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_From the “Boston Advertiser.”_
THE lamented death of Mr. H. W. Grady affords a fit occasion for saying
that oratory is not one of “the lost arts.” A great deal is said from
time to time about the decadence of oratory as caused by the competition
of the press. We are told that public address is held in slight esteem
because the public prints are much more accessible and equally
interesting. It is said that this operates in two ways, that the man who
has something to say will always prefer to write rather than speak,
because the printed page reaches tens of thousands, while the human
voice can at most be heard by a few hundreds, and that not many people
will take the trouble to attend a lecture when they can read discussions
of the same subject by the lecturer himself, or others equally
competent, without stirring from the evening lamp or exchanging slippers
for boots. But there is a great deal of fallacy in such arguments. The
press is the ally, not the supplanter of the platform. The functions of
the two are so distinct that they cannot clash, yet so related that they
are mutually helpful. Oratory is very much more than the vocal
utterance, of fitting words. One of the ancients defined the three
requisites of an orator as first, action; second, action; and third,
action. If by action is meant all that accompanies speech, as gesture,
emphasis, intonation, variety in time, and those subtle expressions that
come through the flushing cheek and the gleaming eye, the enumeration
was complete. Mr. Grady spoke with his lips not only, but with every
form and feature of his bodily presence. Such oratory as his, and such
as that of the man whose lecture on “The Lost Arts” proved that oratory
is not one of them, will never be out of date while human nature remains
what it is. There is, indeed, one class of public speakers whose
occupation the press has nearly taken away. They are the “orators,”
falsely so called, whose speech is full of sound and fury, signifying
nothing. Cold type is fatal to their pretensions.
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