shoulders in a trice. Mr. Timothy felt for his art as poets do for
theirs, and considered what was best adapted to speaking, purely to
speaking. Upon no creature did he look with such contempt as upon Dr.
Shrapnel, whose loose disjunct audiences he was conscious he could,
giving the doctor any start he liked, whirl away from him and have
compact, enchained, at his first flourish; yea, though they were composed
of 'the poor man,' with a stomach for the political distillery fit to
drain relishingly every private bogside or mountain-side tap in old
Ireland in its best days--the illicit, you understand.
Further, to quote Mr. Timothy's points of view, the Radical orator has
but two notes, and one is the drawling pathetic, and the other is the
ultra-furious; and the effect of the former we liken to the English
working man's wife's hob-set queasy brew of well-meant villany, that she
calls by the innocent name of tea; and the latter is to be blown, asks to
be blown, and never should be blown without at least seeming to be blown,
with an accompaniment of a house on fire. Sir, we must adapt ourselves
to our times. Perhaps a spark or two does lurk about our house, but we
have vigilant watchmen in plenty, and the house has been pretty fairly
insured. Shrieking in it is an annoyance to the inmates, nonsensical;
weeping is a sickly business. The times are against Radicalism to the
full as much as great oratory is opposed to extremes. These drag the
orator too near to the matter. So it is that one Radical speech is
amazingly like another--they all have the earth-spots. They smell, too;
they smell of brimstone. Soaring is impossible among that faction; but
this they can do, they can furnish the Tory his opportunity to soar.
When hear you a thrilling Tory speech that carries the country with it,
save when the incendiary Radical has shrieked? If there was envy in the
soul of Timothy, it was addressed to the fine occasions offered to the
Tory speaker for vindicating our ancient principles and our sacred homes.
He admired the tone to be assumed for that purpose: it was a good note.
Then could the Tory, delivering at the right season the Shakesperian
'This England . . .' and Byronic--'The inviolate Island . . .'
shake the frame, as though smiting it with the tail of the gymnotus
electricus. Ah, and then could he thump out his Horace, the Tory's
mentor and his cordial, with other great ancient comic and satiric poets,
his old Port of the classical cellarage, reflecting veneration upon him
who did but name them to an audience of good dispositions. The Tory
possessed also an innate inimitably easy style of humour, that had the
long reach, the jolly lordly indifference, the comfortable masterfulness,
of the whip of a four-in-hand driver, capable of flicking and stinging,
and of being ironically caressing. Timothy appreciated it, for he had
winced under it. No professor of Liberalism could venture on it, unless
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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