St. Stephen’s
.
[In this Poem it is intended to give succinct sketches of our principal Parlia-
mentary Orators, commencing with the origin of
parliamentary oratory (in the Civil
Wars), and closing with the late Sir Robert Peel. The Poem will be completed in
Three
Parts.]
When frank-eyed War with Love stood hand in hand,
And cities oped on lonely Faeryland,
Song was the voice most faithful to the time,
And England spoke in Chaucer’s lusty rhyme.
Thus long ere yet the Orator is known,
Each age demands an utterance all its own ;
Now thrills in carols wise without a rule,
Now fires a camp, and now dictates a school.
But not till warring thoughts mature their strife,
Till some slow people swell to stormy life,
And, lost the inert hereditary awe,
Exact a reason where imposed law,—
Not till the right to argue truth be won,
The heart of many fires the lips of one ;
And the great Art-which sways this age of ours,
Stands forth as Justice ’midst conflicting powers,
And, lest the foe of all, Brute Force, prevail,
Leans on the-sword, while proffering but the scale.
What causes first in English halls combined
To free the voice ?—those which first freed the mind,
In Eastern tales, a fond enchanter’s care
Immures in rock a giant child of air ;
By its own growth the genius wears away
The yielding stone, and nears its native day ;
Till through pale fissures rushes in the storm,
And from the granite whirlwinds lift the form ;—
So forth soared Reason from the cells of Rome,
Rapt on the blasts that rent her prison-home ;
And her own pinions in their angry flight
Cast shadow down while sailing up to light.
Then Man, tormented with a glorious grief,
Scared by the space that spreads round unbelief,
Sought still to reconcile the earth and sky,
And to his trouble came Philosophy.
She came, as came from Jove a Prophet-Dream,
Mid Night’s last shade and Morning’s earliest beam,
And in weird parables of coming things
Showed truth to seers, but boded woe to kings.
Forms that hem round this social state of Man
Are so by custom blended into plan,
That thro’ one chink if some bold footstep steals,
Each fence is loosed, and all the structure reels.
Hark, Bacon speaks ! and walls, with which the wise
Had belted Nature, vanish ; startled eyes
Explore a bound, and skies expand on skies.
Faith thus dislodged from ancient schools and creeds,
Question to question, doubt to doubt succeeds—
Clouds gathering flame for thunders soon to be,
And glass’d on Shakspeare as upon a sea.
Each guess of others into worlds unknown
Shakspeare revolves, but guards concealed his own—
As in the infinite hangs poised his thought,
Surveying all things, and asserting nought.
And now, transferr’d from singer and from sage,
Stands in full day the spirit of the age—
Inquiry !—She, so coy when first pursued
In her own ancient arduous solitude,
Seized by the crowd, and dragged before their bar,
Changes her shape, and towers transformed to War ;
Inscribes a banner, flings it to the gales—
Cries, “ I am Truth, and Truth, when arm’d, prevails.”
Up leaps the zealot—Zeal must clear her way,
And fell the forests that obscure the day.
To guard the Bible flashes forth the sword,
And Cromwell rides, the servant of the Lord.
Twin-born with Freedom, then with her took breath
That Art whose dying will be Freedom’s death.
From Thought’s fierce clash in lightning broke the word ;
Ungagg’d at last the Isle’s strong Man was heard :
Still in their sheaths the direful swords repose ;
Voice may yet warn : The Orator arose !
Founders of England’s slow-built eloquence—
Truth’s last adornment as her first defence—
Pass—but as shadows ! Nevermore again
May the land need, yet reel beneath such men !
Lo, where from haunted floors the phantoms rise,
Pale through the mists which cleared for us the skies,
There, but one moment lingering in the hall,
The earliest, hardiest Orator of all
Shines—and wanes Eliot on the verge of War,
As day, in redd’ning, slays its own bright star.
There flits by Waller of the silvery tongue,
And faith as ductile as the lyre he strung.
There, wise to warn, yet impotent to guide,
And sad with foresight, moves the solemn Hyde.
Mark, in the front, fit leader of the van,
Yon large, imperfect, necessary Man ;
With all the zeal a cause conflicting needs,
And all the craft by which the cause succeeds ;
Iron as Ludlow, yet as Villiers trim,
’Twixt saint and sinner—Atlas-shoulder’d Pym.
Behind, pure, chill, and lonely as a star,
Ruthless as angels, when destroying, are,
Sits Vane, and dreams Utopian isles to be,
While swells the storm, and sea but spreads on sea ;
Still in a mirage he discerns a shore,
And acts with Hampden from belief in More.
Nor less alone, nor less a dreamer, there
Wan Falkland looks through space with gloomy stare,
Pondering that question which no wise man’s voice
Ever solved yet to guide the brave man’s choice,
When the dread Present, as on an abyss,
Splits, in two paths, the frowning precipice—
That, to lost towers which tides already whelm ;
This, through dark gorges to an unknown realm ;
Hard to decide ! each fature has its crime ;
Each past its wreck : here, how control the time ?
There, how rekindle dust ? Between the two,
At least choose quick. Life is the verb “ To do !”
What makes the huge wall crash before the course
Of the slight ball ? Accelerated force !
Ponderest thou still, while murder fills the stage,
And the ghost becks, O Hamlet of thine age ?
“ The scholar’s, soldier’s glass !”—glass clearer still,
Of worth made useless by the want of will.
But lo ! what shadow fills the phantom hall,
Awful and large, awhile obscuring all ;
On angry aspects bending brows of woe,
Still as a glacier over storms below ?
That front, proud Strafford, needs no bauble crown
To make it kinglier than the Stuart’s frown.
How the dire genius, skill’d, alert, intent,
Speaks from each swart Italian lineament !
Some close Visconti there your search defies,
In the cold gloom of unrevealing eyes ;
And the hard daring of Castrucci dwells
In scheming lips comprest as Machiavel’s.
But hark ! what voice, deep-toned, and musical
With Raleigh’s noble English, thrills the hall ?
Still of that voice which awed its age, one tone
Comes, sad as flutes funereal, to our own ;
When, at the last, the grand offender pleads,
Tears drown our justice and efface his deeds ;
And when poor Stuart, with his feeble “ Nay,”
Signs the great life which shields his own away,
Freedom, that needs the victim, rights his shade,
And turns her axe towards him who has betrayed ;
While loyal Knighthood, half a rebel grown,
Veils its shamed eyes from Treason on a Throne.
But see, where rising last on lull’d debate,
With brief discourse, in which each word has weight,
With “ brain to plan, tongue to persuade, and hand
To do all mischief,”—which can free his land,
Great Happen fills the eye !——
Oh, wise as Strafford, and as Vane sincere,
Warm without frenzy, wary without fear,
Freedom’s calm champion, while in peace her trust,
Freedom’s first martyr while her war was just.
Hadst thou but lived thine own designs to crown !—
No ! at its brightest let thy sun go down !
If Heaven in thee had viewed the later guide,
From Heaven’s elected death had turn’d aside.
Thrice happy one ! thy white name is not seen
In the red list of Bradshaw’s jurymen ;
Thy manhood smote not the grey crownless head—
Thy faith forsook not the good cause it led—
Thy cheek flush’d not at the usurper’s scoff,
When pikemen bore a people’s bauble off ;
Hid from thy sight the loved Republic’s doom,
In courtiers crowding Cromwell’s anteroom,
And Gideon-Saints, the men of Marston Moor,
Drill’d into sentries at the Brewer’s door.
So pass, O pure Ideal of the free,
True star to, steer by, wheresoe’er the sea,
Linking the cause that gives the world its breath—
With Cromwell’s triumph ? No ; with Hampden’s death.
Slow out of sight the conclave fades away,
And the last shape which doth the gaze delay,
Resting on orb and mace the large right hand,
Is yon rude sloven with the blood-stained band.
Wide is the void they leave as they depart ;
Long Freedom sleeps,—with Freedom sleeps her art.
The grand Republic—for the million won—
Shrinks into space just large eno’ for one !
Safe from wild talk, reign, lonely Cromwell, reign
!
Hath not the Lord delivered thee from Vane ?
What ! would a Sanhedrim of Vanes appal
Less than one stranger-shadow on thy wall ?
Why gag the time ?—To guard with Mutes thy life ?
Safer the loud tongue than the noiseless knife :—
To still the flood that floated The Good Cause ?
Or save from critics Cromwell’s fame and laws ?—
Vain dupe,—the stream thy genius might have led,
Stopt by thy fear, runs back t0 its old bed—
And The Good Cause ?—is Charles on his white horse !
And Cromwell ?—lo ! at Tyburn hangs a corse
!
Yes, silenced long, outbreaks the Nation’s voice—
“ King Charles—King Charles—let all the land rejoice !’
Sick of grim saints, short commons, and long graces,
Welcome wild sinners, laughter, and gay faces.
France saves our monarch from that vulgar curse,
A mean dependence on his people’s purse—
Charles from King Louis takes his annual fees,
Snubs rude St. Stephen, and misrules at ease.
Shut up the House—can Freedom need its votes
To doom a Sydney ?—or to saint an Oates !
But from the flats of that ignoble hour,
What genius lifts its lightning-shattered tower ?
Wild as the shapes invoked by magic spell,
Dire and grotesque, behold Achitophel !
Dark convict, seared by History’s branding curse,
And hung in chains from Dryden’s lofty verse.
Yet who has pierced the labyrinth of that brain ?—
Who plomb’d that genius, both so vast and vain ?—
What moved its depths ?—Ambition ?—Passion ?—Whim ?
This day a Strafford—and the next a Pym ?
Is it, in truth, as Dryden hath implied,
Was his “ great wit to madness near allied ?”
Accept that guess, and it explains the Man ;
Reject—and solve the riddle if you can !
But “ halting there in a wide sea of wax,”
Trusting no star, trims boasting Halifax ;
And who so fit that fickle age to lead—
An age of doubt, a man without a creed ?
Complete as Gorgias in the sophist’s art—
Orator not—for orators need heart.
Note him, “ of piercing wit and pregnant thought,
Endowed by Nature, and by Learning taught :
To move assemblies ;”—yes, to reconcile
Patriots to place ! That ‘ wit’ had won no smile
From Marvell’s lip ; that ‘pregnant thought’ supplied
No light to Hampden ; nor dispelled in Hyde
One noble doubt,—in Vane one noble dream !
When what they are not men desire to seem,
Their praises follow him who can suggest,
Smooth public pleas for private interest,
Dwarf down rude virtues with a cynic sneer,
Yet simulate their substance in veneer,
Unite extremes in this sole golden mean,—
“ Tis good for both my good should come between ;
And who with zeal sincere can raise the cry,
‘ My country thrives’—unless he add, ‘and I.’ ”
Out on the mask !—we turn a man to find,
The naked face—the honest human mind—
And hail fair Somers ! If some names more near
Our work-day world shine more distinctly clear,
Yet who shall tell, in glory’s luminous host,
Which are the orbs that influence earth the most ?
And every life of use so purely bright,
Beams evermore a part of the world’s light ;
The air we breathe, its noiseless rays suffuse,
Blent in the rainbow, nourishing the dews.
What voice now swells from Anne’s Augustan days ?
What form of beauty glows upon the gaze ?
Bright as the Greek to whom all toil was ease,
Flash’d forth the English Alcibiades.
He for whom Swift had not one cynic sneer,
Whom hardiest Walpole honoured with his fear,
Whose lost harangues a Pitt could more deplore
Than all the gaps in Greek and Roman lore,
Appalling, charming, haunting Sr. John shone,
And stirr’d that age as Byron thrill’d our own ;
Sighing for ease, yet ever keen for strife,
Zeno’s his creed, yet Aretin’s his life ;
With Protean grace through every change he sports,
Now awing senates, now perplexing courts ;
A soul of flame, though both a brand and torch,
Firing the camp or dazzling from the porch.
Behold him now, not in his autumn day,
But the full flowering of his dainty May ;
Not Pope’s sad friend, and soul-deceiving guide,
But the State’s darling and the Church’s pride.
How the fair aspect, ere a sound is heard,
Prepares the path for the melodious word ;
Mark in each gesture force with ease allied,
And manly passion with patrician pride ;
And oh, that style ! so stately, sweet, and strong,
Which, tamely read, has all the charm of song,
What must its power o’er beating hearts have been,
The genius speaking while the man was seen !
Judge it by this—behold a later time,
His party shattered, and its cause a crime
;
His white name blotted, his young vigour spent,
A lone grey man comes back from banishment.
Fear seized the Council ; England seemed too weak
Against that tongue, if once allowed to speak ;
Law ransacks all the expedients at its choice,
Restores the peer, and then proscribes his voice.
So the grand orator, his field denied,
Shrunk to a small philosopher, and died.
Dear to all classic taste that age of Anne ;
We love its poets, though their verse will scan ;
Its prose still greets us like a pleasant friend,
Though not so wise but what we comprehend—
A well-drest elegant Horatian age.
Suspend the curtain, glance along the stage ;
Who’s that with timorous yet with pompous air,
Blandly reserved, and stiffly debonnair ?
Harley, “ got up” for splendour and parade ;
And ne’er less Harley than when in brocade.
Note, through the levée with a careless stride,
Parting the throng as some tough keel the tide,
With soldier bearing, yet in priestly guise,
With black brows knitted over azure eyes,
With lips that kindle from the gravest there,
The boisterous laughter which they scorn to share,
The stern, sad man who made the world so gay,
Seift comes—half-Rousseau and half-Rabelais.
Half-Rousseau ?—yes ; for while we gaze on both,
Hating we pity, and admiring loathe ;
With varying fever-fits now glow, now freeze,
And shuddering ask, “ Which genius, which disease ?”
Half-Rabelais ?—yes ; on crozier and on crown
Hanging wild fool-bells, jingling reverence down ;
Profaning, levelling, yet illuming earth,
Vile and sublime, the demagogue of mirth :
Power, wisdom, beauty trampled, smeared, and spurned ;
What rests to admire ?—the strength that overturned !
Genius permits no mortal to debase
By his own height the stature of his race ;
The crowds beneath if he with scorn surveys,
He dwarfs them not ; he does but lift their gaze.
But Swift, not now the envenoned malcontent ;
His mind has space—its gloomy fires a vent ;
The smile, if wintry, yet plays round the sneer ;
The bright stern eye sees some cathedral near
;
And the fierce hand that warms in Harley’s clasp,
Feels at the touch a mitre in its grasp.
Break up the levée ! that no place for friends,
Harley’s gilt coach the equal pair attends—
Poet and premier take the air together,
Discussing Church and gossip, State and weather.
See, as they pass, what quaint familiar groups,
What lively Muses in what formal hoops !
See Pope’s light Sappho, arm’d With pen and fan,
This points her billetdoux, that slays her man ;
While her pale poet scorn’d yet courted sighs,
And one brief folly dims those lustrous eyes.
Lo, Marlborough’s duchess ! welcome to her grace—
Her with the fury heart and fairy face !
Whose aim a despot’s, and whose sense a doll’s—
Whose pride Roxana’s, and whose language Poll’s.
With English humour and wild Irish heart,
See Steele rehearse what Goldsmith made a part,
Ranging at whim from fever-heat to zero,
Now the frank rake, and now “ the Christian Hero.”
Play as he will, the deuce is in the cards ;
Student at Isis, trooper in the Guards—
A brisk comedian now before the lamps,
And now—a grave Commissioner of Stamps ;
Now a church union with the Scotch his wish,
Next day, “ a project for preserving fish ;”
Inventing Tatlers, scribbling a Gazette—
Ever at work, and never out of debt.
Ah ! wits, like fools, oft make their proper rods—
Where Prudence comes not, never come the gods.
But there, with step more modest and more slow,
Comes the supreme “ Sectator” of the show ;
Exquisite Genius, to whose chisell’d line
The ivory’s polish lends the ivory’s shine.
With strength so sweet, in its subdued repose,
Virgil of humorists, and Pope of prose ;
In this what dignity, in that what ease !
In both what charm !—the rarest charm, to please !
Quick glide the rest. See Cibber has his lord ;
Were there more Cibbers, lords would be less bored !
See Berkeley, lingering on his heavenward way,
Smooth his large front to the child-laugh of Gay ;
See peers, see princes vying for the praise
Of high-bred Congreve, heartless as his plays.
But wheresoe’er the eye delighted rove,
The Muse still stands beside some earthly Jove ;
Fused in one air the universal Powers
That light the ages, or but gild the hours.
Rank then was pleased when Wit its birthright claimed ;
If either cringed—not Swift, be Harley blamed.
In court, in senate, hall, and mart, and street,
Frank Genius came its fellow-chiefs to meet—
Pleasure itself seemed dull and void of ease,
Till some bright spirit taught her how to please ;
And no Sir Plume was half so proud as when
The sylph politely shaped him to a pen.
But all too long a truant from my theme,
I mark the sparkles, not pursue the stream.
Now comes the Man who has for verse no ear,
For lore no reverence, and for wit no fear ;
Burly and bluff, in St. John’s vacant place,
The land’s new leader lifts his jovial face.
Alas ! poor Nine—a dreary time for you !
King George the First, Sir Robert Walpole
too !
Sir Robert waits ;—those shrewd coarse features scan,
How strong the sense, how English is the man !—
English, if left to all plain sense bestows,
And stripp’d of all that man to genius owes.
He sets no flowers, but each dry stubble gleans—
Statesman in ends, but huxter in the means—
Boldly he nears his hacks, extends the chaff,
And flings the halter with an ostler’s laugh.
Corruptly frank, he buys or bullies all,
And is what placemen style “ the practical.”
Is this man eloquent ? The man creates
New ground, now ours—the level of debates.
Eloquent ?—Yes, in parliamentary sense,
The skilful scorn of what seems eloquence ;
Adroit, familiar, fluent, easy, free,
And each quick point as quick to seize as see ;
Shielding the friend, but covering from the foe,
And ne’er above his audience nor below :
Arm’d in finance, blow up with facts the speech,
And rows of figures bristle in the breach.
Soft in his tones, seductive in his signs,
When doom’d to take “ a vote upon supplies ;”
At times a proser, at no time a prater,
And six feet high—in short, a great debater.
And is that all ?—Nay, trath must grant much more ;
The bluff old Whig was Briton to the core.
With this strong purpose, whatsoe’er he plann’d,
To save from Pope and Papist kings the land.
His heart was mild ; it slew not, nor proscribed ;
His tenets loose ; in clemency he bribed.
A town conspires in secret :—he sends down
Cannon—tut ! candidates to buy the town.
Sly Jesuits have a senator misled,
He hints a pension, and he saves a head.
While since adventure outlets must obtain,
In closing war he frees the roads to gain ;
Shows teeming marts, and says to Hope, “ Behold,
’Tis Peace that guards the avenues to gold.”
So blent with good and evil all the springs
Which move in states the wheels of human things,
That, though the truth must be with pain confest,
Men not too good may suit mankind the best ;
So leave Sir Robert “ buttoned to the chin,
Broadcloth without, and a warm heart within,”
To tax, to bribe, to coax the public weal
From foreign standards and fraternal steel.
Far livelier wit, which malice more refines,
Words better minted, and from wealthier mines,
More warmth with dignity, more force with grace,
Rank Pulteney loftier—toftier till in place.
His art attack, success his genius ends ;
Yield him the fort—he’s lost when he defends.
Yet none so boldly rushed upon the wall,
And none so stoutly sapp’d it to its fall
;
And none e’er wielded with so keen a fence
The poniard sarcasm lends to eloquence.
See him with Walpole singly hand to hand,
How the slight dagger foils the heavy brand ;
Sharpening to epigram each word of hate,
He shines and stabs, the Martial of debate.*
With wit as piercing, but in words more chaste,
That steal their blow, and never wound the taste.
His Thyrsus sword, in classic wreaths conceal’d,
Charms and persuades Hortensian Chesterfield.
Too slight to jostle with the Burghers’ crowd,
With tones too well bred, when the roar is loud,
* “ How many Martials were in Pulteney lost !”—Pope.
Form’d for the air patrician calm affords,
He rivals Cicero when he speaks to Lords ;
Makes commerce courtier-like, and Cocker clear,
And speaks of freedom like a free-born peer.
High above each in genius, lore, and fire,
With mind of muscles which no toil could tire,
With lips that seem’d like Homer’s gods to quaff
From nectar-urns the unextinguished laugh,
Frank with the mirth of souls divinely strong,
Carteret’s large presence floats from out the throng.
What earlier school this grand comedian rear’d ?
His first essays no crowds less courtly cheer’d.
From learned closets came a sauntering sage,
Yawn’d, smil’d, and spoke, and took by storm the age :
Who that can hear him, and on business, speak,
Would dream he lunch’d with Bentley upon Greek,
And will to-night with Hutcheson regale on
The feast of Reason in the tough To Kalon,
With what rich spoils the full life overflows ;
His genius gilds, because his nature glows ;
Call it not versatile, but, like the sun,
Fix’d and the same whate’er it beams upon ;
Fix’d and the same not less because it calls
Colour from things on which, as light, it falls.
Pass by the lesser, not inglorious host ;
Awed, they shrink back ; arise, majestic ghost !
Lo, the great Arts’ unrivalled master one,
The mightier Father of the mighty Son !
Like hero myths before the Homeric time,
Looms the vast form—if vague, the more sublime ;
That pomp of speech but such memorial leaves,
As the gone storm with which the wave still heaves ;
Or as, on hills remote, the cloudy wreath,
Flush’d with the giant sun that sank beneath.
Yet it is not by words that critics praise,
Nor yet by deeds which after-judgment weighs
With ounce and scruple in impartial scales,
That a great soul, like a great truth, prevails.
Apart from what is said, and what is done,
There is a force by which the world is won,
Born in men’s destined ruler !—Reason halts
To gauge the merits or assess the faults,
While forth unguess’d magnetic influence flows,
Attracts the followers, or unnerves the foes.
Our fathers tell us what their fathers told,
How from those lips the glorious cataract roll’d ;
And while its scorn all barrier swept away,
Each wave the roughest still flash’d back the day.
The effect sublime ; the cause why fritter down ?
Did stage-craft teach the mode to wear the crown ?
Learn’d he from Roscius in what folds to bring
The imperial purple ?—was he less the king ?
“ Actor” you call him ; yes, with inborn ease
What labour made divine Demosthenes ;
Tones with the might of music at their choice,
The front august, the eye itself a voice,
These Nature gave ; did care the rest impart,
Nature herself were chaos without art.
Was it a fault if cowering Senates shook,
Thrill’d by a whisper, spellbound by a look ?
Or could the gesture dazzle and control,
Save as it lannch’d some lightning of the soul ?
Others take force from judgment, fancy, thought,
Chatham from passion ; for its voice he sought
Sounds rolling large as waves of stormy song,
By pride made stately, but by anger strong ;
To colder lips he left the words that teach ;
He awed and crush’d—the Æschylus of speech.
Hush ! let that form the long perspective close,—
In marble calm the Olympian kings repose ;
Place on his throne the thunder-lord of all,
To end the vista and complete the hall ;
And as ye turn with reverent steps to tread
Galleries that niche the less majestic dead,
Retain that noble image in the heart,
And, your own selves made nobler, so depart.
Thus when the Greek, enshrined in Elis, saw
The Zeus that Phidias shaped for human awe,
The Power but bent above him from its throne
A front that lifted to the stars his own ;
Back from the shrine to active life he brought
The sacred influence in the statelier thought,
More nerved to high design and dauntless deed,
To front the Agora or repel the Mede.