tempted me to forget a number of figures who have now passed away, but who graced the boards and won the plaudits of their time. These seem to me to fall into three categories, according to the nature of their powers and influence—the statesmen, the rhetoricians, and the humorists. I will devote a few words to each class.
Fourteenth Earl of Derby.The great Lord Derby, three times Prime Minister, was before my day. But he just came within the half century which I have attempted to cover, having died in 1869. He was
"The brillian chief, irregularly great,
Frank, haughty, rash—the Rupert of debate"
depicted by Lord Lytton in the New Timon. That he excelled in every talent of the orator, in debate no less than in declamation, is established by the universal consensus of his contemporaries. But he may be said to belong to an earlier period, the records of which can be better traced elsewhere.
Fifteenth Earl of Derby.I recall very clearly his son, the fifteenth Earl of Derby Foreign Minister in Disraeli's second administration. He was a frigid and monotonous but powerful speaker who seemed the embodiment of intellectual common-sense. His speeches were committed to memory, but the speaker somewhat marred their effect by a rather pompous and "mouthing " delivery.
Richard Cobden.Mr. Cobden also belonged to an earlier generation. But in a review of Parliamentary Eloquence, it is impossible altogether to omit the man whose powers of luminous exposition acted as a foil to the fervid oratory of John Bright on a hundred platforms, and of whom so great a judge as Sir Robert Peel could say that his "eloquence was the more to be admired because it was unaffected and unadorned."
Gathorne Hardy.A figure, unknown to the present generation, but very prominent in his day, was Mr. Gathorne Hardy, afterwards the first Earl of Cranbrook. He was one of Disraeli's most capable and trusted lieutenants, and certainly one of the ablest
