convoys, for the heaviest sailing vessels under their charge. The sinews of the wisest councils are, after all, ignorance and interest: the most enlightened bodies are often but slaves of the weakest intellects they reckon among them, and the best-intentioned but the tools of the greatest hypocrites and knaves.-To conclude what I had to say on the character of Mr. Burke's parliamentary style, I will just give an instance of what I mean in affirming that it was too recondite for his hearers; and it shall be even in so obvious a thing as a quotation. Speaking of the new French constitution, and in particular of the king (Louis XVI.) as the chief power only in form and appearance, he repeated the famous lines in Milton describing Death, and concluded with peculiar emphasis,

What seem'd its head, The likeness of a kingly crown had on!

The person who heard him make the speech said, that, if ever a poet's language had been finely applied by an orator to express his thoughts and make out his purpose, it was in this instance. The passage, I believe, is not in his reported speeches; and I should think, in all likelihood, it "fell still-born from his lips; while one of Mr. Canning's well-thumbed quotations out of Virgil would electrify the Treasury Benches, and be echoed by all the politicians of his own standing, and the tyros of his own school, from Lord Liverpool in the Upper, down to Mr. William Ward in the Lower House.

Mr. Burke was an author before he was a Member of Parliament: he ascended to that practical eminence from "the platform" of his literary pursuits. He walked out of his study into the House. But he never be came a thorough-bred debater. He was not "native to that element," nor was he ever "subdued to the quality" of that motley crew of knights, citizens, and burgesses. Lord Chatham was made for, and by it. He seemed to vault into his seat there, like Hotspur, with the exclamation in his mouth" That Roan shall be my throne." Or he sprang out of the genius of the House of Commons, like Pallas from the head of Jupiter, completely armed. He assumed an ascendancy there from the very port

and stature of his mind-from his aspiring and fiery temperament. He vanquished, because he could not yield. He controlled the purposes of others, because he was strong in his own obdurate self-will. He convinced his followers, by never doubting himself. He did not argue, but assert: he took what he chose for granted, instead of making a question of it. He was not a dealer in mootpoints. He seized on some stronghold in the argument, and held it fast with a convulsive grasp or wrested the weapons out of his adversaries' hands by main force. He entered the lists like a gladiator. He made political controversy a combat of personal skill and courage. He was not for wasting time in long-winded arguments with his opponents, but tried to disarm them by a word, by a glance of his eye, so that they should not dare to contradict or confront him again. He did not wheedle, or palliate, or circumvent, or make a studied appeal to the reason, or the passions he dictated his opinions to the House of Commons. "He spoke as one having authority, and not as the Scribes.”—But if he did not produce such an effect either by reason or imagination, how did he produce it?— The principle by which he exerted his influence over others (and it is a principle of which some speakers that I might mention seem not to have an idea, even in possibility) was sympa thy. He himself evidently had a strong possession of his subject, a thorough conviction, an intense interest; and this communicated itself from his manner, from the tones of his voice, from his commanding attitudes, and eager gestures, instinctively and unavoidably to his hearers. His will was surcharged with electrical matter, like a Voltaic battery; and all who stood within its reach felt the full force of the shock. will do more than knowledge. To say the truth, there is little knowledge, no ingenuity, no parade of individual details, not much attempt at general argument, neither wit nor fancy in his speeches-but there are a few plain truths told home-whatever he says, he does not mince the matter, but clenches it in the most unequivocal manner, and with the fullest sense of its importance, in short, clear, pithy, old Eng

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lish sentences. The most obvious things, as he puts them, read like axioms-so that he appears, as it were, the genius of common sense personified; and in turning to his speeches you fancy that you have met with (at least) one honest statesman!-Lord Chatham commenced his career in the intrigues of a camp and the bustle of a mess-room; where he probably learnt that the way to govern others, is to make your will your warrant, and your word a law. If he had spent the early part of his life, like Mr. Burke, in writing a Treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful, and in dreaming over the abstract nature and causes of things, he would never have taken the lead he did in the British Senate.

Both Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt (though as opposite to each other as possible) were essentially speakers, not authors, in their mode of oratory. Beyond the moment, beyond the occasion, beyond the immediate power shown, astonishing as that was, there was little remarkable or worth preserving in their speeches. There is no thought in them that implies a habit of deep and refined reflection (more than we are accustomed ordinarily to find in people of education):-there is no knowledge that does not lie within the reach of obvious and mechanical search-and as to the powers of language, the chief miracle is, that a source of words so apt, forcible, and well-arranged, so copious and unfailing, should have been found constantly open to express their ideas without any previous preparation. Considered as written style, they are not far out of the common course of things: and perhaps it is assuming too much, and making the wonder greater than it is, with a very natural love of indulging our admiration of extraordinary persons, when we conceive that parliamentary speeches are in general delivered without any previous preparation. They do not, it is true, allow of preparation at the moment, but they have the preparation of the preceding night, and of the night before that, and of nights, weeks, months, and years of the same endless drudge ry and routine, in going over the same subjects, argued, with some paltry difference, on the same grounds. Practice makes perfect. He who has got a speech by heart on any particular

occasion, cannot be much gravelled for matter or form, on any similar occasion in future. Not only are the topics the same;-the very same phrases-whole batches of them,→ are served up as the Order of the Day:-the same parliamentary beadroll of grave impertinence is twanged, in full cadence, by the hon. member or his learned and hon. friend; and the well-known, voluminous, cal culable periods roll over the drowsy ears of the auditors, almost before they are delivered from the vapid tongue that utters them! It may appear, at first sight, that here are a number of persons got together, picked out from the whole nation, who can speak at all times, upon all subjects, in the most exemplary manner: but the fact is, they only repeat the same things over and over on the same subjects,-and they obtain credit for general capacity and ready wit, like Chaucer's Monk, who, by having three words of Latin always in his mouth, passed for a great scholar. That he had lerned out of som decree; A few termes coude he, two or three, No wonder is, he herd it all the day.

Try them on any other subject out of doors, and see how soon the extempore wit and wisdom "will halt for it." See how few of those who have distinguished themselves in the House of Commons have done any thing out of it: how few that have, shine there! Read over the collections of old Debates, twenty, forty, eighty, a hundred years ago: they are the same, mutatis mutandis, as those of yesterday. You wonder to see how little has been added,―you grieve that so little has, been lost. Even in their own favourite topics, how much are they to seek! They still talk gravely of the Sinking Fund in St. Stephen's Chapel, which has been for some time exploded as a juggle by Mr. Place of Charing-Cross ;—and a few of the principles of Adam Smith, which every one else has been acquainted with long since, are just now beginning to dawn on the collective understanding of the two Houses of Parliament. Instead of an exuberance of precious matter, you have the same meagre standing dishes for every day in the year. You must serve an apprenticeship to a want of originality, to a suspension of thought and feel

ing. You are in a go-cart of preju dices,-in a regularly constructed machine of pretexts and precedents:you are not only to wear the livery of other men's thoughts, but there is a House of Commons jargon which must be used for every thing. A man of simplicity and independence of mind cannot easily reconcile himself to all this formality and mummery: yet woe to him that shall attempt to discard it! You can no more move against the stream of custom than you can make way against a crowd of people: the mob of lords and gentlemen will not let you speak or think but as they do; you are hemmed in, stifled, pinioned, pressed to death, and if you make one false step, are trampled under the hoofs of a swinish multitude!" Talk of mobs! Is there any body of people that has this 'character in a more consummate degree than the House of Commons? Is there any set of men that determines more by acclamation, and less by deliberation and individual conviction? That is moved more en masse, in its aggregate capacity, as brute force and physical number? That judges with more Midas ears, blind and sordid, without discrimination of right and wrong? The greatest test of courage I can conceive, is to speak truth in the House of Commons. I have heard Sir Francis Burdett say things there which I could not enough admire; and which he could not have ventured upon saying, if, besides his honesty, he had not been a man of fortune, of family, of character,-aye, and a very good-looking man into the bargain! Dr. Johnson had a wish to try his hand in the House of Commons. An elephant might as well have been introduced there, in all the forms. Sir William Curtis makes a better figure. Either he or the Speaker (Onslow) must have resigned. The orbit of his `intellect was not the one in which the intellect of the House moved, by ancient privilege. His common-places were not their common-places. Even Horne Tooke failed, with all his tact, his self-possession, his ready talent, and his long practice at the Hustings. He had weapons of his own with which he wished to make play, and did not lay his hand upon the established levers for wielding the House of Commons. A succession of dry, sharp-pointed sayings, which come

in excellently well in the pauses or quick turns of conversation, do not make a speech. A series of drops is not a stream. Besides, he had been in the practice of rallying his guests and tampering with his subject; and this ironical tone did not suit his new situation. He had been used to "give his own little Senate laws," and when he found the resistance of the grea: one more than he could manage, he shrunk back from the attempt, disheartened and powerless. It is nothing that a man can talk (the better, the worse it is for him) unless he can talk in trammels: he must be drilled into the regiment: he must not run out of the course!—The worst thing a man can do is to set up for a wit there-or rather (I should say) for a humourist-to say odd outof-the-way things, to ape a character, to play the clown or the wag in the House. This is the very forlorn hope of a parliamentary ambition. They may tolerate it till they know what you are at; but no longer. It may succeed once or twice, but the third time you will be sure to break your neck. They know nothing of you, or your whims,-nor have they time to look at a puppet-show. "They look only at the stop-watch, my Lord!" We have seen a very lively sally of this sort which failed lately. The House of Commons is the last place where a man will draw admiration by making a jest of his own character. But if he has a mind to make a jest of humanity, of liberty, and of common sense and decency, he will succeed well enough!

The only person who ever "hit the House between wind and water" in this way,-who made sport for the Members, and kept his own dignity (in our time at least), was Mr. Windham. He carried on the traffic in parliamentary conundrums and enigmas with great eclat for more than one season. He mixed up a vein of characteristic eccentricity with a succession of far-fetched and curious speculations, very pleasantly. Extremes meet; and Mr. Windham overcame the obstinate attachment of his hearers to fixed opinions by the force of paradoxes. He startled his bed-rid audience effectually. A paradox was a treat to them, on the score of novelty at least: "the sight of one," according to the Scotch pro

So

verb, "was good for sore eyes." Mr. Windham humoured them in the thing for once. He took all sorts of commonly received doctrines and notions (with an understood reserve) -reversed them, and set up a fanciful theory of his own, instead. The changes were like those in a pantomime. Ask the first old woman you met, her opinion on any subject, and you could get at the statesman's; for his would be just the contrary. He would be wiser than the old woman at any rate. If a thing had been thought cruel, he would prove that it was humane; if barbarous, manly; if wise, foolish; if sense, nonsense. His creed was the antithesis of common sense,-loyalty excepted. Economy he could turn into ridicule, as 56 a saving of cheese-parings and candle-ends;" -and total failure was with him "negative success. He had no occasion, in thus setting up for original thinking, to inquire into the truth or falsehood of any proposition, but to ascertain whether it was currently believed in, and then to contradict it, point-blank. He made the vulgar prejudices of others " vile ministers" to his own solecisms. It was not easy always to say whether he was in jest or earnest-but he contrived to hitch his extravagancies into the midst of some grave debate; the House had their laugh for nothing; the question got into shape again, and Mr. Windham was allowed to have been more brilliant than

ever.*

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Mr. Windham was, I have heard, a silent man in company. Indeed, his whole style was an artificial and studied imitation, or capricious caricature, of Burke's bold, natural, discursive manner. This did not imply much spontaneous power or fertility of invention: he was evidently a posture-master, rather than a man of real elasticity and vigour of mind. Mr. Pitt was also, I believe, somewhat taciturn and reserved. There was nothing clearly in the subject-matter of his speeches to connect with the ordinary topics of discourse, or with any one aspect of human life. One would expect him to be quite as much

in the clouds as the automaton chessplayer, or the last new Opera-singer. Mr. Fox said little in private, and complained that in writing he had no style. So (to compare great things with small) the great Jack Davies, the racket player, never said any thing at all in company, and was what is understood by a modest man. When the racket was out of his hand, his occupation, his delight, his glory (that which he excelled all mankind in,) was gone! So when Mr. Fox had no longer to keep up the ball of debate, with the floor of St. Stephen's for a stage, and the world for spectators of the game, it is hardly to be wondered at that he felt a little at a losswithout his usual train of subjects, the same crowd of associations, the same spirit of competition, or stimulus to extraordinary exertion. The excitement of leading in the House of Commons (which, in addition to the immediate attention and applause that follows, is a sort of whispering gallery to all Europe,) must act upon the brain, like brandy or laudanum upon the stomach; and must, in most cases, produce the same debilitating effects afterwards. A man's faculties must be quite exhausted, his virtue gone out of him. That any one accustomed all his life to the tributary roar of applause from the great council of the nation, should think of dieting himself with the prospect of posthumous fame as an author, is like offering a confirmed dram-drinker a glass of fair water for his morning's draught. Charles Fox is not to be blamed for having written an indifferent history of James II. but for having written a history at all. It was not his business to write a history-his business was not to have made any more Coalitions. But he found writing so dull, he thought it better to be a colleague of Lord Grenville! He did not want style, (to say that was nonsense, because the style of his speeches was just and fine)-he wanted a sounding-board in the ear of posterity to try his periods upon. If he had gone to the House of Com mons in the morning, and tried to make a speech fasting, when there

was nobody to hear him, he might have been equally disconcerted at his want of style. The habit of speaking is the habit of being heard, and of wanting to be heard: the habit of writing is the habit of thinking aloud, but without the help of an echo. The orator sees his subject in the eager looks of his auditors; and feels doubly conscious, doubly impressed with it, in the glow of their sympathy: the author can only look for encouragement in a blank piece of paper. The orator feels the impulse of popular enthusiasm,

-like proud scas under him:

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the only Pegasus the writer has to boast, is the hobby-horse of his own thoughts and fancies. How is he to get on then? From the lash of necessity. We accordingly see persons of rank and fortune continually volunteer into the service of oratory-and the state: but we have few authors who are not paid by the sheet!-I myself have heard Charles Fox engaged in familiar conversation. It was in the Louvre. He was describing the pictures to two persons that were with him. He spoke rapidly, but very unaffectedly. member his saying-"All those blues and greens, and reds are the Guercinos: you may know them by the colours." He set Opie right as to Domenichino's St. Jerome. "You will find," he said, "though you may not be struck with it at first, that there is a great deal of truth and good sense in that picture." There was a person at one time a good deal with Mr. Fox, who, when the opinion of the latter was asked on any subject, very frequently interposed to give the answer. This sort of tantalising dis, appointment was ingeniously enough compared by some one, to walking up Ludgate-hill, and having the spire of St. Martin's constantly getting in your way, when you wish to see the dome of St. Paul's!-Burke, it is said, conversed, as he spoke in public, and as he wrote. He was communicative, diffuse, magnificent. "What is the use," said Mr. Fox to a friend, "of Sheridan's trying to swell himself out in this manner, like the frog in the fable?"-alluding to his speech on

Warren Hastings's trial. "It is very well for Burke to express himself in that figurative way. It is natural to him: he talks so to his wife, to his servants, to his children: but as for Sheridan, he either never opens his mouth at all, or if he does, it is to utter some joke. It is out of the question for him to affect these Orien talisms." Burke once came into Sir Jo shua Reynolds's painting-room, when one of his pupils was sitting for one of the sons of Count Ugolino; this person was introduced to him by name:"Ah! then," said Burke, "I find that Mr. N- has not only a head that would do for Titian to paint, but is himself a painter." At another time, he came in when Goldsmith was there, and poured forth such a torrent of violent personal abuse against the King, that they got to high words, and Goldsmith threatened to leave the room if he did not desist. Goldsmith bore testimony to his powers of conversation. Speaking of Johnson, he said, "Does he wind into a subject like a serpent, as Burke does?" With respect to his facility in composition, there are contradictory accounts. It has been stated by some, that he wrote out a plain sketch first, like a sort of dead colouring, and added the ornaments and tropes afterwards. I have been assured by a person who had the best means of knowing, that the Letter to a Noble Lord (the most rapid, impetuous, glancing, and sportive of all his works,) was printed off, and the proof sent to him; and that it was returned to the printing-office with so many alterations and passages interlined, that the compositors refused to correct it as it was-took the whole matter in pieces, and reset the copy. This looks like elaboration and after-thought. It was also one of Burke's latest compositions.* A regularly bred speaker would have made up his mind beforehand: but Burke's mind being, as originally constituted, and by its first bias, that of an author, never became set. It was in further search and progress. It had an internal spring left. It was not tied down to the printer's form. It could still project itself into new beau ties, and explore strange regions from the unwearied impulse of its own de