eloquence; and a most unfortunate one for its chance of ever
influencing a remote posterity, or, in any substantial sense, of its
ever surviving in the real unaffected admiration of us moderns--that
it embodies no alien, no collateral information as to manners, usages,
modes of feeling--no extrinsic ornament, no side glimpses into Grecian
life, no casual historical details. The cause, and nothing but the
cause--the political question, and nothing but the question--- pealed
for ever in the ears of the terrified orator, always on sufferance,
always on his good behaviour, always afraid, for the sake of his party
or of his client, lest his auditors should become angry, or become
impatient, or become weary. And from that intense fear, trammeling the
freedom of his steps at every turn, and overruling every motion to the
right or to the left, in pure servile anxiety for the mood and
disposition of his tyrannical master, arose the very opposite result
for us of this day--that we, by the very means adopted to prevent
weariness in the immediate auditors, find nothing surviving in Grecian
orations but what _does_ weary us insupportably through its want of
all general interest; and, even amongst private or instant details of
politics or law, presenting us with none that throw light upon the
spirit of manners, or the Grecian peculiarities of feeling. Probably
an Athenian mob would not have cared much at the prospect of such a
result to posterity; and, at any rate, would not have sacrificed one
atom of their ease or pleasure to obviate such a result: but, to an
Athenian orator, this result would have been a sad one to contemplate.
The final consequence is, that whilst all men find, or may find,
infinite amusement, and instruction of the most liberal kind, in that
most accomplished of statesmen and orators, the Roman Cicero--nay,
would doubtless, from the causes assigned, have found, in their
proportion, the same attractions in the speeches of the elder Antony,
of Hortensius, of Crassus, and other contemporaries or immediate
predecessors of Cicero--no person ever reads Demosthenes, still less
any other Athenian orator, with the slightest interest beyond that
which inevitably attaches to the words of one who wrote his own divine
language with probably very superior skill.
But, from all this, results a further inference--viz. the dire
affectation of those who pretend an enthusiasm in the oratory of
Demosthenes; and also a plenary consolation to all who are obliged,
from ignorance of Greek, to dispense with that novelty. If it be a
luxury at all, it is and can be one for those only who cultivate
verbal researches and the pleasures of philology.
Even in the oratory of our own times, which oftentimes discusses
questions to the whole growth and motion of which we have been
ourselves parties present, or even accessary--questions which we have
followed in their first emersion and separation from the clouds of
general politics; their advance, slow or rapid, towards a domineering
interest in the public passions; their meridian altitude; and perhaps
their precipitous descent downwards, whether from the consummation of
their objects (as in the questions of the Slave Trade, of Catholic
Emancipation, of East India Monopoly), or from a partial victory and
compromise with the abuse (as in the purification of that Augean
stable, prisons, and, still more, private houses for the insane), or
from the accomplishment of one stage or so in a progress which, by its
nature, is infinite (as in the various steps taken towards the
improvement, and towards the extension of education): even in cases
like these, when the primary and ostensible object of the speaker
already, on its own account, possesses a commanding attraction, yet
will it often happen that the secondary questions, growing out of the
leading one, the great elementary themes suggested to the speaker by
the concrete case before him--as, for instance, the general question
of Test Laws, or the still higher and transcendent question of
Religious Toleration, and the relations between the State and
religious opinions, or the general history of Slavery and the commerce
in the human species, the general principles of economy as applied to
monopolies, the past usages of mankind in their treatment of prisoners
or of lunatics--these comprehensive and transcendent themes are
continually allowed to absorb and throw into the shade, for a time,
the minor but more urgent question of the moment through which they
have gained their interest. The capital and primary interest gives way
for a time to the derivative interest; and it does so by a silent
understanding between the orator and his audience. The orator is well
assured that he will not be taxed with wandering; the audience are
satisfied that, eventually, they will not have lost their time: and
the final result is, to elevate and liberalise the province of
oratory, by exalting mere business (growing originally, perhaps, out
of contingencies of finance, or trade, or local police) into a field
for the higher understanding; and giving to the mere necessities of
our position as a nation the dignity of great problems for civilising
wisdom or philosophic philanthropy. Look back to the superb orations
of Edmund Burke on questions limited enough in themselves, sometimes
merely personal; for instance, that on American Taxation, on the
Reforms in our Household or Official Expenditure, or at that from the
Bristol hustings (by its _primâ facie_ subject, therefore, a mere
electioneering harangue to a mob). With what marvellous skill does he
enrich what is meagre, elevate what is humble, intellectualise what is
purely technical, delocalise what is local, generalise what is
personal! And with what result? Doubtless to the absolute
contemporaries of those speeches, steeped to the very lips in the
passions besetting their topics, even to those whose attention was
sufficiently secured by the domineering interest, friendly or hostile,
to the views of the speaker--even to these I say, that, in so far as
they were at all capable of an intellectual pleasure, those parts
would be most attractive which were least occupied with the present
business and the momentary details. This order of precedency in the
interests of the speech held even for them; but to us, removing at
every annual step we take in the century, to a greater distance from
the mere business and partisan interests of the several cases, this
secondary attraction is not merely the greater of the two--to us it
has become pretty nearly the sole one, pretty nearly the exclusive
attraction.
As to religious oratory, _that_ stands upon a different footing--the
questions afloat in that province of human speculation being eternal,
or at least essentially the same under new forms, receives a strong
illustration from the annals of the English senate, to which also it
gives a strong and useful illustration. Up to the era of James I., the
eloquence of either House could not, for political reasons, be very
striking, on the very principle which we have been enforcing.
Parliament met only for dispatch of business; and that business was
purely fiscal, or (as at times it happened) judicial. The
constitutional functions of Parliament were narrow; and they were
narrowed still more severely by the jealousy of the executive
government. With the expansion, or rather first growth and development
of a gentry, or third estate, expanded, _pari passu_, the political
field of their jurisdiction and their deliberative functions. This
widening field, as a birth out of new existences, unknown to former
laws or usages, was, of course, not contemplated by those laws or
usages. Constitutional law could not provide for the exercise of
rights by a body of citizens, when, as yet, that body had itself no
existence. A gentry, as the depository of a vast overbalance of
property, real as well as personal, had not matured itself till the
latter years of James I. Consequently the new functions, which the
instinct of their new situation prompted them to assume, were looked
upon by the Crown, most sincerely, as unlawful usurpations. This led,
as we know, to a most fervent and impassioned struggle, the most so of
any struggle which has ever armed the hands of men with the sword. For
the passions take a far profounder sweep when they are supported by
deep thought and high principles.
This element of fervid strife was already, for itself, an atmosphere
most favourable to political eloquence. Accordingly, the speeches of
that day, though generally too short to attain that large compass and
sweep of movement without which it is difficult to kindle or to
sustain any conscious enthusiasm in an audience, were of a high
quality as to thought and energy of expression, as high as their
circumstantial disadvantages allowed. Lord Strafford's great effort is
deservedly admired to this day, and the latter part of it has been
often pronounced a _chef-d'oeuvre_. A few years before that era, all
the orators of note were, and must have been, judicial orators; and,
amongst these, Lord Bacon, to whom every reader's thoughts will point
as the most memorable, attained the chief object of all oratory, if
what Ben Jonson reports of him be true, that he had his audience
passive to the motions of his will. But Jonson was, perhaps, too
scholastic a judge to be a fair representative judge; and, whatever he
might choose to say or to think, Lord Bacon was certainly too
weighty--too massy with the bullion of original thought--ever to have
realized the idea of a great popular orator--one who
'Wielded at will a fierce democracy,'
and ploughed up the great deeps of sentiment, or party strife, or
national animosities, like a Levanter or a monsoon. In the schools of
Plato, in the _palæstra Stoicorum_, such an orator might be potent;
not _in fæce Romuli_. If he had laboured with no other defect, had he
the gift of tautology? Could he say the same thing three times over in
direct sequence? For, without this talent of iteration--of repeating
the same thought in diversified forms--a man may utter good heads of
an oration, but not an oration. Just as the same illustrious man's
essays are good hints--useful topics--for essays; but no approximation
to what we, in modern days, understand by _essays_: they are, as an
eminent author once happily expressed it to myself, '_seeds, not
plants or shrubs; acorns, that is, oaks in embryo, but not oaks_.'
Reverting, however, to the oratory of the Senate, from the era of its
proper birth, which we may date from the opening of that our memorable
Long Parliament, brought together in November of 1642,[19] our
Parliamentary eloquence has now, within four years, travelled through
a period of two centuries. A most admirable subject for an essay, or a
Magazine article, as it strikes me, would be a bird's-eye view--or
rather a bird's-wing flight--pursuing rapidly the revolutions of that
memorable oracle (for such it really was to the rest of civilised
Europe), which, through so long a course of years, like the Delphic
oracle to the nations of old, delivered counsels of civil prudence and
of national grandeur, that kept alive for Christendom the
recollections of freedom, and refreshed to the enslaved Continent the
old ideas of Roman patriotism, which, but for our Parliament, would
have uttered themselves by no voices on earth. That this account of
the position occupied by our British Parliament, in relation to the
rest of Europe, at least after the publication of the Debates had been
commenced by Cave, with the aid of Dr. Johnson, is, in no respect,
romantic or overcharged, may be learned from the German novels of the
last century, in which we find the British debates as uniformly the
morning accompaniment of breakfast, at the houses of the rural gentry,
&c., as in any English or Scottish county. Such a sketch would, of
course, collect the characteristics of each age, show in what
connection these characteristics stood with the political aspects of
the time, or with the modes of managing public business (a fatal rock
to our public eloquence in England!), and illustrate the whole by
interesting specimens from the leading orators in each generation:
from Hampden to Pulteney, amongst oppositionists or patriots; from
Pulteney to O'Connell; or, again, amongst Ministers, from Hyde to
Somers, from Lord Sunderland to Lords Oxford and Bolingbroke; and from
the plain, downright Sir Robert Walpole, to the plain, downright Sir
Robert Peel.
[Footnote 19: There was another Parliament of this same year 1642,
which met in the spring (April, I think), but was summarily dissolved.
A small quarto volume, of not unfrequent occurrence, I believe,
contains some good specimens of the eloquence then prevalent--it was
rich in thought, never wordy--in fact, too parsimonious in words and
illustrations; and it breathed a high tone of religious principle as
well as of pure-minded patriotism; but, for the reason stated
above--its narrow circuit and very limited duration--the general
character of the Parliamentary eloquence was ineffective.]
Throughout the whole of this review, the same 'moral,' if one might so
call it, would be apparent--viz. that in proportion as the oratory was
high and intellectual, did it travel out into the collateral questions
of less instant necessity, but more durable interest; and that, in
proportion as the Grecian necessity _was_ or was _not_ enforced by the
temper of the House, or by the pressure of public business--the
necessity which cripples the orator, by confining him within the
severe limits of the case before him--in that proportion had or had
not the oratory of past generations a surviving interest for modern
posterity. Nothing, in fact, so utterly effete--not even old law, or
old pharmacy, or old erroneous chemistry--nothing so insufferably dull
as political orations, unless when powerfully animated by that spirit
of generalisation which only gives the breath of life and the salt
which preserves from decay, through every age alike. The very
strongest proof, as well as exemplification of all which has been said
on Grecian oratory, may thus be found in the records of the British
senate.
And this, by the way, brings us round to an aspect of Grecian oratory
which has been rendered memorable, and forced upon our notice, in the
shape of a problem, by the most popular of our native historians--the
aspect, I mean, of Greek oratory in comparison with English. Hume has
an essay upon the subject; and the true answer to that essay will open
a wide field of truth to us. In this little paper, Hume assumes the
superiority of Grecian eloquence, as a thing admitted on all hands,
and requiring no proof. Not the proof of this point did he propose to
himself as his object; not even the illustration of it. No. All that,
Hume held to be superfluous. His object was, to investigate the causes
of this Grecian superiority; or, if _investigate_ is too pompous a
word for so slight a discussion, more properly, he inquired for the
cause as something that must naturally lie upon the surface.
What is the answer? First of all, before looking for causes, a man
should be sure of his facts. Now, as to the main fact at issue, I
utterly deny the superiority of Grecian eloquence. And, first of all,
I change the whole field of inquiry by shifting the comparison. The
Greek oratory is all political or judicial: we have those also; but
the best of our eloquence, by immeasurable degrees, the noblest and
richest, is our religious eloquence. Here, of course, all comparison
ceases; for classical Grecian religious eloquence, in Grecian attire,
there is none until three centuries after the Christian era, when we
have three great orators, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil--of which two I
have a very fixed opinion, having read large portions of both--and a
third of whom I know nothing. To our Jeremy Taylor, to our Sir Thomas
Browne, there is no approach made in the Greek eloquence. The
inaugural chapter of the _Holy Dying_, to say nothing of many another
golden passage; or the famous passage in the _Urn Buriall_,
beginning--'Now, since these bones have rested under the drums and
tramplings of three conquests'--have no parallel in literature. The
winding up of the former is more, in its effect, like a great
tempestuous chorus from the _Judas Maccabeus_, or from Spohr's _St.
Paul_, than like human eloquence.
But, grant that this transfer of the comparison is unfair--still, it
is no less unfair to confine the comparison on our part to the weakest
part of our oratory; but no matter--let issue be joined even here.
Then we may say, at once, that, for the intellectual qualities of
eloquence, in fineness of understanding, in depth and in large compass
of thought, Burke far surpasses any orator, ancient or modern. But, if
the comparison were pushed more widely, very certain I am, that, apart
from classical prejudice, no qualities of just thinking, or fine
expression, or even of artificial ornament, could have been assigned
by Hume, in which the great body of our deliberative and forensic
orators fall short of Grecian models; though I will admit, that, by
comparison with the Roman model of Cicero, there is seldom the same
artful prefiguration of the oration throughout its future course, or
the same sustained rhythmus and oratorial tone. The qualities of art
are nowhere so prominently expressed, nowhere aid the effect so much,
as in the great Roman master.
But, as to Greece, let us now, in one word, unveil the sole advantage
which the eloquence of the Athenian _assembly_ has over that of the
English senate. It is this--_the public business of Athens was as yet
simple and unencumbered by details_; the dignity of the occasion was
scenically sustained. But, in England, the vast intricacy and complex
interweaving of property, of commerce, of commercial interests, of
details infinite in number, and infinite in littleness, break down and
fritter away into fractions and petty minutiæ, the whole huge
labyrinth of our public affairs. It is scarcely necessary to explain
my meaning. In Athens, the question before the public assembly was,
peace or war--before our House of Commons, perhaps the Exchequer
Bills' Bill; at Athens, a league or no league--in England, the Tithe
of Agistment Commutation-Bills' Renewal Bill; in Athens--shall we
forgive a ruined enemy? in England--shall we cancel the tax on
farthing rushlights? In short, with us, the infinity of details
overlays the simplicity and grandeur of our public deliberations.
Such was the advantage--a mighty advantage--for Greece. Now, finally,
for the use made of this advantage. To that point I have already
spoken. By the clamorous and undeliberative qualities of the Athenian
political audience, by its fitful impatience, and vehement arrogance,
and fervid partisanship, all wide and general discussion was barred
_in limine_. And thus occurred this singular inversion of
positions--the greatest of Greek orators was obliged to treat these
Catholic questions as mere Athenian questions of business. On the
other hand, the least eloquent of British senators, whether from the
immense advance in knowledge, or from the custom and usage of
Parliament, seldom fails, more or less, to elevate his intense details
of pure technical business into something dignified, either by the
necessities of pursuing the _historical_ relations of the matter in
discussion, or of arguing its merits as a case of general finance, or
as connected with general political economy, or, perhaps, in its
bearings on peace or war. The Grecian was forced, by the composition
of his headstrong auditory, to degrade and personalise his grand
themes; the Englishman is forced, by the difference of his audience,
by old prescription, and by the opposition of a well-informed, hostile
party, into elevating his merely technical and petty themes into great
national questions, involving honour and benefit to tens of millions.
THE GERMAN LANGUAGE, AND PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.