rvaded the whole man, was written in the harsh rigid lines of his
face, was marked by the way in which he walked, in which he sat, in
which he stood, and, above all, in which he bowed." The Whig historian,
here following the Whig tradition, formed his estimate of the whole man
from what was merely a parliamentary mannerism. Pitt, as we have seen,
was a prey to shyness and _gaucherie_; and the rigid attitude which he
adopted for the House was not so much the outcome of a sense of
superiority (though he had an able man's consciousness of worth) as a
screen to hide those defects. A curiously stilted manner has been the
bane of many gifted orators and actors; but the real test is whether
they could throw it off in private. That Pitt threw it off in the circle
of his friends they all agree. The only defects which Wilberforce saw in
him were an inadequate knowledge of human nature, a too sanguine
estimate of men and of the course of events, and, in later years,
occasional displays of petulance in face of opposition.[789] The first
are the defects of a noble nature, the last those of a man whose
strength has long been overtaxed.

In fact, Pitt's constitution was unequal to the prolonged strain. In
childhood his astonishingly precocious powers needed judicious
repression. Instead, they were unduly forced by the paternal pride of
Chatham. At Cambridge, at Lincoln's Inn, and in Parliament the
intellectual pressure was maintained, with the result that his weakly
frame was constantly overwrought and attenuated by a too active mind.
Further, the pressure at Westminster was so continuous as to preclude
all chance of widening his nature by foreign travel. He caught but a
glimpse of the life of France in 1783; and his knowledge of other
peoples and politics was therefore perforce derived from books. It is
therefore surprising that the young Prime Minister displayed the
sagacity and tolerance which marked his career.

But his faculties, though not transcendently great, were singularly well
balanced, besides being controlled by an indomitable will and tact that
rarely was at fault. In oratory he did not equal Sheridan in wit and
brilliance, Burke in richness of thought and majesty of diction, or Fox
in massive strength and debating facility; but, while falling little
short of Fox in debate, he excelled him in elegance and conciseness,
Burke in point and common sense, Sheridan in dignity and argumentative
power, and all of them in the fe