"He had said of Flood 'that he forgot that he was an oak of the forest, too old and too great to be transplanted at fifty.' And yet here he was himself. Whether he would take root was the question, and for some moments very questionable it was. When he rose, every voice in that crowded House was hushed; the great rivals, Pitt and Fox, riveted their eyes upon him; he strode forth and gesticulated—the hush became unanimous; not a cheer was heard; men looked in one another's faces, and then at the phenomenon before them, as if doubting his identity. At last, and on a sudden, the indication of the master-spirit came. Pitt was the first generously to recognise it. He smote his thigh hastily with his hand—it was an impulse when he was pleased—his followers saw it, and knew it, and with a universal burst they hailed the advent and the triumph of the stranger."
Grattan was sincere, and this sincerity gave at once substance to his popularity, and power to his eloquence. But, as a politician, he was rash; and as a prophet, he had to see the failure of all his predictions. He wielded a torch of exceeding brightness, it is true; but the torch at once blinded himself and inflamed the nation. His patriotism was pure, but it wanted practicability. He left no great measure of public utility behind him. His liberation, as he called it, of Ireland in 1782, was a showy fiction, to end in the disgrace of a painful discovery. It was the liberation of a fever to end in exhaustion; of a dream of opulence and independence, to finish in an awaking of poverty and despair. Its closest resemblance was to the late festival at the Hanwell Asylum—an assemblage of lunatics dressed for the night in feathers and flowers, dancing and feasting, until the morning light sent them back to their cells, and the drudgery of their melancholy discipline.
The whole policy of the Whig party in Ireland was the counterpart of their policy in England, only on a smaller scale. It was, to the performances of Fox and Opposition here, what the little stage-play in Hamlet is to the tragedy itself—the same characters and the same crime performed in imitation of the larger guilt that gazes on it. The wretched shortsightedness of supporting any demand of the populace whom they at once deluded and despised; the perpetual agitation to give the franchise to classes who must use it without the power of discrimination, and who must be careless of it but for the purposes of corruption; the reckless clientship of the Popish claims, ending in the sale of Irish independence by the Papists; the universal conspiracy, and the sanguinary civil war, followed by the political suicide of the Parliament—all the direct and rapid results of the Whig policy in Ireland—show either the headlong ignorance or the scandalous hypocrisy of Irish faction.
Yet, in all this blaze of fraud and falsehood, the name of Grattan was never degraded by public suspicion. He was an enthusiast; and his robe of enthusiasm, like one of the fire-resisting robes of antiquity, came out only brighter for its passing through the flame. But the Legislature (all impurities) was left in ashes.
Mr Phillips seems to regret Grattan's transfer to England, as an injury to his oratorical distinctions. He tells us "that it is in the Irish Parliament, and in his younger day, that his finest efforts are to be found!" Reluctant as we are to differ from such an authority, yet, judging from his published speeches, it appears to us that his powers never found their right position until they were within the walls of the British Parliament. These walls shut out the roar of the populace, which disturbed him, but to which he once must listen. These walls sheltered him from that perpetual clinging of Popery, which dragged down his fine tastes to its own level. Within these walls, he was relieved from the petty interests of partisanship, and raised from the feuds of an island to the policy of an empire. In Ireland, popularity required perpetual submission to the caprices of the multitude, and no man had more fully felt than Grattan the impossibility of taking a stand on his own principles—he must be either on the shoulders of the mob, or under their heels. In England, no longer wearied with the responsibility of leading parties who refused to be guided, or the disgust of following his inferiors through the dust of their hurried "road to ruin," he had before him, and embraced with the gallantry of his nature, the great Cause for which England was fighting—the cause of human kind. In Ireland, Grattan, with all his intrepidity, would not have dared to make his magnificent speech on the war with Napoleon, or, if he had, would have been denounced by the roar of the million. In England, he was in the midst of the noblest associations; he was surrounded by all the living ability of the empire; and if genius itself is to be inspired by the memories of the mighty, every stone of the walls round him teemed with inspiration.
Thus, if his language was more chastened, it was loftier; if his metaphors were more disciplined, they were more majestic;—the orb which, rising through the mists of faction, had shone with broadened disc and fiery hue, now, in its meridian, assumed its perfect form, and beamed with its stainless glory.
In recording the remarkable names of this period in Ireland, Mr Phillips alludes to the celebrated preacher, Dean Kirwan:—
"He had been a Roman Catholic clergyman, but conformed to the Church of England. He was a wonderful orator—one of the greatest that ever filled a pulpit; and yet, when injudicious friends, after his death, published a volume of his sermons, they were scarcely readable. This sounds paradoxical: but it is true. The volume is not remembered—those who heard the preacher never can forget him. It was my happiness to have the opportunity thrice, while a student in the University of Dublin. The church, on those occasions, presented a singular, and, in truth, not a very decorous spectacle—a bear-garden was orderly compared to it. The clothes were torn off men's backs—ladies were carried out fainting—disorder the most unseemly disgraced the entire service, and so continued till Kirwan ascended the pulpit. What a change was there then! Every eye was turned to him—every tongue was hushed—all was solemn silence. His enunciation of the Lord's Prayer was one of the finest things ever heard. Never before or since did mortal man produce such wonderful effect. And yet he had his disadvantages to overcome: his person was not imposing; he was somewhat wall-eyed; and his voice at times was inharmonious."
We see in this striking portrait the writer con amore, and we must give him due credit for his vivid tribute to Irish ability. But there are few miracles in this world, and the fact that Kirwan's printed sermons are wholly inferior to his reputation reduces our wonder within more restricted bounds. If it is true, that much emotion is lost by the loss of the actual speaking; that the full power of the oratory is somewhat diminished by its being calmly read, instead of being ardently heard; still we have but few instances, perhaps none, where true oratory altogether loses its power in publication.
For example, Curran's published speeches give the general reader a very sufficient specimen of the richness of his language, the fertility of imagination, and even the subtlety of his humour. Grattan's speeches, most of them mere fragments, and probably few published with his revision, give the full impression of his boldness of thought, depth of argument, and exquisite pungency of expression. Burke's printed speeches are even said to give a higher sense of his wonderful ability than when they were delivered in the House of Commons. There is an anecdote that, when Pitt had read one of those earlier speeches in the form of a pamphlet, he expressed his astonishment. "Is it possible," he exclaimed, "that this fine oration can be what we heard the other night?"