EARL OF CHATHAM.

colleagues, Pitt replied, "I will not give them leave to think; this is the time; let us crush the whole House of Bourbon. But if the members of this board are of a different opinion, this is the last time I shall ever mix in its councils. I was called into the ministry by the voice of the people, and to them I hold myself answerable for my conduct. I am to thank the ministers of the late king for their support; I have served my country with success; but I will not be responsible for the conduct of the war any longer than while I have the direction of it." To this declaration the president of the council answered, "I find the gentleman is determined to leave us; nor can I say that I am sorry for it, since he would otherwise have certainly compelled us to leave him. But if he is resolved to assume the right of advising his Majesty, and directing the operations of the war, to what purpose are we called to this council? When he talks of being responsible to the people, he talks the language of the House of Commons, and forgets that at this board he is responsible only to the king. However, though he may possibly have convinced himself of his infallibility, still it remains that we should be equally convinced before we can resign our understandings to his direction, or join with him in the measure he proposes." The opposition he thus encountered the nation attributed to the growing influence of Lord Bute. But however this may have been, Pitt was a man of too high, not to say imperious a temper, to remain as the nominal head of a cabinet which he was no longer able to direct. Accordingly, on the 5th of October 1761, he resigned all his appointments; and, as some reward for his services, his wife was created Baroness Chatham in her own right, whilst a pension of £3000 a year was settled on the lives of himself, his lady, and his eldest son.

No fallen minister, if fallen he could be called, ever carried with him more completely the confidence and regret of the nation, whose affairs he had so successfully administered. But at this time the king was also popular; and the war being continued by his new ministers with vigour and success, no discontent appeared until after the conclusion of the peace. The impulse given by Pitt had carried them forward in the same direction which he had pursued; but they were equally incapable of profiting by the advantages which had been already gained, or of prosecuting the war until the objects for which it was originally undertaken should be accomplished. The victories gained over France and Spain having greatly elated the nation, the feeling which almost universally prevailed amongst the people was, that we should either dictate peace as conquerors, or continue the war until our adversaries were more effectually humbled. This was likewise Pitt's opinion. Accordingly, when the preliminaries of peace came to be discussed in Parliament, he went down to the House of Commons, though suffering severely from an attack of gout, and spoke for nearly three hours in the debate, giving his opinion on each article of the treaty in succession, and, upon the whole, maintaining that it was inadequate to the conquests of our arms, and the just expectations of the country. Peace was, however, concluded on the 10th of February 1763, and Pitt continued unemployed.

After his resignation in 1761, Pitt conducted himself in a manner worthy of his high character. So far from giving a vexatious and undiscriminating opposition to the ministry which had succeeded his own, he maintained his popularity in dignified retirement, and came forward only when questions of great importance were to be discussed. One of these occurred in 1764, on the subject of general warrants, the illegality of which he denounced with all the energy and vigour of his eloquence. Another occasion, when he came forward in all his strength, was the consideration of the discontents which had arisen on account of the Stamp Act. In March 1766, the repeal of that act having been proposed by the Rockingham ministry, Pitt, though not connected with them, ably supported the measure, which was carried, but whether prudently or the contrary is still a matter of dispute. About this time Pitt had devised to him by will a considerable estate in Somersetshire, the property of Sir William Pynsent of Burton-Pynsent in that county, who, from admiration of his public character, disinherited his own relations, in order to bequeath to him the bulk of his fortune. After the dissolution of the Rockingham ministry, a new administration was formed, and in 1766 Pitt was appointed lord privy seal. At the same time he was created a peer by the titles of Viscount Pitt of Burton-Pynsent, in the county of Somerset, and Earl of Chatham, in the county of Kent.

Whatever might be his motives in accepting a peerage, it is certain that it proved very prejudicial to his character, and that in consequence he sank as much in popularity as he rose in nominal dignity. The "great commoner," as he was sometimes called, had formed a rank for himself, on the basis of his talents and exertions, which titular honours might obscure, but could not illustrate; and, with the example of Pulteney before him, he should have been careful to preserve it untarnished by empty distinctions, shared by the mean and the worthless as well as by the great, the gifted, and the good. Lord Chatham, however, did not long continue in office after being elevated to the peerage. On the 2d of November 1768 he resigned the place of lord privy seal, and never afterwards held any public employment; nor does he appear to have been at all desirous of returning to office. He was now sixty, and the gout, by which he had so long been afflicted, disabled him, by its frequent and violent attacks, for close and regular application to business. In the intervals of his disorder, however, he failed not to exert himself upon questions of great magnitude; and in 1775, 1776, and 1777, he most strenuously opposed the measures pursued by the ministers in the contest with America. His last appearance in the House of Lords was on the 2d of April 1778. He was then very ill, and much debilitated; but the question was important, being a motion of the Duke of Richmond to address his Majesty to remove the ministers, and to make peace with America on any terms. His lordship made a long speech, in which he summoned up all his remaining strength to pour out his disapprobation of a measure so injurious. But the effort overcame him, for in attempting to rise a second time, he fell down in a convulsive fit; and though he recovered for the time, his disorder continued to increase until the 11th of May, when he expired at his seat at Hayes. His death was lamented as a national loss. As soon as the news reached the House of Commons, which was then sitting, Colonel Barré made a motion, that an address should be presented to his Majesty, requesting that the Earl of Chatham should be buried at the public expense. But Mr Rigby having proposed the erection of a statue to his memory, as more likely to perpetuate the sense of his great merits entertained by the public, this was unanimously agreed to. A bill was soon afterwards passed, by which L4000 a year was settled upon John, now Earl of Chatham, and the heirs of the late earl to whom that title might descend. His lordship was married in 1754 to Lady Hester, sister of Earl Temple, by whom he had three sons and two daughters.

The principal outlines of Pitt's character have been variously sketched, sometimes with, and sometimes without, any depth of shadow. The truth is, that there scarcely ever lived a person who had less claim to be painted altogether en beau, or who so little merited unsparing censure. Lord Macaulay says, "That he was a great man, cannot for a moment be doubted; but his was not a complete and well-proportioned greatness. The public life of Hampden or of Somers resembles a regular drama, which can be criticised as a whole, and every scene of which is to be viewed in connection with the main action. The public life of Pitt, on the other hand, is a rude though striking piece, abounding in incongruities, and without any unity of plan, but redeemed by some noble passages, the effect of which is increased by the tameness or extravagance of what precedes and of what follows. His opinions were unfixed; and his conduct, at some of the most important conjunctures of his life, was evidently determined by pride and resentment. He had one fault, which of all human faults is most rarely found in company with true greatness. He was extremely affected. He was an almost solitary instance of a man of real genius, and of a brave, lofty, and commanding spirit, without simplicity of character. He was an actor in the closet, an actor in the council, and an actor in Parliament; and even in private society he could not lay aside his theatrical tones and attitudes. We know that one of the most distinguished of his partizans often complained that he could never obtain admittance to Lord Chatham's room till everything was ready for the representation; till the light was thrown with Rembrandt-like effect on the head of the illustrious performer; till the flannels had been arranged with the air of Grecian drapery, and the crutch placed as gracefully as that of Belisarius or Lear." Yet, with all his faults and affectations, he possessed, in a very extraordinary degree, many of the elements of true greatness. He had splendid talents, strong passions, quick sensibility, and vehement enthusiasm for the grand and the beautiful. There was something about him which ennobled even tergiversation itself. He often went wrong, very far wrong; but, amidst the abasement of error, he still retained what he had received from nature, "an intense and glowing mind." In an age of low and despicable prostitution, the age of Dodington and Sandys, it was something to have a man who might perhaps, under some strong excitement, have been tempted to ruin his country, but who never would have stooped to pilfer from her; a man whose errors arose, not from a sordid desire of gain, but from a fierce thirst of power, glory, and vengeance. "History owes him this attestation, that, at a time when anything short of direct embezzlement of the public money was considered as quite fair in public men, he showed the most scrupulous disinterestedness; that, at a time when it seemed to be generally taken for granted that government could be upheld only by the basest and most immoral arts, he appealed to the better and nobler parts of human nature; that he made a brave and splendid attempt to do, by means of public opinion, what no other statesman of his day thought it possible to do except by means of corruption; that he looked for support, not, like the Pellams, to a strong aristocratical connection, not, like Bute, to the personal favour of the sovereign, but to the middle class of Englishmen; that he inspired that class with a firm confidence in his integrity and ability; that, backed by them, he forced an unwilling court and an unwilling oligarchy to admit him to an ample share of power; and that he used his power in such a manner as clearly proved that he had sought it, not for the sake of profit or patronage, but from a wish to establish for himself a great and durable reputation by means of eminent services rendered to the state."

A great many unmeaning phrases have been employed, and much rhetorical exaggeration has been expended, in attempts to characterize Lord Chatham's style of eloquence. The following estimate by Lord Macaulay, from whom we have borrowed some of the foregoing observations, is at once deep, discriminating, and brilliant.

"In our time the audience of a member of Parliament is the nation. The three or four hundred persons who may be present when a speech is delivered may be pleased or disgusted by the voice and action of the orator; but in the reports which are read the next day by hundreds of thousands, the difference between the noblest and the meanest figure, between the richest and the shillest tones, between the most graceful and the most uncouth gesture, altogether vanishes. A hundred years ago, scarcely any report of what passed within the walls of the House of Commons was suffered to get abroad. In those times, therefore, the impression which a speaker might make on the persons who actually heard him was everything. The impression out of doors was hardly worth a thought. In the Parliaments of that time, therefore, as in the ancient commonwealths, those qualifications which enhance the immediate effect of a speech were far more important ingredients in the composition of an orator than they would appear to be in our time. All those qualifications Pitt possessed in the highest degree. On the stage, he would have been the finest Brutus or Coriolanus ever seen. Those who saw him in his decay, when his health was broken, when his mind was jangled, when he had been removed from that stormy assembly of which he thoroughly knew the temper, and over which he possessed unbounded influence, to a small, a torpid, and an unfriendly audience, say that his speaking was then for the most part a low monotonous muttering, audible only to those who sat close to him; that, when violently excited, he sometimes raised his voice for a few minutes, but that it soon sank again into an unintelligible murmur. Such was the Earl of Chatham; but such was not William Pitt. His figure, when he first appeared in Parliament, was strikingly graceful and commanding, his features high and noble, his eye full of fire. His voice, even when it sank to a whisper, was heard to the remotest benches; when he strained it to its full extent, the sound rose like the swell of the organ of a great cathedral, shook the house with its peal, and was heard through lobbies and down staircases, to the Court of Requests and the precincts of Westminster Hall. He cultivated all these eminent advantages with the most assiduous care. His action is described, by a very malignant observer, as equal to that of Garrick. His play of countenance was wonderful; he frequently disconcerted a hostile orator by a single glance of indignation or scorn. Every tone, from the impassioned cry to the thrilling aside, was perfectly at his command. It is by no means improbable that the pains which he took to improve his great personal advantages had in some respects a prejudicial operation, and tended to nourish in him that passion for theatrical effect which was one of the most conspicuous blemishes in his character.

But it was not solely or principally to outward accomplishments that Pitt owed the vast influence which, during nearly thirty years, he exercised over the House of Commons. He was undoubtedly a great orator; and from the descriptions of his contemporaries, and the fragments of his speeches which still remain, it is not difficult to discover the nature and extent of his oratorical powers.

He was no speaker of set speeches. His few prepared discourses were complete failures. The elaborate panegyric which he pronounced on General Wolfe was considered as the very worst of all his performances. "No man," says a critic who had often heard him, "ever knew so little what he was going to say." Indeed, his facility amounted to a vice; he was not the master, but the slave of his own speech. So little self-command had he when once he felt the impulse, that he did not like to take part in a debate when his mind was full of an important secret of state. "I must sit still," he once said to Lord Shelburne on such an occasion, "for when once I am up, everything that is in my mind comes out."

Yet he was not a great debater. That he should not have been so when he first entered the House of Commons, is not strange; scarcely any person has ever become so without long practice and many failures. It was by slow degrees, as Burke said, that Mr Fox became the most brilliant and powerful debater that Parliament ever saw. Mr Fox himself attributed his own success to the resolution which he formed when very young, of speaking well or ill, at least once every night. "During five whole sessions," he used to say, "I spoke every night but one; and I regret only that I did not speak that night too." Indeed, it would be difficult to name any great debater who has not made himself a master of his art at the expense of his audience.

But as this art is one which even the ablest men have seldom acquired without long practice, so it is one which men of respectable abilities, with assiduous and intrepid practice, seldom fail to acquire. It is singular that, in such an art, Pitt, a man of splendid talents, great fluency, and dauntless boldness, whose whole life was passed in parliamentary conflict, and who during several years was the leading minister of the Crown in the House of Commons, should never have attained to high excellence. He spoke without premeditation; but his speech followed the course of his own thoughts, and not that of the previous discussion. He could, indeed, treasure up in his memory some detached expression of a hostile orator, and make it the text for sparkling ridicule or burning invective. Some of the most celebrated bursts of his eloquence were called forth by an unguarded word, a laugh, or a cheer. But this was the only sort of reply in which he appears to have excelled. He was perhaps the only great English orator who did not think it an advantage to have the last word, and who generally spoke by choice before his most formidable opponents. His merit was almost entirely rhetorical. He did not succeed either in exposition or refutation; but his speeches abounded with lively illustrations, striking apophthegms, well-told anecdotes, happy allusions, passionate appeals. His invective and sarcasm were tremendous. Perhaps no English orator was ever so much feared.

But that which gave most effect to his declamation was the air of sincerity, of vehement feeling, or moral elevation, which belonged to all that he said. His style was not always in the purest taste. Several contemporary judges pronounced it too florid. Walpole, in the midst of the rapturous eulogy which he pronounces on one of Pitt's greatest orations, owns that some of the metaphors were too forced. The quotations and classical stories of the orator are sometimes too trite for a clever school-boy. But these were niceties for which the audience cared little. The enthusiasm of the orator infected all who were near him; his ardour and his noble bearing put fire into the most frigid conceit, and gave dignity to the most puerile allusion."

Such is the character of this great statesman and orator, as drawn by one masterly hand. It may perhaps both instruct and interest our readers if we present another, delineated by an artist equally distinguished for the vigour, judgment, and fidelity with which he paints such grand pieces for the gallery of history. The preceding, as we have already said, is from the pen of Lord Macaulay; the following is understood to be from that of Lord Brougham:

"The first place among the great qualities which distinguished Lord Chatham is unquestionably due to firmness of purpose, resolute determination in the pursuit of his objects. This was the characteristic of the younger Brutus, as he said, who had spared his life to fall by his hand,—Quicquid vult, id cadde vult; and although extremely apt to be shown in excess, it must be admitted to be the foundation of all true greatness of character. Everything, however, depends upon the endowments in whose company it is found; and in Lord Chatham these were of a very high order. The quickness with which he could ascertain his object, and discover his road to it, was fully commensurate with his perseverance and his boldness in pursuing it; the firmness of grasp with which he held his advantage was fully equalled by the rapidity of the glance with which he discovered it. Add to this a mind eminently fertile in resources, a courage which nothing could daunt in the choice of his means, a resolution equally indomitable in their application, a genius, in short, original and daring, which bounded over the petty obstacles raised by ordinary men,—their squeamishness, and their precedents, and their forms, and their regularities,—and forced away its path through the entanglements of this base undergrowth to the worthy object ever in his view, the prosperity and the renown of his country. Far superior to the paltry objects of a grovelling ambition, and regardless alike of party and of personal considerations, he constantly set before his eyes the highest duty of a public man, to further the interests of his species. In pursuing his course towards that goal, he disdained alike the frowns of power and the gales of popular applause; exposed himself undaunted to the vengeance of the court, while he battled against its corruptions, and confronted, unabashed, the rudest shocks of public indignation, while he resisted the dictates of pernicious agitators; and could conscientiously exclaim, with an illustrious statesman of antiquity, "Ego hoc animo semper fuī ut iuviam virtute partam, gloria non invidiām patrem."

Nothing could be more entangled than the foreign policy of this country at the time when he took the supreme direction of her affairs; nothing could be more disastrous than the aspect of her fortunes in every quarter of the globe. With a single ally in Europe, the King of Prussia, and him beset by a combination of all the continental powers in unnatural union to effect his destruction; with an army of insignificant amount, and commanded by men only desirous of grasping at the emoluments, without doing the duties or incurring the risks of their profession; with a navy that could hardly keep the sea, and whose chieftains vied with their comrades on shore in earning the character given them by the new minister, of being utterly unfit to be trusted in any enterprise accompanied with "the least appearance of danger;" with a generally prevailing dislike of both services, which at once repressed all desire of joining either, and damped all public spirit in the country, by extinguishing all hope of success, and even all love of glory; it was hardly possible for a nation to be placed in circumstances more unsuicidal to military exertions; and yet war raged in every quarter of the world where our dominion extended, while the territories of our only ally, as well as those of our own sovereign in Germany, were invaded by France, and her forces by sea and land menaced our shores. In the distant possessions of the Crown the same want of enterprise and of spirit prevailed. Armies in the West were paralysed by the inaction of a captain who would hardly take the pains to write a despatch recording the nonentity of his operations; and in the East, while frightful disasters were brought upon our settlements by barbarian powers, the only military capacity that appeared in their defence was the accidental display of genius and valour by a merchant's clerk, who thus raised himself to celebrity (Mr., afterwards Lord, Clive). In this forlorn state of affairs, rendering it as impossible to think of peace as it seemed hopeless to continue the yet inevitable war, the base and sordid views of politicians kept pace with the mean spirit of the military caste; and parties were split or united, not upon any difference or agreement of public principle, but upon mere questions of patronage and share in the public spoil, while all seemed alike actuated by one only passion, the thirst alternately of power and of gain.

As soon as Mr Pitt took the helm, the steadiness of the hand that held it came to be felt in every motion of the vessel. There was no more of wavering councils, of torpid inaction, of listless expectancy, of abject despondency. His firmness gave confidence, his spirit roused courage, his vigilance secured exertion, in every department under his sway. Each man, from the first lord of the Admiralty down to the most humble clerk in the victualling office—each soldier, from the commander-in-chief to the most obscure contractor or commissioner—now felt assured that he was acting or indolent under the eye of one who knew his duties and his means as well as his own, and who would very certainly make all defaulters, whether through misfeasance or through nonfeasance, accountable for whatever detriment the commonwealth might sustain at their hands. Over his immediate coadjutors his influence swiftly obtained an ascendant which it ever after retained uninterrupted. Upon his first proposition for changing the conduct of the war he stood single among his colleagues, and tendered his resignation should they persist in their dissent; they at once succumbed, and from that hour ceased to have an opinion of their own upon any branch of the public affairs. Nay, so absolutely was he determined to have the control of those measures of which he knew the responsibility rested upon him alone, that he insisted upon the first lord of the Admiralty not having the correspondence of his own department; and no less eminent a naval character than Lord Anson, with his junior lords, were obliged to sign the orders issued by Mr Pitt while the writing was covered over from their eyes.

The effects of this change in the whole management of the public business, and in all the plans of the government, as well as in their execution, were speedily made manifest to all the world. The German troops were sent home, and a well-regulated militia being established to defend the country, a large disposable force was distributed over the various points whence the enemy might be annoyed. France, attacked on some points and menaced on others, was compelled to retire from Germany, soon afterwards suffered the most disastrous defeats, and, instead of threatening England and her allies with invasion, had to defend herself against attack, suffering severely in several of her most important naval stations. No less than sixteen islands, and settlements, and fortresses of importance, were taken from her in America, and Asia, and Africa, including all her West Indian colonies except St Domingo, and all her settlements in the East. The whole important province of Canada was likewise conquered; and the Havannah was taken from Spain. Besides this, the seas were swept clear of the fleets that had so lately been insulting all our colonies, and even all our coasts. Many general actions were fought and gained; one among them the most decisive that had ever been fought by our navy. Thirty-six sail of the line were taken or destroyed, fifty frigates, forty-five sloops of war. So brilliant a course of uninterrupted success had never in modern times attended the arms of any nation carrying on war with other states equal to it in civilization, and nearly a match in power. But it is a more glorious feature in the unexampled administration which history has to record when it adds, that all public distress had disappeared; all discontent in any quarter, both of the colonies and parent state, had ceased; that no oppression was anywhere practised, no abuse suffered to prevail; that no encroachments were made upon the rights of the subject, no malversations tolerated in the possessors of power; and that England, for the first time and for the last time, presented the astonishing picture of a nation supporting without murmur a widely extended and costly war, and a people hitherto torn with conflicting parties so united in the service of the commonwealth that the voice of faction had ceased in the land, and any discordant whisper was heard no more. "These," said the son of his first and most formidable adversary, Walpole, when informing his correspondent abroad that the session, as usual, had ended without any kind of opposition, or even of debate, "These are the doings of Mr Pitt, and they are wondrous in our eyes."

To genius irregularity is incident, and the greatest genius is often marked by eccentricity, as if it disdained to move in the vulgar orbit. Hence he who is fitted by his nature, and trained by his habits, to be an accomplished "pilot in extremity," and whose inclinations carry him forth to seek the deep when the waves run high, may be found, if not "to steer too near the shore," yet to despise the sunken rocks which they that can only be trusted in calm weather would have more surely avoided. To this rule it cannot be said that Lord Chatham afforded any exception; and although a plot had certainly been formed to eject him from the ministry, leaving the chief control of affairs in the feeble hands of Lord Bute, whose only support was court favour, and whose only talent lay in an expertness at intrigue, yet there can be little doubt that this scheme was only rendered practicable by the hostility which the great minister's unbending habits, his contempt of ordinary men, and his neglect of everyday matters, had raised against him among all the creatures both of Downing Street and St James's. In fact his colleagues, who necessarily felt humbled by his superiority, were needlessly mortified by the constant display of it; and it would have betokened a still higher reach of understanding, as well as a purer fabric of patriotism, if he whose great capacity threw those subordinates into the shade, and before whose vigour in action they were sufficiently willing to yield, had united a little suavity in his demeanour with his extraordinary powers, nor made it always necessary for them to acknowledge as well as to feel their inferiority. It is certain that the insulting arrangement of the Admiralty to which reference has been already made, while it lowered that department in the public opinion, rendered all connected with him his personal enemies; and indeed, though there have since his days been prime ministers whom he would never have suffered to sit even as puny lords at his boards, yet were one like himself again to govern the country, the Admiralty chief, who might be far inferior to Lord Anson, would never submit to the humiliation inflicted upon that gallant and skilful captain. Mr Pitt's policy seemed formed upon the assumption that either each public functionary was equal to himself in boldness, activity, and resource, or that he was to preside over and animate each department in person; and his confidence was such in his own powers that he reversed the maxim of governing, never to force your way where you can win it, and always disdained to insinuate where he could dash in, or to persuade where he could command. It thus happened that his colleagues were but nominally conduits, and though they durst not thwart him, yet rendered no heart-service to aid his schemes. Indeed it has clearly appeared since his time that they were chiefly induced to yield him implicit obedience, and leave the undivided direction of all operations in his hands, by the expectation that the failure of what they were wont to sneer at as "Mr Pitt's visions" would turn the tide of public opinion against him, and prepare his downfall from a height of which they felt that there was no one but himself able to dispossess him.

The same powerful writer, having thus sketched the character of the statesman, proceeds next to delineate that of the orator, as far as this can now be done from the extremely scanty and imperfect materials which have been preserved. The fame of Lord Chatham's eloquence is, in truth, almost wholly traditional.

"There is indeed hardly any eloquence, of ancient or of modern times, of which so little that can be relied on as authentic has been preserved; unless perhaps that of Pericles, Julius Cesar, and Lord Bolingbroke. Of the actions of the two first we have sufficient records, as we have of Lord Chatham's; of their speeches we have little that can be regarded as genuine; although, by unquestionable tradition, we know that each of them was second only to the greatest orator of their respective countries; while of Bolingbroke we only know, from Dean Swift, that he was the most accomplished speaker of his time; and it is related of Mr Pitt (the younger), that when the conversation rolled upon lost works, and some said they should prefer restoring the books of Livy, some of Tacitus, and some a Latin tragedy, he at once decided for a speech of Bolingbroke. What we know of his own father's oratory is much more to be gleaned from contemporary panegyrics, and accounts of its effects, than from the scanty, and for the most part doubtful, remains which have reached us.

All accounts, however, concur in representing those effects to have been prodigious. The spirit and vehemence which animated its greater passages, their perfect application to the subject-matter of debate, the appositeness of his invective to the individual assailed, the boldness of the feats which he ventured upon, the grandeur of the ideas which he unfolded, the heart-stirring nature of his appeals, are all confessed by the united testimony of all his contemporaries; and the fragments which remain bear out to a considerable extent such representations; nor are we likely to be misled by those fragments, for the more striking portions were certainly the ones least likely to be either forgotten or fabricated. To these mighty attractions was added the imposing, the animating, the commanding power of a countenance singularly expressive; an eye so piercing that hardly any one could stand its glare; and a manner altogether singularly striking, original, and characteristic, notwithstanding a peculiarly defective and even awkward action. Latterly, indeed, his infirmities precluded all action; and he is described as standing in the House of Lords, leaning upon his crutch, and speaking for ten minutes together in an under-tone of voice scarcely audible, but raising his notes to their full pitch when he broke out into one of his grand bursts of invective or exclamation. But in his earlier time, his whole manner is represented as having been beyond conception animated and imposing. Indeed, the things which he effected by it principally, or at least which nothing but a most striking and commanding tone could have made it possible to attempt, almost exceed belief. Some of these sallies are indeed examples of that approach made to the ludicrous by the sublime which has been charged upon him as a prevailing fault, and represented under the name of charlatanerie—a favourite phrase with his adversaries, as it in later times has been with the ignorant undervaluers of Lord Erskine. It is related that once in the House of Commons he began a speech with the words, "Sugar, Mr Speaker,"—and then, observing a smile to prevail in the audience, he paused, looking fiercely around, and with a loud voice, rising in its notes, and swelling into vehement anger, he is said to have pronounced again the word "Sugar!" three times,—and having thus quelled the House, and extinguished every appearance of levity or laughter, turned round and disdainfully asked, "Who will laugh at sugar now?" We have this anecdote on good traditional authority; that it was believed by those who had the best means of knowing Lord Chatham, is certain; and this of itself shows their sense of the extraordinary powers of his manner, and the reach of his audacity in trusting to those powers.

There can be no doubt that of reasoning,—of sustained and close argument,—his speeches had but little. His statements were desultory though striking, perhaps not very distinct, certainly not at all detailed, and as certainly every way inferior to those of his celebrated son. If he did not reason cogently, he assuredly did not compress his matter vigorously. He was anything rather than a concise or a short speaker; not that his great passages were at all diffuse, or in the least degree loaded with superfluous words; but he was prolix in the whole texture of his discourse, and he was certainly the first who introduced into our senate the practice, adopted in the American war by Mr Burke, and continued by others, of long speeches—speeches of two and three hours, by which oratory has gained little and business less. His discourse was, however, fully informed with matter—his allusions to analogous subjects, and his reference to the history of past events were frequent—his expression of his own opinions was copious and free, and stood very generally in the place of any elaborate reasoning in their support. A noble statement of enlarged views, a generous avowal of dignified sentiments, a manly and somewhat severe contempt for all petty or mean views, whether their baseness proceeded from narrow understanding or from corrupt bias, always pervaded his whole discourse; and, more than any other orator since Demosthenes, he was distinguished by the nobleness of feeling with which he regarded, and the amplitude of survey which he cast upon, the subject-matters of debate. His invective was unsparing and hard to be endured, although he was a less eminent master of sarcasm than his son, and rather overwhelmed his antagonist with the burst of words and vehement indignation, than wounded him by the edge of ridicule, or tortured him with the gall of bitter scorn, or fixed his arrow in the wound by the barb of epigram. These things seemed as it were to be taken too much labour and too much art; more labour than was consistent with absolute scorn, more art than could stand with heartfelt rage, or entire contempt inspired by the occasion, at the moment, and on the spot. But his great passages,—those by which he has come down to us, those which gave his eloquence its peculiar character, and to which its dazzling success was owing,—were as sudden and unexpected as they were natural. Every one was taken by surprise when they rolled forth; every one felt them to be so natural that he could hardly understand why he had not thought of them himself, although into no one's imagination had they ever entered. If the quality of being natural without being obvious is a pretty correct description of felicitous expression, or what is called fine writing, it is a yet more accurate representation of fine passages or felicitous hits in speaking. In these all popular assemblies take boundless delight; by these, above all others, are the minds of an audience at pleasure moved or controlled. They form the grand charm of Lord Chatham's oratory; they were the distinguishing excellence of his great predecessor, and gave him at will to wield the fierce democracy of Athens, and to fulmine over Greece."

Many years ago, a small volume was published by Lord Grenville, containing letters written by the Earl of Chatham to his nephew Thomas Pitt, Lord Camelford. They are replete with excellent advice, conveyed in an easy, affectionate, and not inelegant style, having all of them been penned evidently without effort, under the simple impulse of the kindly feelings and anxious interest which they manifest throughout. At the same time, they might have been written by a person vastly inferior to Lord Chatham; and indeed one can scarcely avoid surprise at the absence of every trace of that genius, power, and originality for which the writer was so greatly distinguished.

Almon the bookseller has written Anecdotes of the Life of the Earl of Chatham, 3 vols. 8vo; the Rev. Mr Thackeray has illustrated the subject more accurately, as well as fully, in his History of the Earl of Chatham, 2 vols. 4to. None of his own writings have been given to the world, except a small volume of letters to the son of his elder brother, afterwards Lord Camelford, published some years ago by Lord Grenville; and his Correspondence, in 4 vols. 8vo, 1838–40. The Correspondence illustrates very fully his life and character, and furnishes valuable materials for the political history of his time. His wife, who died in 1803, bore him three sons and two daughters. The second son, the subject of the next article, gained a political fame capable of rivalling that of his illustrious father.