It would have been happy for himself and for his country if his elevation had been deferred.Eight or ten years, during which he would have had leisure and opportunity for reading and reflection, for foreign travel, for social intercourse and free exchange of thought on equal terms with a great variety of companions, would have supplied what, without any fault on his part, was wanting to his powerful intellect.He had all the knowledge that he could be expected to have; that is to say, all the knowledge that a man can acquire while he is a student at Cambridge, and all the knowledge that a man can acquire when he is First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer.
But the stock of general information which he brought from college, extraordinary for a boy, was far inferior to what Fox possessed, and beggarly when compared with the massy, the splendid, the various treasures laid up in the large mind of Burke.After Pitt became minister, he had no leisure to learn more than was necessary for the purposes of the day which was passing over him.What was necessary for those purposes such a man could learn with little difficulty.He was surrounded by experienced and able public servants.He could at any moment command their best assistance.From the stores which they produced his vigorous mind rapidly collected the materials for a good parliamentary case; and that was enough.Legislation and administration were with him secondary matters.To the work of framing statutes, of negotiating treaties, of organising fleets and armies, of sending forth expeditions, he gave only the leavings of his time and the dregs of his fine intellect.The strength and sap of his mind were all drawn in a different direction.It was when the House of Commons was to be convinced and persuaded that he put forth all his powers.
Of those powers we must form our estimate chiefly from tradition;for of all the eminent speakers of the last age Pitt has suffered most from the reporters.Even while he was still living, critics remarked that his eloquence could not be preserved, that he must be heard to be appreciated.They more than once applied to him the sentence in which Tacitus describes the fate of a senator whose rhetoric was admired in the Augustan age: "Haterii canorum illud et profluens cum ipso simul exstinctum est." There is, however, abundant evidence that nature had bestowed on Pitt the talents of a great orator; and those talents had been developed in a very peculiar manner, first by his education, and secondly by the high official position to which he rose early, and in which he passed the greater part of his public life.
At his first appearance in Parliament he showed himself superior to all his contemporaries in command of language.He could pour forth a long succession of round and stately periods, without premeditation, without ever pausing for a word, without ever repeating a word, in a voice of silver clearness, and with a pronunciation so articulate that not a letter was slurred over.
He had less amplitude of mind and less richness of imagination than Burke, less ingenuity than Windham, less wit than Sheridan, less perfect mastery of dialectical fence, and less of that highest sort of eloquence which consists of reason and passion fused together, than Fox.Yet the almost unanimous judgment of those who were in the habit of listening to that remarkable race of men placed Pitt, as a speaker, above Burke, above Windham, above Sheridan, and not below Fox.His declamation was copious, polished, and splendid.In power of sarcasm he was probably not surpassed by any speaker, ancient or modern; and of this formidable weapon he made merciless use.In two parts of the oratorical art which are of the highest value to a minister of state he was singularly expert.No man knew better how to be luminous or how to be obscure.When he wished to be understood, he never failed to make himself understood.He could with ease present to his audience, not perhaps an exact or profound, but a clear, popular, and plausible view of the most extensive and complicated subject.Nothing was out of place; nothing was forgotten; minute details, dates, sums of money, were all faithfully preserved in his memory.Even intricate questions of finance, when explained by him, seemed clear to the plainest man among his hearers.On the other hand, when he did not wish to be explicit,--and no man who is at the head of affairs always wishes to be explicit,--he had a marvellous power of saying nothing in language which left on his audience the impression that he had said a great deal.He was at once the only man who could open a budget without notes, and the only man who, as Windham said, could speak that most elaborately evasive and unmeaning of human compositions, a King's speech, without premeditation.
