He understood why, after a time.

The fervour of advocacy, which inspires high diction, had been wanting.

He had sought more to lash the earl with his personal disgust and partly to parade his contempt of a lucrative dependency--than he had felt for the countess.
No wonder his diction was poor.

It was a sample of limp thinness; a sort of tongue of a Master Slender:--flavourless, unsatisfactory, considering its object: measured to be condemned by its poor achievement.

He had nevertheless a heart to feel for the dear lady, and heat the pleading for her, especially when it ran to its object, as along a shaft of the sun-rays, from the passionate devotedness of that girl Madge.
He brooded over it till it was like a fire beneath him to drive him from his bed and across the turfy roller of the hill to the Wythans', in the front of an autumnal sunrise--grand where the country is shorn of surface decoration, as here and there we find some unadorned human creature, whose bosom bears the ball of warmth..