ves the hopes of them.[2] They may expect to see you in the
House of Lords as many years as you were ascending to it. It is our
common good, that your admirable eloquence can now no longer be
employed but in the expression of your own sentiments and judgment.
The skilful pleader is now for ever changed into the just judge;
which latter character your lordship exerts with so prevailing an
impartiality, that you win the approbation even of those who
dissent from you, and you always obtain favour, because you are
never moved by it.

This gives you a certain dignity peculiar to your present
situation, and makes the equity, even of a Lord High Chancellor,
appear but a degree towards the magnanimity of a peer of Great
Britain.

Forgive me, my lord, when I cannot conceal from you, that I shall
never hereafter behold you, but I shall behold you, as lately,
defending the brave, and the unfortunate.[3]

When we attend to your lordship, engaged in a discourse, we cannot
but reflect upon the many requisites which the vainglorious
speakers of antiquity have demanded in a man who is to excel in
oratory; I say, my lord, when we reflect upon the precepts by
viewing the example, though there is no excellence proposed by
those rhetoricians wanting, the whole art seems to be resolved into
that one motive of speaking, sincerity in the intention. The
graceful manner, the apt gesture, and the assumed concern, are
impotent helps to persuasion, in comparison of the honest
countenance of him who utters what he really means. From hence it
is, that all the beauties which others attain with labour, are in
your lordship but the natural effects of the heart that dictates.

It is this noble simplicity which makes you surpass mankind in the
faculties wherein mankind are distinguished from other creatures,
reason and speech.

If these gifts were communicated to all men in proportion to the
truth and ardour of their hearts, I should speak of you with the
same force as you express yourself on any other subject. But I
resist my present impulse, as agreeable as it is to me; though
indeed, had I any pretensions to a fame of this kind, I should,
above all other themes, attempt a panegyric upon my Lord Cowper:
for the only sure way to a reputation for eloquence, in an age