It would almost be enough to say that Fox was everything that Pitt was not. He had not that wayward but divine fire which we call genius, and which inspired Pitt; but he had the saving quality of common sense which was wanting to his rival. He laid no claim to the oratory of Pitt; he was, we are told hesitating and inelegant, not indeed a good speaker; but he was plain and forcible, with a good business-like wear and tear style, which is in Parliament not less valuable than oratory; on occasions indeed he spoke with a vehemence and closeness of reasoning which almost anticipated the supreme faculty of his son. More than all, he thoroughly understood the House of Commons. He had the cordial manner, the veneer at least of good fellowship, the frankness savouring of cynicism, which make for an eminently serviceable sort of parliamentary popularity. In one respect, as a letter writer, he was greatly Pitt's superior. While Pitt was prancing fantastic minuets before his correspondents, Fox, without wasting a word, went straight to the point; and his letters are pregnant, graphic, and forcible. There are perhaps none better in the English language than those in which he describes the debates of December 1755. He was, what Pitt was not, a genial companion, fond of the bottle and the chase; he had, indeed, been a gambler and a debauchee. He was, what Pitt was not, a man of the world, and was closely allied with the choicest blood of the aristocracy by a marriage with a daughter of the Duke of Richmond. Pitt was a county gentleman, who had indeed married Temple's sister, but had thus entered a more limited and less exalted connection. They both had courage, but Fox minded the rebuffs of debate much less than Pitt. He was passionate, but with a passion less sublime than Pitt's. Pitt could sometimes feign passion; Fox could sometimes repress it. In later life, when it had been long smouldering, it was ungovernable. But at this time it only displayed itself in a not ungenerous resentment. In the race for success it would perhaps have been safer to back Fox than Pitt.