the author justly retorted that he would far sooner be the foolish young man who wrote those lines than the malignant old man who quoted them. [361] Stapleton's "Life of Canning," p. 21. [362] "Men and Manners in Parliament," pp. 56-59. That speeches should be as effective when read as when delivered is the highest quality of oratory. For this reason, perhaps, some speakers write out their speeches and commit them to memory. Disraeli did so with his more important orations, a fact which greatly enhances the pleasure of their perusal. Macaulay followed the same practice, and, indeed, it is said that the excessive elaboration of his oratory sometimes weakened its effect. Lord Randolph Churchill's earlier speeches were all memorised in this fashion. But it is not every man whose memory is sufficiently retentive to enable him to accomplish this feat, and a breakdown in the very middle of a humorous anecdote thoughtfully interspersed in a speech is a catastrophe which casts ridicule upon the speaker.[363] [363] Mr. R. Tennant, member for Belfast, in 1834, on O'Connell's motion for a repeal of the Union, made a speech which he had learnt by heart and sent to the papers, which lasted three and a half hours. Grant's "Recollections," p. 66. Though matter may be a most important element in parliamentary speaking, manner undoubtedly counts for a good deal. Demosthenes practised declaiming with sharp weapons suspended above him so as to learn to keep still, and, as we have already seen, had some obscure reason for filling his mouth with pebbles. Neither of these practices is to be commended to modern orators, many of whom already speak as though their mouths were filled with hot potatoes, while their habitual gesticulations, if made in the neighbourhood of dependent cutlery, would result in reducing their bodies to one huge wound. Sir Watkin Wynne and his brother were long known in the House of Commons as "Bubble and Squeak," the former's voice being a smothered mumble suggestive of suppressed thunder, the latter's a childish treble. Mannerisms of gesture, as well as of speech, are easily contracted. Lord Mahon, "out-roaring torrents in their course," reinforced his stentorian lungs by violent gestures which were at times a source of bodily danger to his friends. Once, when speaking on a Bill he had brought in for the suppression of smuggling, he declared that this crime must be knocked on the head with one blow. To emphasize his meaning, he dealt the unfortunate Pitt, who was sitting just in front of him, a violent buffet on the head, much to the amusement of the House.[364] The gesticulations of Sir Charles Wetherell, the well-known member, were less dangerous, if quainter. He used to unbutton his braces in a nervous fashion while addressing the House, leaving between his upper and lower garments an interregnum to which Speaker Manners Sutton once alluded as the honourable gentleman's only lucid interval.