"More striking than the audience was the man; more striking than
the multitude of eager onlookers from the shore was the rescuer,
with deliberate valour facing the floods ready to wash him down;
the veteran Ulysses, who, after more than half a century of
combat, service, toil, thought it not too late to try a further
'work of noble note,' In the hands of such a master of the
instrument the theme might easily have lent itself to one of those
displays of exalted passion which the House had marvelled at in
more than one of Mr. Gladstone's speeches on the Turkish question,
or heard with religious reverence in his speech on the Affirmation
Bill in 1883.
"What the occasion now required was that passion should burn low,
and reasoned persuasion hold up the guiding lamp. An elaborate
scheme was to be unfolded, an unfamiliar policy to be explained
and vindicated. Of that best kind of eloquence which dispenses
with declamation this was a fine and sustained example. There was
a deep, rapid, steady, onflowing volume of arguments, exposition,
exhortation. Every hard or bitter stroke was avoided. Now and
again a fervid note thrilled the ear and lifted all hearts. But
political oratory is action, not words--action, character, will,
conviction, purpose, personality.
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