Dundas and delicacy, he
said, were "a rare and singular coalition." And then follows an image of
colossal coarseness, such as might be supposed capable of rousing
thunder-peals of laughter from a company of festive giants,--an image
which Lord Brougham declared offended _his_ sensitive taste,--the
sensitive taste of one of the most formidable legal and legislative
bullies that ever appeared before the juries or Parliament of Great
Britain, and who never hesitated to use any illustration, however
vulgar, which he thought would be effective to degrade his opponents.
But whatever may be thought of the indelicacy of Burke's image, it was
one eminently adapted to penetrate through the thick hide of the
minister of state at whom it was aimed, and it shamed him as far as a
profligate politician like Dundas was capable of feeling the sensation
of shame. But there are also flashes, or rather flames, of impassioned
imagination, in the same speech, which rush up from the main body of its
statements and arguments, and remind us of nothing so much as of those
jets of incandescent gas which, we are told by astronomers, occasionally
leap, from the extreme outer covering of the sun, to the height of a
hundred or a hundred and sixty thousand miles, and testify to the
terrible forces raging within it. After reading this speech for the
fiftieth time, the critic cannot free himself from the rapture of
admiration and amazement which he experienced in his first fresh
acquaintance with it.
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