Soon Harley acquired the authority of a leader among those with whom, notwithstanding wide differences of opinion, he ordinarily voted.  His influence in Parliament was indeed altogether out of proportion to his abilities.  His intellect was both small and slow.  He was unable to take a large view of any subject.  He never acquired the art of expressing himself in public with fluency and perspicuity.  To the end of his life he remained a tedious, hesitating and confused speaker.483

He had none of the external graces of an orator.  His countenance was heavy, his figure mean and somewhat deformed, and his gestures uncouth.  Yet he was heard with respect.  For, such as his mind was, it had been assiduously cultivated.  His youth had been studious; and to the last he continued to love books and the society of men of genius and learning.  Indeed he aspired to the character of a wit and a poet, and occasionally employed hours which should have been very differently spent in composing verses more execrable than the bellman’s.484 His time however was not always so absurdly wasted.  He had that sort of industry and that sort of exactness which would have made him a respectable antiquary or King at Arms.  His taste led him to plod among old records; and in that age it was only by plodding among old records that any man could obtain an accurate and extensive knowledge of the law of Parliament.  Having few rivals in this laborious and unattractive pursuit, he soon began to be regarded as an oracle on questions of form and privilege.  His moral character added not a little to his influence.  He had indeed great vices; but they were not of a scandalous kind.  He was not to be corrupted by money.  His private life was regular.  No illicit amour was imputed to him even by satirists.  Gambling he held in aversion; and it was said that he never passed White’s, then the favourite haunt of noble sharpers and dupes, without an exclamation of anger.  His practice of flustering himself daily with claret was hardly considered as a fault by his contemporaries.  His knowledge, his gravity and his independent position gained for him the ear of the House; and even his bad speaking was, in some sense, an advantage to him.  For people are very loth to admit that the same man can unite very different kinds of excellence.  It is soothing to envy to believe that what is splendid cannot be solid, that what is clear cannot be profound.  Very slowly was the public brought to acknowledge that Mansfield was a great jurist, and that Burke was a great master of political science.  Montague was a brilliant rhetorician, and, therefore, though he had ten times Harley’s capacity for the driest parts of business, was represented by detractors as a superficial, prating pretender.  But from the absence of show in Harley’s discourses many people inferred that there must be much substance; and he was pronounced to be a deep read, deep thinking gentleman, not a fine talker, but fitter to direct affairs of state than all the