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LORD BYRON'S FIRST SPEECH.

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money but three-pence halfpenny, and determined to spend that also in a pint of beer, which I believe, he was drinking before a public-house, as Hobhouse passed him (still without speaking) for the last time on their route. They were reconciled in London again.

One of his fancies was dining at all sorts of out-ofthe-way places. Somebody popped upon him in I know not what coffee-house in the Strand-and what

do

you think was the attraction? Why, that he paid a shilling (I think) to dine with his hat on. This he called his "hat house," and used to boast of the comfort of being covered at meal times.

When Sir Henry Smith was expelled from Cambridge for a row with a tradesman named “Hiron,” Matthews solaced himself with shouting under Hiron's windows every evening,

"Ah me, what perils do environ

The man who meddles with hot Hiron."

Ravenna, Nov. 12, 1820.

LORD BYRON'S FIRST SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

Lords Holland and Grenville, particularly the latter, paid me some high compliments in the course of their speeches, as you may have seen in the papers, and Lords Eldon and Harrowby answered me. I have had many marvellous eulogies repeated to me since, in person and by proxy, from divers persons ministerial -yea, ministerial!—as well as oppositionists. Lord Holland tells me I shall beat them all if I persevere; and Lord Grenville remarked that the construction of some of my periods are very like Burke's!! And so much for vanity. I spoke very violent sentences with a sort of modest impudence, abused everything and

everybody, and put the Lord Chancellor very much out of humour; and if I may believe what I hear, have not lost any character by the experiment. As to my delivery, loud and fluent enough, perhaps a little theatrical. I could not recognise myself or any one else in the newspapers.-To Mr. Hodgson, March 5, 1812.*

SHERIDAN'S OPINION OF BYRON'S ORATORY.

Sheridan's liking for me (whether he was not mystifying me I do not know, but Lady Caroline Lamb and others told me that he said the same both before and after he knew me,) was founded upon " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." He told me that he did not care about poetry (or about mine-at least, any but that poem of mine), but he was sure, from that and other symptoms, I should make an orator, if I would but take to speaking, and grow a parliament man. He never ceased harping upon this to me to the last; and I remember my old tutor, Dr. Drury, had the same notion when I was a boy; but it never was my turn of inclination to try. I spoke once or twice, as all young peers do, as a kind of introduction into public life; but dissipation, shyness, haughty and reserved opinions, together with the short time I lived in England after my majority (only about five years in all), prevented me from resuming the experiment. As far as it went, it was not discouraging, particularly my first speech (I spoke three or four times in all); but just after it, my poem of Childe Harold was published, and nobody ever thought about my prose afterwards,

* The speech was on the Nottingham Frame-breaking Bill, and was delivered on the 27th of February, 1812, a day or two before the appearance of "Childe Harold."

PARLIAMENTARY ORATORY.

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nor indeed did I; it became to me a secondary and neglected object, though I sometimes wonder to myself if I should have succeeded.-Journal.

PARLIAMENTARY ORATORY.

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 should 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."

VOL. I.

D

I doubt greatly if the English have any eloquence, properly so called; and am inclined to think that the Irish had a great deal, and that the French will have, and have had in Mirabeau. Lord Chatham and Burke are the nearest approaches to orators in England. I don't know what Erskine may have been at the bar, but in the House I wish him at the bar once more. Lauderdale is shrill, and Scotch, and acute.

But amongst all these, good, bad, and indifferent, I never heard the speech which was not too long for the auditors, and not very intelligible, except here and there. The whole thing is a grand deception, and as tedious and tiresome as may be to those who must be often present. I heard Sheridan only once, and that briefly, but I liked his voice, his manner, and his wit: and he is the only one of them I ever wished to hear at greater length.

The impression of Parliament upon me was, that its members are not formidable as speakers, but very much so as an audience; because in so numerous a body there may be little eloquence, (after all, there were but two thorough orators in all antiquity, and I suspect still fewer in modern times,) but there must be a leaven of thought and good sense sufficient to make them know what is right, though they can't express it nobly.

Horne Tooke and Roscoe both are said to have declared that they left Parliament with a higher opinion of its aggregate integrity and abilities than that with which they entered it. The general amount of both in most Parliaments is probably about the same, as also the number of speakers and their talent. I except orators, of course, because they are things of ages, and not of septennial or triennial re-unions. Neither House ever struck me with more awe or respect than the same number of Turks in a divan, or of Methodists in

PARLIAMENTARY ORATORY.

a barn, would have done. Whatever diffidence or nervousness I felt (and I felt both, in a great degree) arose from the number rather than the quality of the assemblage, and the thought rather of the public without than of the persons within,—knowing (as all know) that Cicero himself could never have altered the vote of a single lord of the bedchamber, or bishop. I thought our House dull, but the other animating enough upon great days.

I have heard that when Grattan made his first speech in the English Commons, it was for some minutes doubtful whether to laugh at, or cheer him. The débût of his predecessor, Flood, had been a complete failure, under nearly similar circumstances: but when the ministerial part of our senators had watched Pitt (their thermometer) for the cue, and saw him nod repeatedly his stately nod of approbation, they took the hint from their huntsman, and broke out into the most rapturous cheers. Grattan's speech, indeed, deserved them; it was a chef-d'œuvre. I did not hear that speech of his (being then at Harrow), but heard most of his others on the same question-also that on the war of 1815. I differed from his opinions on the latter question, but coincided in the general admiration of his eloquence.

When I met old Courtenay, the orator, at Rogers's the poet's, in 1811-12, I was much taken with the portly remains of his fine figure, and the still acute quickness of his conversation.* It was he who silenced Flood in

* Mr. Courtenay was a native of Ireland, but [descended from a branch of the noble Devonshire family of that name, He died in 1816, at the age of seventy-four. "He was," says Sir James Mackintosh, "a man of fine talents and of various accomplishments, which rendered his conversation agreeable, as his good nature and kind heart obtained for him the attachment of many excellent friends: but, from his speeches in parliament, strangers mistook him for a jester by profession."

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