Imatges de pàgina
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Section XI.

ORATORY.

ORATORY is the art of speaking gracefully upon a subject, with a view to instruct, persuade, or please. The scope of this art is, to support truth and virtue, to maintain the rights and liberties of mankind, to alleviate the miseries and distresses of life, or to defend the innocent, and accuse the guilty.-The masters of rhetoric among the Greeks and Romans, have considered an oration as consisting of three or four parts, called the exordium, or mere beginning; the narration and confirmation, extending from thence to the peroration, or recapitulation and conclusion of what has been said Now, as these parts of an oration differ widely in nature from each other, so they require a difference of style. A discourse may open variety of ways, bespeaking the favour and attention of the audience, as by an address to those who preside in chief; with an apology;-with setting forth the design of the point in debate ;-or with any other form arising from the speaker's consideration of his own situation, or the person of his hearers.-But, from whatever occasion the exordium may take its rise, in general it should be short, plain, and modest.-Swelling introductions to plain subjects are ridiculous, and to great actions unnecessary, because they sufficiently show and magnify themselves ;-not but, on some occasions, it may be proper to begin with spirit and fire. Examples of this kind are found in Cicero.The language too must be plain, simple, and concise in the narration, which is the part for stating the subject, and setting forth its consideration under one or more propositions; the fewer and clearer the better: Neither must the speaker rise much in the confirmation, where he is to prove the point under consideration, by proper illustrations, apt, short, and plain examples; by expressive similitudes, cogent argu

ments, and just observations, backed and supported by authorities divine and human. Here the speaker must make his way to the judgement and conviction of his audience, by words and matter weighty and significant; in sentences grave and unaffected; in short, rather by strong good sense in familiar language, than by trifling observations in hard words and studied ornaments.-The subject being opened, explained, and confirmed, in the three first parts; that is to say, the speaker, having gained the attention and judgment of his audience, must proceed in the peroration to finish his conquests over the passions, such as imagination, admiration, surprise, hope, joy, love, fear, grief, anger. To these some application may be made in the exordium; but now the court must be paid wholly to them; in managing which is required no small skill and address. Now, therefore, the speaker must begin to exert himself. Here it is that a fine genius may display itself in the use of amplification, enumeration, interrogation, metaphor, and every ornament that can render a discourse entertaining, winning, striking, and enforcing. Thus the orator may gain the ascendant over his audience ;-can turn the current of their minds his own way, either like the rapid Severn with uplifted head, rushing on impetuous, or like the smooth gliding Thames, gently rising by almost imperceptible advances.

Section XII.

REMARKS ON READING.

Reading is the food of the mind; it forms taste, enriches knowledge, and refines reason. The gay. the giddy, the frivolous, read without expansion of soul, or improvement of their mental powers. They read without choice, without system, and with heedless precipitation. The impressions and the objects

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succeed each other with such rapidity, that the first is effaced by the following, and all are jumbled to gether in the memory; so that, after much reading, the men I allude to have only acquired the equivocal talent of disgusting a sound mind with embryo ideas, lost in a luxuriancy of words.

Young men are, in general, advised to read much. If they adhere to this counsel; if they devour every book that falls in their way, as is usually the case, even with those who have the best intentions, they overshoot the mark, and their purpose is disappointed. Amusement only will become their aim. They will give up Tillotson, Blackstone, Addison, Steele, Congreve, &c. for a novel, that is, for reading, of a nature the most dangerous to the undecided taste of a raw mind. I am well aware that there are some few of these ephemeral productions that may be run over with a sort of advantage, but this must not be during the period allotted you for laying the foundations of manly eloquence.

A young man may read Don Quixote twenty times over, before he perceives the acuteness of the author, or feels the moral aim of the work. It will appear to him a tissue of extraordinary events only, and eccentricities of a wild imagination. You well know, that in romances, or even novels, things are generally pushed to the extreme. If they treat of virtue, it loses its name, and becomes heroism or fantastic virtue, They always address themselves to fancy, and lead her a chase after ideal happiness, which nothing but cool reason, in a more advanced period of life, can put a stop to.

For the present, therefore, leave every work of this nature, even the best, and peruse none but such as are recommended to you for truth, solidity, and elegance.

To guard you against this intemperance of reading, I must assure you, that the number of books on which you should form your taste, is by no means considerable. Let your friends see master-pieces in your

hands. Attach yourselves, at first, to their thoughts, and acquire, by every exertion of assiduity, that harmony of style, which wins the soul by charming the ear; those felicities of expression, that rules cannot reach to and that combination of sounds, by means of which you will paint and impress your ideas.

Be not precipitate; call yourself often to account for what you have read. I would counsel you, at first, to take down the heads in writing. You will soon find yourself able to remember them without this assistance; and, besides, you will imperceptibly make yourself master of the art of analysis, which is the surest and shortest road to instruction.

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Section XIII.

OF METHOD IN SPEAKING.

Method is the art of ranking every thing in the place that suits it; in fact, I might boldly tell you at once, that method is nothing but good taste: I do not mean that good taste which produces the graces of a discourse, but that other species of taste, which regulates the order in which the different parts, the reasons, the proofs, and all the means of persuasion, should be displayed, for the purpose of producing the greater effect: it is not the taste that colours, but it is that which draws, which sketches the forms, and 'groups them; in short, I mean the taste that creates the beauty of reason, and not that of fancy; the beauty of plenitude, not that of a single member. It disposes the springs that you are to put in motion for the purpose of pleasing, instructing, and persuading. Before you cast about for the order in which you are to offer your thoughts, you must already have preconceived a general outline of your subject: the next process is, in that outline, to mark the place of your

principal ideas; your subject will then become circumscribed, and you will see its extent.

This plan will be your ground work; it will support you, direct you, regulate the movements of your mind, and submit them to the laws of method. Without it, the best speaker will go astray, his progress will be unguided, and the irregular beauties of his speech will be at the mercy of hazard. How brilliant soever the colours he employs may be, the disposition of the picture will ruin the whole effect; and the speaker may be admired, but his genius will most certainly be suspected.

Why are the works of nature so perfect? says Buffon it is because every work is a whole, or has its full plenitude: it is because she never deviates from one eternal plan. She prepares in silence the seeds of all her productions: in one bold stroke alone, she hits off the primitive form of every living being; she unfolds and bestows perfection on it by a perpetual motion, and in a prescribed time. The human mind cannot create, it can produce nothing until it has been fertilized by experience and meditation; its notions are the seeds of its productions; but if it imitates the progress and labour of Nature; if it rise on the wings of contemplation, to the most sublime truths; if it connect them, link them, and form them into one grand whole by the powers of reflection; it will raise a monument of fame on an immortal foundation.

It is for want of a plan, and for not having allowed reflection to dwell long enough on his subject, that a man of abilities finds himself embarrassed, and knows not where or how to begin. He at once perceives. a vast number of ideas; as he has made no comparison betwixt them, nor established any subordination among them, there is nothing that determines him to give the preference to one more than fo the other; he, therefore, stands a victim of his own perplexity. But when he shall have laid down a plan to himself; when once he shall have gathered together, and put in order, every idea essential to his subject, the work

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