424 A BIOGRAPHICAL CONTRAST second to them in mental endowments, by Sheridan, and Windham, and Barré, by Canning and Tierney, by Wedderburn, Lee, Dundas, Scott, and Thurlow, is a remarkable illustration of the strength and fertility of the English race. Pitt and Fox differed, to begin with, in the conditions under which they entered upon a public career. The hereditary prejudices which attended the one were, as Lord Brougham remarks, not less unfavourable than the prepossessions derived from his father's character and renown were auspicious to the entrance of the other upon the theatre of public affairs. Fox's father, as we have seen, had no following, no influence, and no popularity; whereas the name of Chatham had a spell which the public mind willingly acknowledged. His son succeeded to an ample inheritance of gratitude and affection; and at the very threshold of his public life seemed invested, so to speak, with the lustre of his father's genius and elevated patriotism. A not less conspicuous difference attended the after career of the two statesmen. Fox held office only at intervals, and altogether for only a short period; he was never First Minister. Pitt was seldom in Opposition; and ruled the country as premier, almost without control, for nearly twenty years. Fox was at the head of a small and divided party, unpopular in the country, and with scarcely any influence in either House of Parliament. Pitt commanded a large, a compact, an almost overwhelming majority, which had the support of the Crown as well as the confidence of the nation. The contrast between the two rivals extended, as we have said, to their external characteristics. We have BETWEEN FOX AND PITT. 425 described the burly frame, the "rude health" (until impaired by irregularities of life), the easy fascinating manners, and the frank open countenance of the great Whig leader. Pitt was of a delicate constitution; tall and slender in person; in his demeanour reserved and even frigid. Wraxall says of him that he seemed never to invite approach or to encourage acquaintance, though he could at times be polite, communicative, and even gracious. While Fox was always accessible to his friends and followers, Pitt, from the instant he entered the doorway of the House of Commons, advanced up the floor with a firm quick step, his head erect and thrown back, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and refusing to favour with any sign of recognition his most devoted adherents. Morally, the contrast was in Pitt's favour. He had profited by his father's example of purity, by the healthy atmosphere in which his early years had been spent. It is true that having been accustomed in his youth to take large quantities of port wine* as a remedy for his constitutional feebleness, he remained through life too partial to the bottle; but he was wholly free from the serious failings which the biographer has to lament in Charles James Fox. † To compare the two statesmen as orators is necessarily * At the recommendation of the family physician, Dr. Addington. Lord Stanhope says it was a remedy which at that time he took with manifest advantage; but the ultimate effect must have been injurious. It is significant of the prevailing laxity that Pitt's decorum of life was actually imputed to him as a fault. Thejests which it drew from the Whig satirists are mostly unfit for quotation. Their nature may be inferred from the following verse in a song by that Bacchanalian lyrist, Captain Morris: 426 THE TWO ORATORS. a difficult task. True eloquence is the natural outcome of the orator's genius, character, disposition, and objects. It is influenced by all that he is and all that he wishes to be. Culture and practice may make a rhetorician or a debater; but the orator must find in himself the fire and force which he infuses into his speech. Speaking broadly, we should say that Fox was an orator, and Pitt a rhetorician. The former was spontaneous, genuine, self-communicative; the latter, artificial, elaborate, and unsympathetic. Lord Stanhope says that Fox would have been unquestionably the first orator of his age had it not been for Pitt; and that Pitt would have been unquestionably the first orator of his age had it not been for Fox. This is epigrammatic, but it seems to us incorrect. We are disposed to place the Whig leader above his competitor, just as we should place Fox himself below Chatham. The remark of Windham, that Pitt always seemed to him as if he could make a King's speech off-hand, points to a grave defect in his oratorical method. It suffered from an excess of dignity, from a frigid stateliness, from an over carefulness of phrase and deficiency of sentiment. The speaker's entire deficiency of imagination (in which he contrasted so remarkably with his illustrious father), was visible in the absence of appropriate illustration and figurative expression. The sole ornament he allowed himself was a quotation from CHARACTER OF PITT'S ORATORY. 427 a Latin poet; always felicitous in its appositeness.* The great peculiarity of his eloquence was its marvellous fluency; a calm and liquid flow, possible only to a statesman of coldly serene temper. We meet with none of those passages of magnificent declamation, of passionate apostrophe and scathing invective, which adorn the speeches of Chatham; none of those outburst of deep pathos or exuberant humour, and those lofty appeals to first principles, which embellish the speeches of Fox; none of those luxuriant amplifications and rich effusions of copious fancy which are so frequent in the speeches of Burke. All is regular equable, unbroken, and lucid. Who can fail to admire, however, the admirable clearness of statement, the elevated character of diction, the distinctness of method, the forcibleness of reasoning which are always present? Who but must acknowledge the force of sarcasm which is occasionally employed with so much effect, and yet without interrupting the general evenness, the lofty repose of the whole? We can well believe, from a perusal of Pitt's orations, that his contemporaries did not exaggerate when they compared his deportment and bearing in debate to those of Marlborough in the field. If he descended into the arena it was as an acknowledged chief rather than as a combatant. It was for him to ride on the whirlwind and direct the storm. His courage was invincible, but it was without fire or passion, deriving nothing from the ebullitions "Of mounting spirits, or fermenting blood.” * As in his citation from Statius applied to the execution of Louis the 428 HIS "STATE-PAPER STYLE.” He never lost his self-possession; no tempest of opposition could shake his firmness. Such qualifications as we have indicated must necessarily place their possessor in the first class of orators, but not indisputably foremost in that class. For they imply a monotony of manner and matter which could not be otherwise than a grave defect. Pitt said all he had to say in nearly the same way, in the same "state paper style," with the same nicely balanced periods and measured phraseology. Hence it came to pass, as Lord Brougham remarks, that the speaker was never forgotten in his speech, the artist never lost in his work. He was not without earnestness and sincerity, but he spoke from the mind rather than the heart. So, while moved to admire the flood of well-chosen language, and to wonder at the consummate skill with which the argument was managed, the listener always remembered that a first-rate artist was before him, was arranging an ably-contrived exhibition; that he was gazing "upon a wonderful performer" indeed, but still upon a performer. Yet it may be admitted that, as Sir Robert Grant observes, every part of his speaking, in sentiment, in language, and in delivery, evidently bore the stamp of his character, communicating a definite and varied apprehension of the qualities of "strenuousness without bustle, unlaboured intrepidity, and severe greatness." But even when this has been said, we must refuse to agree with Mr. Gifford that "it combined the eloquence of Tully with the energy of Demosthenes." As far as we can judge from the few specimens that have descended * Quarterly Review, iv. 268, 269. |