Note 68 — Chapter V

Dunning’s relations with Wilkes and with Lord Shelburne furnish abundant reasons for the undistinguished figure he made in the House during the short period that he remained Solicitor-General. He was of course distrusted and slighted by Lord North, who would have obtained his dismissal within a few months after his appointment, but for the intervention of Lord Camden.—(Duke of Grafton’s MS. Memoirs.) Few men could have succeeded under such circumstances. As soon as he was released from this constraint, his great powers obtained the full recognition of the House. Wraxall describes him (after the date of these Memoirs) as one of the leaders of the Opposition, the constant associate, and not unworthy fellow labourer of Burke, and says, “that so powerful was reason, flowing from his lips, that every murmur became hushed and every ear attentive. Though he neither delighted nor entertained his hearers, he subdued them by powers of argumentative ratiocination which have rarely been exceeded.”—(Historical Memoirs, vol. i. p. 42.) His success was more remarkable from the extreme meanness of his person, and the badness of his voice. At the bar he excited universal admiration. Hannah More, in a letter on the Duchess of Kingston’s trial, wrote of him,—“His manner is insufferably bad, coughing and spitting at every word, but his sense and expression pointed to the last degree. He made her Grace shed bitter tears.” A great authority (Lord Brougham) has recorded that the fame of his legal arguments still lives in Westminster Hall,—(Historical Sketches, &c., vol. iii. p. 158) and one of the most accomplished of his contemporaries has left a tribute to his memory, so beautifully worded that one cannot read it without pleasure. “His language was always pure, always elegant, and the best words dropped easily from his lips into the best places with a fluency at all times astonishing, and when he had perfect health really melodious. That faculty, however, in which no mortal ever surpassed him, and which all found irresistible, was his wit. This relieved the weary, calmed the resentful, and animated the drowsy; this drew smiles even from such as were the objects of it, and scattered flowers over a desert, and, like sun-beams sparkling on a lake, gave spirit and vivacity to the dullest and least interesting cause. Not that his accomplishments as an advocate consisted principally of volubility of speech, or liveliness of raillery. He was endued with an intellect sedate yet penetrating, clear yet profound, subtle yet strong. His knowledge, too, was equal to his imagination, and his memory to his knowledge.” (Sir William Jones’s Works, vol. iv. p. 577.)—E.