esse minor)
Seque malis negat esse parem: cui Musa querenti,
"Tu genus humanum voce carere cupis?
Tene adeo fatis diffidere! Non tibi Natus
Quem jam signavit Diva Loquela suum?
En! ego quae vindex 'mutis quoque piscibus' adsum,
Donatura cycni, si ferat hora, sonos,
Ipsa loquor vates: Patriae decus addere linguae
Hic sciet, ut titulis laus eat aucta tuis.
Hunc sua fata vocant; hunc, nostro numine fretum,
Apta jubent aptis ponere verba locis.
Hunc olim domus ipsa canet, silvaeque paternae,
Curiaque, et felix vatibus Herga parens.
Nec lingua caruisse voles, quo vindice vestrae
Gentis in aeternum fama superstes erit."
H. M. B.,
Aug., 1870.

The prophecy has scarcely been fulfilled; but it is true that from my
earliest days I have had an inborn love of oratory. The witchery of
words, powerful enough on the printed page, is to me ten times more
powerful when it is reinforced by voice and glance and gesture. Fine
rhetoric and lofty declamation have always stirred my blood; and yet I
suppose that Demosthenes was right, and that, though rhetoric and
declamation are good, still the most valuable asset for a public speaker
is a complete identification with the majority of his countrymen, in
their prejudices, their likings, and their hatreds.

If Oratory signifies the power of speaking without premeditation,
Gladstone stands in a class by himself, far above all the public
speakers whom I have ever heard. The records of his speaking at Eton and
Oxford, and the reports of his earliest performances in Parliament,
alike give proof that he had, as Coleridge said of Pitt, "a premature
and unnatural dexterity in the combination of words"; and this developed
into "a power of pouring forth, with endless facility, perfectly
modulated sentences of perfectly chosen language, which as far surpassed
the reach of a normal intellect as the feats of an acrobat exceed the
capacities of a normal body."

His voice was flexible and melodious (in singing it was a baritone);
though his utterance was perceptibly marked by a Lancastrian "burr"; his
gestures were free and graceful, though never violent; every muscle of
his face seemed to play its part in his nervous declamation; and the
flash of his deep-set eyes revealed the fiery spirit that was at work
within. It may be