Above all, they were entirely fresh and original. Wit, abuse, epigrams, imagery, argument--all were ‘Randolphian.’ No one could guess beforehand what he was going to say nor how he would say it. No one else said the same kind of things, or said them in the same kind of way. He possessed the strange quality, unconsciously exerted and not by any means to be simulated, of compelling attention, and of getting himself talked about. Every word he spoke was studied with interest and apprehension. Each step he took was greeted with a gathering chorus of astonished cries. As Tacitus said of Mucianus: ‘Omnium quae dixerat, feceratque, arte quadam ostentator’ (‘He had the showman’s knack of drawing public attention to everything he said or did’). Before the end of 1882 a speech from Lord Randolph Churchill had become an event to the newspaper reader. The worthy, pious, and substantial citizen, hurriedly turning over the pages of his _Times_ or still more respectable _Morning Post_, and folding it to his convenience, crouched himself in his most comfortable chair and ate it up line by line with snorts of indignation or gurglings of mirth. ‘Look what he says about Gladstone. I wonder the _Times_ prints such things. How lowering to the dignity of public life! I can’t think why they pay so much attention to this young man. Randolph Churchill, indeed--preposterous! Give me the paper back, my dear.’ Speeches are--next to leading articles--the most impermanent of impermanent things. But the character and conceptions of that political movement to the stimulation of which Lord Randolph Churchill devoted his life, and by which he was now to be so swiftly carried forward, cannot be better explained than in his own words; and, moreover, the reader is entitled to have some opportunities of judging for himself. The winter at Blenheim, with its diversions of the Harriers and the Woodstock Railway, seems to have refreshed Lord Randolph’s mind and added to his stores of fancy. He emerged from his retirement to plunge into a vehement political campaign. On three successive days in December he delivered at Edinburgh what he called a ‘trilogy’ of speeches. The first was upon Egypt. Here are its keynotes:--