next thing to disappear. In the last--Parliament we often had Latin
quotations, but never from a member with a new constituency. I have
heard Greek quoted here, but that was long ago, and a great mistake. The
House was quite alarmed. Charles Fox used to say as to quotation, 'No
Greek; as much Latin as you like; and never French under any
circumstances. No English poet unless he has completed his century.'
These were, like some other good rules, the unwritten orders of the
House of Commons."

XII.

PARLIAMENTARY ORATORY--_continued_.

I concluded my last chapter with a quotation from Lord Beaconsfield,
describing parliamentary speaking as it was when he entered the House of
Commons in 1837. Of that particular form of speaking perhaps the
greatest master was Sir Robert Peel. He was deficient in those gifts of
imagination and romance which are essential to the highest oratory. He
utterly lacked--possibly he would have despised--that almost prophetic
rapture which we recognize in Burke and Chatham and Erskine. His manner
was frigid and pompous, and his rhetorical devices were mechanical.
Every parliamentary sketch of the time satirizes his habit of turning
round towards his supporters at given periods to ask for their applause;
his trick of emphasizing his points by perpetually striking the box
before him; and his inveterate propensity to indulge in hackneyed
quotation. But when we have said this we have said all that can be urged
in his disparagement. As a parliamentary speaker of the second and
perhaps most useful class he has never been excelled. Firmly though
dispassionately persuaded of certain political and economic doctrines,
he brought to the task of promoting them unfailing tact, prompt courage,
intimate acquaintance with the foibles of his hearers, unconquerable
patience and perseverance, and an inexhaustible supply of sonorous
phrases and rounded periods. Nor was his success confined to the House
of Commons. As a speaker on public platforms, in the heyday of the
ten-pound householder and the middle-class franchise, he was peculiarly
in his element. He had beyond most men the art of "making a platitude
endurable by making it pompous." He excelled in demonstrating the
material advantages of a moderate and cautious conservatism, and he
could draw at will and with effect upon a prodigious fund of
constitutional commonplaces. If we measure the merit of a parliamentary
speaker by his practical influence, we mu