The most fastidious critic is by no means the best judge,
seldom even a fairly good judge, of the public speaker. He
is likely to be a stranger to the emotion which the orator
inspires and excites. He is likely to fall into mistakes like
that which Goldwin Smith makes about Patrick Henry. Mr.
Smith ridicules Henry's speech and action and voice. The
emotion which the great Virginian stirred in the breasts of
his backwoodsmen seems very absurd to this cultured Englishman.
The bowing and changes of countenance and gesticulating of
the orator seem to him like the cheapest acting. Yet to us
who understand it, it does not seem that Patrick Henry in
the old church at Richmond need yield the palm to Chatham
in St. Stephen's Chapel, either for the grandeur of his theme
or of his stage, or the sublimity of his eloquence.
Matthew Arnold had the best pair of intellectual eyes of
our time. But he sometimes made a like mistake as a critic
of poetry. He speaks slightingly of Emerson's Fourth of
July Ode--
Oh tenderly the haughty day
Fills his blue urn with fire;
One morn is in the mighty heaven,
And one in our desire.
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