The following description is taken from Lord Beaconsfield, who is drawing a character derived in part from Sir Francis Burdett (1770-1840), and in part from George Byng, who was M.P. for Middlesex for fifty-six years, and died in 1847:—"He was the Father of the House, though it was difficult to believe that from his appearance. He was tall, and kept his distinguished figure; a handsome man with a musical voice, and a countenance now benignant, though very bright and Once haughty. He still retained the same fashion of costume in which he had ridden up to Westminster more than half a century ago to support his dear friend Charles Fox—real topboots and a blue coat and buff waistcoat. He had a large estate, and had refused an earldom. Knowing E., he came and sate by him one Jay in the House, and asked him, good-naturedly, how he liked his new life. It is very different from what it as when I was your age. Up to Easter we rarely had a regular debate, never a party division; very few people came up indeed. But there was a good deal of speaking on all subjects before dinner. We had the privilege then of speaking on the presentation of petitions at any length, and we seldom spoke on any other occasion. After Easter there was always at least one great party fight. This was a mighty affair, talked of for weeks before it came off, and then rarely an adjourned debate. We were gentlemen, used to sit up late, and should have been sitting up somewhere else had we not been in the House of Commons. After this party fight the House for the rest of the session was a mere club.... The House of Commons was very much like what the House of Lords is now. You went home to dine, and then came back for an important division.... Twenty years ago no man would think of coming down to the House except in evening dress. I remember so late as Mr. Canning the Minister always came down in silk stockings and pantaloons or knee-breeches. All these things change, and quoting Virgil will be the next thing to disappear. In the last—Parliament we often had Latin quotations, but never from a member with a new constituency. I have heard Greek quoted here, but that was long ago, and a great mistake. The House was quite alarmed. Charles Fox used to say as to quotation, 'No Greek; as much Latin as you like; and never French under any circumstances. No English poet unless he has completed his century.' These were, like some other good rules, the unwritten orders of the House of Commons."
XII.
PARLIAMENTARY ORATORY—continued.
I concluded my last chapter with a quotation from Lord Beaconsfield, describing parliamentary speaking as it was when he entered the House of Commons in 1837. Of that particular form of speaking perhaps the greatest master was Sir Robert Peel. He was deficient in those gifts of imagination and romance which are essential to the highest oratory. He utterly lacked—possibly he would have despised—that almost prophetic rapture which we recognize in Burke and Chatham and Erskine. His manner was frigid and pompous, and his rhetorical devices were mechanical. Every parliamentary sketch of the time satirizes his habit of turning round towards his supporters at given periods to ask for their applause; his trick of emphasizing his points by perpetually striking the box before him; and his inveterate propensity to indulge in hackneyed quotation. But when we have said this we have said all that can be urged in his disparagement. As a parliamentary speaker of the second and perhaps most useful class he has never been excelled. Firmly though dispassionately persuaded of certain political and economic doctrines, he brought to the task of promoting them unfailing tact, prompt courage, intimate acquaintance with the foibles of his hearers, unconquerable patience and perseverance, and an inexhaustible supply of sonorous phrases and rounded periods. Nor was his success confined to the House of Commons. As a speaker on public platforms, in the heyday of the ten-pound householder and the middle-class franchise, he was peculiarly in his element. He had beyond most men the art of "making a platitude endurable by making it pompous." He excelled in demonstrating the material advantages of a moderate and cautious conservatism, and he could draw at will and with effect upon a prodigious fund of constitutional commonplaces. If we measure the merit of a parliamentary speaker by his practical influence, we must allow that Peel was pre-eminently great.
In the foremost rank of orators a place must certainly be assigned to O'Connell. He was not at his best in the House of Commons. His coarseness, violence, and cunning were seen to the worst advantage in what was still an assemblage of gentlemen. His powers of ridicule, sarcasm, and invective, his dramatic and sensational predilections, required another scene for their effective display. But few men have ever been so richly endowed by Nature with the original, the incommunicable, the inspired qualifications which go to make an orator. He was magnificently built, and blessed with a voice which, by all contemporary testimony, was one of the most thrilling, flexible, and melodious that ever vibrated through a popular assembly. "From grave to gay, from lively to severe" he flew without delay or difficulty. His wit gave point to the most irrelevant personalities, and cogency to the most illogical syllogisms. The most daring perversions of truth and justice were driven home by appeals to the emotions which the coldest natures could scarcely withstand; "the passions of his audience were playthings in his hand." Lord Lytton thus described him:—
"Once to my sight the giant thus was given:
Walled by wide air, and roofed by boundless heaven,
Beneath his feet the human ocean lay,