ELOCUTION, AS A DEPARTMENT OF PREPARATORY STUDY IN THEOLOGY. [By the Author of the present volume.] THE preceding observations will, no doubt, be received with that full weight of effect, which justly belongs to the sources from which they come. Nor would the author feel disposed to present his own thoughts on the subject, were it not for the necessity of meeting objections such as he hears frequently offered to the systematic study of elocution, as either unnecessary or injurious. A teacher in the department of elocution, has to communicate with minds under every variety of impression on the subject of culture. He meets, occasionally, with students whose lack of self-confidence, and even of a just self-reliance, leads them to despair of effecting anything in the way of successful cultivation, even after the most resolute and persevering exertions. He finds, sometimes, on the other hand, those whose self-esteem induces a perfect satisfaction with their habitual manner, be it what it may, and who are confident that they need little aid from from any source but what is within themselves. He sees, perhaps, one individual who has formed an undue estimation of mere tuition and preparatory training, and who evidently expects too much from such aids, and subjects himself too passively to mere processes; and another who, from superficial attention to the merits of the question, or from prejudice or whim, contemns cultivation, as a thing wholly supererogatory, or necessarily artificial and false, or, at best, but mechanical and external, An instructor has therefore to urge, on some minds, the value and importance of the processes of culture in this department of education, and to dwell on things familiar or self-evident to other minds. The objections to systematic training in elocution, especially with reference to the purposes of the pulpit, are often founded on notions apparently just, or, certainly, quite plausible. Standing on the broad ground that the, great point in expression, is the utterrance of feeling, the objector maintains that nothing else is requisite, — that' no rule can be required, when feeling is genuine, — that what a man feels deeply he must express strongly and truly, and therefore eloquently,—that to propose the idea of referring to a rule, when under an impulse of emotion,' is absurd, that utterance modified by rule is but an artificial mimicry of emotion, that the idea of one man learning of another how to express his own feelings, is ridiculous, that, if a speaker really has anything to say, he will easily find the way to say it. But alas! the eloquent nullifier of cultivation, is, perhaps, in the meantime, uttering his very objections in the nasal tone which habit has made second nature and truth to him, but which, to one unaccustomed to hear the tones of the human voice assimilated to the twanging of a poor performer on the violin, is capable of exciting no emotions but those of the risible order: or he is emitting his voice with the gutteral tones which, sometimes, make man approach the quadruped, in his utterance; he is articulating his words so imperfectly, that one syllable obliterates another; or he is marking his emphasis with a double twist of intensity, which seems to verify, on the spot, the half-malicious assertion of Dickens, that "the Americans search out every unaccented syllable in a word, to give it an accent, and every unemphatic word in a sentence, to clap an emphasis upon it;" and, from want of natural or acquired ear for the character of vocal tone, — he is, perhaps, all the while, using a coarse violence of voice, which makes his earnestness become the vehemence of an angry dispute. The opponent of cultivation forgets, in fact, that the radical doctrine of no culture, is true only on condition that natural and acquired habits are perfect in the community in which an individual is educated, and consequently in himself. But, even suppose such a state of things to exist, a generous and truly philosophic view of human culture, would lead to a very different conclusion, as we see in the practice of the ancient Athenians—that people so exquisitely perfect in physical organization, so quick and susceptible in ear, so delicate and true in taste, so vivid in feeling, so poetic in imagination, so subtle and refined in intellect, so intensely ardent in temperament, so expressive, so eloquent, in speech and action. It was that very people, so endued with every grace of nature and every accomplishment of art,- that carried the systematic study of eloquence, and the artistic discipline of voice and person, tone, look, attitude, and action, to the highest point of cultivation, that left no expedient untried, by which thought and emotion might be most efficaciously addressed to the mind, through the appointed avenues of sense. The raw youth who is objecting to cultivation, as something that will mar the symmetry or impair the originality of his genius, forgets that the two most eloquent of men, -Demosthenes, among the Greeks, and Cicero, among the Romans, were the most assiduous, the most rigorous, the most literal self-cultivators, in the humblest and minutest details of practical elocution. Surely, if ever there was a community in which systematic discipline might have been dispensed with, it was that of Athens, whose humblest citizen was daily listening to the eloquence of Demosthenes, to the tragedies of Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; living in the daily vision of architectural structures like the Parthenon, and of sculptures such as those of Phidias; listening to a 32 PULPIT ELOCUTION. music worthy of these sister arts, or to the recitation of the "rhapsodies" of Homer. But it was in that very community that oratory had its diversified orders of schools and seminaries, for the formation of the voice, and for the moulding of the body. The superficial, popular objection, that the Grecian culture was fastidious, minute and fanciful, is wholly gratuitous. Men such as Demosthenes and Cicero could not have submitted to a fantastic discipline. The former stands acknowledged the strongest and manliest specimen of mind, that history has preserved to us; the latter, the most practical in tendency, and the most various in power, character, and accomplishment. The indefatigable selfculture of the former, and its sanction by the practice of the latter, when himself in Greece, -are facts against which it is vain to dispute. How then can we regard the presumption of him who, without study, and without practice, assumes the duties of an office which implies the power of persuasive and impressive discourse on the highest themes of thought, the noblest relations of being, and the profoundest emotions of the soul? The prince of Roman orators regarded the prelusive tremor of anxiety as an indispensable token of the earnest speaker at the judiciary tribunal, - what a reproof to the self-sufficiency which can afford to dispense with the idea of cultivation, for the loftiest purposes of speech! But let us return, for a moment, to the actual state of the case. Whatever may have been the condition of things in ancient Greece or Rome, where a universal taste for eloquence, and the prevalent passion for distinction and renown, may have contributed much to foster the cultivation of oratory; it is a fact universally admitted, that the Anglo-Saxon constitution and temperament do not confer a predisposition to eloquence in its external relations. An instructive contrast presents itself in the case of the Irish nation. That people are, from the noble to the peasant,constitutionally expressive and eloquent, in attitude, action, look, and tone. The Englishman may be galled into indignant invective, he may be roused to forcible argument; but he is not spontaneously eloquent. The Scotchman may be rich in the mental materials of eloquence, in the poetry of thought, in the pathos of feeling, in the play of imagination; but he is not externally expressive-quite otherwise, he is awkward, rather. A similar distinction obviously exists, in the United States, between the native dignity of deportment, and the eloquent expression, so generally characteristic of the people of the South, contrasted with the rigid, cold, hard, dry, angular, and reserved manner, which prevails in New England.* The chill exterior of the Anglo-Saxon race, although environing a world of interior and central fire, - freezes the stream of expressive feeling, and encrusts the surface of character and manner. The prevalent notion in old and in New England, alike, that manliness demands reserve, and dignity, stiffness, throws a morbid restraint over the tendencies of nature to communication and expression, and prematurely quenches the capability of eloquence in exterior manner. Here is one reason why, with us, the express cultivation of manner in speaking, becomes so important, as a compensation for the prevalence of counteracting habit in social and domestic life. The vivacious, the tasteful, the spirited, the graceful, ethereal Greek might, perhaps, have dispensed with the culture of manner in expressive utterance. Not so with the blunt, surly, and taciturn Englishman, or with the angular, mechanical, and constrained New Englander. But our impediments to eloquence of manner, do not lie in constitution and habit only; they are imbedded in our systems of education. Our schools and colleges * It was not a random remark in a late American divine, that the Norman, not the Saxon spirit, seemed to characterize our Southern States. |
