Dr. Stock informs me, a fuller account of the manner in which the original MSS. of the Greek and Roman classics were discovered and preserved than any other book extant.
Dean Tucker’s state of the great leading principles on which the present dispute between the Crown and the House of Commons—which has a few days since (March 24, 1784) ended in a dissolution of the latter—is in Lord Mansfield’s opinion perfect. It is preserved in the Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 54, p. 202.
Mr. Flood, himself one of the greatest orators of the present age, speaking to me on the subject of the distinguishing characteristics of the two eminent persons mentioned in a preceding page (Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox), said that neither of them appeared to him to merit the title of eloquent speakers. Mr. Pitt’s speeches, he called didactick declamations; those of Mr. Fox, argumentative conversations. Mr. Pitt’s style of eloquence, he said, had something of an historical cast. It was a compound of the perspicuity and precision of Sir Wm. Blackstone, with the elegance of Robertson; and his periods particularly reminded him of that writer, whom he thought he resembled much more than he did Bolingbroke, Cicero, or Demosthenes. Mr. Fox’s style of speaking he did not think the best, but that he was perfect in that style. Mr. Pitt’s style of eloquence he considered much superior, but then he was not near so perfect in that style as he might be.
The celebrated Mr. Wilkes, about the time when
