Lord Brougham (1778-1868). Library of Literary Criticism. 1901-05

Lord Brougham (1778-1868). Library of Literary Criticism. 1901-05 Dictionary Biographies Literary Criticism Welcome Terms of Service ⧏ Previous Next ⧐ Contents Bibliographic Record Charles Wells Moulton, ed.  Library of Literary Criticism.  1901–05. Lord Brougham (1778–1868) A British statesman, born in Edinburgh Sept. 19, 1779. He graduated at the University of Edinburgh, and was admitted to the bar in 1800. In 1802 he was associated with Francis Jeffrey and Sydney Smith in founding the “Edinburgh Review,” to which he contributed largely for many years. In 1808 he removed to London and entered upon successful practice as an advocate, and in 1810 was returned to Parliament of which he continued to be a member until 1830, distinguishing himself as a legal reformer and promoter of education. He was the leading counsel in the defense of Queen Caroline, wife of George IV., in 1820–21, and it was owing to a significant threat of his that the prosecution was abandoned. In 1830 he was made lord chancellor in the Whig ministry, and was raised to the peerage under the title of Baron Brougham and Vaux. He retired from the ministry, with his colleagues, in Nov. 1834, after which he pursued an independent political course in the House of Lords. Among his works are “The Objects, Advantages, and Pleasures of Science” and “Statesmen of the Time of George IV.” He left an “Autobiography,” which was published, by his directions, soon after his death. Died at Cannes, France, May 9, 1868.—Barnard and Guyot, 1885, eds., Johnson’s New General Cyclopædia, vol. I, p. 145,    

1 Personal

  I do more justice to Brougham than you imagine. I am aware that his present manner and habits do not proceed from his character, but from circumstances—from his not being naturally placed in the situation which his ambition, his feelings, and his taste equally make necessary to him, and which his intellect tells him is his due. His whole mind is so set on securing the means necessary for this purpose that everything and everybody who cannot in some manner help him, are neglected, or unnoticed, or indifferent to him. Above the mean arts of actual adulation of those he despises, he selects the best he can among those most fitted for his purpose, and consoles himself for the weaknesses his quickness must see, and his prudence not notice in their characters, by being doubly severe on the characters of others. When he shall have secured the independence and distinction to which his abilities in this country must soon raise him we shall see him more generally attentive to merit, less severe to the want of it, judging of persons as they really are, and not as they can or may be useful to him, and, above all, getting rid of a certain sort of affected reserve in his conversation, and of childish gravity in his behaviour. We shall see him acquiring an unaffected popular manner which may better make his superior talents be forgiven by the trifling and the dull.—Berry, Mary, 1808, Letters.    

2   Brougham is a man of the most splendid talents and the most extensive acquirements, and he has used the ample means which he possesses most usefully for mankind. It would be difficult to overrate the services which he has rendered the cause of the slaves in the West Indies, or that of the friends to the extension of knowledge and education among the poor, or to praise too highly his endeavours to serve the oppressed inhabitants of Poland. How much is it to be lamented that his want of judgment and of prudence should prevent his great talents, and such good intentions, from being as great a blessing to mankind as they ought to be.—Romilly, Sir Samuel, 1816, Diary, March 20; Memoirs of Life, ed. his Sons, vol. III, p. 237.    

3   Mr. Brougham, on the contrary, had an apparent restlessness, a consciousness, not of superior powers, but of superior activity, a man whose heart was placed in what should have been his head: you were never sure of him—you always doubted his sincerity.—Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1818–22? Table Talk, ed. Ashe, p. 316.    

4   Brougham, whom I knew in society, and from seeing him both at his chambers and at my own lodgings, is now about thirty-eight, tall, thin and rather awkward, with a plain and not very expressive countenance, and simple or even slovenly manners. He is evidently nervous, and a slight convulsive movement about the muscles of his lips gives him an unpleasant expression now and then. In short, all that is exterior in him, and all that goes to make up the first impression, is unfavorable. The first thing that removes this impression is the heartiness and good-will he shows you, whose motive cannot be mistaken, for such kindness can come only from the heart. This is the first thing, but a stranger presently begins to remark his conversation. On common topics, nobody is more commonplace. He does not feel them, but if the subject excites him, there is an air of originality in his remarks, which, if it convinces you of nothing else, convinces you that you are talking with an extraordinary man. He does not like to join in a general conversation, but prefers to talk apart with only two or three persons, and, though with great interest and zeal, in an undertone. If, however, he does launch into it, all the little, trim, gay pleasure-boats must keep well out of the way of his great black collier, as Gibbon said of Fox. He listens carefully and fairly—and with a kindness that would be provoking, if it were not genuine—to all his adversary has to say, but when his time comes to answer, it is with that bare, bold, bullion talent which either crushes itself or its opponent…. Yet I suspect the impression Brougham generally leaves is that of a good-natured friend. At least, that is the impression that I have most frequently found, both in England and on the continent.—Ticknor, George, 1819, Journal, Life, Letters, and Journals, vol. I, p. 266.    

5   You are aware that the only point of exception to Wilson may be, that, with the fire of genius, he has possessed some of its eccentricities; but, did he ever approach to those of Henry Brougham, who is the God of Whiggish idolatry?—Scott, Sir Walter, 1820, Letter to J. G. Lockhart, March 30; Life by Lockhart, ch. xlviii.    

6   Late in the evening Brougham, his hair and beard grown, looking like an orang-outang.—Granville, Harriet, Countess, 1820, To Lady G. Morpeth, Dec. 21; Letters, ed. Gower, vol. I, p. 200.    

7   Who, though he remains a lawyer, presents the singular spectacle of a lawyer, equally active in his lesser calling and his greater, and consenting, perhaps, to realize the gains of the one, only that he may secure the power of pursuing the noblest of all ambitions in the other. Mr. Brougham was “meant for mankind;” and luckily he has not been prevented by the minuter demands on his eyesight, from looking abroad and knowing it. His world is the world it ought to be,—the noble planet, capable of being added to the number of other planets which have perhaps worked out their moral beauty;—not a mere little despairing corner of it, entitled a court of justice.—Hunt, Leigh, 1828, Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries, vol. I, p. 319, note.    

8   This is the man, the only man, whose powers I contemplate with wonder. In society he has the artless gaiety of a good-humoured child. Never leading the conversation, never canvassing for audience (in truth he has no need) he catches the ball as it flies with a careless and unrivalled skill. His little narratives are inimitable; the touch-and-go of his remarks leaves a trail of light behind it. On the tritest subjects he is now without paradox and without effort, simply, as it seems, because nature has interdicted him from commonplace. With that tremendous power of sarcasm which he has so often put forth in public, he is the sweetest tempered man in private life, the kindliest in its relations, the most attracting to his friends—in short, as amiable as he is great.—Aikin, Lucy, 1830, To Dr. Channing, Dec. 14; Correspondence of William Ellery Channing and Lucy Aikin, ed. Le Breton, p. 58.    

9   I then came into parliament. I do not complain that he should have preferred Denman’s claims to mine, and that he should have blamed Lord Lansdowne for not considering him. I went to take my seat. As I turned from the table at which I had been taking the oaths, he stood as near to me as you do now, and he cut me dead. We never spoke in the House excepting once, that I can remember, when a few words passed between us in the lobby. I have sat close to him when many men of whom I knew nothing have introduced themselves to me to shake hands and congratulate me after making a speech, and he has never said a single word. I know that it is jealousy, because I am not the first man whom he has used in this way…. He is, next to the King, the most popular man in England. There is no other man whose entrance into any town in the kingdom would be so certain to be with huzzaing and taking off of horses. At the same time he is in a very ticklish situation, for he has no real friends, Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, Mackintosh, all speak of him as I now speak to you. I was talking to Sydney Smith of him the other day, and said that, great as I felt his faults to be, I must allow him a real desire to raise the lower orders, and do good by education and those methods upon which his heart has been always set. Sydney would not allow this or any other merit. Now, if those who are called his friends feel towards him, as they all do, angry and sore at his overbearing, arrogant and neglectful conduct, when those reactions in public feeling which must come, arrive, he will have nothing to return upon, no place of refuge, no band of such tried friends as Fox and Canning had to support him. You will see that he will soon place himself in a false position before the public. His popularity will go down, and he will find himself alone.—Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 1831, To Margaret Macaulay, Nov. 27; Life and Letters, ed. Trevelyan, ch. iv.    

10   I should wonder little to see one day a second Cromwell. He is the cunningest and the strongest man in England now, as I construe him, and with no better principle than a Napoleon has—a worship and self-devotion to power. God be thanked that I had nothing to do with his University and its committees.—Carlyle, Thomas, 1831, Letter to John Carlyle, Thomas Carlyle, A History of the First Forty Years of His Life, ed. Froude, vol. II, p. 116.    

11   Tickler. “Brougham in his robes! Lord High Chancellor of England! Stern face, and stalwart frame—and his mind, people say, is gigantic. They name him with Bacon. Be it so; the minister he and the interpreter of Nature! Henry Brougham, in the eye of his idolaters, is also an Edmund Burke. Be it so; at once the most imaginative and the most philosophical of orators that ever sounded lament over the decline and fall of empires, while wisdom, listening to his lips, exclaimed,‘Was ne’er prophetic sound so full of wo!’” —Wilson, John, 1832, Noctes Ambrosianæ, Nov.    

12   That Lord Brougham is one of this favoured class, perhaps, few of his contemporaries will be hardy enough to dispute. He has risen in the course of comparatively a few years from obscurity to the highest honours of the state—the very acmé of political power and popularity. And in this, he owes nothing to birth, fortune, or family connections; he has been the architect of his own fame; and the honours he has attained have been won honourably. Let us search history where we may, we shall find few examples of a statesman having passed to office by a broader and more straight-forward road—few instances of an individual having more closely connected the public interests with his own, than the present Lord Chancellor of England. He does not derive his present greatness from his superiority to other men in any one single line of excellence, whether it be learning, eloquence, a profound acquaintance with jurisprudence, or political sagacity—but from the universality of his genius and talents, and from the felicitous combination of the whole of the afore-mentioned excellencies meeting in his character.—Jones, William, 1832, Biographical Sketches of the Reform Ministers, vol. I, p. 68.    

13   He has attained a vast renown upon a very slender foundation. His failures—and they have been many—have proceeded from two causes. He has pretended to too much, and he wants moral courage. By attempting everything, he is unable to deal with any subject effectually. He knows nothing to the bottom. His incessant activity surprises the fools, but has ruined his own mind…. Present approbation is the very breath of his nostrils. To obtain this approbation he will sacrifice anything and everything.—Roebuck, John Arthur, 1833, Tait’s Magazine, Dec.    

14   I was talking yesterday with Stephen about Brougham and Macaulay. He said he had known Brougham about thirty years and well remembers walking with him down to Clapham, to dine with old Zachary Macaulay, and telling him he would find a prodigy of a boy there of whom he must take notice. This was Tom Macaulay. Brougham afterward put himself forward as the monitor and director of the education of Macaulay, and I remember hearing of a letter he wrote to the father on the subject, which made a great noise at the time; but he was like the man who brought up a young lion, which finished by biting his head off. Brougham and Macaulay dislike each other. Brougham could not forgive his great superiority in many of those accomplishments in which he thought himself unrivaled; and being at no pains to disguise his jealousy and dislike, the other was not behind him in corresponding feelings of aversion. It was unworthy of both, but most of Brougham, who was the aggressor, and who might have considered the world large enough for both of them, and that a sufficiency of fame was attainable by each.—Greville, Charles C. F., 1836, A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, ed. Reeve, Feb. 9, vol. II, p. 458.    

15   His Lordship took very little wine—less than I have seen any gentleman take at the head of his table in England; but if he have not that vice, which has been attributed to him,—and I fully believe that he has it not,—he has another which is, perhaps, as bad; certainly it is bad and vulgar beyond expression,—I mean swearing. I have dined in company nearly every day since I have been in England, and I do not remember to have met a person who swore half so much as Lord Brougham;—and all this in conversation with an aged clergyman! His manner was rapid, hurried, and his voice very loud. He seemed uneasy and restless; and, of course, made me feel the same. His language, as you may well suppose, was vigorous and to the point…. I am almost sorry that I have seen Lord B., for I can no longer paint him to my mind’s eye as the pure and enlightened orator of Christianity, civilization and humanity. I see him now, as before, with powers, such as belong to angels: why could I not have found him with an angel’s purity, gentleness and simplicity? I must always admire his productions as models of art; but I fear that I shall distrust his sincerity and the purity of his motives.—Sumner, Charles, 1838, To George S. Hillard, Sept. 6; Memoir and Letters of Sumner, ed. Pierce, vol. I, pp. 350, 352.    

16   I called on Lord Brougham. It is strange that, in his presence, I forgot all my grounds of complaint against him.—Robinson, Henry Crabb, 1840, Diary, Dec. 23; Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence, ed. Sadler.    

17   He began his literary and political life with a scanty store of many small commodities. Long after he set out, the witty and wise Lord Stowell said of him that he wanted only a little law to fill up the vacancy. His shoulders were not over-burdened by the well-padded pack he bore on them; and he found a ready sale, where such articles find the readiest, in the town of Edinburgh. Here he entered into a confederacy (the word conspiracy may be libellous) to defend the worst atrocities of the French, and to cry down every author to whom England was dear and venerable. A better spirit now prevails in the “Edinburgh Review,” from the generosity and genius of Macaulay. But in the days when Brougham and his confederates were writers in it, more falsehood and more malignity marked its pages than any other journal in the language. And here is the man who cries out he is wounded! The recreant who, screaming for help, aims a poisoned dagger at the vigorous breast that crushes him to the ground…. What other man within the walls of Parliament, however hasty, rude and petulant, hath exhibited such manifold instances of bad manners, bad feelings, bad reasonings, bad language and bad law?—Landor, Walter Savage, 1843, Lord Brougham and the Examiner, Letters, ed. Wheeler, pp. 259, 260.    

18   There was something very charming in Lord Brougham’s conversation. It was playful, varied, wise, witty, full of anecdote and novelty, and overflowing with vanity. His forgetfulness was extreme. He once asked me to breakfast. I went, but he had gone out long before the breakfast hour and told the servants they were not to expect him till dinner, and he afterwards, when I reminded him of his invitation, and of my disappointment, said with great simplicity that he had forgotten it wholly.—Bowring, Sir John, 1853, Autobiographical Recollections, p. 295.    

19   I needed no one to point out Lord Brougham. I knew him at once from the not flattering pictures of Punch. He is wonderfully like General Taylor, our military President.—Le Vert, Octavia Walton, 1853, Souvenirs of Travel, vol. I, p. 24.    

20   The first sight of Brougham, then just seated on the wool-sack, and the object of all manner of expectation which he never fulfilled, was an incident to be remembered. I had not previously shared the general expectation of great national benefits from him. I believe that much of his effort for popular objects, even for education, was for party and personal purposes; and that he had no genuine popular sympathy, or real desire that the citizens at large should have any effectual political education. I distrusted his steadiness, and his disinterestedness, and his knowledge of the men and interests of his own time. I believed him too vain and selfish, and too low in morals and unrestrained in temper, to turn out a really great man when his day of action came…. He talked excessively fast, and ate fast and prodigiously, stretching out his long arm for any dish he had a mind to, and getting hold of the largest spoons which would dispatch the most work in the shortest time. He watched me intently and incessantly when I was conversing with anybody else. For my part, I liked to watch him when he was conversing with gentlemen, and his mind and its manifestations really came out. This was never the case, as far as my observation went, when he talked with ladies…. His swearing became so incessant and the occasional indecency of his talk so insufferable, that I have seen even coquettes and adorers turn pale, and the lady of the house tell her husband that she could not undergo another dinner party with Lord Brougham for a guest. I, for my part, determined to decline quietly henceforth any small party where he was expected; and this simply because there was no pleasure in a visit where everybody was on thorns as to what any one guest might say and do next. My own impression that day was that he was either drunk or insane. Drunk he was not, for he had been publicly engaged in business till the last moment. All manner of protestations have been made by his friends, to this day, and he is, with all his eccentricities, “sane enough,” but my impression remains that no man who conducted himself as he did that summer day in 1834 could be sane and sober.—Martineau, Harriet, 1855–77, Autobiography, ed. Chapman, vol. I, pp. 233, 235.    

21   Strange fellow! His powers gone. His spite immortal. A dead nettle.—Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 1857, Journal; Life and Letters, ed. Trevelyan, ch. xiv.    

22   Notwithstanding the very large space which, while living, he has occupied in the public eye, a considerate man may doubt whether his permanent fame will be great in proportion. By seeking distinction in almost every department of genius, he has failed to establish a great name in any. He accomplished nothing as a statesman; he cannot be said to have extended the bounds of human knowledge by philosophical discovery; his writings, although displaying marvelous fertility, are already falling into neglect; his speeches, which when delivered nearly set the world on fire, when perused in print cause disappointment and weariness; and he must chiefly be remembered by the professional and party struggles in which he was engaged, and by the juridical improvements which he assisted to introduce…. He was very desirous of being considered a distinguished statesman, philosopher, orator, fine writer, and lawyer, but much more desirous of being believed to be “Brougham of that ilk,”—the representative of a great family, who derived their name from the name of the landed estate of which they had immemoriably been in possession. His weakness upon this point was almost incredible, and I am afraid to repeat what I have heard him gravely state respecting the antiquity and splendour of his race.—Campbell, John, Lord, 1859–68, Lives of Lord Lyndhurst and Lord Brougham, p. 214.    

23   Lord Brougham has long since quitted the ranks of party, but whenever the real interests of the people were to be served he has always put forth his strength on either side. The spectator of present and the reviewer of past events, wide as may be the differences of opinion he may entertain from him on many political questions, regards with sincere admiration and respect a long life spent in avocations having for their object the advancement of freedom, the equalization of justice, and the elevation of the humbler classes of the community to a higher rank than hitherto in the scale of social happiness.—Eardley-Wilmot, Sir John E., 1860, ed., Lord Brougham’s Law Reforms, Preface, p. vi.    

24   In private society no one could be more delightful than Lord Brougham. His kindliness of manner and simplicity of demeanor won every heart. Conversation with him flowed naturally, as it was suggested by topics started often by others, without either effort or anxiety for effect. It was very delightful to see this in a man past eighty, who for more than half a century had occupied an important position in the public eye, and had in many ways acquired such extensive fame. He spoke, like Mrs. Norton, much about himself; but that was readily forgiven in him, as in her, from the interesting matter which that subject contained.—Alison, Sir Archibald, 1867?–83, Some Account of My Life and Writings, vol. II, p. 284.    

25   It may truly be said of Lord Brougham, that none more completely represented his age, and no one more contributed to the progress of the times in which he lived. He had two qualities, almost in excess, which are rarely combined in the same person—one was energy, and the other versatility. The influence which creative power gave him, combined with strength of character, alone sustained him in a career which for its duration, as well as for its dazzling feats, has rarely been equalled in Europe.—Disraeli, Benjamin (Lord Beaconsfield), 1868, Speech in House of Commons, July 27.    

26   Lord Brougham was at his chateau at Cannes when the first introduction of the daguerreotype process took place there; and an accomplished neighbor proposed to take a view of the chateau, with a group of guests in the balcony. The artist explained the necessity of perfect immobility. He only asked that his Lordship and friends would keep perfectly still “for five seconds;” and his Lordship vehemently promised that he would not stir. He moved about too soon, however, and the consequence was—a blur where Lord Brougham should be; and so stands the daguerreotype view to this hour. There is something mournfully typical in this. In the picture of our century, as taken from the life by History, this very man should have been a central figure; but now, owing to his want of steadfastness, there will be forever—a blur where Brougham should have been.—Martineau, Harriet, 1868–69, Biographical Sketches, p. 402.    

27   The personal man, the bodily man, the private man did not vary. From 1830 to 1866—the period between his brightest glow of fame and his mental eclipse,—he was always the same gaunt, angular, raw-boned figure, with the high cheek-bones, the great, flexible nose, the mobile mouth, the shock head of hair, the uncouthly-cut coat with the velvet collar, the high black stock, the bulging shirt front, the dangling bunch of seals at his fob, and the immortal pantaloons of checked tweed. It is said that one of his admirers in the Bradford Cloth Hall gave him a bale of plaid trousering “a ‘oo’” in 1825, and that he continued to the day of his death to have his nether garments cut from the inexhaustible store. I have seen Lord Brougham in evening dress and in the customary black continuations; but I never met him by daylight without the inevitable checks. This was the man bodily, as you might see him in the House of Peers, in the Gothic consulting room apportioned to him as a law lord in the palace at Westminster, in the Temple Church on Sundays, or stepping into his antique yellow carriage at the door of his solemn old mansion in Grafton street, Piccadilly.—Sala, George Augustus, 1868, Lord Brougham, Temple Bar, vol. 23, p. 427.    

28   We very much doubt if, in the course of his fourscore years, Brougham ever wittingly did a kind or generous act. He was an intensely hard, selfish man. With talents of the highest order, with opportunities that fall to the lot of but few human beings, he passed through life without ever making a friend, and went to a grave unmoistened by a tear. He was intensely proud, and, what is uncommon with proud men, overbearing and tyrannical to his inferiors…. He was a willing referee in all cases where his legal knowledge and early-acquired habits of brow-beating plaintiff or defendant could aid in keeping cases of domestic scandal from public scrutiny.—Constable, A. G., 1874, Archibald Constable and his Friends, Harper’s Magazine, vol. 48, p. 505.    

29   John Mill, who early conceived a repugnance to Brougham, states that his father’s attachment to him was for the sake of his public usefulness; but he acknowledged in private to myself that Brougham’s fascination was very great when he set himself to gain any one, and that his father always succumbed under the influence. Not that he overlooked Brougham’s faults.—Bain, Alexander, 1882, James Mill, A Biography, p. 76.    

30   All that made Canning attractive Brougham lacked—so far as regards the outer man. Careless to a blamable extent of personal appearance, his clothes hung loosely about him, as if his tailor, when he made them, had neglected to take his measure. His action was the reverse of graceful; his features coarse and somewhat awry, the well-remembered twitching of the nose giving to them rather a repulsive character; the eyes were not expressive, except when animated, and then they rather reminded one of the vulture than the eagle—sly in their fierceness and little indicating the strength of expression so paramount in his flexible and powerful voice. It was not the eye of the Ancient Mariner that compelled the bystander to listen; yet Brougham never failed to do so—being a man whose sway was instinctively irresistible. Slightly tinged at all times with Scottish accent, his voice was broad, strong, flexible, vigorous and mentally healthful—the very opposite to that of his great ally, “silver-tongued Fenman,” who, moreover, had the personal grace in which Brougham was so defective…. It was foreseen that Brougham the Lord would be the inferior of Brougham the Commoner. So it was undoubtedly. In the House of Peers he was never at home. I can only liken him there to a man who wears another man’s clothes that do not fit him. His motions were uneasy at best, sometimes so much so that he appeared to be “seated on a hot griddle.” He fidgeted from side to side, rose without dignity, and ungracefully resumed his seat—starting up and flopping down.—Hall, Samuel Carter, 1883, Retrospect of a Long Life, p. 105.    

31   “Blundering Brougham.” “Dominie Hairy.” “Foaming Fudge.” “The God of Whiggish Idolatry.” “Harry Twitcher.” “Jupiter Placens.”—Frey, Albert R., 1888, Sobriquets and Nicknames, p. 383.    

32   Brougham was a man with whom nobody could get on. He had an over-bearing and even ferocious temper, and he had no idea of dignity, propriety, or prudence. He used to stump the country after the fashion of O’Connell, and deliver harangues such as, according to the etiquette of that time, an ex-Lord Chancellor was not supposed to deliver. He was always getting into quarrels, and always making compromising strokes off his own bat.—McCarthy, Justin, 1891, Sir Robert Peel, p. 131.    

33   He didn’t love to agree with anybody; one of those men it would seem who hardly wished his dinner to agree with him.—Mitchell, Donald G., 1897, English Lands, Letters, and Kings, The Later Georges to Victoria, p. 88.    

34   The boisterous force and ill-balanced energy of Brougham disturbed the serenity of the Court of Session for a few years before he carried them to a larger scene, where they failed to win for him the permanent respect of his countrymen.—Craik, Sir Henry, 1901, A Century of Scottish History, vol. II, p. 251.    

35 Oratory

  Mr. Brougham has one considerable advantage in debate: he is overcome by no false modesty, no deference to others. But then, by a natural consequence or parity of reasoning, he has little sympathy with other people and is liable to be mistaken in the effect his arguments will have upon them. He relies too much, among other things, on the patience of his hearers, and on his ability to turn everything to his own advantage. He accordingly goes to the full length of his tether (in vulgar phrase) and often overshoots the mark…. He is positive and abrupt, and is not in the habit of conciliating the feelings or soothing the follies of others…. Mr. Brougham speaks in a loud and unmitigated tone of voice, sometimes almost approaching to a scream. He is fluent, rapid, vehement, full of his subject, with evidently a great deal to say, and very regardless of the manner of saying it. As a lawyer, he has not hitherto been remarkably successful. He is not profound in cases and reports, nor does he take much interest in the peculiar features of a particular cause, or show much adroitness in the management of it. He carries too much weight of metal for ordinary and petty occasions: he must have a pretty large question to discuss and must make thorough-stitch work of it.—Hazlitt, William, 1825, The Spirit of the Age, pp. 196, 197, 198.    

36   Brougham’s speech was four hours long: the greater part dull, cold, heavy, and tautologous to a wonder: insolent to intolerability in the placarding of characters on all persons he had or found occasion to mention, false to his party, and basely crawling to the Duke of Wellington—the whole a piece of treason under a splash of bravado. The impostor knelt at the end.—Lockhart, John Gibson, 1831, Letter to W. Blackwood, Oct. 8; William Blackwood and His Sons, ed. Oliphant, vol. I, p. 250.    

37   In forensic eloquence a comparison [with Lord Erskine] may be more correctly instituted. Both possessed POWER, the main engine of persuasion; both had a rapid, unhesitating utterance, and a fervid and beautiful fancy; but the latter, [Erskine] was more terrible and unsparing. The first won, the second commanded, the verdict. The former was the “Jupiter Placens” (but still Jupiter), the latter the “Jupiter Tonans.” This within the courts of law; out of them, all comparison ceases.—Dibdin, Thomas Frognall, 1836, Reminiscences of a Literary Life, vol. I, p. 123, note.    

38   Burke, to name two or three distinctions, was always a careful, while Brougham is often an extempore, thinker. Burke is a Cicero, and something far more; Brougham aspires to be a Demosthenes, and is something far less. Burke reasons philosophically—a mode of ratiocination which, as we have seen, can be employed with advantage on almost all subjects; Brougham reasons geometrically, and is one of those who, according to Aristotle, are sure to err when they turn their mathematical method to moral or mental themes. Burke’s process of thought resembles the swift synthetic algebra; Brougham’s, the slow, plodding, geometric analysis. Burke had prophetic insight, earnestness, and poetic fire; Brougham has marvellous acuteness, the earnestness of passion, and the fire of temperament. Burke had genuine imagination; Brougham has little or none.—Gilfillan, George, 1855, A Third Gallery of Portraits, p. 320.    

39   Lord Brougham is said to be hot and hasty, vehement, impetuous and offensively earnest in discussion. The great Lord Chatham has been taxed with similar defects; and, like him, Lord Brougham merges all minor imperfections in the countervailing merits of his vast powers of impulsive oratory and persuasive argument. His command of language, extent of information on every subject, in every science, embracing the whole circle of knowledge; his felicity in extracting arguments and illustrations from that vast store of varied information; his never-failing memory, marvelous ability of grappling with all the difficulties of a question, of seeing at a glance all its bearings, of sustaining a state of perpetual mental activity, of encountering opposition utterly fearless of all opponents, of bearing down on his enemies, of sending forth torrents of words of overwhelming eloquence on any occasion, however sudden the emergency—these peculiar talents and powers have seldom been equaled, never have been surpassed in parliament.—Madden, Richard Robert, 1855, The Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington, vol. II, p. 243.    

40   Lord Brougham has wished to be known not only as an orator, but as a writer on oratory: he has written a “Discourse on Ancient Oratory,” recommending, and very deservedly, its study to those who would now excel in the art. And there is no denying that he has rivaled the great Greek orator at least in one of his characteristic excellences: there is no more manly book in the world than Brougham’s Speeches; he always “calls a spade a spade;” the rough energy strikes; we have none of the tawdry metaphor or half-real finery of the inferior orators; there is not a simile which a man of sense should not own. Nevertheless, we are inclined to question whether his studies on ancient oratory, especially on the great public oration of Demosthenes, have been entirely beneficial to him.—Bagehot, Walter, 1857, Lord Brougham, Works, ed. Morgan, vol. III, p. 81.    

41   We advise all who wish to qualify themselves as public speakers to study the orations of Lord Brougham. They will find them a store-house of manly thought, of vigorous argument, and lofty eloquence upon all the great questions of his time. Few may hope to rival the orator who defeated the bill of Pains and Penalties against Queen Caroline, and snapped asunder the chain of slavery; but none can fail to profit by the example.—Forsyth, William, 1858, The Speeches of Lord Brougham, Edinburgh Review, vol. 107, p. 463.    

42   Brougham well earned a great reputation. With prodigious force of argument he struck down any common adversary, pouring fiery sarcasm, and unsparing, overwhelming refutation upon his head, and leaving him an object of ridicule or of pity, crushed beneath the weight of accumulated epithets and a burning mass of invective…. Lord Brougham was a man of extraordinary powers of mind. It must be said also that, with many aberrations, those powers of mind were generally directed to great and worthy objects,—to the abolition of the Slave Trade and of slavery, to the improvement of law, to the promotion of education, to the furtherance of civil and religious liberty. His speech on the trial and condemnation of Missionary Smith combined the closest and most pressing logic with the most eloquent denunciations of oppression and the most powerful appeal to justice. It contributed, no doubt, in a very marked degree, to the extinction of slavery throughout the dominions of the Crown of England…. Lord Brougham’s speeches at the bar of the House of Lords, on the Bill of Pains and Penalties against Queen Caroline, were striking specimens of a powerful understanding; and his great speech in opening the defense was the most wonderful effort of oratory I ever heard. Nor can any one who heard him remember with any other feelings than those of the highest admiration his speech on the second reading of the Reform Bill in the House of Lords. The speech which he made at the assizes, in defense of Ambrose Williams, in 1821, carries satire and sarcasm to a height that may be called sublime.—Russell, John, Earl, 1874, Recollections and Suggestions, 1813–1873, pp. 46, 111, 112.    

43   Brougham was one of the giants of the senate; but he wrote as if he were speaking from the woolsack, and the big words and labyrinthine sentences violated the first laws of literary composition…. Though Brougham has plenty of faults, they are the faults, not of weakness, but of power. He runs riot in the exuberance of his strength. His sentences are interminable in their length, stuffed with parentheses, and as full of folds as a sleeping boa-constrictor. He is fond of repetition and exaggeration, clothes his ideas in almost endless forms of words; crowds qualifying clauses, explanatory statements, hints, insinuations, and even distinct thoughts, into a single sentence; piles Ossa upon Pelion; accumulates image upon image, metaphor upon metaphor, argument upon argument, till the hearer, perplexed by the multiplicity of ideas, almost loses the thread of the reasoning, and is lost in the labyrinth of his periods.—Mathews, William, 1878, Oratory and Orators, pp. 188, 259.    

44   He was beyond doubt a great parliamentary orator. His style was too diffuse and sometimes too uncouth to suit a day like our own, when form counts for more than substance, when passion seems out of place in debate, and not to exaggerate is far more the object than to try to be great. Brougham’s action was wild, and sometimes even furious; his gestures were singularly ungraceful; his manners were grotesque; but of his power over his hearers there could be no doubt. That power remained with him until a far later date; and long after the years when men usually continue to take part in political debate, Lord Brougham could be impassioned, impressive, and even overwhelming. He was not an orator of the highest class; his speeches have not stood the test of time. Apart from the circumstances of the hour and the personal power of the speaker, they could hardly arouse any great delight, or even interest; for they are by no means models of English style, and they have little of that profound philosophical interest, that pregnancy of thought and meaning, and that splendor of eloquence which make the speeches of Burke always classic, and even in a certain sense always popular among us. In truth, no man could have done with abiding success all the things which Brougham did successfully for the hour. On law, on politics, on literature, on languages, on science, on art, on industrial and commercial enterprise, he professed to pronounce with the authority of a teacher. “If Brougham knew a little of law,” said O’Connell when the former became Lord Chancellor, “he would know a little of everything.” The anecdote is told in another way too, which perhaps makes it even more piquant. “The new Lord Chancellor knows a little of everything in the world—even the law.”—McCarthy, Justin, 1879, A History of Our Own Times from the Accession of Queen Victoria to the Berlin Congress, ch. ii.    

45 General
Beware lest blundering Brougham destroy the sale, Turn beef to bannocks, cauliflowers to kail. —Byron, Lord, 1809, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.    

46   His character has powerfully influenced the character of his age. His example of earnest, devoted, persevering labor to accomplish noble ends by noble means has been long before the world. If we were called upon to name the man, who, in our opinion has done more for the human race, we confess we should not know where to look. Franklin alone, in modern times may be compared to him as an instance of what one man, animated by a noble and enlarged philanthropy, may accomplish for his fellow-men; and, in his great efforts for the diffusion of knowledge, he seems constantly to have held the example of Franklin in full view.—Chase, S. P., 1831, Life and Character of Henry Brougham, North American Review, vol. 33, p. 256.    

47   As a writer, I have always thought him somewhat clumsy; more remarkable for rude force than refinement, and very deficient in the ear. Did he ever write a musical sentence? I began his first book on Natural Theology, but finding that I should gain little, I laid it aside. I hear good accounts of his second, and I certainly respect him for this use of his powers.—Channing, William Ellery, 1839, To Miss Aikin, Sept. 11; Correspondence of William Ellery Channing and Lucy Aikin, ed. Le Breton, p. 353.    

48   He dazzles us by no lights of eloquence, he attracts us by not even a fictitious flue-warmth; but he perplexes and makes us stare and stumble by his angular intricacies and sudden glares. Not a sentence of his speeches or writings will be deposited in the memory as rich or rare; and even what is strange will be cast out of it for what is stranger, until this goes too. Is there a housewife who keeps a cupboardful of cups without handle or bottom; a selection of brokages and flaws?—Landor, Walter Savage, 1843, Lord Brougham and the Examiner, Letters, ed. Wheeler, p. 261.    

49   His style is bold and manly, though sometimes strangely careless and lounging; but it is always expressive of his mind and heart and through the most labyrinthian sentence it is always easy to follow the sentiments and reasoning of the writer.—Peabody, William B. O., 1845, Brougham’s Lives of Men of Letters and Science, North American Review, vol. 61, p. 421.    

50   It is well known that no man has gone beyond Lord Brougham in the patient finish of particular passages of his speeches; he has himself recorded that the ultimate peroration on Queen Caroline’s case was written ten times over before he thought it worthy of the occasion; and we have heard from his lips within these last few years several outpourings on the Whigs, which no doubt had been concocted with equal and more delightful elaboration. But with rare exceptions we cannot believe that he spends much time on the detail of any of his productions; nor do we suppose that his oral eloquence would be more effective than it is, if he took more pains in immediate preparation;—the preparation of lifelong study is a far better and here a quite sufficient thing. But it is somewhat different in the case of compositions avowedly and exclusively for the press. In these, we think, the public might reasonably expect more of care and deliberation than can usually be recognised in the authorship of Lord Brougham. Nothing like imbecility need be feared—but when there is such obvious strength, it is a pity that there should often be as obvious rashness.—Croker, John Wilson, 1845, Lord Brougham’s Lives of Men of Letters, Quarterly Review, vol. 76, p. 62.    

51   It was a bold—perhaps a rash—idea to collect the writings of Henry Brougham; they were written at such distant dates, their subjects are so various, they are often so wedged into the circumstances of an age, that they scarcely look natural in a series of volumes. Some men, doubtless, by a strong grasp of intellect, have compacted together subjects as various: the finger-marks of a few are on all human knowledge; others, by a rare illuminative power, have lit up as many with a light that seems peculiar to themselves; “Franciscus Baconus sic cogitavit” may well illustrate an “Opera Omnia.” But Lord Brougham has neither power; his restless genius has no claim to the still, illuminating imagination; his many-handed, apprehensive intelligence is scarcely able to fuse and concentrate; variety is his taste, and versatility his power. His career has not been quiet; for many years rushing among the details of an age, he has written as he ran. There are not many undertakings bolder than to collect the works of such a life and such a man.—Bagehot, Walter, 1857, Lord Brougham, Works, ed. Morgan, vol. III, p. 42.    

52   He wrote currente calamo, and although probably no other man could have written so large and so good a book [“Colonial Policy of European Nations”] in so short a time, it was destined to a rather obscure career, and but for the fame subsequently acquired by the author, which reflects some interest upon it, long ere now it would have fallen into complete oblivion.—Campbell, John, Lord, 1859–68, Lives of Lord Lyndhurst and Lord Brougham, p. 243.    

53   One of the most vital of the sons of men.—Craik, George L., 1861, A Compendious History of English Literature, vol. II, p. 544.    

54   “Discourse on the Objects, Advantages, and Pleasures of Science.” The sale of this work has been as extraordinary as its merits were striking and almost unexampled. Some called it superficial, because it touched rapidly upon many departments of scientific knowledge; but the more just conclusion was that it was the work of “a full man,” who had not laboriously elaborated this fascinating treatise out of books recently studied or hastily referred to, but had poured it forth out of the accumulated wealth of his rich treasury of knowledge. No reader to whom the subjects treated of were in any degree new could read this little book without feeling an ardent desire to know more—to know all. Such were my own feelings as I devoured this tract on the outside of an Aylesbury coach, and bitterly regretted that upon mere business considerations I had lost the chance of becoming intimate with the author of such a book, as his fellow-labourer in the work of popular enlightenment.—Knight, Charles, 1863, Passages of a Working Life During Half a Century, p. 293.    

55   Yet ambitious as he was of literary fame, and jealous of the success of other authors, he failed to obtain any lasting place in English literature. His style was slouching, involved, and incorrect. Like his handwriting, which was precipitate and almost illegible, except to the initiated, his composition bore marks of haste and carelessness, and nowhere shows any genuine originality of thought.—Reeve, Henry, 1877, Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth ed., vol. IV, p. 381.    

56   He never quite achieved the distinction which his abilities thoroughly deserved. In one sense he had more brilliant powers than any of his contemporaries. There were men among them who could beat him on any given subject, but there was no one who had so extended an acquaintance with so many matters. He was ready to discuss a scientific problem with Playfair, to argue a point of law with Copley, or a question of policy with Canning. He could make a speech with the same facility with which he could write an article; and he could write an article as easily as another man could write a letter. His physical strength admirably assisted his extraordinary intellectual power…. Lord Brougham might have attained the eminence of Fox as a politician, of Erskine as an advocate, of Playfair as a mathematician, of Herschel as an astronomer, of Hallam as an historian. He tried to rival all these characters in their various stations; and, in consequence, though he ran a good second to them all, he did not win quite the first place in any race.—Walpole, Spencer, 1878, A History of England from the Conclusion of the Great War in 1815, vol. I, pp. 310, 311.    

57   The great ability and the prominence of this author entitle this volume [“British Constitution”] to consideration. The first eleven chapters are largely speculative, and to most students will be of less value than those which follow. From chapter xii. to the end, the volume is of considerable historical value. Especially able and discriminating is the discussion of the relations of monarch and parliament in the time of the Plantagenets and Tudors. Chapter xix., on judicial establishments in different countries and in England, is of especial value to the student of law.—Adams, Charles Kendall, 1882, A Manual of Historical Literature, p. 481.    

58   The “Edinburgh Review” had at that time among its chief contributors a young man of vast energy of brain and vast power of sarcasm, without the commensurate sense of responsibility which might have checked and guided his powers. His intellect was not for a moment to be measured with that of Young; but as a writer appealing to a large class of the public, he was, at that time, an athlete without a rival. He afterwards became Lord Chancellor of England. Young, it may be admitted, has given him some annoyance, but his retaliation, if such it were, was out of all proportion to Young’s offence. Besides, whatever his personal feelings were, it was not Young that he assailed so much as those sublime natural truths of which Young at the time was the foremost exponent. Through the undulatory theory he attacked Young without scruple or remorse.—Tyndall, John, 1886, Thomas Young, New Fragments, p. 275.    

59   His literary labours can hardly be estimated highly. He attempted too much to be more than superficial. Yet, in the absence of more authoritative works, his “History of the House of Lancaster” is still useful, and his “Sketches of the Statesmen of the Time of George III.” have a more permanent value as covering ground with which he was familiar. His “Speeches,” collected in 1838, are powerful, though hardly of the highest rank. With energies less dissipated and temper more controlled, Brougham’s place in history, and even in literature, must have been very high. As it was, his life was a splendid failure.—Tout, T. F., 1887, Celebrities of the Century, ed. Sanders, p. 177.    

60   As a man of letters, notwithstanding his literary industry and the fact that in the first twenty numbers of the Edinburgh Review he wrote eighty articles, he has left no work of lasting celebrity, and in science he made no real discovery. In the midst of all his triumphs, the friends who knew him best were aware that his extraordinary gifts and powers did not include all the important elements of true greatness. He lacked self-control, was too rash, arrogant, and capricious for a successful leader, and although probably admired and feared more than any man in England, he drifted out of the main stream of national life, and his figure is already becoming indistinct.—Lamb, Martha J., 1889, The Early Career of Lord Brougham, Magazine of American History, vol. 22, p. 453.    

61   Few eminent men have paid so heavily in posthumous reputation for any failing as Brougham for a jealous and insatiable vanity. His name—apart from the useful vehicle which bears it—conjures up almost no associations that are not ludicrous and grotesque; and as the fame of his achievements as a legislator—of his services to “liberty,” education, and a variety of other “causes”—is tainted by the ever-present recollection of his feverish and overwhelming egotism, so his renown as a man of letters has suffered irretrievable damage from the versatility of his gifts. It were vain to look to this champion of progress for any substantial contribution to political philosophy, to physical science, or to literary criticism. Hasty and ill-considered judgments, rash and superficial generalisations, these, together with the commonplace and high-sounding maxims dear to shallow and confident minds, are the chief legacy of one who, to borrow Rogers’s enumeration, combined in his own person the characters of Solon, Lycurgus, Demosthenes, Archimedes, Sir Isaac Newton, Lord Chesterfield, and a great many more.—Millar, J. H., 1896, English Prose, ed. Craik, vol. V, p. 213.    

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