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QUALITIES REQUISITE TO FORM A GREAT ORATOR.

O be a great orator does not require the highest faculties

To be a sunt mior, but it requires the highest exertion

of the common faculties of our nature. He has no occasion to dive into the depths of science, or to soar aloft on angels' wings. He keeps upon the surface, he stands firm upon the ground; but his form is majestic, and his eye sees far and near; he moves among his fellows, but he moves among them as a giant among common men. He has no need to read the heavens, to unfold the system of the universe, or create new worlds for the delighted fancy to dwell in; it is enough that he sees things as they are, that he knows, and feels, and remembers the common circumstances and daily transactions that are passing in the world around him. He is not raised above others by being superior to the common interests, prejudices, and passions of mankind, but by feeling them in a more intense degree than they do. Force then is the sole characteristic excellence of an orator; it is almost the only one that can be of any service to him. Refinement, depth, elevation, delicacy, originality, ingenuity, invention are not wanted; he must appeal to the sympathies of human nature, and whatever is not founded on these is foreign to his purpose. He does not create, he can only imitate or echo back the public sentiment. His object is to call up the feelings of the human breast; but he cannot call up what is not already there. The first duty of an orator is to be understood by everybut it is evident that what all can understand, is not in itself difficult of comprehension. He cannot add anything to the materials afforded him by the knowledge and experience of others. Lord Chatham, in his speeches, was neither philosopher nor poet. As to the latter, the difference between poetry and eloquence I take to be this; that the object of the one is to delight the imagination, that of the other to impel the will. The one ought to enrich and feed the mind itself with tenderness

one;

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and beauty, the other furnishes it with motives of action. The one seeks to give immediate pleasure, to make the mind dwell with rapture on its own workings; it is to itself both end and use. The other endeavours to call up such images as will produce the strongest effect upon the mind, and makes use of the passions only as instruments to attain a particular purpose. The poet lulls and soothes the mind into a forgetfulness of itself, and laps it in Elysium; the orator strives to awaken it to a sense of its real interests, and to make it feel the necessity of taking the most effectual means for securing them. The one dwells in an ideal world; the other is only conversant about realities. Hence poetry must be more ornamented, must be richer, and fuller, and more delicate, because it is at liberty to select whatever images are naturally most beautiful, and likely to give most pleasure; whereas the orator is confined to particular facts, which he may adorn as well as he can, and make the most of, but which he cannot strain beyond a certain point without running into extravagance and affectation, and losing his end.

CICERO, Orator. § 69, sqq.; 137-139. De Oratore, i. § 144, sqq. ; ii. 182, 899. QUINTILIAN, Instit. Orator. x. c. 1, 27, sqq.; 105, sqq.

BURKE'S STYLE-THE OPPOSITE OF ARTIFICIAL.

HIS style, which is what we understand by the artificial, is all in one key. It selects a certain set of words to represent all ideas whatever, as the most dignified and elegant, and excludes all others as low and vulgar. The words are not fitted to the things, but the things to the words. Every thing is seen through a false medium. It is putting a mask on the face of nature, which may indeed hide some specks and blemishes, but takes away all beauty, delicacy and variety. It destroys all dignity or elevation, because nothing can be raised where all is on a level, and com

pletely destroys all force, expression, truth, and character, by arbitrarily confounding the difference of things, and reducing everything to the same insipid standard. To suppose that this stiff uniformity can add anything to real grace or dignity, is like supposing that the human body, in order to be perfectly graceful, should never deviate from its upright posture. Another mischief of this method is, that it confounds all ranks in literature. Where there is no room for variety, no discrimination, no nicety to be shown in matching the idea with its proper word, there can be no room for taste or elegance. A man must easily learn the art of writing where every sentence is to be cast in the same mould; where he is only allowed the use of one word he cannot choose wrong, nor will he be in much danger of making himself ridiculous by affectation or false glitter, when, whatever subject he treats of, he must treat it in the same way. This indeed is to wear golden chains for the sake of ornament. Burke was altogether free from the pedantry which I have here endeavoured to expose. His style was as original, as expressive, as rich, and varied as it was possible; his combinations were as exquisite, as playful, as happy, as unexpected, as bold, and daring as his fancy. If anything, he ran into the opposite extreme of too great an inequality, if truth and nature could ever be carried to an extreme.

CICERO, de Oratore, iii. § 37, sqq. ; 96, 897.
TACITUS, de Oratoribus, c. 19, 20, 22.

POETRY THE NATURAL OUTPOURING OF THE SOUL.

POETRY,

OETRY, as distinguished from other modes of composition, does not rest in metre, and is not poetry if it make no appeal to our passions or our imagination. One character belongs to all true poets-that they write from a principle within, not originating in anything without; and the true poet's work is distinguished from all other works that assume to belong to the class of

poetry as a natural from an artificial flower, or as the mimic garden of a child from an enamelled meadow. In the former the flowers are broken from their stems and stuck into the ground; they are beautiful to the eye and fragrant to the sense, but their colours soon fade and their odour is transient as the smile of the planter; while the meadow may be visited again and again with renewed delight; its beauty is innate in the soil, and its bloom is of the freshness of nature.

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JUDICIOUS USE OF PLAINNESS AND ORNAMENT A
REQUISITE OF ELOQUENCE.

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IGURES and metaphors should, upon no occasion, be scattered with too profuse a hand; and they should never be incongruous with the train of our sentiment. Nothing can be more unnatural than for a writer to carry on a process of reasoning, in the same kind of figurative language which he would employ in description. When he reasons, we look only for perspicuity; when he describes, we expect embellishment; when he divides or relates, we desire plainness and simplicity. One of the greatest secrets in composition is to know when to be simple. This always lends a heightening to ornament, in its proper place. The judicious disposition of shade makes the light and colouring strike the more. He is truly eloquent who can discourse of humble subjects in a plain style, who can treat important ones with dignity, and speak of things which are of a middle nature in a temperate strain. For one who upon no occasion can express

himself in a calm, orderly, distinct manner, but begins to be on fire before his readers are prepared to kindle along with him, has the appearance of a madman raving among persons who enjoy the use of their reason, or of a drunkard reeling in the midst of sober company.—Irving.

CICERO, de Oratore, iii. § 96, sqq.; 155.

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PERSPICUITY THE CHIEF MERIT OF STYLE.

σαφήνεια ἀρετὴ λέξεως.

NOTHER virtue of an heroic poem is the perspicuity and

the facility of construction, and consisteth in a natural contenture of the words, so as not to discover the labour but the natural ability of the poet; and this is usually called a good style. For the order of words, when placed as they ought to be, carries a light before it, whereby a man may foresee the length of his period as a torch in the night shows a man the stops and unevenness in his way. But when placed unnaturally the reader will often find unexpected checks, and be forced to go back and hunt for the sense, and suffer such unease, as in a coach a man unexpectedly finds in passing over a furrow. And though the laws of verse put great restraints upon the natural course of. language, yet the poet, having the liberty to depart from what is obstinate, and to choose somewhat else that is more obedient to such laws and no less fit for his purpose, shall not be, neither by the measure, nor by the necessity of rhyme, excused though a translation often may.-Hobbes.

QUINTILIAN, Inst. Orator. lib. vii. Preface.
CICERO, Ad Herennium, i. § 15; iii. § 16, sqq.

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