On the 2d of June, in presenting a petition to the House of Lords, he made his third and last appearance as an orator, in that assembly.  In his way home from the House that day, he called, I remember, at my lodgings, and found me dressing in a very great hurry for dinner.  He was, I recollect, in a state of most humorous exaltation after his display, and, while I hastily went on with my task in the dressing-room, continued to walk up and down the adjoining chamber, spouting forth for me, in a sort of mock heroic voice, detached sentences of the speech he had just been delivering.  “I told them,” he said, “that it was a most flagrant violation of the Constitution—­that, if such things were permitted, there was an end of English freedom, and that ——­“—­“But what was this dreadful grievance?” I asked, interrupting him in his eloquence.—­“The grievance?” he repeated, pausing as if to consider—­“Oh, that I forget."[71] It is impossible, of course, to convey an idea of the dramatic humour with which he gave effect to these words; but his look and manner on such occasions were irresistibly comic; and it was, indeed, rather in such turns of fun and oddity, than in any more elaborate exhibition of wit, that the pleasantry of his conversation consisted.

Though it is evident that, after the brilliant success of Childe Harold, he had ceased to think of Parliament as an arena of ambition, yet, as a field for observation, we may take for granted it was not unstudied by him.  To a mind of such quick and various views, every place and pursuit presented some aspect of interest; and whether in the ball-room, the boxing-school, or the senate, all must have been, by genius like his, turned to profit.  The following are a few of the recollections and impressions which I find recorded by himself of his short parliamentary career:—­

“I have never heard any one who fulfilled my ideal of an orator.  Grattan would have been near it, but for his harlequin delivery.  Pitt I never heard.  Fox but once, and then he struck me as a debater, which to me seems as different from an orator as an improvisatore, or a versifier, from a poet.  Grey is great, but it is not oratory.  Canning is sometimes very like one.  Windham I did not admire, though all the world did; it seemed sad sophistry.  Whitbread was the Demosthenes of bad taste and vulgar vehemence, but strong, and English.  Holland is impressive from sense and sincerity.  Lord Lansdowne good, but still a debater only.  Grenville I like vastly, if he would prune his speeches down to an hour’s delivery.  Burdett is sweet and silvery as Belial himself, and I think the greatest favourite in Pandemonium; at least I always heard the country gentlemen and the ministerial devilry praise his speeches up stairs, and run down from Bellamy’s when he was upon his legs.  I heard Bob Milnes make his second speech; it made no impression.  I like Ward—­studied, but keen, and sometimes eloquent.  Peel, my school and form fellow (we sat within two of each other), strange to say, I have never heard, though I often wished to do so; but from what I remember of him at Harrow, he is, or should be, among the best of them.  Now I do not admire Mr. Wilberforce’s speaking; it is nothing but a flow of words—­’words, words, alone.’