exhibition of fireworks, and Burke hardly listened to at all; and that Fox and Pitt were very much speakers of the modern school. On the other hand, there is some reason to suppose that Sheridan's most remarkable effort—the Begum speech—has been so mutilated in the printed version as to be unrecognisable;[1] and the chances are that this applies in great measure to Lord Chatham. Taking the modern oratory in its best form—a clear business-like argument, relieved by pathetic touches or appeals to generous feeling—it may be admitted to be a measurable force. It has been said that no speech ever changed a vote; but even if this be true of . Parliament, there remains the fact that some speeches have powerfully influenced national feeling, and that a party is always the weaker for being without orators. Still there are two strong reasons why we may expect a gradual and growing change towards a lower level of eloquence. One is that the art of public speaking is much more generally practised than it was, and that it is difficult for any one with the limitations imposed by the modern preference for debating to tower head and shoulders above the mob of gentlemen who spout with ease. The other is that the great common-places of oratory are even more easily exhausted than those of poetry. Patrick Henry carried a House of Assembly with him by asking if they who had cowed
- ↑ Rae's Wilkes, Sheridan, and Fox, pp. 218-233.
ments often weak."—Letters, Feb. 2, 1751. On the other hand, he allowed him the praise of great versatility; " he excelled in the argumentative, as well as the declamatory way."—Character of Lord Chatham. Lord Brougham says that he was charged with often passing from the sublime to the ludicrous.—Statesmen of the time of George III. And Lord Macaulay says, that "his merit was almost entirely rhetorical," and that "his style was not always in the purest taste."—Essay on Chatham. Lord Lytton sums him up: "Others take force from judgment, fancy, thought; Chatham from passion."—St. Stephen's, Part I.
