A contemporary journalist[98] has well observed of the oratory of the
present day: “With all its great defects, which are perceptible enough
to any cultivated hearer, Public Speaking is one of the greatest treats
you can provide for the middle and higher population of one of our
towns. The extempore oration is of course often a rough production; it
does not at all come up to our ideas of the perfection of language, but
it fascinates and fetters attention as being extempore,—as displaying
the energy of an actual creation on the spot. Lord Derby’s is perhaps
the best oratorical language we have,—we mean when he speaks his best;
it is properly different from book-language, and yet does not run into
the technical inflation, and conventional bombast, and professional
phraseology, which are the dangers of oratory. Mr. Gladstone’s is
Parliamentary English—a very surprising and brilliant creation, but one
that has gone through a medium of technicality or conventionalism, and
does not come straight from the fount of language. The Bishop of
Oxford’s oratory is open to the criticism that it is overstrained, and
produces vivid pictorial effects at the cost of simplicity. This is no
very severe or invidious criticism, because in nine cases out of ten an
orator who selects an exaggerated phrase selects it because a simpler
one does not come to hand. A ready and inexhaustible command of the
simplest and truest words is, of course, the very triumph of oratory,
and a most rare triumph. Still, with all its defects, oratory is
oratory: it is an uncommon exhibition of power; it creates interest, and
sustains attention as such; and we are not sorry that our provincial
towns have now the opportunity of hearing most of our leading public
speakers.”
Akin to the present subject is the art of presiding over a festive
company, for which Sir Walter Scott has left these few simple practical
rules:
1st. Always hurry the bottle round for five or six rounds, without
prosing yourself, or permitting others to prose. A slight fillip of
wine inclines people to be pleased, and removes the nervousness
which prevents men from speaking—disposes them, in short, to be
amusing, and to be amused.
2d. Push on, keep moving! as young Rapid says. Do not think of
saying fine things—nobody cares for them any more than for fine
music, which is often too liberally bestowed on such occasions.
Speak at all ventures, and attempt the _mot pour rire_. You will
find people satisfied with wonderfully indifferent jokes, if you can
but hit the taste of the company, which depends much on its
character. Even a very high party, primed with all the cold irony
and _non est tanti_ feelings, or no feelings of fashionable folks,
may be stormed by a jovial, rough, round, and ready præses. Choose
your text with discretion—the sermon may be as you like. Should a
drunkard or an ass break in with any thing out of joint, if you can
parry it with a jest, good and well; if not, do not exert your
serious authority, unless it is something very bad. The authority
even of a chairman ought to be very cautiously exercised. With
patience, you will have the support of every one.
3d. When you have drunk a few glasses to play the good fellow and
banish modesty (if you are unlucky enough to have such a troublesome
companion), then beware of the cup too much. Nothing is so
ridiculous as a drunken preses.
Lastly, always speak short, and _Skeoch doch na skiel_—cut a tale
with a drink.
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Footnote 97:
_Orat._ c. 7.
Footnote 98:
The _Times_.
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