There is another essential, aside from the knowledge of the law, for
the successful court lawyer--that is eloquence; the sort of eloquence
which Blair defines to be "the art of speaking in such a manner as to
attain the end for which we speak." Most young men, who study with a
view of coming to the bar, have an ambition, more or less strong, to
become advocates--to be able to convince judges and persuade juries
by the power of their logic and the graces of their style and
utterance; but a visit to our courts is but too likely to show how
lamentably the great majority of them fail of achieving their desire.
Lack of perseverance in performing the labor necessary to the student
of elocution, or ignorance of the method to be pursued; or, in many
cases, a notion that orators, like poets, "are born, not made," has
served to make the number of eloquent advocates very small indeed.
The most universal idea seems to prevail, that industry can effect
nothing; that every one must be content to remain just what he
happens to be, and that eminence is the result of accident. For the
acquirement of any other art, men expect to serve long
apprenticeships; to study it carefully and laboriously; to master it
thoroughly. If one would learn to sing, he attends a master and is
drilled in the elementary principles; and it is only after the most
careful discipline that he dares to exercise his voice in public. If
he would learn to play a musical instrument, how patiently and
persistently does he study and practise, that he may draw out, at
will, all its various combinations of harmonious sounds, and its full
richness and delicacy of expression. "And yet," adds a learned
writer, "a man will fancy that the grandest, the most complex, the
most expressive of all instruments, which is fashioned by the union
of intellect with power of speech, may be played upon without study
or practise. He comes to it a mere tyro, and thinks to manage all
its stops, and command the whole compass of its varied and
comprehensive power; he finds himself a mere bungler in the attempt,
wonders at his failure, and settles it in his mind forever that the
attempt is vain"--that it can be done only by genius.
Nothing can be more mischievous and unfortunate to the student than
for him to fall into such an error--to hold the opinion that
excellence in speaking is a gift of nature and not the result of
patient and persistent labor and study. If all men had entertained
and acted upon such an opinion, those who have won fame and honor by
their eloquence would have remained mute and inglorious. Never would
Demosthenes have charmed an Athenian audience, nor Cicero have hurled
his denunciations against Cataline. Lord Chatham would have remained
simple William Pitt, and Erskine live an ordinary English barrister.
Curran would have been "Orator Mum" to the end of his days, and
Choate died "unwept, unhonored, and unsung."
Men who believe that eloquence is the result of genius, and not of
labor, are like the dwellers in the East, as described by Sir Joshua
Reynolds in his address to the pupils of the Royal Academy. He says:
"The travelers into the East tell us that when the ignorant
inhabitants of those countries are asked concerning the ruins of
stately edifices yet remaining among them, the melancholy monuments
of their former grandeur and long-lost science, they always answer:
'They were built by magicians.' The untaught mind finds a vast gulf
between its own powers and those works of complicated art, which it
is utterly unable to fathom; and it supposes that such a void can be
passed only by supernatural powers." What Sir Joshua says of
painting is true of oratory. Those who know not the cause of any
thing extraordinary and beyond them may well be astonished at the
_effect_; and what the uncivilized ascribe to magic others ascribe to
genius--two mighty pretenders who, for the most part, are safe from
rivalry only because by the terror of their names they discourage in
their own peculiar sphere that resolute and sanguine spirit of
enterprise which is essential to success. But as has been well said,
"all magic is science in disguise," and it is our object to proceed
to take off the mask--to show that the mightiest objects of our
wonder, so far as eloquence is concerned, are mere men like
ourselves, have attained their superiority by steps which we can
follow, and that we can walk in the same path even tho there remain
at last a broad space between us.
Lord Chesterfield was not very far wrong when, in his letters to his
son, he told him that any man of reasonable abilities might make
himself an orator; not an orator like Cicero's magnificent myth, who
should have "the acuteness of the logician, the wisdom of the
philosophers, the language almost of poetry, the memory of lawyers,
the voice of tragedians, the gesture of the best actors"; such
orators, we admit, must be _nascitur, non fit_--born, not made--and
they are rarely to be found; but orators like Pitt and Fox, like
Mansfield and Erskine, like Pinckney and Choate--orators who can
"sway listening senates," who are stormy masters of the jury-box.
Chesterfield was perhaps an illustration of his own theory, for he
said that he at one time determined to make himself the best speaker
in Parliament, and set about a severe course of training for it; and
we have the opinion of so able a judge as Horace Walpole that he was
the first speaker of the House. Every schoolboy can tell you of the
gigantic labors of Demosthenes in training himself for a public
speaker. It will be refreshing for any student who desires to
improve himself in speaking to turn to Plutarch's life of
Demosthenes, and read of his early struggles with obstacles which
would have discouraged at the threshold the great majority of
mankind. Laughed at and interrupted by the clamor of the people in
his first efforts, by reason of his violent and awkward manner, and a
weakness and stammering in his voice, he retired to his house with
covered head and in great distress, yet not disheartened. At one
time he complained to Satyrus, the player, "that tho he was the most
laborious of all the orators, and had almost sacrificed his health to
that application, yet he could gain no favor with the people."
Satyrus seems to have been a judicious adviser, and proceeded to
correct his faults, as Hume says he who teaches eloquence must--by
example. He requested Demosthenes to read some speech from Euripides
or Sophocles. When he had done, Satyrus pronounced the same speech
with so much propriety of action that it appeared to the orator quite
a different passage. "He now understood so well," says Plutarch,
"how much grace and dignity of action adds to the best oration, that
he thought it a small matter to premeditate and compose, tho with the
utmost care, if the pronunciation and propriety of gesture were not
attended to. Upon this he built himself a subterranean study,
whither he repaired every day to form his action and exercise his
voice; and he would often stay there two or three months together,
shaving one side of his head, that if he should happen to be ever so
desirous of going abroad, the shame of appearing in that condition
might keep him in." The contemporaries of Demosthenes esteemed him
as a man of but little genius, and concluded that all his eloquence
was the result of labor. Certain it is that he was seldom heard to
speak _extempore_; and tho often called upon in the assembly to
speak, he would not do it unless he came prepared. It is undoubtedly
true, that nature had sowed in Demosthenes the seeds of a great
orator; but they were brought to perfection only by the most patient
labor and severe discipline--labor and discipline that would make any
student of the law, of ordinary judgment and sense, the equal of
Pinckney, of Wirt, or of Choate.
Think of the eloquence of Cicero! How wonderful the grandeur and
magnificence of his style; how copious and elegant his diction; how
various and comprehensive his knowledge; surely, we say, like the
dwellers in the East, this is the work of magic--of genius. But when
we take off the mask we find that it is mainly the result of careful,
unflagging, untiring study and practise. Middleton says: "His
industry was incredible, beyond the example or even conception of our
days; this was the secret by which he performed such wonders, and
reconciled perpetual study with perpetual affairs."
Nor were these orators of antiquity singular in their devotion to the
_art_ of speaking. All the great orators of modern times have
emulated their greatness by emulating their love of labor. Lord
Chatham, who has been justly regarded as the most powerful orator of
modern times, was from his early youth a most laborious and devoted
student of oratory. His biography says of him: "At the age of
eighteen, Mr. Pitt (afterward Lord Chatham) was removed to the
University of Oxford. Here, in connection with his other studies, he
entered on that severe course of rhetorical training which he often
referred to in after life as forming so large a part of his early
discipline. He took up the practise of writing out translations from
the ancient orators and historians, on the broadest scale.
Demosthenes was his model; and we are told that he rendered a large
part of his orations again and again into English, as the best means
of acquiring a forcible and expressive style.... As a means of
acquiring copiousness of diction and an exact choice of words, Mr.
Pitt also read and reread the sermons of Dr. Barrow till he knew many
of them by heart. With the same view he performed a task, to which,
perhaps, no other student in oratory has ever submitted. _He went
twice through the folio dictionary of Bailey, examining each word_
attentively, dwelling on its peculiar import and modes of
construction, and thus endeavoring to bring the whole range of our
language completely under his control. At this time, also, he began
those exercises in elocution by which he is known to have obtained
his extraordinary powers of delivery. Tho gifted by nature with a
commanding voice and person, he spared no effort to add everything
that art could confer for his improvement as an orator." His success
was commensurate with his zeal. Garrick himself was not a greater
actor, in that higher sense of the term in which Demosthenes declared
action to be the first, and second, and third thing in oratory. The
labor which he bestowed on these exercises was surprizingly great.
Probably no man of genius since the days of Cicero has ever submitted
to an equal amount of drudgery.
Lord Mansfield, equally famous as an advocate and judge, affords us
another example of unwearying patient discipline. He studied oratory
with the greatest fervor and diligence. He read everything that had
been written on the subject of the art; he made himself familiar with
all the great masters of eloquence in Greece and Rome, and spent much
of his time in translating their finest productions as the best means
of improving his style. During his study of the law at Lincoln's
Inn, he carried on the practise of oratory with the utmost zeal, and
was a constant attendant and speaker in a debating society which he
had joined. One day, says his biographer, he was surprized by a
friend, who suddenly entered his room, in "the act of practising
before a glass, while Pope (the poet) sat by to aid him in the
character of an instructor." Such are the arts by which are produced
those results that the uninitiated ascribe to genius.
Sheridan was one of the most brilliant orators of modern times, and
yet his maiden speech in Parliament, delivered when he was nearly
thirty years old, was a failure. Woodfall, the reporter, used to
relate that Sheridan came up to him in the gallery, when the speech
was ended, and asked him, with much anxiety, what he thought of his
first attempt. "I am sorry to say," replied Woodfall, "that I don't
think this is your line; you would better have stuck to your former
pursuit." Sheridan rested his head on his hand for a few minutes,
and then exclaimed, with vehemence: "It is _in_ me, and it _shall
come out of me_." Quickened by a sense of shame, he now devoted
himself, with the utmost assiduity, to the cultivation of his powers
as a speaker. Seven years after he brought forward, in the House of
Commons, the charges against Warren Hastings, relating to the
princesses of Oude, in a speech of such brilliancy and eloquence that
the whole assembly, at its conclusion, broke forth into expressions
of tumultuous applause, and the House adjourned to recover from the
excitement produced by it. Pitt said, "An abler speech was perhaps
_never delivered_," and Fox and Windham, years after, spoke of it
with undiminished admiration. As Sheridan had said to Woodfall, it
_was_ in him and it _did_ come out, but it was wrought out by patient
toil and study. Moore paints him at his desk at work on this very
speech--writing and erasing with all the care and painstaking of a
special pleader. Indeed, it transpired after his death that his wit
was most of it studied out before hand. His commonplace book was
found to be full of humorous thoughts and sportive turns, written
first in one form and then in another--the point shifted from one
part of the sentence to another to try the effect. How little did
his delighted hearers imagine, as some playful allusion, keen retort,
or brilliant sally flashed out upon them from his speeches, in a
manner so easy, natural, and yet unexpected, that it had been long
before laboriously molded and manufactured. Johnson tells us that
Butler, the author of "Hudibras," had garnered up his wit in the same
way. How conclusively do these examples illustrate the truth of Sir
Joshua Reynolds' remark, that the effects of genius must have their
causes, and that these may, for the most part, be analyzed, digested,
and copied, tho sometimes they may be too subtle to be reduced to a
written art.
Charles James Fox rose, says Mr. Burke, "by slow degrees, to be the
most brilliant and accomplished debater the world ever knew," and Fox
himself has told us the secret of his skill. He gained it, he says,
"at the expense of the House," for he had frequently tasked himself,
during an entire session, to speak on every question that came up,
whether he was interested in it or not, as a means of exercising and
training his faculties.
Curran, the Irish orator and advocate, was known at school as
"stuttering Jack Curran"; and, while studying at an Inn of Court, the
members of a debating society to which he belonged called him "Orator
Mum," in honor of his signal failure as a speaker. But he made up
his mind to become an orator, and was not to be put down by
obstacles. He spent his mornings, as he states, "in reading even to
exhaustion," and the rest of the day in the more congenial pursuits
of literature, and especially in unremitting efforts to perfect
himself as a speaker. His voice was bad, and his articulation hasty
and confused; his manner was awkward, his gestures constrained and
meaningless, and his whole appearance calculated only to produce
laughter. Such is the picture of him left us by his biographers.
Surely, one would think, an orator could never be made out of such
materials. Yet all these faults he overcame by severe and patient
labor. Constantly on the watch against bad habits, he practised
daily before a glass, reciting passages from Shakespeare, Junius, and
the best English orators. He frequented debating societies, and
unmindful of the ridicule that greeted his repeated failures, he
continued to take part in the discussions. At last, he surmounted
every difficulty. "He turned his shrill and stumbling brogue," says
one of his friends, "into a flexible, sustained, and finely-modulated
voice; his action became free and forcible; and he acquired perfect
readiness in thinking on his legs"; in short, he became one of the
most brilliant and eloquent advocates that the world has ever
produced. Well might one of his biographers say: "His oratorical
training was as severe as any Greek ever underwent."
The biographies of Pultney, of Burke, of Pitt, of Erskine, of
Grattan, of Brougham--of all the great orators of England--contain
records of the same careful training and discipline in the art of
speaking.
Nor have American orators found the path to success less difficult.
Rufus Choate--who was, perhaps, the most accomplished advocate
America has yet produced--was a noble illustration of what systematic
culture and discipline can do. He was, in the truest sense of the
term, a made orator. Forensic rhetoric was the great study of his
life, and he pursued it with a patience, a steadiness, a zeal, equal
to that of Chatham or Curran. He trusted to no native gift of
eloquence, but practised elocution every day for forty years as a
critical study. Everything that could be prepared, was prepared;
every nerve, every muscle, that could be trained was trained; every
power that daily practise could strengthen was invigorated. So
thoroughly imbued was he with a zeal for oratory, that it formed the
subject of his almost daily conversation, as it did of his daily
practise; and his biography will rouse an ambitious student as the
sound of the trumpet does the war-horse.
Daniel Webster may, perhaps, be considered to have been as nearly a
_natural_ orator as any this country has produced; and yet the
students are few indeed that cultivate the art of oratory so
laboriously as he did. Even his genius was mainly "science in
disguise." He himself told the late Senator Fessenden that those
figures and illustrations in his speeches, which had become so famous
and been so often quoted, were, like Sheridan's wit, the result of
previous study and preparation; and that that passage in his speech,
wherein he describes the glory and the power of England--a passage
known and quoted the world over--was conceived and fashioned while he
was standing on the American side of the Niagara River, listening to
the British drum-beats on the Canada shore.
From these examples we may learn that all truly noble orators in
every age have trusted, not to inspiration, but to discipline; that
great as were their natural abilities, they were much less than the
ignorant rated them; that even the mightiest condescended to certain
rules and methods of study by which the humblest are able to profit.
It is good for the student to read of the studies and labors, the
trials and conflicts, the difficulties and triumphs, of such men. It
is to the ambitious student as the touch of mother earth was to
Antæus in his struggle with Hercules--renewing his strength and
reviving his flagging zeal. It rouses him to severer self-denial, to
more assiduous study, to more self-sustaining confidence, and leads
him to feel, like Themistocles of old, that "the trophies of
Miltiades will not let me sleep." These examples will teach him that
God has set a price on every real and noble achievement; that success
in oratory, as in everything else worth succeeding in, can be
purchased only by pain and labor; and lastly and mainly, that those
who would follow in their steps must give their days and nights to
study, and emulate their greatness by emulating their love of labor.
Having endeavored to show that eloquence is not so much the result of
natural gifts as of persevering and persistent labor, we now proceed
to offer some suggestions as to the best means of improvement in
forensic eloquence.
Socrates used to say that "all men are sufficiently eloquent in that
which they understand"; but it would have been nearer truth to say
that no man can be eloquent on a subject that he does not understand;
nor on a subject that he does understand, unless he know how to form
and polish his speech. The two essential things to the orator are
something to say and a knowledge of how to say it. There is no art
that can teach one to be eloquent without knowledge. Attention to
style, diction, and all the arts of speech, can only assist the
orator in setting off to advantage the stock of materials which he
possesses; but the stock, the materials themselves, must be brought
from other quarters than from rhetoric. In the first place, the
advocate must have a profound knowledge of the law. On this depends
his reputation and success, and nothing is of such consequence to him
or deserves more his deep and serious study. In no other profession
is superficial knowledge sooner detected or more ruthlessly exposed,
and however brilliant as a speaker one may be, if it but become known
that he is not well grounded in the law, few will choose to commit
their cause to him. Besides a knowledge of the general principles of
law, another thing highly material to the success of every advocate
is a diligent and careful attention to every cause that is intrusted
to him, so as to be thoroughly master of all the facts and
circumstances relating to it, Cicero has left a very instructive
record of the method pursued by him in the preparation of a cause for
trial, and which we commend to the careful consideration of every
student and lawyer. He tells us, under the character of Antonius, in
the second book _De Oratore_, that he always conversed at full length
with every client who came to consult him; that he took care there
should be no witnesses to their conversation, in order that his
client might explain himself more freely; that he was wont to start
every objection, and to plead the cause of the adverse party with
him, that he might come at the whole truth and be fully prepared on
every point of the business; and that after the client had retired he
used to balance all the facts with himself under three different
characters: his own, that of the adversary, and that of the judge.
He censures very severely those of the profession who decline to take
so much trouble; taxing them not only with shameful negligence, but
with dishonesty and breach of trust. Quintilian likewise urged the
necessity of carefully studying every cause, again and again
recommending patience and attention in conversation with clients.
"For," said he, "to listen to something that is superfluous can do no
hurt; whereas to be ignorant of something that is material may be
highly prejudicial. The advocate will frequently discover the weak
side of a cause, and learn at the same time what is the proper
defense, from circumstances which to the party himself appeared to be
of little or no moment." It is said of Rufus Choate, that he began
to study a case the moment it was brought to him, and that he
continued to study it till the day of trial.
Besides the knowledge of the law, the advocate must make himself
acquainted with the general principles of logic. He must learn how
to _reason_; how to draw conclusions from premises; how to found an
argument. Without a knowledge of these things, no matter how copious
his diction or elegant his delivery, his speeches will be little more
than "sounding brass and tinkling cymbals."
The object of the advocate is chiefly to convince, and to do this he
must satisfy the understanding. Solid argument and clear method
must, therefore, be used. Nothing can be more erroneous than the
idea that mere declamation is eloquence. It may have the show, but
never can produce the effect; it "may tickle the ear," but it will
never lead a judge to pass that judgment or a jury to adopt that side
of the cause to which we seek to bring them. "There is no talent, I
apprehend," said Dugald Stewart, "so essential to a public speaker as
to be able to state clearly every step of those trains of thought by
which he himself was led to the conclusions he wishes to establish."
Especially is this true at the bar--the eloquence suited to which is
of the calm and temperate kind, connected with close reasoning. Let
the advocate take for his motto the advice of Quintilian, "To your
expression be attentive; but about your matter be solicitous."
There was much wisdom in the remark of Sir William Jones, that "an
elegant method of arranging the thoughts is powerful to persuade as
well as to please." William Pitt, being asked how he acquired his
talent for _reply_, answered at once that he owed it to the study of
Aristotle's logic in early life, and the habit of applying its
principles to all the discussions he met with in the works he read
and the debates he witnessed. So it is said of Rufus Choate, "he was
a thorough master of logic. He had studied it, not only in detail
and immediate application of style and arrangement, but in its
essence and origin."
The treatise best calculated to give the student an insight into the
rules and principles of logic is that by Dr. Whately. The book
recommended for the strengthening of the reasoning faculties is
Chillingworth's "The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to
Salvation," which was written in answer to the arguments of an
adversary, and which has for years been considered the most perfect
specimen of logical argument. Locke, than whom there could not be a
more competent authority, proposes "for the attainment of right
reasoning, the constant reading of Chillingworth"; and Lord Mansfield
pronounced it the "perfection of reasoning."
Law and logic are the immediate and foundation studies of the
advocate, but they are not all. Besides these he must drink deep at
the fountains of science, philosophy, history and _belles-lettres_.
These are the handmaids of oratory. They enlarge and liberalize the
mind, embellish the style and afford illustrations, ideas, arguments,
phrases, words, and last, tho not least, intellectual enthusiasm.
There are few occasions, indeed, on which an advocate will not derive
assistance from a cultivated taste and extensive knowledge. Their
illustrations, allusions and principles, woven in with the weightier
matters of the law, will make a pattern which will not fail to please
and interest--will throw around the dry and uninteresting legal
principles a freshness and charm that will fix the attention and
fascinate the hearer.
But perhaps the chief benefit to be derived from their study is the
improvement they afford to style and language. Cicero remarked in
the third book _De Oratore_, that "all elegance of language, tho it
receive a polish from the science of grammar, is yet augmented by the
reading of orators and poets." From this source have all great
orators drawn their copious and elegant diction and their polished
and graceful style. Erskine is represented by an excellent authority
as having spoken the finest and richest English ever spoken by an
advocate. For two years prior to his call to the bar, he devoted
himself exclusively to the study of literature, and probably no two
years of his life were so profitably spent. In addition to his
reading in prose, he devoted himself with great ardor to the study of
Milton and Shakespeare. His biographers tell us that he committed a
large part of the former to memory, and became so familiar with the
latter "that he could almost, like Person, have held conversations on
all subjects for days together in the phrases of the great English
dramatist." Here it was that he acquired that fine choice of words,
that rich and varied imagery, that sense of harmony in the structure
of his sentences, that boldness of thought and magnificence of
expression for which he was afterward so much distinguished. He
could have drawn these things from no richer source. To use the
words of Johnson, slightly varied, he who would excel in this noblest
of arts must give his days and nights to the study of Milton and
Shakespeare.
"Hither, as to a fountain,
Other suns repair, and in their urns
Draw golden light."
Lord Chatham read and reread Dr. Barrows' sermons until he knew many
of them by heart, "for the purpose," as he himself said, "of
acquiring copiousness of diction and an exact choice of words."
William Pitt, his son, obtained his remarkable command of the English
tongue from the same source, in connection with Shakespeare and the
Bible; the latter he studied not only as a guide of life, but as the
true "_well_ of English undefiled." No wonder that his contemporary,
Fox, should have said of him, "He always has the right word in the
right place."
William Pinckney has himself unlocked the secret of his intellectual
affluence and elegant diction. He says that he made it a rule from
his youth never to see a fine idea without committing it to memory.
Rufus Choate, in speaking of this fact, said "the result was the most
splendid and powerful English spoken style I ever heard." Choate
pursued a plan equally commendable. During the greater portion of
his life he made it a practise to read aloud every day a page or more
from some fine English author. This he did for the improvement of
his expression. He was a most indefatigable student of _words_, and
made the whole round of literature tributary to his vocabulary.
The following extract from the address of Lord Brougham to the
University of Glasgow will be a sufficient guide, with what has been
already said, to the selection of those authors that will tend most
to improve the style and diction: "The English writers who really
unlock the rich sources of the language are those who flourish from
the end of Elizabeth's to the end of Queen Anne's reign; who used a
good Saxon dialect with ease, but correctness and
perspicuity--learned in the ancient classics, but only enriching
their mother tongue where the Attic could supply its defects--not
overlaying it with a profuse pedantic coinage of words."
The great masters of oratory should be studied most carefully and
diligently; Erskine, Burke, Pinckney, Webster, and, above all, the
legal orations of Cicero are the best models for a young lawyer.
Read Bolingbroke for specimens of the splendid and ornate; Fox and
Pitt for the classical and argumentative; advantage may likewise be
derived from the letters of Junius.
In pursuing these studies, the motto must be _multum haud
multa_--much, not many. No real advantage and improvement will be
gained from a rambling, desultory course of reading. There is a
whole sermon in that saying of Hobbes, of Malmesbury, "If I had read
as many books as other persons, I should probably know as little."
The wisest and best informed teach us, both by counsel and example,
to read a little and that well; to count not by the books we have
read, but by the subjects we have exhausted. Swift said that the
reason a certain university was a learned place was that most persons
took some learning there and few brought any away with them, so it
accumulated. Such is the effect of a proper course of
reading--everything adds and nothing takes away.
We are not counseling an imitation of the _men of one book_, but the
pursuit of one system. Choose those authors most suited to the
object in view and _know_ them.
The advocate should make choice of his book, Shakespeare, Milton,
Bacon, Burke, Erskine, Bolingbroke, and make that his chief study.
One sterling author to call _my own_, ever most conspicuous and most
at hand, read, reread, "marked and quoted," will do much to form the
mind, to teach one to think, to give precision of expression, purity
of taste, loftiness of views and fervency of spirit. No better
selection can be made by the advocate than the works of Edmund Burke.
"Among the characteristics of Lord Erskine's eloquence," observes one
of his recent biographers, "the perpetual illustrations derived from
the writings of Burke is very remarkable. In every one of the great
state trials in which he was engaged, he referred to the productions
of that extraordinary person as to a text-book of political
wisdom--expounding, enforcing and justifying all the great and noble
principles of freedom and of justice." "When I look," says Lord
Erskine himself, "into my own mind and find its best lights and
principles fed from that immense magazine of moral and political
wisdom which he has left an inheritance to mankind for their
instruction, I feel myself repelled by an awful and grateful
sensibility from perpetually approaching him." Take, then, the words
of this sublime philosopher and orator, bind them up in one thick
volume, on which write _wisdom_ in gold letters, and begin to read it
through every New-year's day.
Another means of acquiring a command of language is translation, and
it is commended alike by the precepts and example of the great
masters. Two thousand years ago Cicero stocked his vocabulary by
this plan, translating from the Greek into Latin. Chatham translated
the orations of Demosthenes again and again into English. Mansfield
declared that there was not one of the orations of Cicero that he had
not translated more than once. Pitt pursued the same plan for ten
years, and to this he ascribed his extraordinary command of language,
which enabled him to give every idea its most felicitous expression,
and to pour out an unbroken stream of thought hour after hour without
once hesitating for a word or recalling a phrase, or sinking for a
moment into looseness or inaccuracy in the structure of a sentence.
Choate was a most indefatigable translator. This exercise he
persevered in daily, even in the midst of the most arduous business.
Five minutes a day, if no more, he would seize in the morning for
this task. Tacitus was his favorite author. He attended chiefly to
the multiplication of synonyms. For every word he translated, he
would rack his brain and search his books till he got five or six
corresponding English words. This is the true way to translate when
style and diction is the object. Turn the passage read into regular
English sentences, aiming to give the idea with great exactness and
to express it with idiomatic accuracy and ease. This plan of
translating is infinitely better than the plan sometimes advised of
taking some passage of classic English, getting the ideas from it and
then expressing them in the best manner possible. In this latter
method, the author has already selected the most appropriate words,
and if the student use the same words he will receive no profit, or
if other words, it is prejudicial, as it accustoms one to use such as
are less eligible.
The student of advocacy can not give too much attention to the
culture of _expression_. Orators in every age have made it a
specific study. Cicero says, "The proper concern of an orator, as I
have already often said, is language of power and eloquence
accommodated to the feelings and understanding of mankind." Language
and its elements, words, are to be mastered by direct, earnest labor.
A speaker ought _daily_ to exercise and air his vocabulary and add to
and enrich it. The advocate does not want a diction gathered from
the newspapers, caught from the air, common and unsuggestive; but one
whose every word is full freighted with suggestion and association,
with beauty and power. It is a rich and rare English that one ought
to command, who is aiming to control a jury's ear.
Chesterfield, in his letters to his son, said, "Manner is of as much
importance as matter"; and that this has been the opinion of all
great orators may be gathered from the vast labor expended by them on
the cultivation of expression and delivery. How much stress was laid
upon this by the greatest of all orators, Demosthenes, appears from a
noted saying of his related by both Cicero and Quintilian, when,
being asked what was the first point in oratory, he answered, action;
and being asked what was the second, he answered, action; and
afterward what was the third, he still answered, action. And
Plutarch said of him that "he thought it a small matter to
premeditate and compose, tho with the utmost care, if the
pronunciation and propriety of gesture were not attended to."
Esteeming delivery of such vast importance to the orator, there is no
wonder that he should have labored for months together in his
subterranean study to form his action and improve his voice.
To the superficial thinker, the study of gesture and of the
management of the voice may appear to be but "vanity of
vanities"--gaudy tinselry and worthless decoration; but the
experience of all time has proved that they are powerful to persuade
and strong to convince. We all know how much meaning--how much
expression--how much power there may be in a look, in a tone of the
voice, or in a motion. The impression they make on others is
frequently much stronger than any that words can make. They are the
language of nature, and are understood by all far better than words,
which are only the arbitrary conventional symbols of ideas. The
speaker who should use bare words, without aiding their meaning by
proper tones and accents, would make but a feeble impression, and
leave but a misty and indistinct conception of what he had delivered.
It is surprizing, indeed, to see how perfectly persons practised in
the art of gestures can communicate even complicated trains of
thought and long series of facts without the aid of words. This fact
was known and appreciated by the ancient Greeks and Romans, who made
the subject a study far more than have subsequent nations. Cicero
informs us that it was a matter of dispute between the actor Roscius
and himself whether the former could express a sentiment in a greater
variety of ways by gestures, or the latter by words. During the
reign of Augustus, both tragedies and comedies were acted by
pantomime alone. It was perfectly understood by the people, who wept
and laughed, and were excited in every way as much as if the words
had been employed. It seems, indeed, to have worked upon their
sympathies more powerfully than words; for it became necessary, at a
subsequent period, to enact a law restraining members of the Senate
from studying the art of pantomime--a practise to which, it seems,
they had resorted in order to give more effect to their speeches
before that body.
There have been volumes written on this subject of delivery, but they
are little better than a "vexation of spirit." The tone of the
voice, the look, the gesture, suited to express a thought or emotion,
must be learned from experience and the example of living speakers
and masters. Curran and many others have made it a practise to speak
before a glass, that they might themselves judge of the propriety of
their gestures, and correct those at fault. A more condensed or
sensible treatise on this subject can not be found than Hamlet's
direction to the players:
"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounce it to you--trippingly
on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had
as lief the town crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too
much with your hand; but use all gently, for in the very torrent,
tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must
acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh, it
offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious, periwigpated fellow
tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the
groundlings, who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but
inexplicable dumb shows and noise.... Be not too tame, neither, but
let your own discretion be your tutor; suit the action to the word,
the word to the action; with this special observance, that you
o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from
the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was,
and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue
her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of
the time, his form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come tardy
off, tho it make the unskilful laugh, can not but make the judicious
grieve; the censure of which one must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a
whole theater of others."
The student who shall follow these directions, which are as
applicable to the speaker as to the player, will not go very far
wrong.
The first consideration of a speaker must be to make himself heard by
all those to whom he speaks. This, tho often neglected, is of the
first importance, and is a matter that rests mainly in the management
of the voice, and not in the strength of lungs. Nor is it, as many
suppose, a natural talent, for the voice is susceptible of the
greatest culture, and may be formed after almost any model. To make
oneself audible, it is not necessary that the voice should be pitched
on a high key. Strength of sound does not depend upon the key or
note on which one speaks, but on the proper management of the voice.
A speaker may render his voice strong and full while speaking in a
middle or conversational tone, and will be able to give the most
sustained force to that pitch, as it is the one to which in
conversation he is accustomed. The conversational key is the one
that the advocate should, with rare exceptions, adopt; otherwise he
will exhaust himself and be heard with pain by his audience. Grattan
tells us that he heard Lord Chatham speak in the House of Lords; and
it was just like talking to one man by the buttonhole, except when he
lifted himself in enthusiasm, and then the effect of the outbreak was
immense; and of Harrison Gray Otis it is said that when you met him
in the street and heard him talk, you heard the orator Otis almost as
much as if he were in Faneuil Hall talking about politics.
In the next place, the student of advocacy must study to articulate
clearly and distinctly. On this, as much as on the quantity of
sound, depends the capacity to make oneself heard.
We need say nothing with regard to emphasis, pauses, tones and
gestures. Every one who goes about his work in earnest will devote
proper attention to these matters, and will gain more from experience
and observation than from the rules laid down in the books. One
thing seldom laid down in the books is of the highest importance to
the advocate: that is, to study always to _feel_ what he speaks.
Unless he do this, his oratory will be little more than an empty and
puerile flow of words. "The author who will make me weep," says
Horace, "must first weep himself." "In reality," adds Henry
Fielding, "no man can paint a distress well which he doth not feel
while he is painting it; nor do I doubt but that the most pathetic
and affecting scenes have been writ with tears." In Shakespeare's
Richard II, the Duchess of York thus impeaches the sincerity of her
husband:
"Pleads he in earnest? Look upon his face,
His eyes do drop no tears; his prayers are jest;
His words come from his mouth; ours, from our breast;
He prays but faintly and would be denied;
We pray with heart and soul."
No kind of language is so generally understood, or has such force and
weight, as the language of feeling. The advocate must be in
downright earnest before he can impress his hearers.
It only remains for us to add, that the student of oratory must
exercise himself continually in both writing and speaking. Writing
is said by Cicero to be "the best and most excellent modeler and
teacher of oratory"; "for," he continues, "if what is meditated and
considered easily surpasses sudden and extemporaneous speech, a
constant and diligent habit of writing will surely be of more effect
than meditation and consideration itself." Write with as much pains
as possible, and write as much as possible. It is even as Quintilian
said: "It is not writing rapidly that you come to write well, but by
writing well you come to write rapidly." In mental culture, as in
the culture of the earth, the seed sown in the deepest furrows finds
a more fruitful soil, is more securely cherished and springs up in
its time to more exuberant and healthful harvest. Without this
discipline, the power and practise of extemporaneous speech will
yield only an empty loquacity--only words born on the lips. In this
discipline, deep down there are the roots, there the foundations;
thence must the harvest shoot, thence the structure ascend; there is
garnered up, as in a more sacred treasury, wealth for the supply of
even unanticipated exactions. Thus, first of all, we must accumulate
resources sufficient for the contests to which we are summoned. In
writing, seek for the best; do not eagerly and gladly lay hold on
that which first offers itself; apply judgment to the crowd of
thoughts and words which fill your mind and retain those only of
which your judgment deliberately approves. Nor should every word be
allowed to occupy the exact spot where the order of time in which it
occurs would place it. Seek rather by a variety of experiments and
arrangements to attain to the utmost power and eloquence of style.
There is nothing like the pen to correct vagueness of thought and
looseness of expression. Every argument, every speech should, so far
as possible, be carefully written out. It is not necessary, nor is
it even advisable, to commit it to memory, save in rare instances.
The mind should be left untrammeled by any set speech to take
advantage of the inspiration of the moment. But the simple act of
carefully composing and writing down an argument will fix in the mind
the general order and sequence of facts and illustrations, and will
greatly aid in a clear and forcible arrangement. The night before
Alexander Hamilton delivered his celebrated speech, which more than
anything else led to the establishment of a liberal and more just law
regarding libel and slander in the State of New York, he wrote the
argument all out and then deliberately tore it up.
Besides frequent practise in writing, the student must have constant
practise in speaking, which is of more real value than all the
precepts of the masters.
It is sometimes said that men by speaking succeed in becoming
speakers, but it is just as true that men by speaking badly succeed
in becoming bad speakers. It is frequently the case, that students
do nothing more in practise than to exercise their voice, and not
even that skilfully--and try their strength of lungs and volubility
of tongue. Such practise is but a waste of breath. The student
should make it a cardinal rule always to do his best even while
practising in his room; to speak on subjects that he has deliberately
considered, and in such a style as he would adopt were an audience
before him. Of course, that kind of speaking will be most
advantageous to the advocate which is most in accordance with the
business of his life. Prominent advocates in every age have, while
developing their powers, made it a practise to propose a case similar
to those brought in the courts, and to make arguments thereon as
nearly as possible as they would were it an actual case in court.
Cicero followed this plan two thousand years ago, as he himself has
told us, and Curran and Choate were both indefatigable in this
practise.
Such are the means, such the labors by which the student may make
himself an advocate. It is not the work of an hour or a day or a
year, but of years--years of application and of industry--of patient
plodding and painful study. It is not by starts of application and
intermittent labor that anything valuable can be achieved. It is the
outgrowth of well-directed and persistent effort. In nothing more
than oratory are the lines of the poet true:
"The Father of our race Himself decrees
That culture shall be hard."
It has been the glory of the great masters of the art to confront and
to overcome; and all the wisdom of these latter days has discovered
no other road to success. These suggestions apply not only to the
lawyer, but to every man who would become an efficient public speaker
and a leader of men.