CHARLES JAMES FOX

Charles James Fox (1749-1806) inherited the blood and even the favor of the Stuarts of England, and was also a lineal descendant of Henry IV of France. His father, Henry

Fox, afterwards Lord Holland, was a man of dissolute habits, who was determined that his son should be surrounded with every luxury that money could procure, and yet whose sole ambition was to make of him a great debater and a powerful statesman. Accordingly he did all in his power to contribute to that end, and superintended with great care the lad's early training. Under competent instructors young Charles early formed a taste for study, and

devoted himself to the classics, to modern languages, and to other branches of a liberal training. He spent four years at Eton, where he distinguished himself both for scholarship and dissipation. Later, at Oxford, he devoted himself to the severest mental discipline and yet did not cease his vicious habits. His favorite studies were the classics, history, and eloquence. Classical literature was one of his chief recreations. He read Demosthenes' speeches as readily as the speeches made in Parliament. Homer, Euripides, Virgil, and

Shakespeare were his favorite poets, and he found in Euripides an argumentative style much to his taste. Fox says himself that "the study of good authors, and especially poets, ought never to be intermitted by any man who is to speak or write for the public, or indeed who has any occasion to tax his imagination, whether it be for argument, for illustration, for ornament, for sentiment, or for any other purpose.'

After leaving Oxford he spent much time in travel on the continent, where his already excellent knowledge of the modern languages became minute and profound, and at the same time he attained a considerable knowledge of the masterpieces of art in the galleries of Europe.

As a student of oratory Fox must be ranked among the most persistent and successful. He was not only a constant reader of the best specimens of eloquence, but he compelled himself to commit and declaim the most stirring passages. He accepted every opportunity to debate at Eton and Oxford, and thus began early to acquire and develop his splendid powers of argument and expression. To perfect his elocution he devoted much time to Shakespearean reading and to theatricals, in which he attained considerable celebrity as an actor. Thus he overcame in great measure his defects of voice and manner and the natural tendency to be disconcerted on first rising to speak. One of the chief sources of his success lay in the fact that he embraced every opportunity to speak, and created opportunities when they did not present themselves.

He is accused of attaining his skill at the expense of those who heard him. We are told that after he entered Parliament, at the age of nineteen, he tasked himself to prepare and speak on every important measure that came up, whether he was particularly interested in it or not, or whether at first he knew anything about it or not. This was done for

the sake of perfecting himself in the art of debating, and of gaining wide knowledge of affairs. "During five whole sessions," he once said, "I spoke every night but one, and I regret that I did not speak on that night too."

His style lacked ornament and was somewhat loose and careless, but it was terse, full of point and good sense. His speeches do not read as well as those of some of his compeers. When told that a speech read well, he said, "Then it must have been a bad speech." In compactness and massiveness of style his speeches cannot be compared with those of Erskine and Webster. He believed in amplification. He says in regard to repeating arguments: "It is better that some should observe it, than that any should not understand." Erskine says that "he was in the habit of passing and repassing his subject in fascinating review, enlightening every part of it, and binding even his adversaries in a kind of spell, for the moment, of involuntary assent." Burke called him "the most brilliant and accomplished debater the world ever saw." Argument was his delight. He could keep before him all the points of an opponent's argument and quickly discover the vulnerable parts. It was most exasperating to his opponents to hear him state their side of a case stronger than they could do it themselves, and then tear it to pieces. At such times argument was heaped on argument, until no point of attack was left open to his adversary. Taunt could not disconcert him. Happy in retort and repartee, "he had astonishing dexterity in evading difficulties and turning to his own advantage everything that occurred in debate.”

Some of the distinguishing features of his oratory are these his simplicity and unity, the habit of bending every energy toward elucidating the main points, and of selecting great principles as the heart of his speech and then surrounding and entangling his opponents; the absence of any

preconceived arrangement of matter or language; his choice of words ("Give me an elegant Latin and a homely Saxon word," he said, "and I will always choose the latter "); his abundant sarcasm (his side blows at his opponents, as he rushed on with his arguments, aroused his audiences even more than his loftiest strains of eloquence); his unfailing memory and great fund of information. It was not the length and roundness of his periods that weighed so heavily, but the truth and vigor of his conceptions.

Fox's manner on rising to address an audience was awkward; he would hesitate, knew not what to do with his hands, fumbled his papers, and went lumbering along with a kind of careless air which did not disappear for several minutes; but gaining impetus, his strong personality, his vehement gesture, his involuntary exclamation, his choking utterance, convinced those who were at first disappointed in him that he was sincere. But when he got deeply into his subject his genius kindled. He forgot himself and was changed into another being. Mr. Goodwin says, "I have seen his countenance light up with more than mortal ardor and goodness; I have been present when his voice was suffocated with tears." Few if any ever surpassed Fox in earnestness. It was contagious. His audience caught the same spirit. Sheridan remarked that "he spoke with lightning rapidity and with breathless anxiety and impatience."

His sweetness and power of tone, his pathos and impetuosity, his intellectual strength and his intense personality, united to make him the greatest of debaters and one of the first of the English orators. While he was less far-reaching than Burke, he had more tact, could better adapt himself to his surroundings, and hence was more convincing and useful as a legislator. An English writer institutes this comparison between Fox and his great rival, the Younger Pitt: "Pitt's

style was stately, sonorous, full to abundance, smooth and regular in its flow; Fox's free to carelessness, rapid, rushing, turbid, broken, but overwhelming in its swell. Pitt never sank below his ordinary level, never paused in his declamation, never hesitated for a word; Fox was desultory and ineffective till he warmed; he did best when provoked or excited. He required the kindling impulse, the explosive spark." Mackintosh calls him "the most Demosthenian orator since Demosthenes." But Lord Brougham thinks the points of difference were numerous and important. He would not compare the men except as you compare any two great and powerful speakers. He thinks that Fox lacked the power of Demosthenes, though he had the skill, possessed by few in so great a degree, of keeping close to his subject. Goodrich, in commenting on these differences of opinion, remarks that in some respects "Fox was the very reverse of the great Athenian; as to others they had much in common. In whatever related to the forms of oratory symmetry, dignity, grace, the working up of thought and language to their most perfect expression Mr. Fox was not only inferior to Demosthenes, but wholly unlike him, having no rhetoric and no ideality; while at the same time, in the structure of his understanding, the modes of its operation, the soul and spirit which breathes throughout his eloquence, there is a striking resemblance."

Fox had a generous, noble heart and quick sensibilities. This is the spring and fountain of his eloquence. Without manly and generous feelings, a sympathetic and ardent spirit, amiable social qualities, and warm affections, no man can reach the hearts of the people. Spontaneity was his supreme gift. Study of oratory did much for him, but the effusion of the divine spirit counted for more. Though not the greatest English orator, he was the most gifted. Two things