ORATORY AND SOME ORATORS I HAVE HEARD
The longer I live, the more highly I have come to value the
gift of eloquence. Indeed, I am not sure that it is not
the single gift most to be coveted by man. It is hard, perhaps
impossible, to define, as poetry is impossible to define.
To be a perfect and consummate orator is to possess the highest
faculty given to man. He must be a great artist, and more.
He must be a great actor, and more. He must be a master of
the great things that interest mankind. What he says ought
to have as permanent a place in literature as the highest
poetry. He must be able to play at will on the mighty organ,
his audience, of which human souls are the keys. He must
have knowledge, wit, wisdom, fancy, imagination, courage,
nobleness, sincerity, grace, a heart of fire. He must himself
respond to every emotion as an AEolian harp to the breeze.
He must have
An eye that tears can on a sudden fill
And lips that smile before the tears are gone.
He must have a noble personal presence. He must have, in
perfection, the eye and the voice which are the only and
natural avenues by which one human soul can enter into and
subdue another. His speech must be filled with music, and
possess its miraculous charm and spell,
Which the posting winds recall,
And suspend the river's fall.
He must have the quality which Burke manifested when Warren
Hastings said, "I felt, as I listened to him, as if I were
the most culpable being on earth"; and which made Philip say
of Demosthenes, "Had I been there he would have persuaded
me to take up arms against myself."
He has a present, practical purpose to accomplish. If he
fail in that he fails utterly and altogether. His object is to
convince the understanding, to persuade the will, to set
aflame the heart of his audience or those who read what he
says. He speaks for a present occasion. Eloquence is the
feather that tips his arrow. If he miss the mark he is a
failure, although his sentences may survive everything else
in the permanent literature of the language in which he speaks.
What he says must not only accomplish the purpose of the hour,
but should be fit to be preserved for all time, or he can
have no place in literature, and a small and ephemeral place
in human memory.
The orator must know how so to utter his thought that it
will stay. The poet and the orator have this in common.
Each must so express and clothe his thought that it shall
penetrate and take possession of the soul, and, having penetrated,
must abide and stay. How this is done, who can tell? Carlyle
defines poetry as a "sort of lilt." Cicero finds the secret
of eloquence in a
Lepos quidem celeritasque et brevitas.
One writer lately dead, who has a masterly gift of noble
and stirring eloquence, finds it in "a certain collocation of
consonants." Why it is that a change of a single word, or
even of a single syllable, for any other which is an absolute
synonym in sense, would ruin the best line in Lycidas, or
injure terribly the noblest sentence of Webster, nobody knows.
Curtis asks how Wendell Phillips did it, and answers his own
question by asking you how Mozart did it.
When I say that I am not sure that this is not the single
gift most to be coveted by man, I may seem to have left out
the moral quality in my conception of what is excellent. But
such is the nature of man that the loftiest moral emotions
are still the overmastering emotions. The orator that does
not persuade men that righteousness is on his side will seldom
persuade them to think or act as he desires; and if he fail
in that he fails in his object; and the orator who has not
in fact righteousness on his side will in general fail so to
persuade them. And even if in rare cases he do persuade
his audience, he does not gain a permanent place in literature.
Bolingbroke's speeches, though so enthusiastically praised
by the best judges, have perished by their own worthlessness.
Although the danger of the Republic, and his own, still occupied
his thoughts, Cicero found time in his old age to record,
at the request of his brother Quintus, his opinion, _de omni
ratione dicendi._ It is not likely that the treatise "de
Oratore" or that "de Claris Oratoribus" will ever be matched
by any other writer on this fascinating subject, except the
brief and masterly fragment of Tacitus.
He begins by inquiring why it is that, when so many persons
strive to attain the gift of eloquence, and its rewards of
fame and wealth and power are so great, the number of those
who succeed as orators is so small in comparison with the
number of those who become great generals, or statesmen,
or poets. I suppose this fact, which excited the wonder
of Cicero, exists in our country and our time. There is a
foreign country which is to us as a posterity. If we reckon
those Americans only as great orators who are accepted in
England as such, or who, belonging to past generations are
so accepted now by their own countrymen, the number is very
small. A few sentences of Patrick Henry are preserved, as
a few sentences of Lord Chatham are preserved. The great
thoughts of Webster justify, in the estimation of the reader,
the fame he enjoyed with his own generation. The readers
of Fisher Ames--alas, too few--can well comprehend the spell
which persuaded an angry and reluctant majority to save the
treaty to which the nation had pledged its faith, and, perhaps,
the life of the nation itself. With these exceptions, the
number of American orators who will live in history as orators
can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
I have never supposed myself to possess this gift. The instruction
which I had in my youth, especially that at Harvard, either
in composition or elocution, was, I think, not only of no
advantage, but a positive injury. Besides the absence of
good training, I had an awkward manner, and a harsh voice.
Until quite late in life I never learned to manage so that
I could get through a long speech without serious irritation
of the throat. But I have had good opportunity to hear the
best public speaking of my time. I have heard in England,
on a great field day in the House of Commons, Palmerston,
Lord John Russell, and John Bright, and, later, Disraeli,
Gladstone and Bernal Osborne. I have heard Spurgeon, and
Bishop Wilberforce, and Dr. Guthrie in the pulpit.
At home I have heard a good many times Daniel Webster, Edward
Everett, Rufus Choate, Robert C. Winthrop, John P. Hale,
Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, Richard H. Dana, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, James G. Blaine, Lucius Q. C. Lamar, James
A. Garfield, William McKinley, William M. Evarts, Benjamin
F. Thomas, Pliny Merrick, Charles Devens, Nathaniel P. Banks,
and, above all, Kossuth; and in the pulpit, James Walker,
Edwards A. Park, Mark Hopkins, Edward Everett Hale, George
Putnam, Starr King, and Henry W. Bellows. So, perhaps, my
experience and observation, too late for my own advantage,
may be worth something to my younger readers.
I am not familiar with the books which have been lately published
which give directions for public speaking. So I dare say
that what I have to advise is already well known to young
men, and that all I can say has been said much better. But
I will give the result of my own experience and observation.
In managing the voice, the speaker when he is engaged in earnest
conversation, commonly and naturally falls into the best tone
and manner for public speaking. Suppose you are sitting about
a table with a dozen friends, and some subject is started
in which you are deeply interested. You engage in an earnest
and serious dialogue with one of them at the other end of
the table. You are perfectly at ease, not caring in the least
for your manner or tone of voice, but only for your thought.
The tone you adopt then will ordinarily be the best tone for
you in public speaking. You can, however, learn from teachers
or friendly critics to avoid any harsh or disagreeable fashion
of speech that you may have fallen into, and that may be habitual
to you in private conversation.
Next. Never strain your vocal organs by attempting to fill
spaces which are too large for you. Speak as loudly and
distinctly as you can do easily, and let the most distant
portions of your audience go. You will find in that way very
soon that your voice will increase in compass and power, and
you will do better than by a habit of straining the voice
beyond its natural capacity. Be careful to avoid falsetto.
Shun imitating the tricks of speech of other orators, even
of famous and successful orators. These may do for them,
but not for you. You will do no better in attempting to
imitate the tricks of speech of other men in public speaking than
in private speaking.
Never make a gesture for the sake of making one. I believe
that most of the successful speakers whom I know would find
it hard to tell you whether they themselves make gestures
or not, they are so absolutely unconscious in the matter.
But with gestures as with the voice, get teachers or friendly
critics to point out to you any bad habit you may fall into.
I think it would be well if our young public speakers, especially
preachers, would have competent instructors and critics among
their auditors, after they enter their profession, to give
them the benefit of such observations and counsel as may be
suggested in that way. If a Harvard professor of elocution
would retain his responsibility for his pupils five or ten
years after they got into active life he would do a great
deal more good than by his instructions to undergraduates.
So far we have been talking about mere manner. The matter
and substance of the orator's speech must depend upon the
intellectual quality of the man.
The great orator must be a man of absolute sincerity. Never
advocate a cause in which you do not believe, or affect an
emotion you do not feel. No skill or acting will cover up
the want of earnestness. It is like the ointment of the
hand which bewrayeth itself.
I shall be asked how I can reconcile this doctrine with the
practice of the law. It will be said the advocate must often
defend men whom he believes to be guilty, or argue to the
court propositions he believes to be unsound. This objection
will disappear if we consider what exactly is the function
of the advocate in our system of administering justice.
I suppose it is needless to argue to persons of American
or English birth that our system of administering justice is
safer for the innocent and, on the whole, secures the punishment
of guilt and secures private right better than any other
that now exists or that ever existed among men. The chief
distinction of the system we have inherited from England consists
in two things: first, the function of the advocate, and
second, that cases are decided not upon belief, but upon
proof. It has been found that court or jury are more likely
to get at truth if they have the aid of trained officers whose
duty it shall be to collect and present all the arguments on
each side which ought to be considered before the court or
jury reach the decision. The man who seems clearly guilty
should not be condemned or punished unless every consideration
which may tend to establish innocence or throw doubt upon
guilt has been fully weighed. The unassisted tribunal will
be quite likely to overlook these considerations. Public
sentiment approves the judgment and the punishment in the
case of John W. Webster. But certainly he should never have
been convicted without giving the fullest weight to his previous
character and to the slightness of the temptation to the commission
of such a crime, to the fact that the evidence was largely
circumstantial, to the doubt of the identity of the body of
the victim, and to the fact that the means or instrument of
the crime which ordinarily must be alleged and proved in cases
of murder could not be made certain, and could not be set
forth in the indictment. The question in the American or
English court is not whether the accused be guilty. It is
whether he be shown to be guilty, by legal proof, of an offence
legally set forth. It is the duty of the advocate to perform
his office in the mode best calculated to cause all such considerations
to make their due impression. It is not his duty or his right
to express or convey his individual opinion. On him the responsibility
of the decision does not rest. He not only has no right to
accompany the statement of his argument with any assertion
as to his individual belief, but I think the most experienced
observers will agree that such expressions, if habitual, tend
to diminish and not to increase the just influence of the
lawyer. There was never a weightier advocate before New England
juries than Daniel Webster. Yet it is on record that he always
carefully abstained from any positiveness of assertion. He
introduced his weightiest arguments with such phrases as,
"It will be for the jury to consider," "The Court will judge,"
"It may, perhaps, be worth thinking of, gentlemen," or some
equivalent phrase by which he kept scrupulously off the ground
which belonged to the tribunal he was addressing. The tricks
of advocacy are not only no part of the advocate's duties,
but they are more likely to repel than to attract the hearers.
The function of the advocate in the court of justice, as thus
defined and limited, is tainted by no insincerity or hypocrisy.
It is as respectable, as lofty, and as indispensably necessary
as that of the judge himself.
In my opinion, the two most important things that a young
man can do to make himself a good public speaker are:
First. Constant and careful written translations from Latin
or Greek into English.
Second. Practice in a good debating society.
It has been said that all the greatest Parliamentary orators
of England are either men whom Lord North saw, or men who
saw Lord North--that is, men who were conspicuous as public
speakers in Lord North's youth, his contemporaries, and the
men who saw him as an old man when they were young themselves.
This would include Bolingbroke and would come down only to
the year of Lord John Russell's birth. So we should have
to add a few names, especially Gladstone, Disraeli, John Bright,
and Palmerston. There is no great Parliamentary orator in
England since Gladstone died. I once, a good many years ago,
studied the biographies of the men who belonged to that period
who were famous as great orators in Parliament or in Court,
to find, if I could, the secret of their power. With the
exception of Lord Erskine and of John Bright, I believe every
one of them trained himself by careful and constant translation
from Latin or Greek, and frequented a good debating society
in his youth.
Brougham trained himself for extemporaneous speaking in the
Speculative Society, the great theatre of debate for the University
of Edinburgh. He also improved his English style by translations
from the Greek, among which is his well-known version of the
"Oration on the Crown."
Canning's attention, while at Eton, was strongly turned to
extemporaneous speaking. They had a debating society, in
which the Marquis of Wellesley and Charles Earl Grey had been
trained before him, in which they had all the forms of the
House of Commons--Speaker, Treasury benches, and an Opposition.
Canning also was disciplined by the habit of translation.
Curran practised declamation daily before a glass, reciting
passages from Shakespeare and the best English orators. He
frequented the debating societies which then abounded in London.
He failed at first, and was ridiculed as "Orator Mum." But
at last he surmounted every difficulty. It was said of him
by a contemporary: "He turned his shrill and stumbling brogue
into a flexible, sustained, and finely modulated voice; his
action become free and forcible; he acquired perfect readiness
in thinking on his legs; he put down every opponent by the
mingled force of his argument and wit; and was at last crowned
with the universal applause of the society and invited by
the president to an entertainment in their behalf." I am not
sure that I have seen, on any good authority, that he was
in the habit of writing translations from Latin or Greek,
but he studied them with great ardor and undoubtedly adopted,
among the methods of perfecting his English style, the custom
of students of his day of translation from these languages.
Jeffrey joined the Speculative Society, in Edinburgh, in
his youth. His biographer says that it did more for him
than any other event in the whole course of his education.
Chatham, the greatest of English orators, if we may judge
by the reports of his contemporaries, trained himself for
public speaking by constant translations from Latin and Greek.
The education of his son, the younger Pitt, is well known.
His father compelled him to read Thucydides into English at
sight, and to go over it again and again, until he had got
the best possible rendering of the Greek into English.
Macaulay belonged to the Cambridge Union, where, as in the
society of the same name at Oxford, the great topics of the
day were discussed by men, many of whom afterward became famous
statesmen and debaters in the Commons.
Young Murray, afterward Lord Mansfield, translated Sallust
and Horace with ease; learned great part of them by heart;
could converse fluently in Latin; wrote Latin prose correctly
and idiomatically, and was specially distinguished at Westminster
for his declamations. He translated every oration of Cicero
into English and back again into Latin.
Fox can hardly have been supposed to have practised much in
debating societies, as he entered the House of Commons when
he was nineteen years old. But it is quite probably that
he was drilled by translations from Latin and Greek into English;
and in the House of Commons he had in early youth the advantage
of the best debating society in the world. It is said that
he read Latin and Greek as easily as he read English. He
himself said that he gained his skill at the expense of the
House, for he had sometimes tasked himself during the 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. This is what made him, according
to Burke, "rise by slow degrees to be the most brilliant and
accomplished debater the world ever saw."
Sir Henry Bulwer's "Life of Palmerston" does not tell us whether
he was trained by the habit of writing translations or in
debating societies. But he was a very eager reader of the
classics. There is little doubt, however, considering the
habit of his contemporaries at Cambridge, and that he was
ambitious for public life, and represented the University
of Cambridge in Parliament just after he became twenty-one,
that he belonged to a debating society and that he was drilled
in English composition by translation from the classics.
Gladstone was a famous debater in the Oxford Union, as is
well known, and was undoubtedly in the habit of writing translations
from Greek and Latin, of which he was always so passionately
fond. He says in his paper on Arthur Hallam that the Eton
debating club known as the Society supplied the British Empire
with four Prime Ministers in fourscore years.
The value of the practice of translation from Latin or Greek
into English, in getting command of good English style, in
my judgment, can hardly be stated too strongly. The explanation
is not hard to find. You have in these two languages and
especially in Latin, the best instrument for the most precise
and most perfect expression of thought. The Latin prose of
Tacitus and Cicero, the verse of Virgil and Horace, are like
a Greek statue, or an Italian cameo--you have not only exquisite
beauty, but also exquisite precision. You get the thought
into your mind with the accuracy and precision of the words
that express numbers in the multiplication table. Ten times
one are ten--not ten and one one-millionth. Having got the
idea into your mind with the precision, accuracy, and beauty
of the Latin expression, you are to get its equivalent in
English. Suppose you have knowledge of no language but your
own. The thought comes to you in the mysterious way in which
thoughts are born, and struggles for expression in apt words.
If the phrase that occurs to you does not exactly fit the
thought, you are almost certain, especially in speaking or
rapid composition, to modify the thought to fit the phrase.
Your sentence commands you, not you the sentence. The extemporary
speaker never gets, or easily loses, the power of precise
and accurate thinking or statement, and rarely attains a literary
excellence which gives him immortality. But the conscientious
translator has no such refuge. He is confronted by the inexorable
original. He cannot evade or shirk. He must try and try
and try again until he has got the exact thought expressed
in its English equivalent. This is not enough. He must get
an English expression if the resources of the language will
furnish it, which will equal as near as may be the dignity
and beauty of the original. He must not give you pewter for
silver, or pinchbeck for gold, or mica for diamond. This
practice will soon give him ready command of the great riches
of his own noble English tongue. It will give a habitual
nobility and beauty to his own style. The best word and phrase
will come to him spontaneously when he speaks and thinks.
The processes of thought itself will grow easier. The orator
will get the affluence and abundance which characterize the
great Italian artists of the Middle Ages, who astonish us
as much by the amount and variety of their work as by its
excellence.
The value of translation is very different from that of original
written composition. Cicero says:
"Stilus optimus et praestantissimus dicendi effector ac magister."
Of this I am by no means sure. If you write rapidly you
get the habit of careless composition. If you write slowly
you get the habit of slow composition. Each of these is an
injury to the style of the speaker. He cannot stop to correct
or scratch out. Cicero himself in a later passage states
his preference for translation. He says that at first he used
to take a Latin author, Ennius or Gracchus, and get the meaning
into his head, and then write it again. But he soon found
that in that way if he used again the very words of his author
he got no advantage, and if he used other language of his
own, the author had already occupied the ground with the best
expression, and he was left with the second best. So he gave
up the practice and adopted instead that of translating from
the Greek.
But to go back to what makes an orator. As I have said,
his object is to excite the emotions which, being excited, will
be most likely to impel his audience to think or act as he
desires. He must never disgust them, he must never excite
their contempt. He can use to great advantage the most varied
learning, the profoundest philosophy, the most compelling
logic. He must master the subject with which he has to deal,
and he must have knowledge adequate to illustrate and adorn
it. When every other faculty of the orator is acquired, it
sometimes almost seems as if the voice were nine-tenths, and
everything else but one-tenth, of the consummate orator. It
is impossible to overrate the importance to his purpose of
that matchless instrument, the human voice.
The most fastidious critic is by no means the best judge,
seldom even a fairly good judge, of the public speaker. He
is likely to be a stranger to the emotion which the orator
inspires and excites. He is likely to fall into mistakes like
that which Goldwin Smith makes about Patrick Henry. Mr.
Smith ridicules Henry's speech and action and voice. The
emotion which the great Virginian stirred in the breasts of
his backwoodsmen seems very absurd to this cultured Englishman.
The bowing and changes of countenance and gesticulating of
the orator seem to him like the cheapest acting. Yet to us
who understand it, it does not seem that Patrick Henry in
the old church at Richmond need yield the palm to Chatham
in St. Stephen's Chapel, either for the grandeur of his theme
or of his stage, or the sublimity of his eloquence.
Matthew Arnold had the best pair of intellectual eyes of
our time. But he sometimes made a like mistake as a critic
of poetry. He speaks slightingly of Emerson's Fourth of
July Ode--
Oh tenderly the haughty day
Fills his blue urn with fire;
One morn is in the mighty heaven,
And one in our desire.
What did the Englishman know of the Fourth of July emotion
which stirred all Americans in the days when the country
had just escaped destruction, and was entering upon its new
career of freedom and of glory? What could he understand
of that feeling, full of the morning and of the springtime,
which heard the cannon boom and the bells ring, with stirring
and quickened pulse, in those exultant days? Surely there
never was a loftier stroke than that with which the New England
poet interpreted to his countrymen the feeling of that joyous
time--the feeling which is to waken again when the Fourth
of July comes round on many anniversaries:
Oh tenderly the haughty day
Fills his blue urn with fire;
One morn is in the mighty heaven,
And one in our desire.
It is often said that if a speech read well it is not a good
speech. There may be some truth in it. The reader cannot,
of course, get the impression which the speaker conveys by
look and tone and gesture. He lacks that marvellous influence
by which in a great assembly the emotion of every individual
soul is multiplied by the emotion of every other. The reader
can pause and dwell upon the thought. If there be a fallacy,
he is not hurried away to something else before he can detect
it. So, also, more careful and deliberate criticism will
discover offences of style and taste which pass unheeded in
a speech when uttered. But still the great oratoric triumphs
of literature and history stand the test of reading in the
closet, as well as of hearing in the assembly. Would not
Mark Anthony's speech over the dead body of Caesar, had it
been uttered, have moved the Roman populace as it moves the
spectator when the play is acted, or the solitary reader in
his closet? Does not Lord Chatham's "I rejoice that America
has resisted" read well? Do not Sheridan's great perorations,
and Burke's, in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, read well?
Does not "Liberty and Union, Now and Forever!" read well?
Does not "Give me Liberty or Give me Death!" read well? Does
not Fisher Ames's speech for the treaty read well? Do not
Everett's finest passages read well?
There are examples of men of great original genius who have
risen to lofty oratory on some great occasion who had not
the advantage of familiarity with any great author. But they
are not only few in number, but the occasions are few when
they have risen to a great height. In general the orator,
whether at the Bar, or in the pulpit, or in public life, who
is to meet adequately the many demands upon his resources,
must get familiarity with the images and illustrations he
wants, and the resources of a fitting diction, by soaking
his mind in some great authors which will alike satisfy and
stimulate his imagination, and supply him with a lofty expression.
Of these I suppose the best are, by common consent, the Bible,
Shakespeare, and Milton. It is a maxim that the pupil who
wishes to acquire a pure and simple style should give his
days and nights to Addison. But there is a lack of strength
and vigor in Addison, which perhaps prevents his being the
best model for the advocate in the court-house or the champion
in a political debate. I should rather, for myself, recommend
Robert South to the student. If the speaker, whose thought
have weight and vigor in it, can say it as South would have
said it, he may be quite sure that his weighty meaning will
be expressed alike to the mind of the people and the apprehension
of his antagonist.
There is one great difference between the condition of the
American orator and that of the orator of antiquity. The
speaker, in the old time, addressed an audience about to act
instantly upon the emotions or convictions he had himself
caused. Or he spoke to a Judge who was to give no reason
for his opinion. The sense of public responsibility scarcely
existed in either. The speech itself perished with the occasion,
unless, as in some few instances, the orator preserved it
in manuscript for a curious posterity. Even then the best
of them had discovered that not eloquence, but wisdom, is
the power by which states grow and flourish.
"Omnia plena consiliorum, inania verborum.
"Quid est tam furiosum quam verborum vel optimorum atque ornatissimorum
sonitus inanis nulla subjecta sententia nec scientia?"
Cicero's oratory is to excite his hearers, whether Judge
or popular assembly, for the occasion. Not so in general
with our orator. The auditor is ashamed of excitement. He
takes the argument home with him: He sleeps on it. He reads
it again in the newspaper report. He hears and reads the
other side. He discusses with friends and antagonists. He
feels the responsibility of his vote. He expects to have
to justify it himself. Even the juryman hears the sober
statement of the Judge, and talks the case over with his
associates of the panel in the quiet seclusion of the jury-room.
The Judge himself must state the reasons for his opinions,
which are to be read by a learned and critical profession and
by posterity. The speaker's argument must be sounded, and
rung, and tested, and tried again and again, before the auditor
acts upon it. Our people hear some great orators as they
witness a play. The delight of taste, even intellectual
gratification, caused by what is well said, is one thing.
Conviction is quite another. The printing-press and the reporter,
the consultation in the jury-room, the reflection in the Judge's
chamber, the delay of the election to a day long after the
speech, are protections against the mischief of mere oratory,
which the ancients did not enjoy.
I heard a debate in the House of Commons in 1860, on the
paper duties, in which Lord John Russell, Palmerston, Gladstone,
and John Bright took part. Gladstone's part was not very
prominent. I now remember little that he said. His image,
as it then appeared, is effaced by his later appearance on
a much greater occasion. Bright spoke admirably, both in
manner and matter. He was an Independent, through giving
general support to the measures of the Government, in which
Palmerston and Lord Russell were the leaders. He complained
bitterly of their acquiescence in what he thought the unconstitutional
attitude of the House of Lords, in refusing to consent to
the abolition of the paper duties, for which the House of
Commons had voted. But the Government, though they had tried
to abolish the duty, were very glad to hold on to the revenue.
Bright had none of the English hesitation, and frequent punctuation
of sentences with--"er"--"er"--which has led some one, speaking
of English orators, to say that "to err" is human. He reminded
me in general, in look, voice, and manner, of the late Richard
H. Dana, although he sometimes threw more passion and zeal
into his speech than Dana ever indulged. Periods followed
each other in easy and rapid flow. He had a fine voice and
delivery, easily filling the hall from his place below the
gangway.
Palmerston, in his jaunty and off-hand way, rebuked Bright
for desiring to make the House of Commons adopt a resolution
which would only show its own helplessness. On the whole,
he seemed to me to get the better of the debate. Bright could
not persuade the House, or the people of England, to make
a great constitutional question out of the paper duties, especially
after the powerful speech of Lord Lyndhurst, who, then more
than ninety years old, argued for the side of the Lords with
a power that no other speaker on the subject rivalled.
I heard Gladstone again in 1871, when there was a great struggle
between him and Disraeli over the Parliamentary and Municipal
Elections Bill. I visited the House with Thomas Hughes, to
whom I was indebted for much courtesy while in London, and
had a seat on the floor just below the gallery, where a few
strangers are, or were then, admitted by special card from
the Speaker.
Bernal Osborne, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, Sir Stafford Northcote,
Gladstone, and Disraeli took part in the debate. The bill
was introduced by Mr. Gladstone's Government. The question
that night was on a motion to strike out the provision for
the secret ballot; so the opponents of the Government had
to close in support of the motion. The report of Hansard
purports to be in the first person. But I can testify from
memory that it is by no means verbally accurate. I have no
doubt the speeches were taken down in short-hand. The phonetic
system was then used. But the report seems to be about like
those which our good short-hand reporters used to make before
that invention. The speeches are well worth studying by a
person who wishes to get an idea of the intellectual and literary
quality of these champions. There is no great passage in
any one of them. But the capacity and quality of power appear
distinctly. Osborne was full of a shrewd and delightful wit,
without the vitriolic flavor which often appears in the sarcasm
of Disraeli. Gladstone showed his power of elevating the
discussion to a lofty plane, which his opponent never reached,
although Disraeli launched at him many a keen shaft from
below. Mr. Hughes sat by me most of the night, and occasionally
brought and introduced to me some eminent person whom he thought
I would like to know.
The members of our National House of Representatives, however
turbulent or disorderly, never would submit to the fashion
of treating a speaker whom they do not want to hear which
prevails in the House of Commons. When Mr. Gladstone got
through, the night was far spent, and the House evidently
wanted to hear Disraeli, then vote and go home. Mr. Plunket,
a member for the University of Dublin, who seemed an intelligent
and sensible man, rose, wishing to correct a statement of
Mr. Gladstone's, which he thought had done him an injustice.
Disraeli rose about the same time, but bowed and gave way.
The House did not like it. Poor Plunket's voice was drowned
in the storm of shouts--"Sit down. Sit down. Dizzy, Dizzy,"
in which my friend, Mr. Hughes, although of Gladstone's party,
joined at the top of his lungs. I think the Bedlam lasted
five minutes. But Plunket stood his ground and made his correction.
Although Bernal Osborne was a man of great wit and sense,
and Sir Stafford Northcote and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach were
then, as the latter is now, very eminent characters, yet the
only speakers who belonged to the rank of the great orators
were Gladstone and Disraeli. I will not undertake to add
another description of Gladstone to the many with which every
reader of mine is thoroughly familiar. The late Dr. Bellows
resembled him very nearly, both in his way of reasoning and
his manner of speech. Persons who have heard Dr. Bellows
at his best will not deem this comparison unworthy.
Gladstone was terribly in earnest. He began his speech by
a compliment to Northcote, his opponent, for whom he had shown
his esteem by sending him to the United States as one of the
Joint High Commission to make the Alabama Treaty. But when
Mr. Gladstone was well under way, Sir Stafford interposed
a dissent from something he said by calling out "No, no"--
a very frequent practice in the House. Gladstone turned
upon him savagely, with a tone of anger which I might almost
call furious: "Can the gentleman tolerate no opinion but
his own, that he interjects his audible contradiction into
the middle of my sentence?" The House evidently did not like
it. Hughes, who agreed with Gladstone, said to me: "What
a pity it is that he cannot control his temper; that is his
great fault."
There are no passages in this speech of Gladstone that can
be cited as among the best examples of the great style of
the orator. But there are several that give a good idea of
his manner, and show something of the argument in two or
three sentences: "I am not at all ashamed of having said,
and I will say it again, that this is a choice of evils. I do not
say that the proposal for a secret ballot is open to no objections
whatever. I admit that open voting has its evils as well
as its merits. One of these merits is that it enables a
man to discharge a noble duty in the noblest possible manner.
But what are its demerits? That by marking his vote you expose
the voter to be tempted through his cupidity and through his
fears. We propose, by secret voting, to greatly diminish
the first of these, and we hope to take away the second. We
do not believe that the disposition to bribe can operate with
anything like its present force when the means of tracing
the action of the man bribed are taken away, because men will
not pay for that they do not know they will ever receive."
"I think it is too late for the honorable gentleman to say,
'We are passing through an experiment; wait for more experiment.'"
"We have already been debating this subject for forty years;
we have plenty of time on our hands; it is a Godsend to have
anything to fill up our vacant hours; and therefore let us
postpone the subject in order that it may be dealt with in
future years."
The great quality of Gladstone, as of Sumner, is his profound
seriousness. He makes the impression on his hearers, an impression
made, but not so strongly, upon his readers, that the matter
he is discussing is that upon which the foundations of heaven
and earth rest.
It would be a great mistake to hold Disraeli cheap. He turned
the tables upon Osborne, who had gone into several, what Disraeli
called, archaeological details, with respect to the antiquity
of the ballot, and had cited a proclamation of Charles I.
prohibiting the ballot in all corporations, either in the
city of London or elsewhere, which Disraeli said "was done
with the admirable view of identifying the opinions of those
who sit on this side of the House with the political sentiments
of that monarch. But there was another assertion of the principle
that the ballot should be open that the gentleman has not
cited. That occurred in the most memorable Parliament that
ever sat in England--the Long Parliament . . . . They wished
it therefore to be exercised, not to satisfy the self-complacency
of the individual, but with due respect for common-sense and
the public opinion of the country, and influenced by all those
doctrines and all that discipline of party which they believed
to be one of the best securities for public liberty."
Gladstone showed in his speech the profounder reflection
on the general subject, the more philosophy, and the intenser
earnestness; Disraeli showed quickness of wit, a ready command
of his resources, ability for subtle distinctions, and glimpses
of his almost Satanic capacity for mocking and jeering. He
describes Mr. Gladstone most felicitously as "inspired by
a mixture of genius and vexation." He speaks of his majority
as a "mechanical majority, a majority the result of heedlessness
of thought on the part of members who were so full of other
questions that they gave pledges in favor of the ballot without
due consideration."
He said: "There is a celebrated river, which has been the
subject of political interest of late, and with which we
are all acquainted. It rolls its magnificent volume, clear and
pellucid, in its course; but it never reaches the ocean; it
sinks into mud and morass. And such will be the fate of
this mechanical majority. The conscience of the country is
against it. It is an old-fashioned political expedient;
it is not adapted to the circumstances which we have to encounter
in the present, and because it has no real foundation of truth
or policy, it will meet with defeat and discomfiture."
Gladstone had, what is quite rare, and what no famous American
orator that I now think of, except Choate and Evarts, have
had--a tendency to diffuse and somewhat involved speech, and
at the same time a gift of compact epigrammatic utterance
on occasions. When Mr. Evarts, who was my near relative,
and a man with whom I could take a liberty, came into the
Senate, I said to him that we should have to amend the rules
so that a motion to adjourn would be in order in the middle
of a sentence; to which he replied that he knew of nobody
in this country, who objected to long sentences, except the
criminal classes.
Gladstone was the last of a school of oratory, and the last
of our time--I hope not for all time--of a school of statesmen.
When he entered upon a discussion in Parliament, or on the
hustings, he elevated it to the highest possible plane. The
discussion became alike one of the highest moral principles
and the profoundest political philosophy. He seemed to be
speaking as our statesmen of the Revolutionary time, and the
time of framing our Constitution. He used to speak to all
generations alike. What he had to say would have been true
and apt and fit to be uttered in the earlier days of Athens
and Rome, and true and apt and fit to be uttered for thousands
of years to come. He had, in a large measure, a failing which
all Englishmen have, and always had; the notion that what
is good for England is good for humanity at large. Still
it was a lofty morality and a lofty ideal statesmanship. It
was sincere. What he said, that he believed. It came straight
from his heart, and he kindled in the bosoms of his listeners
the ardor of his own heart. He was not afraid of his ideals.
I heard Dr. Guthrie in Edinburgh in 1860. It was a hot day.
My companion was just getting well from a dangerous attack
of bleeding at the lungs. We made our way with difficulty
into the crowded church. The people were, almost all of them,
standing. We were obliged, by my friend's condition, to get
out again before the sermon. I remember, however, the old
man's attitude, and his prayer in the racy, broad Scotch,
the most tender, pathetic and expressive language on earth
for the deeper emotions as well as for humor. I wonder if
my readers have ever seen the version of the Psalms--
"Frae Hebrew Intil Scottis," by P. Hately Waddell, LL.D.,
Minister, Edinburgh, 1891.
If not, and they will get it, a new delight is in store for
them, and they will know something of the diction of Dr.
Guthrie.
He once began a prayer, "O Lord, it is a braw thing to loe
ye. But it is a better (bitter) thing to hate ye."
The beauty of this dialect is that while it is capable alike
of such tenderness, and such lofty eloquence, and such exquisite
and delicate humor, it is, like our Saxon, incapable of falsetto,
or of little pomposities.
I heard Lyman Beecher, then a very old man, before a meeting
of the members of the Massachusetts Legislature in 1852, when
the measure known as the Maine Liquor Law was pending. He
bore unmistakable marks of advanced age. But there were one
or two passages that showed the power of the orator, one especially
in which he described the beauty and delight of our homes,
and intemperance threatening them with its waves like a great
sea of fire.
I saw Henry Ward Beecher several times in private, and had
pleasant talks with him. But I am sorry to say I never heard
him speak, so far as I can now remember, on any occasion when
he put forth his power. But if half that is told of his speeches,
during the Civil War, some of them to hostile and angry audiences,
be true, he was a consummate master. One story is told of
him which I suppose is true, and, if it be true, ranks him
as one of the greatest masters of his art that ever lived.
It is said that he was speaking to a great crowd in Birmingham,
or perhaps Liverpool, which constantly goaded him with hostile
interruptions, so that he had great difficulty in getting
on. At last one fellow provoked the cheers and applause of
the audience by crying out--"Why didn't you put down the Rebellion
in sixty days as you said you would?" Beecher paused a moment
until they became still, in their eagerness to hear his reply,
and then hurled back--"We should if they had been Englishmen."
The fierce, untamed animal hesitated a moment between anger
and admiration, and then the English love of fair play and
pluck prevailed, and the crowd cheered him and let him go
on.
But any man who reads Beecher's delightful "Letters from the
White Mountains," or some of his sermons, and imagines his
great frame, and far-sounding voice, will get a conception
of his power to play on the feelings or men, of his humor,
and pathos, and intense conviction, and rapidity in passing
from one emotion to another, and will understand him.
I heard Rufus Choate a great many times. I heard nearly
all the speeches given in Brown's Life; and I heard him a
great many times at the Bar, both before juries and the full
Court. He is the only advocate I ever heard who had the
imperial power which would subdue an unwilling and hostile
jury. His power over them seemed like the fascination of
a bird by a snake. Of course, he couldn't do this with able
Judges, although all Judges who listened to him would, I think,
agree that he was as persuasive a reasoner as ever lived.
But with inferior magistrates and juries, however intelligent,
however determined they were in a made-up opinion, however
on their guard against the charmer, he was almost irresistible.
There are very few important cases recorded that Choate lost.
Non supplex, sed magister aut dominus videretur esse judicum.
Choate's method was pure persuasion. He never appealed to
base motives, nor tried to awake coarse prejudices or stormy
passions. He indulged in no invective. His wit and sarcasm
and ridicule amused the victim almost as much as it amused
the bystander. He had the suaviloquentia which Cicero attributes
to Cornelius. There was never a harsh note in his speech.
Latrantur enim jam quidam oratores, non loquuntur.
When he was confronted with some general rule, or some plain
fact, he had a marvellous art of subtle distinction. He
showed that his client, or witness, or proposition, belonged
to a class of itself. He invested it with a distinct and
intense personality. He held up his fact or his principle
before the mind of the Court and the jury. He described
and pictured it. He brought out in clear relief what distinguished
it from any other fact or proposition whatever. If necessary,
he would almost have made a jury, before he was through, think
the Siamese twins did not look alike, and possibly that they
never could have been born of the same parents.
He had a voice without any gruff or any shrill tones. It
was like a sweet, yet powerful flute. He never strained it
or seemed to exert it to its fullest capacity. I do not know
any other public speaker whose style resembled his in the
least. Perhaps Jeremy Taylor was his model, if he had any
model. The phraseology with which he clothed some commonplace
or mean thought or fact, when he was compelled to use commonplace
arguments, or to tell some common story, kept his auditors
ever alert and expectant. An Irishman, who had killed his
wife, threw away the axe with which Choate claimed the deed
was done, when he heard somebody coming. This, in Choate's
language, was "the sudden and frantic ejaculation of the axe."
Indeed his speech was a perpetual surprise. Whether you liked
him or disliked him, you gave him your ears, erect and intent.
He used manuscript a great deal, even in speaking to juries.
When a trial was on, lasting days or weeks, he kept pen, ink,
and paper at hand in his bedroom, and would often get up in
the middle of the night to write down thoughts that came to
him as he lay in bed. He was always careful to keep warm.
It was said he prepared for a great jury argument by taking
off eight great coats and drinking eight cups of green tea.
When I was a young lawyer in Worcester I had something to
do before the Court sitting in the fourth story of the old
stone court house in Boston. I finished my business and
had just time to catch the train for home. As I came down
the stairs I passed the door of the court-room where the
United States Court was sitting. The thick wooden door was
open, and the opening was closed by a door of thin leather
stretched on a wooden frame. I pulled it open enough to look
in, and there, within three feet of me, was Choate, addressing
a jury in a case of marine insurance, where the defence was
the unseaworthiness of the vessel. I had just time to hear
this sentence, and shut the door and hurry to my train: "She
went down the harbor, painted and perfidious--a coffin, but
no ship."
I hear now, as if still in the eager throng, his speech in
Faneuil Hall during the Mexican War. He demanded that we
should bring back our soldiers to the line we claimed as
our rightful boundary, and let Mexico go. He said we had
done enough for glory, and that we had humiliated her enough.
"The Mexican maiden, as she sits with her lover among the
orange-groves, will sing to her guitar the story of these
times--'Ah, woe is me, Alhama,' for a thousand years to come."
Choate, like other good orators, and like some great poets,
notably Wordsworth, created the taste which he satisfied.
His dramatic action, his marvellous and strange vocabulary,
his oriental imagination, his dressing the common and mean
things of life with a poetic charm and romance, did not at
once strike favorably the taste of his Yankee audiences.
Webster and Everett seem to have appreciated him from the
first. But he was, till he vindicated his title to be a great
lawyer, rather a thorn in the flesh of Chief Justice Shaw, of
whose consternation and amazement, caused by the strange
figure that appeared in his court-room, many queer stories
used to be told. But the young men and the people liked
him.
"Non probantur haec senibus--saepe videbam cum invidentem
tum etiam irascentem stomachantem Philippum--sed mirantur
adulescentes multitudo movetur."
It was a curious sight to see on a jury twelve hard-headed
and intelligent countrymen--farmers, town officers, trustees,
men chosen by their neighbors to transact their important
affairs--after an argument by some clear-headed lawyer for
the defence, about some apparently not very doubtful transaction,
who had brought them all to his way of thinking, and had warned
them against the wiles of the charmer, when Choate rose to
reply for the plaintiff--to see their look of confidence and
disdain--"You needn't try your wiles upon me." The shoulder
turned a little against the speaker--the averted eye--and
then the change; first, the changed posture of the body; the
slight opening of the mouth; then the look, first, of curiosity,
and then of doubt, then of respect; the surrender of the eye
to the eye of the great advocate; then the spell, the charm,
the great enchantment--till at last, jury and audience were
all swept away, and followed the conqueror captive in his
triumphal march.
He gesticulated with his whole body. Wendell Phillips most
irreverently as well as most unjustly compared him to a monkey
in convulsions. His bowings down and straightening himself
again were spoken of by another critic, not unfriendly, as
opening and shutting like a jack-knife. His curly black hairs
seemed each to have a separate life of its own. His eyes
shone like coals of fire. There is a passage of Everett's
which well describes Choate, and is also one of the very best
examples of Everett, who, with all his fertility of original
genius, borrowed so much, and so enriched and improved everything
that he borrowed. Cicero said of Antonius:
"Omnia veniebant Antonio in mentem; eaque suo quaeque loco,
ubi pluimum proficere et valere possent, ut ab imperatore
equites pedites levis armatura, sic ab illo in maxume opportunis
orationis partibus conlocabantur."
Now see what Everett does with this thought in his eulogy,
spoken in Faneuil Hall, the week after Choate's death:
"He is sometimes satisfied, in concise epigrammatic clauses,
to skirmish with his light troops, and drive in the enemy's
outposts. It is only on fitting occasions, when great principles
are to be vindicated, and solemn truths told, when some moral
or political Waterloo or Solferino is to be fought, that he
puts on the entire panoply of his gorgeous rhetoric. It is
then that his majestic sentences swell to the dimensions
of his majestic thought; then it is that we hear afar off the
awful roar of his rifled ordnance; and when he has stormed
the heights, and broken the centre, and trampled the squares,
and turned the staggering wings of the adversary, that he
sounds his imperial clarion along the whole line of battle,
and moves forward with all his hosts, in one overwhelming
charge."
One of the most remarkable advocates of my day was Sidney
Bartlett. He seldom addressed juries, and almost never public
assemblies. He was a partner of Chief Justice Shaw before
1830. He argued cases before the Supreme Court of the United
States and before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts after
he was ninety. He cared for no other audience. He had a
marvellous compactness of speech, and a marvellous sagacity
in seeing the turning-point of a great question. He found
the place where the roads diverged, got the Court's face set
in the right direction, and then stopped. He would argue
in ten or fifteen minutes a point where some powerful antagonist
like Curtis or Choate would take hours to reply. I once told
him that his method of argument was to that of ordinary lawyers
like logarithms to ordinary mathematics. He seemed pleased
with the compliment, and said, "Yes, I know I argue over their
heads. The Chief Justice told me he wished I would talk a
little longer." I do not know that Bartlett ought to be reckoned
among orators. But he had a great power of convincing, and
giving his intellectual delight to minds capable of appreciating
his profound and inexorable logic.
Edward Everett seems to me, on the whole, our best example
of the orator, pure and simple. Webster was a great statesman,
a great lawyer, a great advocate, a great public teacher.
To all these his matchless oratory was but an instrument and
incident.
Choate was a great winner of cases, and as relaxation he
gave, in the brief vacations of an overworked professional
life (he once defined a lawyer's vacation as the time after he
has put a question to a witness while he is waiting for an
answer), a few wonderful literary and historical addresses.
He gave a brief period of brilliant but most unwilling service
in each House of Congress. He made some powerful political
speeches to popular audiences. But his heart was always in
the court-house. No gambler ever hankered for the feverish
delight of the gaming table as Choate did for that absorbing
game, half chance, half skill, where twelve human dice must
all turn up together one way, or there be no victory.
But Everett is always the orator. He was a clergyman a little
while. He was a Greek professor a little while. He was a
College President a little while. He was a Minister to England
a little while. He was Representative in Congress and Senator.
He was Governor of the Commonwealth. In these places he did
good service enough to make a high reputation for any other
man. Little of these things is remembered now. He was above
all things--I am tempted to say, above all men--the foremost
American orator in one class.
There is one function of the orator peculiar to our country,
and almost unknown elsewhere. That is the giving utterance
to the emotion of the people, whether of joy or sorrow, on
the occasions when its soul is deeply stirred--when some great
man dies, or there is a great victory or defeat, or some notable
anniversary is celebrated. This office was filled by other
men, on some few occasions by Daniel Webster himself, but
by no man better than by Everett. A Town, or City, or State
is very human. In sorrow it must utter its cry of pain; in
victory, its note of triumph. As events pass, it must pronounce
its judgement. Its constant purpose must be fixed and made
more steadfast by expression. It must give voice to its love
and its approbation and its condemnation. It must register
the high and low water mark of its tide, its rising and its
sinking in heat and cold. This office Edward Everett, for
nearly fifty years, performed for Massachusetts and for the
whole country. In his orations is preserved and recorded
everything of the emotion of the great hours of our people's
history. The camera of his delicate photography has preserved
for future generations what passed in the soul of his own
in the times that tried the souls of men.
I do not know where he got his exquisite elocution. He went
abroad in his youth, and there were good trainers abroad,
then. He must have studied thoroughly the speeches of Cicero
and the Greek orators. Many casual phrases in his works,
besides many quotations, show his familiarity with Cicero's
writing on oratory.
If you would get some faint, far-off conception of him, first
look at the best bust or picture of Everett you can find.
Imagine the figure with its every movement gentle and graceful.
The head and face are suggestive of Greek sculpture. This
person sits on the platform with every expression discharged
from the face, looking like a plaster image when the artist
has just begun his model, before any character or intelligence
has been put into it. You think him the only person in the
audience who takes no interest whatever in what is going on,
and certainly that he expects to have nothing to do with it
himself. He is introduced. He comes forward quietly and
gracefully. There is a slight smile of recognition of the
welcoming applause. The opening sentences are spoken in a
soft--I had almost said, a caressing voice, though still a
little cold. I suppose it would be called a tenor voice.
There was nothing in the least unmanly about Edward Everett.
Yet if some woman had spoken in the same tones, you would
have not thought them unwomanly.
Illa tamquam cycnea fuit divini hominis vox et oratio.
He has found somewhere in the vast storehouse of his knowledge
a transaction exactly like the present, or exactly in contrast
with it, or some sentiment of poet or orator which just fits
the present occasion. If it be new to his audience, he adds
to it a newer delight still by his matchless skill as a narrator--
a skill almost the rarest of all talents among public speakers.
If it be commonplace and hackneyed he makes it fresh and pleasant
by giving in detail the circumstances when it was first uttered,
or describes some occasion when some orator has applied it
before; or calls attention to its very triteness as giving
it added authority. If he wish to express his agreement with
the last speaker and "say ditto to Mr. Burke," he tells you
when that was said, what was the occasion, and gives you the
name of Mr. Kruger, who stood for the representation of Bristol
with Burke.
Mr. Everett's stores were inexhaustible. If any speaker
have to get ready in a hurry for a great occasion, let him
look through the index of the four volumes of Everett's speeches,
and he will find matter enough, not only to stimulate his
own thought and set its currents running, but to illustrate
and adorn what he will say.
But pretty soon the orator rises into a higher plane. Some
lofty sentiment, some stirring incident, some patriotic emotion,
some play of fancy or wit comes from the brain or heart of
the speaker. The audience is hushed to silence. Perhaps
a little mist begins to gather in their eyes. There is now
an accent of emotion in the voice, though still soft and
gentle. The Greek statue begins to move. There is life in
the limbs. There has been a lamp kindled somewhere behind
the clear and transparent blue eyes. The flexible muscles
of the face have come to life now. Still there is no jar or
disorder. The touch upon the nerves of the audience is like
that of a gentle nurse. The atmosphere is that of a May
morning. There is no perfume but that of roses and lilies.
But still, gently at first, the warmer feelings are kindled in
the hearts of the speaker and hearers. The frame of the
speaker is transfigured. The trembling hands are lifted
high in the air. The rich, sweet voice fills the vast audience
chamber with its resonant tones. At last, the bugle, the
trumpet, the imperial clarion rings out full and clear, and
the vast audience is transported as to another world--I had
almost said to a seventh heaven. Read the welcome to Lafayette
or the close of the matchless eulogy on that illustrious object
of the people's love. Read the close of the oration on Washington.
Read the contrast of Washington and Marlborough. Read the
beautiful passage where, just before the ocean cable was laid,
the rich fancy of the speaker describes--
"The thoughts that we think up here on the earth's surface
in the cheerful light of day--clothing ourselves with elemental
sparks, and shooting with fiery speed in a moment, in the
twinkling of an eye, from hemisphere to hemisphere, far down
among the uncouth monsters that wallow in the nether seas,
along the wreck-paved floor, thorough the oozy dungeons of
the rayless deep; the last intelligence of the crops, whose
dancing tassels will in a few months be coquetting with the
west wind on those boundless prairies, flashing along the
slimy decks of old sunken galleons, which have been rotting
for ages; messages of friendship and love, from warm, living
bosoms, burn over the cold green bones of men and women, whose
hearts, once as fond as ours, burst as the eternal gulfs
closed and roared over them, centuries ago."
Read the passage in the eulogy on Choate where he describes
him arming himself in the entire panoply of his gorgeous
rhetoric--and you will get some far-away conception of the
power of this magician.
One thing especially distinguishes our modern orator from
the writer in the closet, where he writes solely for his readers,
or where he has prepared his speeches beforehand--that is,
the influence of the audience upon him. There is nothing
like it as a stimulant to every faculty, not only imagination,
and fancy, and reason, but especially, as every experienced
speaker knows, memory also. Everything needed seems to come
out from the secret storehouses of the mind, even the things
that have lain there forgotten, rusting and unused. Mr. Everett
describes this in a masterly passage in his Life of Webster.
Gladstone states it in a few fine sentences:
"The work of the orator, from its very inception," he says,
"is inextricably mixed up with practice. It is cast in the
mould offered to him by the mind of his hearers. It is an
influence principally received from his audience (so to speak)
in vapor, which he pours back upon them in a flood. The sympathy
and concurrence of his time is, with his own mind, joint parent
of his work. He cannot follow nor frame ideals; his choice
is to be what his age would have him, what it requires in
order to be moved by him, or else not to be at all."
I heard six of Kossuth's very best speeches. He was a marvellous
orator. He seemed to have mastered the whole vocabulary of
English speech, and to have a rare gift of choosing words
that accurately expressed his meaning, and he used so to fashion
his sentences that they were melodious and delightful to the
ear. That is one great gift or oratory, as it is of poetry,
or indeed of a good prose style. Why it is that two words
or phrases which mean precisely the same thing to the intellect,
have so different an effect on the emotions, no man can tell.
To understand it, is to know the secret not only of reaching
the heart, but frequently of convincing the understanding
of man.
Kossuth made a great many speeches, sometimes five or six
in a day. He could have had no preparation but the few minutes
which he could snatch while waiting for dinner at some house
where he was a guest, or late at night, after a hard day's
work. But his speeches were gems. They were beautiful in
substance and in manner. He was ready for every occasion.
When the speaker who welcomed him at Roxbury told him that
Roxbury contained no historic spot that would interest a stranger,
Kossuth at once answered, "You forget that it is the birthplace
of Warren." When old Josiah Quincy, then past eighty, said
at a Legislative banquet that he had come to the time--"when
the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men
shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they
are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened,
and they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears
shall be in the way," Kossuth interrupted him, "Ah! but that
was of ordinary men."
I was a member of the Legislature when Kossuth visited Boston.
I heard his address to the House and to the Senate, his reply
to the Governor's welcome. I heard him again at the Legislative
banquet in Faneuil Hall, and twice in Worcester--on the Common
in the afternoon, and at the City Hall in the evening. I
shook hands with him and perhaps exchanged a word or two,
but of that I have no memory. Afterward I visited him with
my wife at Turin in 1892, when he was a few months past ninety.
He received me with great cordiality. I spent two hours with
him and his sister, Madam Ruttkay. They both expressed great
pleasure with the visit, and Madam Ruttkay kissed Mrs. Hoar
affectionately when we took leave. Kossuth's beautiful English
periods were as beautiful as they were forty years before,
at the time of his famous pilgrimage through the United States.
His whole conversation related to the destiny of his beloved
Hungary. He spoke with great dignity of his own share in
the public events which affected his country. There was nothing
of arrogance or vanity in his claim for himself, yet in speaking
of Francis Joseph, he assumed unconsciously the tone of a
superior. He maintained that constitutional liberty could
never be permanent where two countries with separate legislatures
were under one sovereign. He said the sovereign would always
be able to use the military and civil power of one to accomplish
his designs against the liberty of the other. The opinion
of Kossuth on such a question is entitled to the greatest
deference. But I incline to the belief that, while undoubtedly
there may be great truth in the opinion, the spirit of liberty
will overcome that danger. Hungary and Hungary's chief city
seem rapidly to be asserting control in their own affairs
and an influence in the Austro-Hungary Empire which no monarch
will be able to withstand, and which it is quite likely the
royal family will not desire to withstand. In these days
monarchs are learning the love of liberty, and I believe
in most cases to-day the reigning sovereigns of Europe are
eager to promote constitutional government, and prefer the
title of Liberator to that of Despot.
I have heard Wendell Phillips speak a great many times. I
do not include him in this notice, because, if I did, I ought
to defend my estimate of him at considerable length, and to
justify it by ample quotation. I think him entitled to the
very highest rank as an orator. I do not estimate his moral
character highly. I think he exerted very little influence on
his generation, and that the influence he did exert was in the
main pernicious. I have had copied everything he said, from
the time he made his first speech, so far as it is found in
the newspapers, and have the volumes in which his speeches
are collected. I never had occasion to complain of him on
my own account. So far as I know and believe, he had the
kindliest feeling for me until his death, and esteemed my
public service much more highly than it deserved. But he
bitterly and unjustly attacked men whom I loved and honored
under circumstances which make it impossible for me to believe
that his conduct was consistent with common honesty. He seemed
never to care for the soundness of his opinion before he uttered
it, or for the truth of the fact before he said it, if only
he could produce a rhetorical effect. He seemed to like to
defame men whom the people loved and honored. Toward the
latter part of his life, he seemed to get desperate. If he
failed to make an impression by argument, he took to invective.
If vinegar would not answer he resorted to cayenne pepper.
If that failed, he tried to throw vitriol in the eyes of the
men whom he hated. His remedy for slavery was to destroy
the country, and to leave the slave to the unchecked will
of the South. During Lincoln's great trial, he attacked and
vilified him. At the time when nearly every household in
the North was mourning for its dead, he tried to persuade
the people that Lincoln did not mean to put down the Rebellion.
He never gave the people wise counsel, and rarely told them
the honest truth. He rarely gave his homage to anybody. When
he did, it was to bad men, and not to good men.
There can be no worse influence upon the youth of the Republic
than that which shall induce them to approve sentiments, not
because they are true, but only because they are eloquently
said.