BURKE’S SPEECH ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
“But I have found,” cried I afterwards, “another newspaper praise for you now, ‘Mr. Windham, with his usual vein of irony.’”
“O, yes,” cried he, “I saw that! But what can it mean?—I use no ‘vein of irony;’—I dislike it, except for peculiar purposes, keenly handled, and soon passed over.”
“Yet this is the favourite panegyric you receive continually,—this, or logic, always attends your name in the newspapers.”
“But do I use it?”
“Nay, not to me, I own. As a manner, I never found it out, at least. However, I am less averse now than formerly to the other panegyric—close logic,—for I own the more frequently I come hither the more convinced I find myself that that is no character of commendation to be given universally.”
He could say nothing to this; and really the dilatory, desultory style of these prosecutors in general deserved a much deeper censure.
“If a little closeness of logic and reasoning were observed by one I look at now, what a man would he be, and who could compare with him!” Mr. Burke you are sure was here my object; and his entire, though silent and unwilling, assent was obvious.
“What a speech,” I continued, “has he lately made![337] how noble, how energetic, how enlarged throughout!”
“O,” cried he, very unaffectedly, “upon the French Revolution?”
“Yes; and any party might have been proud of it, for liberality, for feeling, for all in one—genius. I, who am only a reader of detached speeches, have read none I have thought its equal.”
“Yet, such as you have seen it, it does not do him justice. I was not in the House that day; but I am assured the actual speech, as he spoke it at the moment, was highly superior to what has since been printed. There was in it a force—there were shades of reflection so fine—allusions so quick and so happy—and strokes of satire and observation so pointed and so apt,—that it had ten times more brilliancy when absolutely extempore than when transmitted to paper.”
“Wonderful, wonderful! He is a truly wonderful creature!” And, alas, thought I, as wonderful in inconsistency as in greatness!
In the course of a discussion more detailed upon faculties, I ventured to tell him what impression they had made upon James, who was with me during one of the early long speeches. “I was listening,” I said, with the most fervent attention, “to such strokes of eloquence as, while I heard them, carried all before them, when my brother pulled me by the sleeve to exclaim, ‘When will he come to the point?’”
The justness, notwithstanding his characteristic conciseness, of this criticism, I was glad thus to convey. Mr. Windham however, would not subscribe to it; but, with a significant smile, coolly said, “Yes, ’tis curious to hear a man of war’s ideas of rhetoric.”
“Well,” quoth I, to make a little amends, “shall I tell you a compliment he paid you?”
“Me?”
“Yes. ‘He speaks to the purpose,’ he cried.”