We have already indicated many of the sources of Burke's power as a speaker and writer, but others remain to be mentioned. Not least important are his faculties of logical arrangement and lucid statement. He was the first Englishman to exemplify with supreme skill all the technical devices of exposition and argument--a very careful ordering of ideas according to a plan made clear, but not too conspicuous, to the hearer or reader; the use of summaries, topic sentences, connectives; and all the others. In style he had made himself an instinctive master of rhythmical balance, with something, as contrasted with nineteenth century writing, of eighteenth century formality. Yet he is much more varied, flexible, and fluent than Johnson or Gibbon, with much greater variety of sentence forms and with far more color, figurativeness and picturesqueness of phrase. In his most eloquent and sympathetic passages he is a thorough poet, splendidly imaginative and dramatic. J. R. Greene in his 'History of England' has well spoken of 'the characteristics of his oratory--its passionate ardor, its poetic fancy, its amazing prodigality of resources; the dazzling succession in which irony, pathos, invective, tenderness, the most brilliant word pictures, the coolest argument, followed each other.' Fundamental, lastly, in Burke's power, is his philosophic insight, his faculty of correlating facts and penetrating below this surface, of viewing events in the light of their abstract principles, their causes and their inevitable results. In spite of all this, in the majority of cases Burke was not a successful speaker. The overwhelming logic and feeling of his speech 'On the Nabob of Arcot's Debts' produced so little effect at its delivery that the ministers against whom it was directed did not even think necessary to answer it. One of Burke's contemporaries has recorded that he left the Parliament house (crawling under the benches to avoid Burke's notice) in order to escape hearing one of his speeches which when it was published he read with the most intense interest. In the latter part of his life Burke was even called 'the dinner-bell of the House' because his rising to speak was a signal for a general exodus of the other members. The reasons for this seeming paradox are apparently to be sought in something deeper than the mere prejudice of Burke's opponents. He was prolix, but, chiefly, he was undignified in appearance and manner and lacked a good delivery. It was only when the sympathy or interest of his hearers enabled them to forget these things that they were swept away by the force of his reason or the contagion of his wit or his emotion. On such occasions, as in his first speech in the impeachment of Hastings, he was irresistible.