But his mind was parliamentary; his study in England had been parliament; and his spirit was kindled by the great orators of the time. He who had beard Burke and Chatham, had heard the full power of imaginative oratory--of all oratory the noblest. Grattan had the materials of a great speaker in him by nature--keen sensibility, strong passion, daring sincerity, and an imagination furnished with all the essential knowledge for debate--not overwhelmed by it, but refreshing the original force of his mind, like the eagle's wing refreshed by dipping into the fountain, but dipping only to soar. Yet, though almost rapturously admiring those distinguished men, he was no _imitator_. He struck out for himself a line between both, and, in some of its happier moments, superior to either; combining the rich exuberance of Burke's imagination with Chatham's condensed dignity of thought. Possessed of an extraordinary power of reasoning, Grattan had the not less extraordinary power of working it into an intensity which made it glow; and some of the most elaborate arguments ever uttered in Parliament have all the brilliancy of eloquence. He continually _reasoned_, though the most metaphorical of speakers; and this combination of logic and lustre, though so unusual in others, in _him_ was characteristic. He poured out arguments like a shower of arrows, but they were all arrows tipped with fire. Mr Phillips' sketch of him brings Grattan before us to the life:-- "He was short in stature, and unprepossessing in appearance. His arms were disproportionately long. His walk was a stride. With a person swaying like a pendulum, and an abstracted air, he seemed always in thought, and each thought provoked an attendant gesticulation. Such was the outward and visible form of one whom the passenger would stop to stare at as a droll, and the philosopher to contemplate as a study. How strange it is that a mind so replete with grace and symmetry, and power and splendour, should have been allotted such a dwelling for its residence! Yet so it was, and so also was it one of his highest attributes, that his genius, by its 'excessive light,' blinded his hearers to his physical imperfections. It was the victory of mind over matter." It is then stated that, even while at the Temple, he exercised himself in parliamentary studies, and made speeches in his walks in Windsor Forest, near which he had taken lodgings, and in his chamber. Of course, he was supposed to be a little mad:--