Here again the racial characteristics were apt to assert themselves, and such a phrase as he employed at the conclusion of the Abyssinian War—that we had set the standard of St. George upon the mountains of Rasselas—may be taken as an instance of an essay in the sublime that verges nearly upon the ridiculous.
I heard him for the first time when he introduced his great Reform Bill in 1867, and his gestures also struck me then as often bordering upon the grotesque.
I can recall his attitude now as he drew towards the close of his speech with his arms folded and his head sunk upon his breast, rolling out in a voice, that I confess had for me neither intrinsic beauty of tone nor perfect accent of sincerity, the carefully forged phrases which formed the close of his peroration.
“Those who take a larger and a nobler view of human affairs,” he said, “will, I think, recognise that, alone in the countries of Europe, England now, for almost countless generations, has—by her Parliament—established the fair exemplar of free government, and that, throughout the awful vicissitudes of her heroic history, she has—chiefly by this House of Commons—maintained and cherished that public spirit which is the soul of Commonwealth, without which Empire has no glory, and the wealth of nations is but the means of corruption and decay.”
Earlier passages of that same speech had been marked by brilliant flashes of humour and sarcasm, showing, here as always, his incomparable power of registering in a single sentence the characteristics of a cause he desired to condemn.
I remember in particular a reference to Professor Goldwin Smith which was very happily expressed.
“Why, the other day,” he said, “a rampant orator who goes about the country maligning men and things, went out of his way to assail me, saying, ‘Where now are the 4000 freeholders of Buckinghamshire?’ Why, sir, they are where you would naturally expect to find them—they are in the county of Buckingham. I can pardon this wild man, who has probably lived in the cloisters of some abbey, making this mistake ...” etc.
There are orators who are not orators, and who yet, by some undefinable power of personality, exercise an extraordinary authority upon their hearers. In this class, and I should be disposed to think foremost in this class, must be set Mr. Parnell, whose acquaintance I made at the house of Sir George Lewis about the date of the publication of the famous letter in the Times.
To me that letter had seemed from the first a manifest forgery, and I had made several small bets in the Garrick Club that it would be so proved whenever it was made the subject of a judicial investigation.
Mr. Parnell’s comment when I told him of my confidence as to the result was tinged with a certain sadness that was, I think, a constant quality of his nature.