Biographers have delighted to relate how painfully Demosthenes made himself a tolerable speaker, - how, with pebbles in his mouth, he tried his lungs against the waves, how he declaimed as he ran up hill, how he shut himself up in a cell, having first guarded himself against a longing for the haunts of men by shaving one side of his head, how he wrote out Thucydides eight times, how he was derided by the Assembly and encouraged by a judicious actor who met him moping about the Peiraeus.
Prince Vasili sternly declaimed, looking round at his audience as if to inquire whether anyone had anything to say to the contrary.
He grouped around him all the leading writers, publicists and progressive young men of the day; declaimed against prejudices; stimulated the timid; inspired the lukewarm with enthusiasm; and never rested till the constitution of the 3rd of May 1791 had been carried through.
Against this power of absorption Bonaparte declaimed vehemently, asserting also that the proclamateurelecteur would be a mere cochon a l'engrais.
All through the American War he consistently declaimed against the colonies, and he was bitter in his attack on Benjamin Franklin before the Privy Council.