Corruption imagined, indeed, that she had found defects in this
statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of his glory, and
much of the ruin of his victories--but the history of his country,
and the calamities of the enemy, answered and refuted her.
"Nor were his political abilities his only talents; his eloquence
was an era in the senate, peculiar and spontaneous, familiarly
expressing gigantic sentiments and instinctive wisdom--not like
the torrent of Demosthenes, or the splendid conflagration of
Tully; it resembled sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music
of the spheres. Like Murray, he did not conduct the understanding
through the painful subtilty of argumentation; nor was he, like
Townshend, for ever on the rack of exertion, but rather lightened
upon the subject, and reached the point by the flashings of his
mind, which, like those of his eye, were felt, but could not be
followed.
"Yet he was not always correct or polished; on the contrary, he
was sometimes ungrammatical, negligent, and unenforcing, for he
concealed his art, and was superior to the knack of oratory. Upon
many occasions he abated the vigour of his eloquence, but even
then, like the spinning of a cannon ball, he was still alive with
fatal, unapproachable activity.
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