ascribed the two qualities for which his eloquence was most conspicuous namely, the lucid order of his reasonings, and the ready choice of his words answered that he believed he owed the former to an early study of the Aristotelian logic, and the latter to his father's practice in making him every day after reading over to himself some passage in the classics, translate it aloud and continuously into English prose. Nor was Lord Chatham less solicitous as to his own action and manner, which, according to Horace Walpole, was as studied and as successful as Garrick's*: but his care of it extended not only to speeches, but even in society. It is observed by himself, in one of his letters, that "behaviour, "though an external thing, which seems rather to belong to "the body than to the mind, is certainly founded in consider"able virtues;"** and he evidently thought very highly of the effect of both dress and address upon mankind. He was never seen on business without a full dress coat, and a tie wig, nor ever permitted his Under Secretaries of State to be seated in his presence.*** His very infirmities were managed to the best advantage; and it has been said of him that in his hands even his crutch could become a weapon of oratory. This striving for effect had, however, in some respects, an unfavourable influence upon his talents, and, as it appears to me, greatly injured all his written compositions. His private letters bear in general a forced and unnatural appearance; the style of homely texture, but here and there pieces with pompous epithets and swelling phrases. Thus also in his oratory his most elaborate speeches were his worst; and that speech which he delivered on the death of Wolfe, and probably intended as a mastepriece, was universally lamented as a failure. But when without forethought, or any other preparation than those talents which nature had supplied and education * Memoirs, vol. i. p. 479. &c. ** To Thomas Pitt, afterwards Lord Camelford, January 24. 1754. Letters published by Lord Grenville. Seward's Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 362. 1740. WILLIAM PITT (LORD CHATHAM). 15 cultivated, Chatham rose stirred to anger by some sudden subterfuge of corruption or device of tyranny. then was heard an eloquence never surpassed either in ancient or in modern times. It was the highest power of expression ministering to the highest power of thought. Dr. Franklin declares that in the course of his life he had seen sometimes eloquence without wisdom, and often wisdom without eloquence; in Lord Chatham only had he seen both united.* Yet so vivid and impetuous were his bursts of oratory, that they seemed even beyond his own control; instead of his ruling them, they often ruled him, and flashed forth unbidden, and smiting all before them. As in the oracles of old, it appeared not he that spake, but the spirit of the Deity within. In one debate, after he had just been apprised of an important secret of state, "I must not speak to-night," he whispered to Lord Shelburne, "for when once I am up, "everything that is in my mind comes out." No man could grapple more powerfully with an argument: but he wisely remembered that a taunt is in general of far higher popular effect, nor did he therefore disdain (and in these he stood unrivalled) the keenest personal invectives. His ablest adversaries shrunk before him crouching and silenced. Neither the skilful and polished Murray, nor the bold and reckless Fox, durst encounter the thunderbolts which he knew how to launch against them; and if these failed who else could hope to succeed? But that which gave the brightest lustre, not only to the eloquence of Chatham, but to his character, was his loftiness and nobleness of soul. If ever there has lived a man in modern times to whom the praise of a Roman spirit might be truly applied, that man beyond all doubt was William Pitt. He loved power- but only as a patriot should- because he knew and felt his own energies, and felt also that his country needed them—because he saw the public spirit languishing, and the national glory declined because his whole heart -- * Dr. Franklin to Earl Stanhope, Jan. 23. 1775. Chatham's Papers, vol. iv. p. 385. was burning to revive the one, and to wreathe fresh laurels round the other. He loved fame - but it was the fame that follows, not the fame that is run after not the fame that is gained by elbowing and thrusting, and all the little arts that bring forward little men but the fame that a Minister at length will and must wring from the very people whose prejudices he despises, and whose passions he controls. The ends to which he employed both his power and his fame will best show his object in obtaining them. Bred amidst too frequent examples of corruption; entering public life at a low tone of public morals; standing between the mock-Patriots and the sneerers at patriotism · between Bolingbroke and Walpole-he manifested the most scrupulous disinterestedness, and the most lofty and generous purposes: he shunned the taint himself, and in time removed it from his country. He taught British statesmen to look again for their support to their own force of character, instead of Court cabals or Parliamentary corruption. He told his fellow-citizens, not as agitators tell them, that they were wretched and oppressed, but that they were the first nation in the world — and under his guidance they became so! And moreover (I quote the words of Colonel Barré, in the House of Commons), "he was possessed of the happy talent of transfusing his own "zeal into the souls of all those who were to have a share in "carrying his projects into execution; and it is a matter well "known to many officers now in the House, that no man ever "entered the Earl's closet who did not feel himself, if pos"sible, braver at his return than when he went in."* Thus he stamped his own greatness on every mind that came in contact with it, and always successfully appealed to the higher and better parts of human nature. And though his influence was not exempt from the usual gusts and veerings of popularity - though for some short periods he was misrerepresented, and at others forgotten - though Wilkes might conclude a libel against him with the words, "He is said to "be still living at Hayes in Kent;" yet during the greater * Speech of Colonel Barré, May 13, 1778. Parl. Hist. vol. xix, 1740. WILLIAM PITT (LORD CHATHAM). 17 part of his career, the nation looked up to its "Great Com"moner," (for so they termed him,) as to their best and truest friend, and when he was promoted to an Earldom they still felt that his elevation over them was like that of Rochester Castle over his own shores of Chatham - raised above them only for their own protection and defence! Such was the great genius, that in office smote at once both branches of the House of Bourbon, and armed his countrymen to conquest in every clime; while at home (a still harder task!) he dissolved the old enmities of party prejudice, quenched the last lingering sparks of Jacobitism, and united Whigs and Tories in an emulous support of his administration. The two parties thus intermingled and assuaged at the death of George the Second, ere long burst forth again, but soon with a counter-change of names, so that the Whigs now stand on the old footing of the Tories, and the Tories on that of the Whigs. Were any further proof required of a fact which I have elsewhere fully, and, I believe, clearly unfolded, I could find it in the instance of Lord Chatham and of Mr. Pitt. It has never been pretended that the son entered public life with a different party, or on other principles than his father. Yet Lord Chatham was called a Whig, and Mr. Pitt a Tory. I am far, however, from maintaining that Chatham's views were always wise, or his actions always praiseworthy. In several transactions of his life, I look in vain for a steady and consistent compass of his course, and the horizon is too often clouded over with party spirit or personal resentments. But his principal defect, as I conceive, was a certain impracticability and waywardness of temper, that on some occasions overmastered his judgment and hurried him along. To give one instance of it; when, not in the hey-day of youth, not in the exasperations of office — but so late as 1772, and in the midst of his honoured retirement, he was replying to the speech of a Prelate, and to the opinion of a College of Divinity, he could so far fall in with the worst rants of the Dissenters, as to exclaim that "there is another College of Mahon, History. III. 2 "much greater antiquity as well as veracity, which I am sur"prised I have never heard so much as mentioned by any of "his Lordship's fraternity, and that is the College of the "poor, humble, despised fishermen who pressed hard upon "no man's conscience, yet supported the doctrines of Chris"tianity both by their lives and conversations. ..... But, "my Lords, I may probably affront your rank and learning "by applying to such simple antiquated authorities, for I "must confess that there is a wide difference between the "Bishops of those and the present times!"* Yet who was the Prelate against whom these sneers were aimed? Was it any Bishop of narrow views, of sordid and of selfish mind? No, it was the irreproachable, the mild, the good, the warmhearted and the open-handed Bishop Barrington! Yet, as I think, these frailties of temper should in justice be mainly ascribed to his broken health, and to the consequence of broken health - his secluded habits. When in society, Lord Chesterfield assures us, that he was "a most "agreeable and lively companion, and had such a versatility "of wit, that he could adapt it to all sorts of conversations." But to such exertion his health and spirits were seldom equal, and he, therefore, usually confined himself to the intercourse of his family, by whom he was most tenderly beloved, and of a few obsequious friends, who put him under no constraint, who assented to every word he spoke, and never presumed to have an opinion of their own. Such seclusion is the worst of any in its effects upon the temper; but seclusion of all kinds is probably far less favourable to virtue than it is commonly believed. When Whitefield questioned Conrade Mathew, who had been a hermit for forty years amidst the forests of America, as to his inward trials and temptations, the old man quaintly but impressively replied: "Be "assured, that a single tree which stands alone is more ex"posed to storms than one that grows among the rest!"** I have lingered too long, perhaps, on the character of * Thackeray's Life, vol. ii. p. 247. ** See Whitefield's Journal, Nov. 27. 1739. |