have crossed his impetuous and uncompromising mind; for it had often been entertained by him, but only to be rejected with indignation and abhorrence, as if the independence of America were the loss of our national existence. Upon all less important questions, whether touching our continental or our colonial policy, his opinion was to the full as sound, and his views as enlarged, as those of any statesman of his age; but it would not be correct to affirm that on those larger ones, the cardinal, and therefore the trying, points of the day, he was materially in advance of his own times.

If we turn from the statesman to survey the orator, our examination must be far less satisfactory, because our materials are extremely imperfect, from the circumstances already adverted to. There is indeed hardly any eloquence, of ancient or of modern times, of which so little that can be relied on as authentic has been preserved; unless perhaps that of Pericles, Julius Cæsar, and Lord Bolingbroke. Of the actions of the two first we have sufficient records, as we have of Lord Chatham's; of their speeches we have little that can be regarded as genuine; although, by unquestionable tradition, we know that each of them was second only to the greatest orator of their respective countries;*

* Thucydides gives three speeches of Pericles, which he may very possibly have in great part composed for him. Sallust's speech of Cæsar is manifestly the writer's own composition; indeed it is in the exact style of the one he puts into Cato's mouth, that is, in his own style. It is, however, remarkable, that the first instance of Reporting was the precaution taken by Cicero to have the debate on the conspiracy preserved, as we find from Plutarch.-(Cato, c. 23.)

The following note is from Mr. Hazlitt's edition of the Duke of Wellington's speeches, and refers to Julius Cæsar's :-"It is hardly necessary to remark that we have no remains of his speeches; for the notes he gives of his addresses (conciones) to the soldiers, in his Commentaries, only are the heads, and were written long after; the speech in Sallust, like that of Cato, is plainly the historian's own composition. Sallust's diligence in collecting information upon that famous debate must have been confined to the topics merely, though Cicero had laid the foundation of reporting, and even of short-hand reporting, on that occasion. But even as to the topics,

while of Bolingbroke we only know, from Dean Swift, that he was the most accomplished speaker of his time; and it is related of Mr. Pitt (the younger), that when the conversation rolled upon lost works, and some said they should prefer restoring the books of Livy, some of Tacitus, and some a Latin tragedy, he at once decided for a speech of Bolingbroke. What we know of his own father's oratory is much more to be gleaned from contemporary panegyrics, and accounts of its effects, than from the scanty, and for the most part doubtful, remains which have reached us. The impression made upon Mr. Pitt himself, is described in a very interesting letter written after the debate of 31 May, 1777.*

the Fourth Catilinarian shows how unfaithful his account of the debate is. Indeed, nothing can be more unfair than his whole treatment of Cicero. Of Cæsar's letters two or three remain, and they are truly admirable."

* THE HON. WM. PITT TO THE COUNTESS OF CHATHAM.

"MY DEAR MOTHER,

HOTEL, KING STREET, Saturday Morning, May 31, 1777.

"I had not time to write last night, as the House did not rise till near ten, and I then went in quest of a dinner. In the way of information, therefore, this letter will come late; which you will have the goodness to forgive. It is with another motive that I write it; which is, that I cannot. help expressing to you how happy beyond description I feel in reflecting that my father was able to exert, in their full vigour, the sentiments and eloquence which have always distinguished him.

"His first speech took up half-an-hour, and was full of all his usual force and vivacity. I only regretted, that he did not always raise his voice enough for all the House to hear everything he said. If they felt as I did, however, they must have heard abundantly enough to be charmed and transported.

"I have not time and I fear scarcely memory, to do justice to his particular expressions; most of which, I flatter myself, you will hear from himself, as well as, in general, the substance of what he said. He spoke a second time, in answer to Lord Weymouth, to explain the object of his motion, and his intention to follow it by one for the repeal of all the Acts of Parliament, which form the system of chastisement. This he did in a flow of eloquence, and with a beauty of expression, animated and striking beyond conception. The various incidents of the debate you will undoubtedly learn; so that I need not detain you with an account of them. You will, I think, also hear, that among the supporters of the motion, Lord

All accounts, however, concur in representing those effects to have been prodigious. The spirit and vehemence which animated its greater passages their perfect application to the subject-matter of debatethe appositeness of his invective to the individual assailed the boldness of the feats which he ventured upon the grandeur of the ideas which he unfoldedthe heart-stirring nature of his appeals,—are all confessed by the united testimony of his contemporaries; and the fragments which remain bear out to a considerable extent such representations; nor are we likely to be misled by those fragments, for the more striking portions were certainly the ones least likely to be either forgotten or fabricated. To these mighty attractions was added the imposing, the animating, the commanding power of a countenance singularly expressive; an eye so piercing that hardly any one could stand its glare; and a manner altogether singularly striking, original, and characteristic, notwithstanding a peculiarly defective and even awkward action. Latterly, indeed, his infirmities precluded all action; and he is described as standing in the House of Lords leaning upon his crutch, and speaking for ten minutes together in an under-tone of voice scarcely audible, but raising his notes to their full pitch when he broke out into one of his grand bursts of invective or exclamation. But, in his earlier time, his whole manner is represented as having been beyond conception animated and imposing. Indeed the things which he effected

Shelburne was as great as possible. His speech was one of the most interesting and forcible, I think, that I ever heard, or even can imagine. Lord Mansfield appeared to me to make a miserable attempt to mislead his hearers and cavil at the question.

"I have almost forgot my original object, which was only to congratulate you on this most happy event; on which I cannot say enough, though I feel it is unnecessary to say anything. I am going out of town at eleven with Lord Althorpe. Adieu, my dear Mother, and believe me,

"Your ever dutiful and affectionate Son,

D

"W. PITT."

principally by means of it, or at least which nothing but a most striking and commanding tone could have made it possible to attempt, almost exceed belief. Some of these sallies are indeed examples of that approach made to the ludicrous by the sublime, which has been charged upon him as a prevailing fault, and represented under the name of Charlatanerie, -a favourite phrase with his adversaries, as in later times it has been with the ignorant undervaluers of Lord Erskine. 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 is said to have 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?" We have the anecdote upon good traditional authority; that it was believed by those who had the best means of knowing Lord Chatham is certain; and this of itself shows their sense of the extraordinary powers of his manner, and the reach of his audacity in trusting to those powers.

There can be no doubt that of reasoning,-of sustained and close argument, his speeches had but little. His statements were desultory, though striking, perhaps not very distinct, certainly not at all detailed, and as certainly every way inferior to those of his celebrated son. If he did not reason cogently, he assuredly did not compress his matter vigorously. He was anything rather than a concise or a short speaker; not that his great passages were at all diffuse, or in the least degree loaded with superfluous words; but he was prolix in the whole texture of his discourse, and he was certainly the first who introduced into our senate the practice, adopted in the American war by

Mr. Burke, and continued by others, of long speeches, -speeches of two and three hours, by which oratory has gained little, and business less. His discourse was, however, fully informed with matter; his allusions to analogous subjects, and his references to the history of past events, were frequent; his expression of his own opinions was copious and free, and stood very generally in the place of any elaborate reasoning in their support. A noble statement of enlarged views, a generous avowal of dignified sentiments, a manly and somewhat severe contempt for all petty or mean views-whether their baseness proceeded from narrow understanding or from corrupt bias-always pervaded his whole discourse; and, more than any other orator since Demosthenes, he was distinguished by the grandeur of feeling with which he regarded, and the amplitude of survey which he cast upon the subject-matters of debate. His invective was unsparing and hard to be endured, although he was a less eminent master of sarcasm than his son, and rather overwhelmed his antagonist with the burst of words and vehement indignation, than wounded him by the edge of ridicule, or tortured him with the gall of bitter scorn, or fixed his arrow in the wound by the barb of epigram. These things seemed, as it were, to betoken too much labour and too much art-more labour than was consistent with absolute scorn-more art than could stand with heart-felt rage, or entire contempt inspired by the occasion, at the moment, and on the spot. But his great passages, those by which he has come down to us, those which gave his eloquence its peculiar character, and to which its dazzling success was owing, were as sudden and unexpected as they were natural. Every one was taken by surprise when they rolled forth-every one felt them to be so natural, that he could hardly understand why he had not thought of them himself, although into no one's imagination had they ever entered. If the quality