public speaker, we may
picture him from Lord Dalling's description:--

"Every day, indeed, leaves us fewer of those who remember the
clearly chiseled countenance, which the slouched hat only
slightly concealed; the lip satirically curled; the
penetrating eye, peering along the Opposition benches, of
the old Parliamentary leader in the House of Commons. It is
but here and there that we find a survivor of the old days to
speak to us of the singularly mellifluous and sonorous voice,
the classical language,--now pointed with epigram, now
elevated into poetry, now burning with passion, now rich with
humor,--which curbed into still attention a willing and
long-broken audience."

As a statesman his place is more dubious. Like every English
politician not born to a title, however,--Burke is an instance,--he
was ferociously abused as a mere mercenary adventurer because his
livelihood came from serving the public. The following lampoon
is a specimen; the chief sting lies not in Canning's insolent
mockery,--"Every time he made a speech he made a new and permanent
enemy," it was said of him,--but in his not being a rich nobleman.

THE UNBELOVED

Not a woman, child, or man in
All this isle that loves thee, Canning.
Fools, whom gentle manners sway,
May incline to Castlereagh;
Princes who old ladies love
Of the Doctor[A] may approve;
Chancery lords do not abhor
Their chatty, childish Chancellor;
In Liverpool, some virtues strike,
And little Van's beneath dislike.
But thou, unamiable object,
Dear to neither prince nor subject,
Veriest, meanest scab for pelf
Fastening on the skin of Guelph,
Thou, thou must surely _loathe thyself_.

[A] Addington.

But his dominant taste was literary. His literature helped him to
the field of statesmanship; as a compensation, his statesmanship is
obscured by his literature. Bell says of him:--

"Canning's passion for literature entered into all his
pursuits. It colored his whole life. Every moment of leisure
was given up to books. He and Pitt were passionately fond of
the classics, and we find them together of an evening after a
dinner at Pitt's, poring over some old Grecian in a corner of
the drawing-room while the rest of the company are dispersed
in conversation.... In English writings his judgment was pure
and strict; and no man was a more perfect master