316 GIBBON. 



He never was more than a silent spectator of those 

 great and fierce struggles. He appears early to have felt 

 that his talents were not adapted to public speaking, 

 an error which many able and even highly gifted men fall 

 into from not being aware how much the faculty of 

 thinking on his legs, is an acquisition of habit to any 

 man of tolerable abilities, who will devote himself to gain 

 a faculty, beyond most others, bearing a premium dispro- 

 portioned to its real merits in every free country. He 

 repeatedly endeavoured to overcome his repugnance, and 

 to risk the consequences of a failure, which after all 

 would only have continued the silence he condemned him- 

 self to. As often as he came near the point, he shrank 

 back, saying, it "was more tremendous than he had 

 imagined the great speakers filled him with despair, the 

 bad ones with terror." Afterwards, on again coming 

 near the task, he recoils, as he says, not for want of pre- 

 paration and of matter, but "from dread of exposing 

 himself." This personal vanity, then, finally condemned 

 him to silence or as he says, " he remained in his seat 

 safe but inglorious." He would not take the chance of 

 success which would have greatly exalted him, for fear 

 by failing he should remain where he was. He refused 

 to take a gratis ticket in the political lottery, where he 

 might have gained by the adventure, and could not pos- 

 sibly lose, unless, indeed, his vanity might have been 

 mortified for nine days by men citing his failure. 



His colloquial powers were by all accounts of a high 

 order, but certainly not of the highest; for he was care- 

 ful of his expressions to the pitch of pedantry; his re- 

 marks came as if prepared for the press; his wit was 



