A PORTRAIT GALLERY IN WORDS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1838, 11 February 1887, Page 33

A PORTRAIT GALLERY IN WORDS.

Lord Chatham, perhaps the most powerful orator of modern times, had enormous personal advantages. ' In his best days his figure .was tall and erect, and he had all the air of a being of a superior species. When he rose to speak his countenance glowed with animation, justifying Cowper's description of him, " With all his country beaming in his face." He had an aquiline nose and an extraordinary, penetrating eye, from which he glanced looks of scorn and contempt that sometimes threw opponents into confusion before they got far with their speeches. His attitude was imposing and his gestures were energetic .to the point of vehemence.

William Murray, the first. Earl of Mansfield and the great Tory antagonist of-Chat-harn, was also fortunate in his looks. He was the " silver-tongued Murray," of whom Colley Cibber wrote in mockery of a couplet of Pope's :

Persuasion tips his tongue whene''e he talks. And he has pnambera in the King's Bench Walks. " The countenance of Lord Mansfield," says a. Friend and contemporary, " was uncommonly beautiful, and none could ever behold it, even in advanced years, without reverence. Nature had given him an eye of fire. . , . There was a similarity between his action and that of Mr Garrick."

The wonderful oratory of Edmund Burke was not assisted much by bis personal appearance. He was tall, but not robust. His gestures were a little awkward, and his face, #m&rtb btaO'Biat&s pi UMiet*, was not

attractive. As he always wore spectacles, his eye gave him no command over an audience.

Eloquence of language, however, so concealed these shortcomings from some people, that we find " little Miss Burney " recording in her enthusiasm that " his figure is noble, his air commanding, his address graceful. . . . Since we lost Garrick I have seen nobody so enchanting."' But perhaps she could hardly say less of a man who confessed that he had sat up all night to read her books. According to Rogers, "Burke did not do himself justice as a speaker; his manner was hurried, and he always seemed to be in a passion."

Charles James Fox was a typical Englishman both in appearance and oratory. "He stood on the floor' of the House," says one writer, " like a Norfolkshire farmer in the midst of his fellows ; short, thick-set, with his broad shoulders and capacious chest, his bushy hair and eyebrows, and his dark countenance working with emotion, the very image of blunt honesty and strength." In his later days he was rather a sloven in dress, but in his youth he was passionately fond of wearing fine clothes, walking about with a little French hat on his head, and redheeled shoes on his feet, and once making a journey from Paris to Lyons for no other purpose than to buy waistcoats. .

. Henry Grattan, the great Irish orator, and unflinching advocate of the just rights of his country, had large plain features and quite an eccentric look. "He was short in stature," says Mr Charles Phillips, "and unprepossessing in appearance. His arms were disproportionately long. His walk was a stride. With a person swinging like a pendulum, and an abstracted air, he seemed always in thought, and each thought moved an attendant gesticulation. . . The great difficulty in this great speaker's way was the first five minutes. During his exordium laughter was imminent. He bent his body almost to the ground, swung his arms over his head, up and down, and around him, and added to the grotesqueness of his manner a hesitating tone and drawling emphasis. Still there was an earnestness about him that at first besought, and as he warmed, enforced, nay, demanded attention." Lord Byron says that Grattan would have been near his ideal of a perfect orator but for his harlequin manner.

Lord Erskine had a singularly graceful and attractive manner and a pleasing personal appearance. He was of middle height, and his figure was sender and firmly moulded. His countenance shone with emotion, and he had an eye of wondeiful keenness and power. "Juries," says Lord Brougham, "have 'declared that they felt it impossible to remove their looks from him when he had riveted and, as it were, fascinated them by his first glance ; and it used to be a common remark of men who observed his motions that they resembled those of a blood-horse, as light, as limber, as much betokening strength and speed, as free from all gross superfluity or encumbrance."

John Philpot Curran, o£ whose triumphs at the Irish bar everyone has read, was in-significant-looking, but like Erskine, had a remarkable eye — " an eye that glowed like a live coal." He had a swarthy coraplexioi 1 . He was short, slim, and even boyish in appearance, which reminds us of a scene thai took. place after his speech at the trial of Archibald Rowan in 1794. The mob determined to chair him, and on Curran im2^loring them to desist, a great brawny fellow shouted out, "Never mind the little cratur ; pitch him this minute on my shoulder." This was done easily enough, and thus Curran was conveyed to his carnage.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, before convivial habits had made their mark on him, is said to have been handsome. " His countenance and features," says Wraxall, in his Posthumas Memoirs, " had in them something peculiarly pleasing, indicative at once of intellect, humour, and gaiety. All these characteristic played about his lips when speaking and operated with inconceivable attraction, for they anticipated as it were to the eye the effect produced by his oratory on the ear." In his later years nothing handsome was left but his eyes. "It was indeed in. the upper part of his face," says Moore, " that the spirit of the man chiefly reigned ; the dominion of the world and the senses being rather strongty marked out in the lower." Sheridan was above the middle size and of a robust and well-proportioned make.

William Pitt, the famous son of Lord Chatham, was tall and slender. There was a little harshness in his features, but, like several of the orators already mentioned, his face was lighted up by the eye "of genius. His gestures were animated, but not graceful. In Lord Fitzmaurice's "Life of Pitt" we have him thus described : "He was tall in person and as genteel as a martyr to the gout could be, with the eye of a hawk, a little head, thin face, long aquiline nose, and perfectly erect."

The appearance Pitt presented on entering the House of Commons has been thus described by Wraxall. " From the instant he passed the doorway he advanced up the floor with a quick and firm step, his head erect and thrown back, looking neither to the right nor to the left, nor 1 favouring with a nod or a glance any of the individuals seated on either side, among whom many who possessed £5000 a-ycar would have been gratified even by so slight a mark of attention."

George Canning had all the natural endowments of a great orator. He had a graceful and commanding form. " His features," says a contemporary, "were handsome, and his eye, though deeply ensconced under his eyebrows, was full of sparkle and gaiety." Sir James Mackintosh gives it as his opining that "in the calm part of his speeches his attitude and gesture might have been selected by a painter' to represent grace rising towards dignity."'

Lord Brougham was remarkable for his stiff and almost grotesque appenrance. He had a tall disjointed frame with strong bony limbs and hands. His features were expressive but singularly harsh. ■" While his forehead, shot up to a great elevation his chin ,m& long aria square? tp motrib* aose, arid

eyes seemed huddled together in the centre of his face, his eyes absolutely lost amid folds and corrugations; and while he sat listening they seemed to retire inward or to be veiled by a filmy curtain, which not only concealed th« appalling glare which shot from them when he was^aroused, but rendered his mind and his purpose a sealed book to the keenest scrutiny ol man." Daniel Webster, the distinguished American orator, had an impressive air. He was a large massive man, with' the head of a giant. He had a sallow complexion anfl deep cavernous eyes, quite in harmony with his deep bass voice.

Of Continental statesmen, one of the most remarkable-looking, as well as one of the most remarkable' in character and experience, was Talleyrand. Of him a graphic description has been given by Haydon the artist. " I met," he says, " that patriarch of dissimulation and artifice, Talleyrand, but once, but I shall never forget him. He looked like a toothless boa of intrigue, with nothing left but hi* poison. To see his impenetrable face at a game of whist, watching everybody without a trace of movement in his own figure or face, save the slightest imperceptible twitch iii the lip, was a sight never to be forgotten. It was the incarnation of meaning without assumption.

Robespierre was little, lean, and feeblelooking. He had a sharp face ; " his forehead was good, bnt narrow, and largely developed in the perceptive organs ; his mouth was large, and the lips thin. and compressed ; his noso was straight and small and very wide at the nostrils." He was bilious, and had a livid complexion. Cariyle, in his " French Revolution," alwaya speaks of him as " the sea-green." Such was the man for whom tnis epitaph was written : " Passenger, lament not his fate, for were he living thou wouldst be dead."

We have a milder type of man in Prince Charlie, a description of whose person has been handed down to us by an eye-witness of his entry into Edinburgh in 1745. He was tlipn in the prime of youth, tall and handsome, and of a fair complexion — from its extreme delicacy his face was slightly marked with freckles. He wore a lighrnoloured peruke, the ringlets of which descended his back in graceful masses, and over the front of which his own fair hair was neatly combed. His face was a perfect oval. He had large and rolling eyes of a light -blue colour. His nose was round and high ; his mouth small in proportion to the other feainres, and his clan was pointed. ' His height was about six feet. Even the Whigs acknowledged his hand>ome appearance, but they took care to add that "he locked like a gentleman and man nf fashion, and not like a hero and conqueror.""

Of all the military heroes of cur own country, the one whom the pencil of artists has rendered most fjimiliaristheDukeof Wellington. As a record in words of what he was like, we sr-:all quote the following description by Eckenminn, who saw him at Weimar in 182(5. The "Iron Duke" was passing from an inn dcor to his carriage. " One only need pee him once," snys Eckerimmn, "never to forgot him, such an impression dres he make. His eyes are brown and of the serene st brilliancy : one ieels the effect of his glance; his mouth speaks even when it is closed ; he locks a man who has had many thoughts, and has lived through the greatest deeds, who now can handle the world serenely and calmly, and whom nothing more can disturb. He seemed to me as hard and a.« tempered as a Dama*-cus blade. By his appearance be is far advanced in the fifties; is upright, slim, and not very tall or stout. I ?aw him getting into his carriage to depart. There was something uncommonly cordial in his salutation as he passed through the crowd, and, with a very slight bow, touched his hat with his finger."

When Eckermann told Goethe whom he he had seen, " You have cast eyes on one hero more," said Goethe, "and that is saying something."— Leisure Hour.