“True,” cried he; “yet still, I think, his features, his look, his whole expression, unfavourable to him. I never saw him but once before; that was at the bar of the House of Commons and there, as Burke admirably said, he looked, when first he glanced an eye against him, like a hungry tiger, ready to howl for his prey!”
“Well,” cried I, “I am sure he does not look fierce now! Contemptuous, a little, I think he does look!”
I was sorry I used this word; yet its truth forced it to escape me. He did not like it; he repeated it; he could not but be sure the contempt could only be levelled at his prosecutors. I feared discussion, and flew off as fast as I could, to softer ground. “It was not,” cried I, “with that countenance he gave me my prepossession! Very differently, indeed, he looked then!”
“And can he ever look pleasant? can that face ever obtain an expression that is pleasing?”
“Yes, indeed and in truth, very pleasant! It was in the country I first saw him, and without any restraint on his part; I saw him, therefore, perfectly natural and easy. And no one, let me say, could so have seen him without being pleased with him—his quietness and serenity, joined to his intelligence and information—”
“His information?—in what way?”
“In such a way as suited his hearer: not upon committee business—of all that I knew nothing. The only conversation in which I could mix was upon India, considered simply as, a country in which he had travelled; and his communications upon the people, the customs, habits, cities, and whatever I could name, were so instructive as well as entertaining, that I think I never recollect gaining more intelligence, or more pleasantly conveyed, from any conversation in which I ever have been engaged.” To this he listened with an attention that, but for the secret zeal which warmed me must have silenced and shamed me. I am satisfied this committee have concluded Mr. Hastings a mere man of blood, with slaughter and avarice for his sole ideas! The surprise with which he heard this just testimony to his social abilities was only silent from good-breeding, but his eyes expressed what his tongue withheld; something that satisfied me he concluded.
I had undesignedly been duped by him. I answered this silence by saying “There was no object for hypocrisy, for it was quite in retirement I met with him: it was not lately; it is near two years since I have seen him; he had therefore no point to gain with me, nor was there any public character, nor any person whatever, that Could induce him to act a part; yet was he all I have said-informing, Communicative, instructive, and at the same time, gentle and highly pleasing.”
“Well,” said he, very civilly, “I begin the less to wonder, now, that You have adhered to his side; but—”
“To see him, then,” cried I, stopping his ‘but,’—“to see him brought to that bar! and kneeling at it!—indeed, Mr. Windham, I must own to you, I could hardly keep my seat—hardly forbear rising and running out of the Hall.”