The same disqualification attached to the oratory of Lord Brougham, whose speech at the bar of the House of Lords in defence of Queen Caroline had made so deep an impression.  His extraordinary fierceness and even violence of nature pervaded his whole physical as well as intellectual being.  When he spoke he was on springs and quicksilver, and poured forth sarcasm, invective, argument, and declamation in a promiscuous and headlong flood.  Yet all contemporary evidence shows that his grandest efforts were dogged by the inevitable fate of the man who, not content with excellence in one or two departments, aims at the highest point in all.  In reading his speeches, while one admires the versatility, one is haunted by that fatal sense of superficiality which gave rise to the saying that “if the Lord Chancellor only knew a little law he would know something about everything.”

Pitt died in 1806, but he lived long enough to hear the splendid eloquence of Grattan, rich in imagination, metaphor, and epigram; and to open the doors of the official hierarchy to George Canning.  Trained by Pitt, and in many gifts and graces his superior, Canning first displayed his full greatness after the death of his illustrious master.  For twenty years he was the most accomplished debater in the House of Commons, and yet he never succeeded in winning the full confidence of the nation, nor, except in foreign affairs, in leaving his mark upon our national policy.  “The English are afraid of genius,” and when genius is displayed in the person of a social adventurer, however brilliant and delightful, it is doubly alarming.

We can judge of Canning’s speeches more exactly than of those of his predecessors, for by the time that he had become famous the art of parliamentary reporting had attained almost to its present perfection; and there are none which more amply repay critical study.  Second only to Burke in the grandeur and richness of his imagery, he greatly excelled him in readiness, in tact, and in those adventitious advantages which go so far to make an orator.  Mr. Gladstone remembered the “light and music” of the eloquence with which he had fascinated Liverpool seventy years before.  Scarcely any one contributed so many beautiful thoughts and happy phrases to the common stock of public speech.  All contemporary observers testify to the effect produced by the proud strength of his declaration on foreign policy:  “I called the New World into existence, to redress the balance of the Old.”  And the language does not contain a more magnificent or perfect image than that in which he likens a strong nation at peace to a great man-of-war lying calm and motionless till the moment for action comes, when “it puts forth all its beauty and its bravely collects its scattered elements of strength, and awakens its dormant thunder.”