His style was simple and forcible. He very seldom quoted the classics,
although he was fond of giving passages from the English poets, more
especially from Moore; but the lines which expressed the guiding
principle of his life were taken from Byron:
"Hereditary bondsmen, know ye not
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow."
The moment I read that passage, he once said, I saw it was the motto for
Ireland; and up to 1829, the year of Emancipation, he seldom spoke
without quoting it. He avoided figurative language. He amused his
audience with stories and old sayings which they understood and
appreciated. He brought the shrewd apothegms, familiar at their own
firesides, to bear upon the principles he was inculcating, but flowers
of rhetoric he knew would be feeble weapons for the warfare in which he
was engaged. He once indeed complimented Sheil, by calling him "the
brightest star that ever rose in the murky horizon of his afflicted
country;" but that suited the man and the occasion.
He had a true conception of what a great teacher ought to be; and for
this reason he kept repeating his principles and his arguments in the
same or almost the same words.
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