He knew no living language except French; and French he knew very imperfectly.With a few of the best English writers he was intimate, particularly with Shakspeare and Milton.The debate in Pandemonium was, as it well deserved to be, one of his favourite passages; and his early friends used to talk, long after his death, of the just emphasis and the melodious cadence with which they had heard him recite the incomparable speech of Belial.He had indeed been carefully trained from infancy in the art of managing his voice, a voice naturally clear and deep-toned.His father, whose oratory owed no small part of its effect to that art, had been a most skilful and judicious instructor.At a later period, the wits of Brookes's, irritated by observing, night after night, how powerfully Pitt's sonorous elocution fascinated the rows of country gentlemen, reproached him with having been "taught by his dad on a stool."His education, indeed, was well adapted to form a great parliamentary speaker.One argument often urged against those classical studies which occupy so large apart of the early life of every gentleman bred in the south of our island is, that they prevent him from acquiring a command of his mother tongue, and that it is not unusual to meet with a youth of excellent parts, who writes Ciceronian Latin prose and Horatian Latin Alcaics, but who would find it impossible to express his thoughts in pure, perspicuous, and forcible English.There may perhaps be some truth in this observation.But the classical studies of Pitt were carried on in a peculiar manner, and had the effect of enriching his English vocabulary, and of ****** him wonderfully expert in the art of constructing correct English sentences.His practice was to look over a page or two of a Greek or Latin author, to make himself master of the meaning, and then to read the passage straightforward into his own language.This practice, begun under his first teacher Wilson, was continued under Pretyman.It is not strange that a young man of great abilities, who had been exercised daily in this way during ten years, should have acquired an almost unrivalled power of putting his thoughts, without premeditation, into words well selected and well arranged.
Of all the remains of antiquity, the orations were those on which he bestowed the most minute examination.His favourite employment was to compare harangues on opposite sides of the same question, to analyse them, and to observe which of the arguments of the first speaker were refuted by the second, which were evaded, and which were left untouched.Nor was it only in books that he at this time studied the art of parliamentary fencing.
When he was at home, he had frequent opportunities of hearing important debates at Westminster; and he heard them, not only with interest and enjoyment, but with a close scientific attention resembling that with which a diligent pupil at Guy's Hospital watches every turn of the hand of a great surgeon through a difficult operation.On one of these occasions, Pitt, a youth whose abilities were as yet known only to his own family and to a small knot of college friends, was introduced on the steps of the throne in the House of Lords to Fox, who was his senior by eleven years, and who was already the greatest debater, and one of the greatest orators, that had appeared in England.
Fox used afterwards to relate that, as the discussion proceeded, Pitt repeatedly turned to him, and said, "But surely, Mr Fox, that might be met thus;" or, "Yes; but he lays himself open to this retort." What the particular criticisms were Fox had forgotten; but he said that he was much struck at the time by the precocity of the lad who, through the whole sitting, seemed to be thinking only how all the speeches on both sides could be answered.
One of the young man's visits to the House of Lords was a sad and memorable era in his life.He had not quite completed his nineteenth year, when, on the 7th of April 1778, he attended his father to Westminster.A great debate was expected.It was known that France had recognised the independence of the United States.The Duke of Richmond was about to declare his opinion that all thought of subjugating those states ought to be relinquished.Chatham had always maintained that the resistance of the colonies to the mother country was justifiable.But he conceived, very erroneously, that on the day on which their independence should be acknowledged the greatness of England would be at an end.Though sinking under the weight of years and infirmities, he determined, in spite of the entreaties of his family, to be in his place.His son supported him to a seat.
The excitement and exertion were too much for the old man.In the very act of addressing the peers, he fell back in convulsions.A few weeks later his corpse was borne, with gloomy pomp, from the Painted Chamber to the Abbey.The favourite child and namesake of the deceased statesman followed the coffin as chief mourner, and saw it deposited in the transept where his own was destined to lie.
His elder brother, now Earl of Chatham, had means sufficient, and barely sufficient, to support the dignity of the peerage.The other members of the family were poorly provided for.William had little more than three hundred a year.It was necessary for him to follow a profession.He had already begun to eat his terms.In the spring of 1780 he came of age.He then quitted Cambridge, was called to the bar, took chambers in Lincoln's Inn, and joined the western circuit.In the autumn of that year a general election took place; and he offered himself as a candidate for the university; but he was at the bottom of the poll.It is said that the grave doctors, who then sate robed in scarlet, on the benches of Golgotha, thought it great presumption in so young a man to solicit so high a distinction.He was, however, at the request of a hereditary friend, the Duke of Rutland, brought into Parliament by Sir James Lowther for the borough of Appleby.