periods of
Cicero or Bossuet or Burke. Robespierre could not rival the vivid and
highly-coloured declamation of Vergniaud; his speeches were never heated
with the ardent passion that poured like a torrent of fire through some
of the orations of Isnard; nor, above all, had he any mastery of that
dialect of the Titans, by which Danton convulsed an audience with fear,
with amazement, or with the spirit of defiant endeavour. The absence of
these intenser qualities did not make Robespierre's speeches less
effective for their own purpose. On the contrary, when the air has
become torrid, and passionate utterance is cheap, then severity in form
is very likely to pass for good sense in substance. That Robespierre had
decent fluency, copiousness, and finish, need hardly be said. The French
have an artistic sense; they have never accepted our own whimsical
doctrine, that a man's politics must be sagacious, if his speaking is
only clumsy enough. Robespierre more than once showed himself ready with
a forcible reply on critical occasions: this only makes him an
illustration the more of the good oratorical rule, that he is most
likely to come well out of the emergency of an improvisation, who is
usually most careful to prepare. Robespierre was as solicitous about the
correctness of his speech, as he was about the neatness of his clothes;
he no more grudged the pains given to the polishing of his discourses
than he grudged the time given every day to the powdering of his hair.

Nothing was more remarkable than his dexterity in presenting his case.
James Mill used to point out to his son among other skilful arts of
Demosthenes, these two: first, that he said everything important to his
purpose at the exact moment when he had brought the minds of his hearers
into the state most fitted to receive it; second, that he insinuated
gradually and indirectly into their minds ideas which would have roused
opposition if they had been expressed more directly. Mr. Mill once
called the attention of the present writer to exactly the same kind of
rhetorical skill in the speeches of Robespierre. The reader may do well
to turn, for excellent specimens of this, to the speech of January 11,
1792, against the war, or that of May 1794 against atheism. The logic is
stringent, but the premises are arbitrary. Robespierre is as one who
should iterate indisputable propositions of abstract geometry and
mechanics, while men are craving an architect who shall bridge