PUBLIC SPEAKING.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 12, 15 April 1871, Page 7

PUBLIC SPEAKING.

It was a positive torture to Thackeray to be called upon to make a speech. " Why don't you go to Dickens to take the chair ?" he used to say peevishly when a deputation had just pestered him into attending their anniversary at the London Tavern. He can make a speech, and a good one. I'm of no use. They little think how nervous I am: and Dickens does not know the meaning of the word." Thackeray scribbled out a draft of all his speeches, and revised, and altered, and polished them as he did a chapter of " Pendennis" or a "Bound About Paper," and learnt them by heart. But it was a thousand chances to one whether lie got through half of what he had thus prepared; and whether he did or not, he was like a toad under a harrow all the evening, and very seldom made the slightest play with his eloquence. And this is generally the case with men of Thackeray's

type. It was the case with Theodore Hook. In a club smoking-room, the witty editor of "John Bull" would mount the table and keep a select circle of boon companions laughing for a couple of hours, by mimicking the style of most of our Parliamentary orators, Peel, Palmerston, Crocker, Althorp, " the brilliant baron," Lyncfhurst, Brougham, Follett, reproducing their style, their thoughts all their little affectations and tricks with astounding fidility. Yet, when called upon to put a few sentences together at a Lord Mayor's dinner, the keenest wit in London was brought to the standstill at his third sentence for a thought or a phrase, and never, I believe, in his life got beyond a dozen sentences.—" After dinner Speeches," in " Gentleman's Magazine-'