ruler to a cannibal in his den, where he paints him as having actually devoured a king and suffering from indigestion; of another, to a retailer of dresses, in which character the nature of constitutions is forgotten in that of millinery,—are instances too well known to be further dwelt upon; and they were the produce not of the "audacity of youth," but of the last years of his life. It must, however, be confessed, that he was at all times somewhat apt to betray what Johnson imputes to Swift, a proneness to "revolve ideas from which other minds shrink with disgust." At least he must be allowed to have often mistaken violence and grossness for vigour. “The anodyne draught of oblivion, thus drugged, is well calculated to preserve a galling wakefulness, and to feed the living ulcer of a corroding memory. Thus to administer the opiate potion of animosity, powdered with all the ingredients of scorn and contempt," &c.*-"They are not repelled, through a fastidious delicacy at the stench of their arrogance and presumption, from a medicinal attention to their mental blotches and running sores.”†

"Those bodies, which, when full of life and beauty, lay in their arms, and were their joy and comfort, when dead and putrid became but the more loathsome from remembrance of former endearments."-The vital powers, wasted in an unequal struggle, are pushed back upon themselves, and fester to gangrene, to death; and instead of what was but just now the delight of the creation, there will be cast out in the face of the sun a bloated, putrid, noisome carcase, full of stench and poison, an offence, a horror, a lesson to the world."§ Some passages are not fit to be cited, and could not now be tolerated in either house of parliament, for the indecency of their allusions-as in the Regency debates, and the attack upon

Reflections on the French Revolution.

† Ibid. Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents. § Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts.

lawyers on the Impeachment Continuation. But the finest of his speeches, which we have just quoted from, though it does not go so far from propriety, falls not much within its bounds. Of Mr. Dundas he says, "With six great chopping bastards (Reports of Secret Committee), each as lusty as an infant Hercules, this delicate creature blushes at the sight of his new bridegroom, assumes a virgin delicacy; or, to use a more fit, as well as a more poetical comparison, the person so squeamish, so timid, so trembling lest the winds of heaven should visit too roughly, is expanded to broad sunshine, exposed like the sow of imperial augury, lying in the mud with all the prodigies of her fertility about her, as evidence of her delicate amour."

It is another characteristic of this great writer, that the unlimited abundance of his stores makes him profuse in their expenditure. Never content with one view of a subject, or one manner of handling it, he for the most part lavishes his whole resources upon the discussion of each point. In controversy this is emphatically the case. Indeed, nothing is more remarkable than the variety of ways in which he makes his approaches to any position he would master. After reconnoitring it with skill and boldness, if not with perfect accuracy, he manœuvres with infinite address, and arrays a most imposing force of general principles mustered from all parts, and pointed, sometimes violently enough, in one direction. He now moves on with the composed air, the even, dignified pace of the historian; and unfolds his facts in a narrative so easy, and yet so correct, that you plainly perceive he wanted only the dismissal of other pursuits to have rivalled Livy or Hume. But soon this advance is interrupted, and he stops to display his powers of description, when the boldness of his 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 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 docendo 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 recognized 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.* 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

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

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 γαρ εκεινοι περιφερουμενοι τυπτουσι πολλακις καλας αλλ' ουτ' εκείνοι απ' ETLOTηuns.—(Metaphys.)*

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 characterizes 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

*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 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 πολέμειτε φιλιππω: και γαρ εκείνων ὁ πληγεις αει της πληγης εχεται. κἀν ἑτέρωσε παταξη τις, εκεισε εισιν αἱ χειρες. προβάλλεσθαι δ', η βλεπεῖν εναντιον, ουτ' οίδεν, ουτ' εθελει—which he proceeds to illustrate by the conduct held respecting the Chersonese and Thermopyla.