Not only sobbing, for which he isn't often derided today.
The subject matter is the much derided coastal landscape of Essex.
The performances of Los Comuneros were attended by members of the different parties; the utterances of the different characters were taken to represent the author's personal opinions, and every speech which could be brought into connexion with current politics was applauded by one half of the house and derided by the other half.
Eustace is said to have been under the impression that they meant to attack Calais in his absence, and to have derided them because he had left the town well guarded.
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.
