over which the correcting hand has passed, and all that was minute or
superfluous is generalized and softened away.

Neither was it in such rhetorical passages as abound, perhaps, rather
lavishly, in this Speech, that the chief strength of Mr. Sheridan's
talent lay. Good sense and wit were the great weapons of his
oratory--shrewdness in detecting the weak points of an adversary, and
infinite powers of raillery in exposing it. These were faculties which he
possessed in a greater degree than any of his contemporaries; and so well
did he himself know the stronghold of his powers, that it was but rarely,
after this display in Westminster Hall, that he was tempted to leave it
for the higher flights of oratory, or to wander after Sense into that
region of metaphor, where too often, like Angelica in the enchanted
palace of Atlante, she is sought for in vain. [Footnote: Curran used to
say laughingly, "When I can't talk sense, I talk metaphor."] His
attempts, indeed, at the florid or figurative style, whether in his
speeches or his writings, were seldom very successful. That luxuriance of
fancy, which in Burke was natural and indigenous, was in him rather a
forced and exotic growth. It is a remarkable proof of this difference
between them, that while, in the memorandums of speeches left behind by
Burke, we find, that the points of argument and business were those which
he prepared, trusting to the ever ready wardrobe of his fancy for their
adornment,--in Mr. Sheridan's notes it is chiefly the decorative
passages, that are worked up beforehand to their full polish; while on
the resources of his good sense, ingenuity, and temper, he seems to have
relied for the management of his reasonings and facts. Hence naturally it
arises that the images of Burke, being called up on the instant, like
spirits, to perform the bidding of his argument, minister to it
throughout, with an almost coordinate agency; while the figurative
fancies of Sheridan, already prepared for the occasion, and brought forth