; but no supporter of the government measure, of any colour,
advancing to reply to this volunteer, Bentinck was obliged to rise.
He came out like a lion forced from his lair. And so it happened, that
after all his labours of body and mind, after all his research and
unwearied application and singular vigilance, after having been at his
post for a month, never leaving the House, even for refreshment, he
had to undertake the most difficult enterprise in which a man can well
embark, with a concurrence of every disadvantage which could ensure
failure and defeat. It would seem that the audience, the subject, and
the orator, must be equally exhausted; for the assembly had listened for
twelve nights to the controversy, and he who was about to address them
had, according to his strange habit, taken no sustenance the whole day;
it being his custom to dine after the House was up, which was very
often long after midnight, and this, with the exception of a slender
breakfast, rigidly restricted to dry toast, was his only meal in the
four-and-twenty hours.

He had been forced to this regimen, from food exercising a lethargic
influence over him; so that, in addition to some constitutional weakness
in his organ, he usually laboured, when he addressed the House, under
the disadvantage of general exhaustion. And this was, no doubt, a
principal cause of that over-excitement and apparently unnecessary
energy in his manner of speaking, of which he was himself perfectly,
and even painfully, conscious. He was wont to say, that before he could
speak he had to make a voice, and, as it were, to pump it from the very
core of his frame. One who took a great interest in his success once
impressed on him the expediency of trusting entirely to his natural
voice and the interest and gravity of his matter, which, combined
with his position as the recognized leader of a great party, would be
adequate to command the attention of his audience; and he subsequently
endeavoured very often to comply with this suggestion. He endeavoured
also very much to control his redundancy of action and gesture, when
that peculiarity was pointed out to him with the delicacy, but the
sincerity, of friendship. He entirely freed himself from a very awkward
feature of his first style of speaking, namely, the frequent repetition
of a sentence, which seemed at first a habit inveterate with him; but
such was his force of will, that when the necessity of ridding himself
of this dr