the greatest French orator, he would name Mirabeau. The fame of each rests upon precisely the same foundation as that of Chatham, upon the tradition of the electrical shocks which they produced on great occasions by the glow, the lightning flash, the intermittent splendour, the condensed vitality, of genius. Grandeur and sublimity are heightened by vagueness of outline. A mountain, a castle, or a line-of-battle ship, looms larger through the haze. It may be that Patrick Henry, Mirabeau, and Chatham, all three, stand better with posterity than they would stand had they been reported like the leading speakers of our time. Neither appears to have shone in a set speech. Chatham certainly did not. His elaborate panegyric on Wolfe has been declared the worst of his performances. He appears to have frequently acted on Sydney Smith's maxim for conversation: to begin

1 Specimens of Patrick Henry's style and manner are given in the Essay on American Orators and Statesmen' in the first Series of these Essays.