a
flood. The sympathy and concurrence of his time, is, with his own mind,
joint parent of the work. He cannot follow nor frame ideals: his choice
is, to be what his age will have him, what it requires in order to be
moved by him; or else not to be at all.'[115]

Among Mr. Gladstone's physical advantages for bearing the orator's
sceptre were a voice of singular fulness, depth, and variety of tone; a
falcon's eye with strange imperious flash; features mobile, expressive,
and with lively play; a great actor's command of gesture, bold,
sweeping, natural, unforced, without exaggeration or a trace of
melodrama. His pose was easy, alert, erect. To these endowments of
external mien was joined the gift and the glory of words. They were not
sought, they came. Whether the task were reasoning or exposition or
expostulation, the copious springs never failed. Nature had thus done
much for him, but he superadded ungrudging labour. Later in life he
proffered to a correspondent a set of suggestions on the art of
speaking:--

1. Study plainness of language, always preferring the simpler word.
2. Shortness of sentences. 3. Distinctness of articulation. 4. Test
and question your own arguments beforehand, not waiting for critic
or opponent. 5. Seek a thorough digestion of, and familiarity with,
your subject, and rely mainly on these to prompt the proper words.
6. Remember that if you are to sway an audience you must besides
thinking out your matter, watch them all along.--(March 20, 1875.)

The first and second of these rules hardly fit his own style. Yet he had
seriously studied from early days the devices of a speaker's training. I
find copied into a little note-book many of the precepts and maxims of
Quintilian on the making of an orator. So too from Cicero's _De
Oratore_, including the words put into the mouth of Catulus, that nobody
can attain the glory of eloquence without the height of zeal and toil
and knowledge.[116] Zeal and toil and knowledge, working with an inborn
faculty of powerful expression--here was the double clue. He never
forgot the Ciceronian truth that the orator is not made by the tongue
alone, as if it were a sword sharpened on a whetstone or hammered on an
anvil; but by having a mind well filled with a free supply of high and
various matter.[117] His eloquence was 'inextricably mixed up with
practice.' An old whig listening to one of his budget speeches, said
with a touch of b