"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.'

"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