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justified. Like the sturdy warrior leaning on his own battleaxe, conscious where his strength lay, he did not readily look beyond it.

As a debater in the House of Commons, his speeches were logical and argumentative: if they did not often abound in the graces of metaphor, or sparkle with the brilliancy of wit, they were always animated, elegant, and classical. The strength of his oratory was intrinsic; it presented the rich and abundant resource of a clear discernment and a correct taste. His speeches are stamped with inimitable marks of originality. When replying to his opponents, his readiness was not more conspicuous than his energy: he was always prompt and always dignified. He could sometimes have recourse to the sportiveness of irony, but he did not often seek any other aid than was to be derived from an arranged and extensive knowledge of his subject. This qualified him fully to discuss the arguments of others, and forcibly to defend his own. armed, it was rarely in the power of his adversaries, mighty as they were, to beat him from the field. His eloquence, occasionally rapid, electric, vehement, was always chaste, winning, and persuasive, not awing into acquiescence, but arguing into conviction. His understanding was bold and comprehensive: nothing seemed too remote for its reach, or too large for its grasp. Unallured by dissipation, and unswayed by pleasure, he never sacrificed the national treasure to the one, or the national interest to the other.. To his unswerving integrity the most authentic of all testimony is to be found in that unbounded public

Thus

confidence which followed him throughout the whole of his political career.

Absorbed as he was in the pursuits of public life, he did not neglect to prepare himself in silence for that higher destination, which is at once the incentive and reward of human virtue. His talents, superior and splendid as they were, never made him forgetful of that Eternal Wisdom from which they emanated. The faith and fortitude of his last moments were affecting and exemplary. In his forty-seventh year, and in the meridian of his fame, he died on the twentythird of January, 1806.

RIGHT HON. G. CANNING.

I have some difficulty in delivering my sentiments concerning the style of this young man's eloquence, because there are few adequate judges of the matter itself; but a vast multitude who are ignorantly devoted to his cause. They who are without the faculty of taste and judgment are filled with admiration whenever they hear what is beyond the line of their experience or somewhat too refined for their comprehension.

They who think deeper than the vulgar will allow that to be, at best, but a popular and plausible eloquence, which glitters with puerile points; which swells with tumid insignificance; which carries its bombast almost to frenzy, and mistakes the rash for the sublime. That species of eloquence which Hume declared he could conceive in his mind, but never knew to be attained, his partisans appropriate to the minis

ter. This imagined model of perfection they fancy that they lead by the hand. A young man with the greatest acuteness of understanding, regularly trained in the most perfect discipline, by no means unacquainted with jurisprudence; who, when he rises in the senate, never fails to charm the ear and delight the passions; who has all the splendid stores of eloquence perfectly at command; who is copious, elegant, and sublime.

Having taken this opportunity of giving my sentiments to the public, I shall relate, with unreserved freedom, what from various and important reasons I have hitherto concealed. This young man is distinguished by an ornamented and florid style of eloquence, which, as it seems altogether transferred to the senate from the schools of the sophists, offends the sagacity of some, and the dignity of others. He possesses one faculty, in my opinion his chief recommendation, of speaking with facility on all occasions. The ancients were accustomed to believe this talent could only be the effect, though the honourable effect, of continual industry. Whatever is the necessity of the occasion, as soon as he rises, at the very waving of his hand and motion of his foot, an exuberance of words (like the Pompeian band, bound to their leader by the solemnity of an oath), press themselves forwards with zealous eagerness; and very remarkable it is that, whilst speaking with great variety, and still greater celerity, in all the turns and changes of debate, he is accurate in the choice, and correct in the application of his words, that he never in the

minutest instance deviates from grammatical precision. To which facility it is to be added, that in disputation he preserves one uniform tenour, and that regularity which seems best and most properly adapted to the order of his sentiments, as prompted by the contingence of the occasion. There is no pause nor hesitation in his speaking; he never seems to deliberate, even for a moment, as if selecting, from two things present to his fancy, the one most eligible for use or for ornament.

There are many, however, who do not entirely approve of that rapidity of style, which is produced by the imagination when warm with new ideas. Yet these, nevertheless, acknowledge, that if this style were committed to writing, it could not be made more polished or more perfect. The application perhaps of unusual, and of what are termed attic expressions, may be defective in strength, but is sometimes exceedingly beautiful. It sometimes also happens that a sentence, however decorated by well chosen words, carries with it little or no impression; the words themselves may be offensive in their operation upon the ear: and very often the speech to which we have listened with attentive pleasure appears, when we have the opportunity of examining it at leisure, weak, trifling, and unconnected.

The minister's style of oratory is always severe, and sometimes acrimonious; indeed it is sometimes necessary to make the retaliation his asperity provokes. At ridicule also he makes occasional attempts, either to prevent the effects of weari

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ness and satiety on his audience, or probably by way of relaxation to his own genius, naturally of a very different propensity. But in this respect he fails altogether; he is neither pointed, elegant, nor witty; and obviously discovers that, like Demosthenes, he is not so much averse to facetiousness as unsuccessful in attaining it.

But his principal defect is entirely different from any thing I have yet mentioned. As a civilian, in which kind of knowledge it becomes an orator to be particularly accomplished, he has no claim to praise. He is destitute of that ratiocination which is applied by philosophy to the investigation of human nature and human manners. He possessed not the impressive power of exciting the ardour of the soul, and of leaving on the minds of his hearers an energy not easily effaced. To obtain our applause, his speeches should be more compressed and less voluble; with greater marks of study and polished artifice; with a spirit of harmony natural and unaffected; not, as it were, laboured and constrained. If we determine that to be the only genuine eloquence, which at one time rouses to ardour, at another steals upon the sense; which communicates new ideas, and operates to the extinction of inveterate prejudice; the present minister is by many degrees distant from his father's excellence.

He is by nature vehement and impetuous, and can by no means allow a syllable to fall from another's tongue that is not either agreeable or honourable to himself. It is this very circumstance which induces me to check his presumption

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