The speech, however, was admirable in
form, and still more admirable in delivery; the cold, clear voice
penetrated to every ear, and some of the sentences were uttered with
that deep, though carefully subdued swell which adds intense force by
its very reserve, to the rhetoric of passion.
[Sidenote: Joe's beautiful elocution.]
Indeed, if I were a professor of elocution, I should feel bound to say
that if a pupil required a lesson in the highest art of delivery, he
could do nothing better than listen to Mr. Chamberlain's delivery of
this bitter little speech of his; and, above all, that he could nowhere
and in nowise better learn the lesson of the extraordinary increase
there is in the force of a speech by careful self-suppression on the
part of the speaker. There were one or two marvellous examples of Mr.
Chamberlain's extraordinary readiness in taking a point. I think Mr.
Chamberlain an extremely shallow man. I believe his knowledge to be
slatternly, his judgment to be rash, his temper to be dictatorial and
uncertain, but as a debater he stands, in readiness, alertness, and
quickness in taking and utilising a point, supreme over anybody in the
House of Commons, with the one exception of Mr.
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