George Curzon

“ The Cursitors were clerks of Chancery, but anciently choristers, just as the Lord Chancellor himself was an ecclesiastic.
Curtain Road. From the “Curtain Theatre,” where Ben Jonson’s “Every Man in his Humour” was put on the stage.
Curzon Street. From George Augustus Curzon, created Viscount Howe, the ground landlord.
Cuspidor. The American term for a spittoon, derived from the Spanish escupidor, a spitter.
Cut me to the Quick. The quick of one’s fingers when cut into is most alive or sensitive to pain. See “Quicksilver.” ”

“ There comes to every one that last great day when medicine has done its best, when all relief possible has been given, when the soul stands naked and trembling, face to face with all the horrors and wonders of Eternity. ”

“ It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus so far nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us ”

“ There are laid the sceptre of righteousness and the swords of justice and mercy. There is the purple robe that speaks of the unity of love and power, and there is the throne that teaches the supreme moral governance of the world. ”

“ He has left behind him no resentments and no enmity: nothing but a gracious memory for a manly and winning personality—the memory of one who served with an unstinted measure of devotion his generation and his country. ”

“ There is hardly a gift predicable of the orator with which nature or study has not endowed Lord Rosebery; a voice flexible and resonant rather than melodious, gestures, bold and dramatic, perhaps even at times histrionic, a diction both chaste and resplendent, an exhaustive knowledge of all that is pertinent in literature or history, an exuberant fancy, great natural wit, a gift of persiflage, sometimes almost too generously indulged. ”

“ If it be said that a Burke or a Canning could do it, the answer must be that we have neither a Burke nor a Canning, and that one shudders to think of any inferior professor attempting the task. In America it would be undertaken with confidence, even if it were not achieved with ease. But there the rhetoric assumes a more glowing guise ”

“ Of the three audiences whom the speaker has to face—the hearers of the moment, the readers of the morrow, and a remote posterity—the first are those in whose hands his fame as an orator really lies. It may be that the highest form of eloquence is the eloquence that can be read with as much pleasure as it was originally heard, and that the greatest masterpieces are those which live again as prose. ”

“ Robert Wallace, an Edinburgh minister, professor, and journalist, clothed a biting wit in a literary garb so artistic that he kept the House, in which, by the way, he had a seizure and died, alternately hushed with expectancy and convulsed with laughter. Labouchere was the incurable cynic who mocked, at everybody, including himself. Mr. Birrell, the present Irish Secretary, has an instinctive gift of humour which does not desert him even on serious occasions, and is aided by irreproachable literary form. ”

“ It is not surprising in these circumstances that Parliamentary eloquence should have blossomed into an exuberant growth, that the models of the ancient world should have been diligently emulated, and almost reproduced or that oratory for more than half a century reappeared in England in the garb of an exclusive and fashionable art. ”

“ Perhaps the most remarkable instance of such an oratorical triumph in modern times was the speech of Mr. Gladstone, when moving a vote of credit in the Russo-Afghan crisis of 1885. I trust, therefore, that no aspirant to a Parliamentary career, and no mourner over the bier of old-world eloquence, will be disheartened by the idea that we live in times when speech is merely a casual accomplishment, like the hitting of a golf ball, or a stroke at cricket, worthy, perhaps, of admiration, but destitute either of real merit or of authority. ”

“ If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offences which in the Providence of God must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern there any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? ”

“ The House of Commons could hardly have made a better or more finished debater of the present Lord Lansdowne. It is true that to a man accustomed to the electric atmosphere of the Lower Chamber, with its cheering and counter-cheering and all the excitement of a popular assembly, the still and motionless firmament of the Upper House, with its austere silences and its rare murmurs of Olympian applause, is like exchanging the temperature of a stokehole for that of a refrigerating chamber. ”

“ It is not the speeches which read best which are the greatest speeches. Posterity cannot possibly judge of their merit by a mere study of the words used. They must see the man, feel the magnetism of his presence, see his gestures, the flash of his eyes. ... The test of a speaker is the audience he addresses. ”

“ In the Debate upon the Introduction of the first Home Rule Bill in 1886, to which I have before referred, by far the best speech, greatly transcending that of the trained orator Mr. Gladstone, was delivered by Lord Hartington. No hesitation or drowsiness marred the utterance of the man who felt his most sacred convictions outraged and betrayed. Sincerity and a sæva indignatio endowed him with a noble eloquence, and when he resumed his seat, I recall that members stood up and waved their hats in the air. ”

“ How different is the atmosphere of a Chamber where rules of debate and a measure of decorum have to be observed, where the audience, so far from clamouring for the speaker, is often surfeited with speeches and requires to be coaxed back to the meal, where an appeal has to be made to the understanding rather than to the emotions, where an emptying House may chill the courage of the boldest orator, and where the entire effect of his eloquence may be wiped out by a brilliant reply. Obviously we are speaking of two entirely different modes of expression, which call for separate gifts. ”

“ I quote them here because they seem to me to represent better than any explanation or definition could do that which is not rhetoric nor declamation, nor even sermonising, but the purest gold of human eloquence, nay, of eloquence almost divine. Either could be delivered, if a man capable of composing and delivering them were to exist, in any assemblage, before any audience, at any time of the modern world's history, without a suggestion of artifice or incongruity, with an effect inexorably sure and eternally true. ”

“ How then shall we judge anyone how, at any rate, shall we judge a giant, great in gifts and great in temptations, great in strength and great in weakness? Let us glory in his strength and be comforted in his weakness, and when we thank Heaven for the inestimable gift of Burns, we do not need to remember wherein he was imperfect, we cannot bring ourselves to regret that he was made of the same clay as ourselves. ”

“ No Parliamentary reputation, however great, will avail in the future to secure for a statesman the confidence of his party or the support of the nation unless it is confirmed by the verdict of the platform. It is there that the shrillest war-cries are uttered; there that the gauge of oratorical combat is thrown down. Lord Randolph Churchill would never have become leader of the House of Commons but for his platform triumphs. Mr. Lloyd George reserves the master-pieces of his peculiar style for Limehouse, Newcastle, and Swindon. ”

“ The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. ”

“ His eloquence has poured over the ordinary boundaries of the political arena, has filled innumerable channels of historical, biographical, social, or literary interest, and has fertilised many and diverse fields. Whatever subject he touches is raised at once out of the commonplace: it is gilded with happy phrases, it sparkles with effervescence and laughter, and it becomes a part of the intellectual capital of the whole community. ”

“ I speak with less confidence as to passion and pathos, since it is an oratory that produces every sensation of admiration, amusement, and delight, without as a rule appealing either to profound emotion or to tears. ”

“ Gladstone's speeches are of a kind that make it impossible for those who read them in any sense to judge of their excellence. Posterity must take it from us, who heard with our own ears the extraordinary gifts of pathos, humour, invective, detailed exposition, of holding the audience and interesting them in the most intricate and dry matters of administrative and financial detail that they had all these qualities. ”

“ Shall we not, while we adore the blessing, acknowledge the responsibility? And while we see, far away in the rich horizons, growing generations fulfilling the promise, do we not own with resolution mingled with awe the honourable duty incumbent on ourselves? ”

“ Replying at a mass meeting to a speaker who had changed his politics and been rewarded with a post, for the discharge of the duties of which he had acquired a fine house and set up a lightning conductor on the roof, Lincoln, whom the turncoat had taunted with his youth, said, "I am not so young in years as I am in the tricks and trade of the politician. But whether I live long or die young, I would rather die now than change my politics for an office worth $3,000 a year, and have to erect a lightning rod over my house to protect my conscience from an offended God." ”

“ Asquith, represents a type of public speaking carried to higher perfection than by anyone else in modern times. Possessed of a copious vocabulary, an extraordinary and effortless command of the right word, a remarkable gift of lucidity and compression, and a resonant voice, he produces an overpowering effect of Parliamentary and forensic strength. Whether in exposition or declamation, in opening or in reply, on a great subject or a small, he never falls below a certain stately level, even though he never soars above it into passion or kindles an audience into flame. ”

“ Men crowded to the House of Commons to hear the latest performance of " the orator of the century." Epigrams, antithesis, alliteration all the conscious tricks of the trade were packed into his ornate harangues, which no one now remembers. ”

“ Just as the oratory of the Georgian era was attuned to an aristocratic age, and that of the mid-Victorian epoch to middle-class ascendancy, so does it seem to me likely that the democracy will produce an eloquence, perhaps even an oratory, of its own. Should a man arise from the ranks of the people, as did Abraham Lincoln from the backwoods of America, a man gifted with real oratorical power and with commanding genius, I can see no reason why he should not renew in England the glories of a Chatham or a Grattan. ”

“ The foreigner who is accustomed to see a French or Italian orator declaiming in the tribune, rushing up and down, waving his arms, beating the desk, and throwing his body into violent postures, is astonished at the spectacle of the English Parliamentarian standing almost motionless at the table, his hands clinging to the lapels of his coat, or perhaps toying with a pince-nez, his most violent action being in all probability a mild castigation of the brass-bound box in front of him. ”

“ May we not rather seek an explanation in the foibles, not so much of the leader as of the led? May he not be preoccupied or shy where he is thought to be proud or indifferent? May they not be sensitive and over-exacting? After all, the popularity of a leader is usually in the same ratio as his success. Disraeli, who was once the suspect, became the idol of his party. Mr. Gladstone, from being taunted with arrogance, blossomed into the eventide splendour of the Grand Old Man. Popularity, in fact, comes to the leaders who wait long enough and do their work sufficiently well. ”

“ That a speaker so ungainly in manner, so unready of speech, and so casual in temperament, should also be the eldest son of a Duke, was thought to aggravate the crime. And yet this leisure-loving man, who always preferred Newmarket to the House of Commons, who hated making a speech, and regarded politics as a disagreeable necessity of his order, rose by his robust and steadfast common sense, his incorruptible honesty, and the splendid tenacity with which he defended and expounded his convictions, to be one of the most powerful and persuasive speakers in either House of Parliament. ”

“ He is too indifferent to the arts of oratory to have enjoyed a platform success at all comparable to his Parliamentary position. But even at mass meetings his logic, his play of humour, his immense resourcefulness, and his felicitous diction, have often won a conspicuous triumph.
I could not pay a higher tribute to Mr. Balfour's versatility than by selecting for quotation a passage from the class of speech from which a priori he would most naturally shrink, but in which his intellectual ascendency and width of outlook have more than once enabled him to excel. ”

“ But now that every word is taken down and that the speaker, particularly the prominent or Front Bench speaker, knows that he is addressing, not a private club, but a gathering that may embrace the whole nation, and in the case of Foreign Office debates a much wider audience still, he must walk delicately and measure his paces; he cannot frisk and frolic in the flowery meads of rhetoric; he dare not "let himself go" as Chatham or Fox could afford to do. ”