MISCELLANEOUS EXERCISES

IN

READING AND SPEAKING.

ENGLISH ORATORY.- Addison.

[This and a few of the following pieces may be read as examples of didactic style. But they are introduced thus early on account, chiefly, of their suggestive character, as regards the formation of style in reading and speaking.]

MOST foreign writers, who have given any character of the English nation, whatever vices they ascribe to it, allow, in general, that the people are naturally modest. It proceeds, perhaps, from this our national virtue, that our orators are observed to make use of less gesture or action than those of other countries. Our preachers stand stock still in the pulpit, and will not so much as move a finger to set off the best sermons in the world. We meet with the same speaking statues at our bars, and in all public places of debate. Our words flow from us in a smooth, continued stream, without those strainings of the voice, motions of the body, and majesty of the hand, which are so much celebrated in the orators of Greece and Rome, We can talk of life and death in cold blood, and keep our temper in a discourse which turns upon everything that is dear to us. Though our zeal breaks out in the finest tropes and figures, it is not able to stir a limb about us.

I have heard it observed more than once, by those who have seen Italy, that an untravelled Englishman cannot

relish all the beauties of Italian pictures, because the postures which are expressed in them are often such as are peculiar to that country. One who has not seen an Italian in the pulpit, will not know what to make of that noble gesture in Raphael's picture of St. Paul preaching at Athens, where the apostle is represented as lifting up both his arms, and pouring out the thunder of his rhetoric amidst an audience of pagan philosophers.

It is certain, that proper gestures, and powerful exertions of the voice, cannot be too much studied by a public orator. They are a kind of comment to what he utters, and enforce everything he says, with weak hearers, better than the strongest argument he can make use of. They keep the audience awake, and fix their attention to what is delivered to them; at the same time that they show the speaker is in earnest, and affected himself with what he so passionately recommends to others.

We are told that the great Latin orator very much impaired his health by the vehemence of action, with which he used to deliver himself. The Greek orator was likewise so very famous for this particular in rhetoric, that one of his antagonists, whom he had banished from Athens, reading over the oration which had procured his banishment, and seeing his friends admire it, could not forbear asking them, if they were so much affected by the bare reading of it, how much more they would have been alarmed, had they heard him actually throwing out such a storm of eloquence?

How cold and dead a figure, in comparison of these two great men, does an orator often make at the British bar! The truth of it is, there is often nothing more ridiculous than the gestures of an English speaker; you see some of them running their hands into their pockets as far as ever they can thrust them, and others, looking with great attention on a piece of paper that has nothing written on it; you may see many a smart rhetorician turning his hat in his hands, moulding it into several different

shapes, examining sometimes the lining of it, and sometimes the button, during the whole course of his harangue. A deaf man would think he was cheapening a beaver, when perhaps he is talking of the fate of the British nation. I remember, when I was a young man, and used to frequent Westminster Hall, there was a counsellor who never pleaded without a piece of pack-thread in his hand, which he used to twist about a thumb or a finger, all the while he was speaking: the wags of those days used to call it "the thread of his discourse;" for he was not able to utter a word without it. One of his clients, who was more merry than wise, stole it from him, one day, in the midst of his pleading; but he had better have let it alone, for he lost his cause by his jest.

I have all along acknowledged myself to be a dumb man, and therefore may be thought a very improper person to give rules for oratory; but I believe every one will agree with me in this, that we ought either to lay aside all kinds of gesture, (which seems to be very suitable to the genius of our nation,) or at least to make use of such only as are graceful and expressive.

PULPIT ELOQUENCE OF ENGLAND.- Sydney Smith.

We have no modern sermons in the English language that can be considered as very eloquent. The merits of Blair, (by far the most popular writer of sermons within the last century,) are plain good sense, a happy application of scriptural quotation, and a clear, harmonious style, richly tinged with scriptural language. He generally leaves his readers pleased with his judgment, and his just observations on human conduct, without ever rising so high as to touch the great passions, or kindle any enthusiasm in favor of virtue. For eloquence, we must ascend as high as the days of Barrow and Jeremy Taylor: and even there, while we are delighted with their energy, their copiousness, and their fancy, we are in danger of being

suffocated by a redundance which abhors all discrimination: which compares till it perplexes, and illustrates till it confounds.

To the ouses of Tillotson, Sherlock, and Atterbury, we must wade through many a barren page, in which the weary Christian can descry nothing all around him but a dreary expanse of trite sentiments and languid words.

The great object of modern sermons, is to hazard nothing their characteristic is, decent debility; which alike guards the authors from ludicrous errors, and precludes them from striking beauties. Every man of sense, in taking up an English sermon, expects to find it a tedious essay, full of common-place morality; and if the fulfilment of such expectations be meritorious, the clergy have certainly the merit of not disappointing their readers. Yet it is curious to consider, how a body of men so well educated, and so magnificently endowed as the English clergy, should distinguish themselves so little in a species of composition to which it is their peculiar duty, as well as their ordinary habit to attend.

To solve this difficulty, it should be remembered, that the eloquence of the Bar and of the Senate force themselves into notice, power, and wealth, that the penalty which an individual client pays for choosing a bad advocate, is the loss of his cause, that a prime minister must infallibly suffer in the estimation of the public, who neglects to conciliate the eloquent men, and trusts the defence of his measures to those who have not adequate talents for that purpose: whereas, the only evil which accrues from the promotion of a clergyman to the pulpit, which he has no ability to fill as he ought, is the fatigue of the audience, and the discredit of that species of public instruction; an evil so general, that no individual patron would dream of sacrificing to it his particular interest. The clergy are generally appointed to their situations by those who have no interest that they should please the audience before whom they speak; while the very re

verse is the case in the eloquence of the Bar, and of Parliament. We by no means would be understood to say, that the clergy should owe their promotion principally to their eloquence, or that eloquence ever could, consistently with the constitution of the English church, be made out a common cause of preferment. In pointing out the total want of connection between the privilege of preaching, and the power of preaching well, we are giving no opinion as to whether it might, or might not be remedied; but merely stating a fact.

Pulpit discourses have insensibly dwindled from speaking to reading; a practice, of itself, sufficient to stifle every germ of eloquence. It is only by the fresh feelings of the heart, that mankind can be very powerfully affected. What can be more ludicrous, than an orator delivering stale indignation, and fervor of a week old; turning over whole pages of violent passions, written out in goodly text; reading the tropes and apostrophes into which he is hurried by the ardor of his mind; and so affected at a preconcerted line, and page, that he is unable to proceed any farther?

The prejudices of the English nation have proceeded a good deal from their hatred to the French; and because that country is the native soil of elegance, animation, and grace, a certain patriotic solidity, and loyal awkardness, have become the characteristics of this; so that an adventurous preacher is afraid of violating the ancient tranquillity of the pulpit; and the audience are commonly apt to consider the man who tires them less than usuai,. as a trifler, or a charlatan.

Of British Education, the study of eloquence makes little or no part. The exterior graces of a speaker are despised; and debating societies, (admirable institutions, under proper regulations,) would hardly be tolerated either at Oxford or Cambridge. It is commonly answered to any animadversions upon the eloquence of the English pulpit, that a clergyman is to recommend himself, not by