But it was not solely or principally to outward accomplishments that Pitt owed the vast influence {213}which, during nearly thirty years, he exercised over the House of Commons. He was undoubtedly a great orator; and, from the descriptions given by his contemporaines, and the fragments of his speeches which still remain, it is not difficult to discover the nature and extent of his oratorical powers. He was no speaker of set speeches. His few prepared discourses were complete failures. The elaborate panegyric which he pronounced on General Wolfe was considered as the very worst of all his performances. “No man,” says a critic who had often heard him, “ever knew so little what he was going to say.” Indeed his facility amounted to a vice. He was not the master, but the slave of his own speech. So little selfcommand had he when once he felt the impulse, that he did not like to take part in a debate when his mind was full of an important secret of state. “I must sit still,” he once said to Lord Shelburne on such an occasion; “for, when once I am up, every thing that is in my mind comes out.” Yet he was not a great debater. That he should not have been so when first he entered the House of Commons is not strange. Scarcely any person has ever become so without long practice and many failures. It was by slow degrees, as Burke said, that Charles Fox became the most brilliant and powerful debater that ever lived. Charles Fox himself attributed his own success to the resolution which he formed when very young, of speaking, well or ill, at least once every night. “During five whole sessions,” he used to say, “I spoke every night but one; and I regret only that I did not speak on that night too.” Indeed, with the exception of Mr. Stanley, whose knowledge of the science of parliamentary defence resembles an {214}instinct, it would be difficult to name any eminent debater who had not made himself a master of his art at the expense of his audience.