the same; he uses no common place artifice to excite a momentary thrill of admiration. He is not obliged to patch up and embellish a few ordinary thoughts, or set off a few meagre and uninteresting facts. His resources seem to be as unlimited as those of nature; and fresh powers, and new beauties are exhibited, whenever his eloquence is employed. A singular copiousness and felicity of thought and expression, united to a magnificence of amplification, and a purity and chastity of ornament, give to his eloquence a sort of enchantment which it is difficult to describe. Mr. Pinkney's mind is in a high degree poetical; it sometimes wantons in the luxuriance of its own creations; but these creations never violate the purity of classical taste and elegance. He {362} loves to paint when there is no occasion to reason; and addresses the imagination and passions, when the judgment has been satisfied and enlightened. I speak of Mr. Pinkney at present as a forensic orator. His career was too short to afford an opportunity of judging of his parliamentary eloquence; and, perhaps, like Curran, he might have failed in a field in which it was anticipated he would excel, or, at least, retain his usual pre-eminence. Mr. Pinkney, I think, bears a stronger resemblance to Burke than to Pitt; but, in some particulars, he unites the excellences of both. He has the fancy and erudition of the former, and the point, rapidity, and elocution of the latter. Compared with his countrymen, he wants the vigour and striking majesty of Clay, the originality and ingenuity of Calhoun; but, as a rhetorician, he surpasses both. In his action, Mr. Pinkney has, unfortunately, acquired a manner, borrowed, no doubt, from some illustrious model, which is eminently uncouth and inelegant. It consists in raising one leg on a bench or chair before him, and in thrusting his right arm in a horizontal line from his side to its full length in front. This action is uniform, and never varies or changes in the most tranquil flow of sentiment, or the grandest burst of impassioned eloquence. His voice, though not naturally good, has been disciplined to modulation by art; and, if it is not always musical, it is {363} never very harsh or offensive. Such is Mr. Pinkney as an orator; as a diplomatist but little can be said that will add to his reputation. In his official notes there is too much flippancy, and too great diffuseness, for beauty or elegance of composition. It is but seldom that the orator possesses the requisites of the writer; and the fame which is acquired by the tongue sometimes evaporates through the pen. As a writer he is inferior to the present Attorney-General,[120] who unites the powers of both in a high degree, and thus in his own person illustrates the position which he has laid down, as to the universality of genius.