Henry Grattan, 1750-1820, an Irish orator and statesman, was born at
Dublin, and graduated from Trinity College, in his native city. By his
admiration of Mr. Pitt, the first Earl of Chatham, he was led to turn his
attention to oratory. In personal appearance, he was unprepossessing; but
his private character was without a blemish.
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The secretary stood alone. Modern degeneracy had not reached him. Original
and unaccommodating, the features of his character had the hardihood of
antiquity. His august mind overawed majesty itself. No state chicanery, no
narrow system of vicious politics, no idle contest for ministerial
victories, sank him to the vulgar level of the great; but overbearing,
persuasive, and impracticable, his object was England, his ambition was
fame.
Without dividing, he destroyed party; without corrupting, he made a venal
age unanimous. France sunk beneath him. With one hand he smote the house
of Bourbon, and wielded in the other the democracy of England. The sight
of his mind was infinite; and his schemes were to effect, not England, not
the present age only, but Europe and posterity. Wonderful were the means
by which those schemes were accomplished; always seasonable, always
adequate, the suggestion of an understanding animated by ardor and
enlightened by prophecy.
The ordinary feelings which make life amiable and indolent, were unknown
to him. No domestic difficulties, no domestic weakness, reached him; but,
aloof from the sordid occurrences of life, and unsullied by its
intercourse, he came occasionally into our system, to counsel and decide.
A character so exalted, so strenuous, so various, so authoritative,
astonished a corrupt age, and the treasury trembled at the name of Pitt,
through all classes of venality. 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 his only talents. His eloquence was an era in the
senate; peculiar and spontaneous; familiarly expressing gigantic
sentiments and instructive 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. He did not conduct the
understanding through the painful subtilty of argumentation, nor was he
ever on the rack of exertion; but rather lightened upon the subject, and
reached the point by the flashings of the mind, which, like those of the
eye, were felt, but could not be followed.
Upon the whole, there was in this man something that could create,
subvert, or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an eloquence, to
summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds of slavery asunder, and
to rule the wildness of free minds with unbounded authority; something
that could establish or overwhelm empires, and strike a blow in the world
that should resound through the universe.
NOTES.--Demosthenes (b. 385, d. 322, B. C.) was the son of a cutler at
Athens, Greece. By diligent study and unremitting toil, he became the
greatest orator that ever lived.
Tully, Marcus Tullius Cicero (b. 106, d. 43, B. C.), was the most
remarkable of Roman orators. He held the highest office of the Republic.