design is only matched by the brilliancy of his colouring. He then skirmishes for a space, and puts in motion all the lighter arms of wit; sometimes not unmingled with drollery, sometimes bordering upon farce. His main battery is now opened, and a tempest bursts forth, of every weapon of attack-invective, abuse, irony, sarcasm, simile drawn out to allegory, allusion, quotation, fable, parable, anathema. The heavy artillery of powerful declamation, and the conflict of close argument alone are wanting; but of this the garrison is not always aware; his noise is oftentimes mistaken for the thunder of true eloquence; the number of his movements distracts, and the variety of his missiles annoys the adversary; a panic spreads, and he carries his point, as if he had actually made a practicable breach; nor is it discovered till after the smoke and confusion is over, that the citadel remains untouched.

Every one of Mr. Burke's works that is of any importance, presents, though in different degrees, these features to the view; from the most chaste and temperate, his Thoughts on the Discontents,' to the least faultless and severe; his richer and more ornate, as well as vehement tracts upon revolutionary politics; his letters on the Regicide Peace,' and ' Defence of his Pension.' His speeches differed not at all from his pamphlets; these are written speeches, or those are spoken dissertations, according as any one is overstudious of method and closeness in a book, or of ease and nature in an oration.

The principal defects here hinted at are a serious derogation from merit of the highest order in both kinds of

composition. But in his spoken eloquence, the failure which it is known attended him for a great part of his Parliamentary life, is not to be explained by the mere absence of what alone he wanted to equal the greatest of orators. In fact, he was deficient in judgment; he regarded not the degree of interest felt by his audience in the topics which deeply occupied himself; and seldom knew when he had said enough on those which affected them as well as him. He was admirable in exposition; in truth, he delighted to give instruction both when speaking and conversing, and in this he was unrivalled. Quis in sententiis argutior? in aocendo edisserendoque subtilior? Mr. Fox might well avow, without a compliment, that he had learnt more from him alone than from all other men and authors. But if any one thing is proved by unvarying experience of popular assemblies, it is, that an excellent dissertation makes a poor speech. The speaker is not the only person actively engaged while a great oration is pronouncing; the audience have their share; they must be excited, and for this purpose constantly appealed to as recognised persons of the drama. The didactic orator (if, as has been said of the didactic poet, this be not a contradiction in terms) has it all to himself; the hearer is merely passive; and the consequence is, he soon ceases to be a listener, and if he can, even to be a spectator. Mr. Burke was essentially didactic, except when the violence of his invective carried him away, and then he offended the correct taste of the House of Commons, by going beyond the occasion, and by descending to coarseness.*

*The charge of coarseness, or rather of vulgarity of language, has,

When he argued, it was by unfolding large views, and seizing upon analogies too remote, and drawing distinctions "too fine for his hearers," or, at the best, by a body of statements, lucid, certainly, and diversified with flower and fruit, and lighted up with pleasantry, but almost always in excess, and overdone in these qualities as well as in its own substance. He had little power of hard stringent reasoning, as has been already remarked; and his declamation was addressed to the head, as from the head it proceeded, learned, fanciful, ingenious, but not impassioned. Of him, as a combatant, we may say what Aristotle did of the old philosophers, when he compared them to unskilful boxers, who hit round about, and not straight forward, and fight with little effect, though they may by chance sometimes deal a hard blow.—Οἷον εν ταις μαχαις οἱ αγύμναστοι ποιουσι. και εκείνοι περιφερουμενοι τυπτουσι πολλακις καλας αλλ' ουτ' εκείνοι απ' επιστημης. -(Metaphys.)*

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to the astonishment of all who knew him, and understood pure idiomatic English, been made against Mr. Windham, but only by persons unacquainted with both. To him might nearly be applied the beautiful sketch of Crassus by M. Tullius-Quo, says he, nihil statuo fieri potuisse perfectius. Erat summa gravitas, erat cum gravitate junctus, facetiarum et urbanitatis oratorius, non scurrilis lepos. Latine loquendi accurata, et sine molestiâ diligens elegantia-in disserendo mira explicatio; cum de jure civili, cum de æquo et bono disputaretur argumentorum et similitudinum copia. Let not the reader reject even the latter features, those certainly of an advocate; at least let him first read Mr. Windham's Speech on the Law of Evidence, in the Duke of York's case.

* The Attic reader will be here reminded of the First Philippic, in which a very remarkable passage, and in part too applicable to our subject, seems to have been suggested by the passage in the text; and

Cicero has somewhere called Eloquence copiose loquens sapientia. This may be true of written, but of spoken eloquence it is a defective definition, and will, at the best, only comprehend the Demonstrative (or Epideictic) kind, which is banished, for want of an audience, from all modern assemblies of a secular description. Thus, though it well characterises Mr. Burke, yet the defects which we have pointed out were fatal to his success. Accordingly the test of eloquence, which the same master has in so picturesque a manner given, from his own constant experience, here entirely failed.— "Volo hoc oratori contingat, ut cum auditum sit eum esse dicturum, locus in subselliis occupetur, compleatur tribunal, gratiosi scribæ sint in dando et cedendo locum, corona multiplex, judex erectus; cum surgit is, qui dicturus sit, significetur a corona silentium, deinde crebræ assensiones, multæ admirationes: risus, cum velit ; cum velit, fletus; ut, qui hæc procul videat, etiamsi quid agatur nesciat, at placere tamen, et in scena Roscium intelligat." For many years, that is, between the latter part of the American war, and the speeches which he made, neither many nor long, nor in a very usual or regular style, on the French Revolution, the very reverse of all this was to be seen and lamented, as often as Mr.

its great felicity both of apt comparison and of wit, should, with many other passages, have made critics pause before they denied those qualities to the chief of orators. Ωσπερ δε οἱ βαρβαροι πυκτεύουσιν, ουτω πολεμειτε φιλιππῳ: και γαρ εκεινων ὁ πληγεις αει της πληγης εχεται. κἀν ἑτέρωσε παταξη τις, εκείσε εισιν ai χειρες. προβαλλεσθαι δ', η βλεπειν εναντιον, ουτ' οιδεν, ουτ' εθελει—which he proceeds to illustrate by the conduct held respecting the Chersonese and Thermopylæ.

Burke spoke. The spectator saw no signs of Roscius being in action, but rather of the eminent Civilian so closely allied to Mr. Burke, and of whom we are hereafter to speak.* "Videt" (as the same critic has, in another passage, almost to the letter described it) "oscitantem judicem, loquentem cum altero, nonnunquam etiam circulantem, mittentem ad horas; quæsitorem, ut dimittat, rogantem;† intelligit, oratorem in ea causa non adesse, qui possit animis judicum admovere orationem, tanquam fidibus manum."

But it may justly be said, with the second of Attic orators, that sense is always more important than eloquence; and no one can doubt that enlightened men in all ages will hang over the works of Mr. Burke, and dwell with delight even upon the speeches that failed to command the attention of those to whom they were addressed. Nor is it by their rhetorical beauties that they interest us. The extraordinary depth of his detached views, the penetrating sagacity which he occasionally applies to the affairs of men and their motives, and the curious felicity of expression with which he unfolds principles, and traces resemblances and relations, are separately the gift of few, and in their union probably without any example. This must be admitted on all hands; it is possibly the last of these observations which will obtain universal assent, as it is the last we have to offer before coming upon

Dr. Lawrence.

+ This desire in the English senate is irregularly signified, by the cries of 'Question,' there not being a proper quarter to appeal to, as in the Roman courts.