While every part of this volume is valuable, for the display of vigorous writing and manly conception, the more interesting fragments, to us, are the characters of the parliamentary leaders; because such men are the creators of national character, the standards of national intellect, and the memorials to which their nation justly points as the trophies of national honour.
The Parliament of Ireland is in the grave; but, while the statues of her public orators stand round the tomb, it must be felt to be more than a sepulchre. Whatever homage for genius may be left in the distractions of an unhappy country, must come to kneel beside that tomb; and if the time shall ever arrive for the national enfranchisement from faction, the first accents of national wisdom must be dictated from that sacred depository of departed virtue.
Grattan, the first man in the brightest day of the Irish Parliament, was descended of an honourable lineage. His father was a barrister, member of parliament for Dublin, and also its Recorder. He himself was a graduate of the Irish University, where he was distinguished. Entering the Middle Temple, he was called to the Irish Bar in 1772.
But his mind was parliamentary; his study in England had been parliament; and his spirit was kindled by the great orators of the time. He who had beard Burke and Chatham, had heard the full power of imaginative oratory--of all oratory the noblest. Grattan had the materials of a great speaker in him by nature--keen sensibility, strong passion, daring sincerity, and an imagination furnished with all the essential knowledge for debate--not overwhelmed by it, but refreshing the original force of his mind, like the eagle's wing refreshed by dipping into the fountain, but dipping only to soar. Yet, though almost rapturously admiring those distinguished men, he was no _imitator_. He struck out for himself a line between both, and, in some of its happier moments, superior to either; combining the rich exuberance of Burke's imagination with Chatham's condensed dignity of thought. Possessed of an extraordinary power of reasoning, Grattan had the not less extraordinary power of working it into an intensity which made it glow; and some of the most elaborate arguments ever uttered in Parliament have all the brilliancy of eloquence. He continually _reasoned_, though the most metaphorical of speakers; and this combination of logic and lustre, though so unusual in others, in _him_ was characteristic. He poured out arguments like a shower of arrows, but they were all arrows tipped with fire.