n editor, he has expressed with the
good taste of a gentleman.

The commencement of a parliament is always looked to with curiosity,
as the debut of new members. All the expectations which have been
formed by favouritism, family, or faction, are then brought to the
test. Parliament is an unerring tribunal, and no charlatanry can cheat
its searching eye. College reputations are extinguished in a moment,
the common-places of the hustings can avail no more, and the
pamperings of party only hurry its favourites to more rapid decay.

Mr Phipps, the son of Lord Mulgrave, now commenced his career. By an
extraordinary taste, though bred a seaman, he was so fond of quoting
law, that he got the sobriquet of the "marine lawyer." His knowledge
of the science (as the annotator observes) could not have been very
deep, for he was then but twenty-two. But he was an evidence of the
effect of indefatigable exertion. Though a dull debater, he took a
share in every debate, and he appears to have taken the pains of
revising his speeches for the press. Yet even under his nursing, they
exhibit no traces of eloquence. His manner was inanimate, and his
large and heavy figure gained him the luckless appellation of Ursa
Major, (to distinguish him from his brother, who was also a member.)
As if to complete the amount of his deficiencies, his voice was
particularly inharmonious, or rather it was two distinct voices, the
one strong and hoarse, the other weak and querulous; both of which he
frequently used. On this was constructed the waggish story--that one
night, having fallen into a ditch, and calling out in his shrill
voice, a countryman was coming up to assist him; when Phipps calling
out again in his hoarse tone, the man exclaimed--"If there are two of
you in the ditch, you may help each other out!"

One of his qualities seems to have been a total insensibility to his
own defects; which therefore suffered him to encounter any man, and
every man, whatever might be their superiority. Thus, in his early
day, his dulness constantly encountered Lord North, the most dexterous
wit of his time. Thus, too, in his maturer age, he constantly thrust
himself forward to meet the indignant eloquence of Fox; and seems to
have been equally unconscious that he was ridiculed by the sarcastic
pleasantry of the one, or blasted by the lofty contempt of the other.
Yet, such is the value of perseverance, that this man was gradually
regarded as important in the deba