Page:Modern Parliamentary Eloquence.djvu/63

 letter to the Queen as "the address of a consummate speaker." Later, when he obtained an uncontested entrance into the House, he impressed it greatly with his courage, sincerity, and oratorical power. Traces of his early career flashed out in his complete disregard of the aspirate when excited, and he had a peculiar trick of standing with his right leg raised upon the bench and his elbow resting upon it as he addressed the House. His towering bulk and resounding voice (which almost equalled the thunder of Mr. John Burns) added to the impression of weight and power, and I can well believe that had he pursued less violent lines of agitation or been identified with more popular causes, he might have obtained an influence with the democracy second only to that of Daniel O'Connell.

I pass from the class of politicians who were speakers, to another class, the speakers who were politicians. I speak of a number of persons celebrated in their day, but now well-nigh forgotten, and of a class of speech which is not oratory but rhetoric, though the exaggeration of contemporaries sometimes mistakes it for the authentic article. These men were of very different order of merit, all had great abilities, and some attained to high office; but the glitter and sparkle of their ornate art has left no permanent mark upon the history of their time. I seem to trace a lineal descent in these exponents of a style in which Canning, and to a less extent Macaulay, were acknowledged masters, but which in inferior hands could only achieve an ephemeral reputation. They are Richard Lalor Sheil, George Smythe (afterwards Lord Strangford), Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Robert Lowe, Patrick Smyth, and Joseph Cowen. Since the last named died the stock has become extinct and seems unlikely to be renewed.

Of these Sheil carried his art to the highest pitch of artificial elaboration. He was an essentially histrionic speaker, both in action and voice. "Did not scream?" some one asked of Mr. Gladstone. "He was all scream" is said to have been the reply. Professor Jebb seems to have thought that Sheil's famous apostrophe about the aliens in the House