Page:How to Get Strong (1899).pdf/347

 known, Andrew Jackson was the only bully who was not also a coward."—Parton's Life of Jackson.

A greyhound's body, with the tenacity of a bulldog.

It was high praise of Fox as an orator when Wilberforce said that he could begin at full speed and roll on for hours without fatiguing himself or his audience; it exalts our estimate of his genius when we learn that after his great speech in the trial of Warren Hastings, as Walpole says, "he was seen handing the ladies into their coaches, with all the gayety and prattle of an idle gallant"; but he won a very warm place in American hearts when throughout the Revolution he was the relentless opponent of all coercive measures; and did the utmost that a powerful advocate could do for the claims of the Colonists. The Regency, the trial of Warren Hastings, the French Revolution, and the events which followed it, gave ample scope to his talents and energies, even in the face of so brilliant a rival as Pitt.

Desultory and ineffective till he warmed; he did best when he was provoked or excited; he required the kindling pulse, the explosive spark; always happiest in reply; if interrupted by cries of "Order!" he pressed home his arguments with increasing vehemence; with redoubled blows and repeated bursts of extemporaneous declamation almost overpowered the audience; and effectually checked all further interruption. Fox had not the teeming knowledge, the broad, sweeping view, the marvellous forecast, the prophetic vision of Burke; but he surpassed him as an orator, because he had more tact; and kept to the topics of the hour; until Burke himself said that he was "the most brilliant and accomplished debater the world ever saw."

And this Eton boy and Oxford man, entering the House of Commons at nineteen, in defiance of all rules—a skilful mathematician; critical classical scholar; master of French; fascinator alike of his school-fellows in youth, and of all men in manhood; during his whole life passionately in love with the great authors of antiquity, whose companionship he kept up at every moment snatched from Parliamentary duty; in private theatricals distinguishing himself alike in tragedy and in high comedy; with a