"For every man shall bear his own burden."
_Galatians_, c. vi. v. 5.
"Brethren, every man has his burden. If God designed our lives to end
at the grave, may we not believe that he would have freed an existence
so brief from the cares and sorrows to which, since the beginning of
the world, mankind has been subjected? Suppose that I am a kind father,
and have a child whom I dearly love, but I know by a divine revelation
that he will die at the age of eight years, surely I should not vex
his infancy by needless preparations for the duties of life. If I am
a rich man, I should not send him from the caresses of his mother to
the stern discipline of school. If I am a poor man, I should not take
him with me to hedge and dig, to scorch in the sun, to freeze in the
winter's cold: why inflict hardships on his childhood, for the purpose
of fitting him for manhood, when I know that he is doomed not to grow
into man? But if, on the other hand, I believe my child is reserved for
a more durable existence, then should I not, out of the very love I
bear to him, prepare his childhood for the struggle of life, according
to that station in which he is born, giving many a toil, many a pain
to the infant, in order to rear and strengthen him for his duties as
man? So is it with our Father that is in Heaven. Viewing this life as
our infancy, and the next as our spiritual maturity, where 'in the ages
to come, he may show the exceeding riches of his grace,' it is in his
tenderness, as in his wisdom, to permit the toil and the pain which, in
tasking the powers and developing the virtues of the soul, prepare it
for 'the earnest of our inheritance, the redemption of the purchased
possession.' Hence it is that every man has his burden. Brethren, if
you believe that God is good, yea, but as tender as a human father,
you will know that your troubles in life are a proof that you are
reared for an eternity. But each man thinks his own burden the hardest
to bear: the poor man groans under his poverty, the rich man under
the cares that multiply with wealth. For, so far from wealth freeing
us from trouble, all the wise men who have written in all ages, have
repeated with one voice the words of the wisest, 'When goods increase,
they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners
thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes?' And this is
literally true, my brethren; for, let a man be as rich as was the great
King Solomon himself, unless he lock up all his gold in a chest, it
must go abroad to be divided amongst others; yea, though, like Solomon,
he make him great works--though he build houses and plant vineyards,
and make him gardens and orchards--still the gold that he spends feeds
but the mouths he employs; and Solomon himself could not eat with a
better relish than the poorest mason who builded the house, or the
humblest labourer who planted the vineyard. Therefore, 'when goods
increase, they are increased that eat them.' And this, my brethren, may
teach us toleration and compassion for the rich. We share their riches
whether they will or not; we do not share their cares. The profane
history of our own country tells us that a princess, destined to be
the greatest queen that ever sat on this throne, envied the milk-maid
singing; and a profane poet, whose wisdom was only less than that of
the inspired writers, represents the man who by force and wit had risen
to be a king, sighing for the sleep vouchsafed to the meanest of his
subjects--all bearing out the words of the son of David--'The sleep
of the labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much; but the
abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.'
"Amongst my brethren now present, there is doubtless some one who has
been poor, and by honest industry has made himself comparatively rich.
Let his heart answer me while I speak: are not the chief cares that
now disturb him to be found in the goods he hath acquired?--has he not
both vexations to his spirit and trials to his virtue, which he knew
not when he went forth to his labour, and took no heed of the morrow?
But it is right, my brethren, that to every station there should be its
care--to every man his burden; for if the poor did not sometimes so far
feel poverty to be a burden as to desire to better their condition, and
(to use the language of the world) 'seek to rise in life,' their most
valuable energies would never be aroused; and we should not witness
that spectacle, which is so common in the land we live in--namely, the
successful struggle of manly labour against adverse fortune--a struggle
in which the triumph of one gives hope to thousands. It is said that
necessity is the mother of invention; and the social blessings which
are now as common to us as air and sunshine, have come from that law
of our nature which makes us aspire towards indefinite improvement,
enriches each successive generation by the labours of the last, and,
in free countries, often lifts the child of the labourer to place
amongst the rulers of the land. Nay, if necessity is the mother of
invention, poverty is the creator of the arts. If there had been no
poverty, and no sense of poverty, where would have been that which
we call the wealth of a country? Subtract from civilisation all that
has been produced by the poor, and what remains?--the state of the
savage. Where you now see labourer and prince, you would see equality
indeed--the equality of wild men. No; not even equality there! for
there, brute force becomes lordship, and woe to the weak! Where you
now see some in frieze, some in purple, you would see nakedness in
all. Where stand the palace and the cot, you would behold but mud huts
and caves. As far as the peasant excels the king among savages, so
far does the society exalted and enriched by the struggles of labour
excel the state in which Poverty feels no disparity, and Toil sighs
for no ease. On the other hand, if the rich were perfectly contented
with their wealth, their hearts would become hardened in the sensual
enjoyments it procures. It is that feeling, by Divine Wisdom implanted
in the soul, that there is vanity and vexation of spirit in the things
of Mammon, which still leaves the rich man sensitive to the instincts
of heaven, and teaches him to seek for happiness in those elevated
virtues to which wealth invites him--namely, protection to the lowly
and beneficence to the distressed.
"And this, my brethren, leads me to another view of the vast subject
opened to us by the words of the apostle--'Every man shall bear his
own burden.' The worldly conditions of life are unequal. Why are they
unequal? O my brethren, do you not perceive? Think you that, if it had
been better for our spiritual probation that there should be neither
great nor lowly, rich nor poor, Providence would not so have ordered
the dispensations of the world, and so, by its mysterious but merciful
agencies, have influenced the framework and foundations of society?
But if, from the remotest period of human annals, and in all the
numberless experiments of government which the wit of man has devised,
still this inequality is ever found to exist, may we not suspect that
there is something in the very principles of our nature to which that
inequality is necessary and essential? Ask why this inequality! Why?
as well ask why life is the sphere of duty and the nursery of virtues.
For if all men were equal, if there were no suffering and no ease, no
poverty and no wealth, would you not sweep with one blow the half at
least of human virtues from the world? If there were no penury and
no pain, what would become of fortitude?--what of patience?--what of
resignation? If there were no greatness and no wealth, what would
become of benevolence, of charity, of the blessed human pity, of
temperance in the midst of luxury, of justice in the exercise of power?
Carry the question farther; grant all conditions the same--no reverse,
no rise and no fall--nothing to hope for, nothing to fear--what a moral
death you would at once inflict upon all the energies of the soul, and
what a link between the heart of man and the Providence of God would
be snapped asunder! If we could annihilate evil, we should annihilate
hope; and hope, my brethren, is the avenue to faith. If there be 'a
time to weep, and a time to laugh,' it is that he who mourns may
turn to eternity for comfort, and he who rejoices may bless God for
the happy hour. Ah! my brethren, were it possible to annihilate the
inequalities of human life, it would be the banishment of our worthiest
virtues, the torpor of our spiritual nature, the palsy of our mental
faculties. The moral world, like the world without us, derives its
health and its beauty from diversity, and contrast.
"'Every man shall bear his own burden.' True: but now turn to an
earlier verse in the same chapter.--'Bear ye one another's burdens,
and so fulfil the law of Christ.' Yes; while Heaven ordains to each his
peculiar suffering, it connects the family of man into one household,
by that feeling which, more perhaps than any other, distinguish us
from the brute creation--I mean the feeling to which we give the name
of _sympathy_--the feeling for each other! The herd of deer shun the
stag that is marked by the gunner; the flock heedeth not the sheep that
creeps into the shade to die; but man has sorrow and joy not in himself
alone, but in the joy and sorrow of those around him. He who feels only
for himself abjures his very nature as man; for do we not say of one
who has no tenderness for mankind that he is _inhuman_? and do we not
call him who sorrows with the sorrowful, _humane_?
"Now, brethren, that which especially marked the divine mission of our
Lord, is the direct appeal to this sympathy which distinguishes us
from the brute. He seizes, not upon some faculty of genius given but
to few, but upon that ready impulse of heart which is given to us all;
and in saying, 'Love one another,' 'Bear ye one another's burdens,' he
elevates the most delightful of our emotions into the most sacred of
his laws. The lawyer asks our Lord, 'Who is my neighbour?' Our Lord
replies by the parable of the good Samaritan. The priest and the Levite
saw the wounded man that fell among the thieves, and passed by on the
other side. That priest might have been austere in his doctrine, that
Levite might have been learned in the law; but neither to the learning
of the Levite, nor to the doctrine of the priest, does our Saviour even
deign to allude. He cites but the action of the Samaritan, and saith
to the lawyer, 'Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour
unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that showed mercy
unto him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.'
"O shallowness of human judgments! It was enough to be born a Samaritan
in order to be rejected by the priest, and despised by the Levite.
Yet now, what to us the priest and the Levite, of God's chosen race
though they were? They passed from the hearts of men when they passed
the sufferer by the wayside; while this loathed Samaritan, half thrust
from the pale of the Hebrew, becomes of our family, of our kindred;
a brother amongst the brotherhood of Love, so long as Mercy and
Affliction shall meet in the common thoroughfare of Life!
"'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.'
Think not, O my brethren, that this applies only to almsgiving--to that
relief of distress which is commonly called charity--to the obvious
duty of devoting, from our superfluities, something that we scarcely
miss, to the wants of a starving brother. No. I appeal to the poorest
amongst ye, if the worst burdens are those of the body--if the kind
word and the tender thought have not often lightened your hearts more
than bread bestowed with a grudge, and charity that humbles you by a
frown. Sympathy is a beneficence at the command of us all,--yea, of the
pauper as of the king; and sympathy is Christ's wealth. Sympathy is
brotherhood. The rich are told to have charity for the poor, and the
poor are enjoined to respect their superiors. Good: I say not to the
contrary. But I say also to the poor, '_In your turn have charity for
the rich_;' and I say to the rich, '_In your turn respect the poor_.'
"'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.'
Thou, O poor man, envy not nor grudge thy brother his larger portion
of worldly goods. Believe that he hath his sorrows and crosses like
thyself, and perhaps, as more delicately nurtured, he feels them
more; nay, hath he not temptations so great that our Lord hath
exclaimed--'How hardly they that have riches enter into the kingdom
of heaven?' And what are temptations but trials?--what are trials but
perils and sorrows? Think not that you cannot bestow your charity on
the rich man, even while you take your sustenance from his hands. A
heathen writer, often cited by the earliest preachers of the gospel,
hath truly said--'Wherever there is room for a man, there is place for
a benefit.'
"And I ask any rich brother amongst you, when he hath gone forth to
survey his barns and his granaries, his gardens and orchards, if
suddenly, in the vain pride of his heart, he sees the scowl on the
brow of the labourer--if he deems himself hated in the midst of his
wealth--if he feels that his least faults are treasured up against
him with the hardness of malice, and his plainest benefits received
with the ingratitude of envy--I ask, I say, any rich man, whether
straightway all pleasure in his worldly possessions does not fade from
his heart, and whether he does not feel what a wealth of gladness it is
in the power of the poor man to bestow! For all these things of Mammon
pass away; but there is in the smile of him whom we have served, a
something that we may take with us into heaven. If, then, ye bear one
another's burdens, they who are poor will have mercy on the errors, and
compassion for the griefs, of the rich. To all men it was said--yes,
to the Lazarus as to the Dives--'Judge not that ye be not judged.'
But think not, O rich man, that we preach only to the poor. If it be
their duty not to grudge thee thy substance, it is thine to do all
that may sweeten their labour. Remember, that when our Lord said 'How
hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven,'
he replied also to them who asked, 'Who then shall be saved?' 'The
things which are impossible with men are possible with God:' that is,
man left to his own temptations would fail; but strengthened by God,
he shall be saved. If thy riches are the tests of thy trial, so may
they also be the instruments of thy virtues. Prove by thy riches that
thou art compassionate and tender, temperate and benign; and thy riches
themselves may become the evidence at once of thy faith and of thy
works.
"We have constantly on our lips the simple precept, 'Do unto others
as ye would be done by.' Why do we fail so often in the practice?
Because we neglect to cultivate that SYMPATHY which nature implants
as an instinct, and the Saviour exalts as a command. If thou wouldst
do unto thy neighbour as thou wouldst be done by, ponder well how
thy neighbour will regard the action thou art about to do to him. Put
thyself into his place. If thou art strong, and he is weak, descend
from thy strength, and enter into his weakness; lay aside thy burden
for the while, and buckle on his own; let thy sight see as through his
eyes--thy heart beat as in his bosom. Do this, and thou wilt often
confess that what had seemed just to thy power will seem harsh to his
weakness. For 'as a zealous man hath not done his duty, when he calls
his brother drunkard and beast,'[2] even so an administrator of the law
mistakes his object if he writes on the grand column of society, only
warnings that irritate the bold, and terrify the timid: and a man will
be no more in love with law than with virtue, 'if he be forced to it
with rudeness and incivilities.'[3] If, then, ye would bear the burden
of the lowly, O ye great--feel not only _for_ them, but _with_! Watch
that your pride does not chafe them--your power does not wantonly gall.
Your worldly inferior is of the class from which the apostles were
chosen--amidst which the Lord of Creation descended from a throne above
the seraphs."
The Parson here paused a moment, and his eye glanced towards the pew
near the pulpit, where sat the magnate of Hazeldean. The Squire was
leaning his chin thoughtfully on his hand, his brow inclined downwards,
and the natural glow of his complexion much heightened.
"But"--resumed the Parson softly, without turning to his book, and
rather as if prompted by the suggestion of the moment--"But he who
has cultivated sympathy commits not these errors, or, if committing
them, hastens to retract. So natural is sympathy to the good man, that
he obeys it mechanically when he suffers his heart to be the monitor
of his conscience. In this sympathy behold the bond between rich and
poor! By this sympathy, whatever our varying worldly lots, they become
what they were meant to be--exercises for the virtues more peculiar to
each; and thus, if in the body each man bear his own burden, yet in the
fellowship of the soul all have common relief in bearing the burdens of
each other.
"This is the law of Christ--fulfil it, O my flock!"
Here the Parson closed his sermon, and the congregation bowed their
heads.
ANCIENT AND MODERN ELOQUENCE.
Eloquence, in its highest flights, is beyond all question the
greatest exertion of the human mind. It requires for its conception
a combination of the most exalted faculties; for its execution, a
union of the most extraordinary powers. Unite in thought the most
varied and dissimilar faculties of the soul--strength of understanding
with brilliancy of imagination; fire of conception with solidity of
judgment; a retentive memory with an enthusiastic fancy; the warmth of
poetry with the coldness of prose; an eye for the beauties of nature
with a command of the realities of life; a mind stored with facts
and a heart teeming with impressions--and you will form the elements
from which the most powerful style of oratory is to be created. But
this is not all. Physical powers, if not essential, are at least a
great addition to the mental qualities required for its success. The
orator must have at once the lengthened thought which is requisite for
a prolonged argument, and the ready wit which can turn to the best
advantage any incident which may occur in the course of its delivery.
More than all is required the fixity of purpose, the energy in effort,
the commanding turn, which, as it is the most valuable and important
faculty of the mind, so it is the one most rarely to be met with in any
walk of life, and least of all in combination with the brilliant and
imaginative qualities, which are the very soul of every art which is to
subdue or captivate mankind.
It is not surprising that the art of the orator should require, for its
highest flights, so rare a combination of qualities, for of all the
efforts of the human mind it is the most astonishing in its nature,
and the most transcendent in its _immediate_ triumphs. The wisdom
of the philosopher, the eloquence of the historian, the sagacity of
the statesman, the capacity of the general, may produce more lasting
effects upon human affairs; but they are incomparably less rapid
in their influence, and less intoxicating from the ascendency they
confer. In the solitude of his library the sage meditates on the truths
which are to influence the thoughts and direct the conduct of men in
future times; amidst the strife of faction the legislator discerns
the measures calculated, after a long course of years, to alleviate
existing evils or produce happiness yet unborn; during long and
wearisome campaigns the commander throws his shield over the fortunes
of his country, and prepares in silence and amidst obloquy the means
of maintaining its independence. But the triumphs of the orator are
immediate; his influence is instantly felt: his, and his alone, it is
"The applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read his history in a nation's eyes."
To stand up before a vast assembly composed of men of various passions,
habits, and prepossessions; to conciliate their feelings by the art,
and carry away their judgment by the eloquence, of the orator; to see
every gaze at length turned on his countenance, and every ear intent
on the words which drop from his lips; to see indifference turn into
excitement, and aversion melt away amidst enthusiasm; to hear thunders
of applause at the close of every sentence, and behold the fire of
enthusiasm kindled in every eye, as each successive idea is brought
forth; and to think that all this is the creation of the moment, and
has sprung extempore from the ardour of his conceptions, and the
inspiration they have derived from what passes around him, is perhaps
the greatest triumph of the human mind, and that in which its divine
origin and immortal destiny is most clearly revealed.
It is the magnitude of the combination requisite for its greatest
efforts which renders eloquence of the loftiest kind so extremely rare
among mankind. It is less frequent than the highest flights in epic or
dramatic poetry. Greece produced three great tragedians, but only one
Demosthenes; Cicero stands alone to sustain by his single strength the
fame of Roman oratory. Antiquity could not boast of more than five or
six persons who, by the common consent of their contemporaries, had
attained the highest rank in forensic eloquence; it is doubtful if
modern times could count as many: as many, we mean, who have attained
the very highest place in this noble and difficult art; for, doubtless,
in the second class, great numbers of names are to be found; and in the
third their name is legion. It is not meant to be asserted that great
temporary fame and influence by eloquence may not be, and often has
been, acquired by persons who are deficient in many of the qualities
above enumerated, as required to form a perfect orator. Without doubt,
brilliancy of genius will often, for passing effect, compensate the
want of solidity of judgment; and fire of imagination make us for the
moment forget a squeaking voice, a diminutive figure, an ungainly
countenance. No one, at times, commanded the attention of the House
of Commons more entirely than the late Mr Wilberforce, and yet his
stature was small, and his voice weak and painfully shrill. But great
earnestness of will and brilliancy of fancy are required to compensate
such defects; and we are persuaded that none will more readily admit
the justice of these observations than those who have laboured under,
and, by their powers, in a certain degree surmounted them.
As little is it intended to assert that vast influence may not be
acquired, and unbounded celebrity for the time obtained, not merely
without the cooperation of such varied and extensive qualities, but by
the aid, in many cases, of the very reverse. As temporary influence,
not lasting fame, is the immediate and chief end of oratory, its style
must be adapted to the prevailing cast of mind, and ruling interests
or passions, of the persons to whom it is addressed; and as it will
share in elevation of sentiment, if that is their characteristic, so
it will be deformed by vulgarity or selfishness when they are vulgar
and selfish. It is a common saying, that a speaker must descend to the
level of his audience, if he means to command their suffrages or enlist
their passions; and we have only to look around us to see how often, in
assemblies of an inferior, interested, or impassioned character, the
highest celebrity and most unbounded success are attained by persons
who not only have exhibited few of the qualities of a refined orator,
but who had studiously concealed those which they did possess, and
secretly despised in their hearts the arts to which their triumphs
had been owing.[4] But this is no more than is the case with all the
arts which aim at influencing, or charming mankind. The theatre,
the romance, poetry itself, share at times in the same degradation.
It would be as unjust to stigmatise oratory as the art of sophists
or declaimers, intended to seduce or deceive those who cannot see
through its artifices, as it would be to reproach the stage with the
vulgarity of the buffoon, or novels with the licentiousness of Aretin,
or poetry with the seductions of Ovid. We must not think lightly of an
art which has been ennobled by the efforts of Cicero and Burke in the
most refined assemblies, because it has also led to the triumphs of
O'Connell and Wilkes in the most ignorant.
To the highest triumphs of the art of oratory, that first of blessings,
CIVIL LIBERTY, is indispensable. More truly of it than of the liberty
of the press, it may be said, "It is our vital air: withdraw it, and
we perish." Regulated freedom is essential to its success. It is hard
to say whether it perishes most rapidly amidst the studied servility
of courtly rhetoric, or the coarse adulations of democratic flattery;
whether the atmosphere of Constantinople or that of New York is most
fatal to its existence. Genius, and that of the very highest kind, may
exist in despotic communities; but it is degraded by selfishness and
misdirected by servility.
Where there is only one ruling power in the state--be it monarchical,
aristocratic, or democratic--this corruption is equally certain,
and equally unavoidable. The sonorous periods in which Fontanes
celebrated the triumphs of the empire, the impassioned strains in
which Robespierre eulogised the incorruptible virtue of the people,
the coarse flattery with which O'Connell captivated his ignorant
and excitable audiences, equally marked the approach of the period
in which oratory, if such a _régime_ continued, must die a natural
death. Under such influences it necessarily perished from its own
exaggeration: it ceased to be impressive, it became ridiculous. As in
all the other arts which are intended to please and instruct mankind,
TRUTH, and a regard to the limits of nature, are essential to its
success. Exaggeration and hyperbole not only degrade the character
of eloquence, but destroy its influence, because they induce a style
of expression with which subsequent times, emancipated from passing
influences, cannot sympathise--look upon as contemptible. Then, and
then only, will oratory attain its highest perfection, during that
period "slow to come, soon to perish," as Tacitus said of balanced
freedom, during which no one interest in the state is irresistible; and
truth, in assailing the vices or resisting the encroachments of others,
can find a fulcrum from whence to direct its efforts. Withdraw the
fulcrum--remove the support--and truth, and with it genius, will sink
to rise no more.
It is surprising, however, how solicitous the human soul is for liberty
of expression; how eagerly, if one channel is closed, it seeks out and
often finds another. When the power of Government, or the tyranny of
the majority, has shut out the natural expression of unfettered opinion
in the discussion of the social and political interests of man, it
takes refuge in the regions of imagination. Romance becomes the vehicle
of independent thought: the stage the arena of unrestrained debate.
So delightful is free expression to the human mind, that it proves
agreeable even to those whose ascendency may seem to be endangered by
its prevalence. It may appear strange, but it is undoubtedly true, that
the germ of the doctrines of human perfectibility, the general vices of
those in authority, and the expedience of universal freedom alike in
trade and employment, emanated from the precincts of the most despotic
authority in Europe, and at the period of its highest exaltation. It
was in the palace of Versailles, in the court of the Grande Monarque,
and when discharging the duties of tutor to the Dauphin, that Fenelon
wrote, for the instruction of his royal pupil, _Telémaque_--perhaps the
most thoroughly democratic work, in its principles, that ever emanated
from the pen of genius. It was in the boudoir of Madame de Pompadour,
and when surrounded by the corruptions of Louis XV., that Quesnay
first announced the doctrines of throwing all taxes on the land, and
of universal freedom of trade and occupation, which have subsequently
had so powerful an influence in producing the Revolution of France, and
altering the political system and social conditions of Great Britain.
The extraordinary perfection to which tragedy has been brought in many
modern countries where the institutions are of a despotic character,
is mainly to be ascribed to this cause. The stage became the outlet
of independent thought; it was there alone that unfettered expression
could be safely attempted. Put into the mouths of historical or
imaginary characters, portraying remote events, for the most part
drawn from the classical ages of Greece or Rome, such unrestrained
ideas attracted no disquietude in the depositories of authority. They
were regarded as an attribute of a primeval world, which had as little
relation to the present, and as little bearing on its fortunes, as
the skeletons of the Mammoth, or the backbones of the Ichthyosauri,
on its material interests. A direct argument in favour of republican
institutions would have secured for its author a place in the Bastile,
or in the dungeons of the Inquisition; an incitement to the people to
take up arms, to dethrone the reigning monarch, would have led to the
scaffold; but the most eloquent and impassioned declamations in support
of both the one and the other, when couched in verse, put into the
mouth of Virginius or Brutus, and repeated on the stage by a popular
actor, excited no sort of apprehension. On the contrary, it was only
the more admired from its very novelty. Such ideas fell on the mind,
amidst the seductions and restrictions of a despotic court, with
somewhat of the charm with which the voice of nature, and the picture
of her beauties, was in the last days of the French monarchy listened
to from the gifted pen of Rousseau, or the vehement and imaginary
passions of the Greek Corsairs, as delineated by Byron, were regarded
by the worn-out victims of London dissipation.
If we would see in modern literature the most exact counterpart which
Europe has been able to present to the oratorical perfection of
antiquity, we must look for it, not in the debates of its National
Assemblies, or even the effusions of its pulpit eloquence, but in the
speeches of its great tragic poets. The best declamations in Corneille,
Alfieri, and Schiller, are often nothing but ancient eloquence put
into verse. The brevity and force of Shakspeare belong to the same
school. These men exhibit the same condensation of ideas, terseness
of expression, depth of thought, acquaintance with the secrets of the
heart, which have rendered the historians and orators of antiquity
immortal. Like them in their highest flights, they present intellect
and genius disdaining the attractions of style, the flowers of
rhetoric, the amplifications of imagination, and resting solely on
condensed reason, cogent argument, and impassioned pathos. They are the
bones and muscles of thought, without its ornament or covering. It is
this circumstance which rendered their drama so popular, and has given
its great masters their colossal reputation; and in their lasting fame
may be found the most decisive proof of the undying influence of the
highest species of eloquence on cultivated minds. Men and women went
to the theatre not to be instructed in the story--it was known to all;
not to be dazzled by stage effect--there was none of it: but to hear
oratory of the highest, pathos of the most moving, magnanimity of the
most exalted kind, repeated with superb effect by the first performers.
The utmost vehemence of action, with all the aids of intonation,
action, and delivery, was employed to heighten the effect of condensed
eloquence, conveying free and lofty sentiments which could nowhere
else be heard. This was the secret of the wonderful influence of the
stage on the polished society of Paris, during the latter days of the
monarchy. The audience in the _parterre_ might be seen repeating every
celebrated speech with the actor.
To illustrate these observations, we shall subjoin a few passages--two
from Corneille, one from Shakspeare, one from Alfieri, and two from
Schiller, in prose--partly to show how nearly they approach to the
style of ancient oratory, and partly from a sense of the hopelessness
of any translation conveying more than a prosaic idea of the terseness
and vigour of the originals,--
"When the people are the master, tumults become national events.
Never is the voice of reason consulted. Honours are sold to the
most ambitious, authority yielded to the most seditious. These
little sovereigns, made for a year, seeing the term of their
power so near expiring, cause the most auspicious designs to
miscarry, from the dread that others who follow may obtain the
credit of them. As they have little share in the property which
they command, they reap without hesitation in the harvest of the
public, being well assured that every one will gladly pardon what
they themselves hope to do on a future occasion. The worst of
states is the popular state."[5]
Corneille's celebrated picture of Attila, which he puts into the mouth
of Octar, but which was really intended for Louis XIV., exhibits
another example of the condensed style of oratory, perhaps still more
applicable to a greater man than the Grande Monarque,--
"I have seen him, alike in peace and war, bear everywhere the air
of the conqueror of the earth. Often have I beheld the fiercest
nations disarm his wrath by their submission. I have seen all
the pleasure of his heroic mind savouring of the grand and the
magnificent, while his ceaseless foresight in the midst of peace
had prepared the triumphs of war; his noble anxiety, which, amidst
his very recreations prepared the success of future designs. Too
happy the people against whom he does not turn his invincible
arms! I have seen him, covered with smoke and dust, give the
noblest example to his army--spread terror everywhere by his
own danger--overturn walls by a single glance, and heap his own
conquests on the broken pride of the haughtiest monarchs."[6]
Napoleon said, if he had lived in his time, he would have made
Corneille his first councillor of state. He was right: for his thoughts
were more allied to the magnanimity of the hero than the pathos of the
tragedian; and his language savoured more of the sonorous periods of
the orator than the fire of the poet.
Beside these specimens of French tragic eloquence, we gladly place
the well-known speech of Brutus in _Julius Cæsar_, which proves that
Shakspeare was endowed with the very soul of ancient oratory:--
"Romans, countrymen, and lovers! Hear me for my cause, and be
silent that you may hear; believe me for mine honour, and have
respect to mine honour that you may believe; censure me in your
wisdom, and awake your senses that you may the better judge. If
there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Cæsar's, to
him I say that Brutus' love to Cæsar was not less than his. If,
then, that friend demand why Brutus rose against Cæsar, this is
my answer: not that I loved Cæsar less, but that I loved Rome
more. Had you rather that Cæsar were living and die all slaves,
than that Cæsar were dead to live all free men? As Cæsar loved
me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice in it; as he
was valiant, I honour him; but, as he was ambitious, I slew him.
There are tears for his love, joy for his fortune, honour for his
valour, and death for his ambition. Who is there so base that
would be a bondsman? If any, speak, for him have I offended. Who
is here so rude that would not be a Roman? If any, speak, for
him have I offended. Who is here so vile that will not love his
country? If any, speak, for him have I offended. I have done no
more to Cæsar than you should do to Brutus. The question of his
death is enrolled in the Capitol; his glory is not extenuated,
wherein he was worthy; nor his offences enforced for which he
suffered death."[7]
This is in the highest style of ancient oratory. Whoever has had the
good fortune to hear this noble speech repeated by the lips, and with
the impressive manner of Kemble, will have no difficulty in conceiving
how it was that eloquence in Greece and Rome acquired so mighty an
ascendency. Shakspeare has shown, however, in the speech of Antony,
which follows, that he is not less master of that important part of
oratory which consists in moving the feelings, and conciliating by
pathos an adverse audience. Antiquity never conceived anything more
skilful, or evincing a more thorough knowledge of the human heart, than
thus turning aside the lofty patriotic and republican ideas awakened
by Brutus' speech, first by the exhibition of Cæsar's garments, rent
by the daggers of his murderers, and yet wet with his blood, and then
unveiling the mangled corpse itself!
The eloquence of Alfieri and Schiller, perhaps, of all modern writers,
is that which approaches most closely to the brief and condensed style
of ancient oratory. The speech of Icilius, in the noble drama of
_Virginia_, by the first of these writers, affords a fair specimen of
its power:--
"Listen to my words, O people of Rome! I who heretofore have never
been deceitful, who have never either betrayed or sold my honour;
who boast an ignoble origin, but a noble heart! hear me. This
innocent free maid is daughter of Virginius. At such a name, I
see your eyes flash with resplendent fire. Virginius is fighting
for you in the field: think on the depravity of the times;
meanwhile, exposed to shame, the victim of outrage, his daughter
remains in Rome. And who outrages her? Come forward, O Marcus!
show yourself. Why tremble you? He is well known to you: the last
slave of the tyrant Appius and his first minister--of Appius,
the mortal enemy of every virtue--of Appius, the haughty, stern,
ferocious oppressor, who his ravished from you your freedom, and,
to embitter the robbery, has left you your lives. Virginia is my
promised bride: I love her. Who I am, I need not say: some one
may perhaps remind you. I was your tribune, your defender; but in
vain. You trusted rather the deceitful words of another than my
free speech. We now suffer, in common slavery, the pain of your
delusion. Why do I say more? The heart, the arm, the boldness of
Icilius is known to you not less than the name. From you I demand
my free bride. This man does not ask her: he styles her slave--he
drags her, he forces her. Icilius or Marcus is a liar: say,
Romans, which it is."[8]
That Schiller was a great dramatic and lyric poet, need be told to
none who have the slightest acquaintance with European literature; but
his great oratorical powers are not so generally appreciated, for they
have been lost in the blaze of his poetic genius. They were, however,
of the very highest order, as will at once appear from the following
translation (imperfect as it, of course, is) in prose, which we have
attempted of the celebrated speeches of Shrewsbury and Burleigh, who
discussed before Queen Elizabeth the great question of Queen Mary's
execution, in his noble tragedy of _Maria Stuart_:--
SHREWSBURY.
"God, whose wondrous hand has four times protected you, and who
to-day gave the feeble arm of gray hairs strength to turn aside
the stroke of a madman, should inspire confidence. I will not now
speak in the name of justice; this is not the time. In such a
tumult you cannot hear her still small voice. Consider this only:
you are fearful now of the living Mary; but I say it is not the
living you have to fear. _Tremble at the dead--the beheaded._ She
will rise from the grave a fiend of dissension. She will awaken
the spirit of revenge in your kingdom, and wean the hearts of
your subjects from you. At present she is an object of dread to
the British; but when she is no more, they will revenge her. No
longer will she then be regarded as the enemy of their faith; her
mournful fate will cause her to appear only as the granddaughter
of their king, the victim of man's hatred and woman's jealousy.
Soon will you see the change appear! Drive through London after
the bloody deed has been done; show yourself to the people, who
now surround you with joyful acclamations: then will you see
another England, another people! No longer will you then walk
forth encircled by the radiance of heavenly justice which now
binds every heart to you. Dread the frightful name of tyrant which
will precede you through shuddering hearts, and resound through
every street where you pass. You have done the last irrevocable
deed. What head stands fast when this sacred one has fallen?"
BURLEIGH.
"Thou sayest, my Queen, thou lovest thy people more than
thyself--show it now! Choose not peace for yourself, and leave
discord to your people. Think on the Church! Shall the ancient
faith be restored with this Stuart? Shall the monk of new lord it
here--the legate of Rome return to shut up our churches, dethrone
our queen? I demand the souls of all your subjects from you.
As you now decide, you are saved or lost. This is no time for
womanish pity: the salvation of your people is your highest duty.
Has Shrewsbury saved your life to-day? I will deliver England, and
that is more."--_Maria Stuart_, Act iv. s. 7.
Demosthenes could have written nothing more powerful--Cicero imagined
nothing more persuasive.
We shall now, to justify our assertion that it is in the dramatic poets
of modern Europe that a parallel can alone be found to the condensed
power of ancient eloquence, proceed to give a few quotations from the
most celebrated speeches of antiquity. We have selected, in general,
those from the historians, as they are shorter than the orations
delivered in the forum, and can be given entire. A fragment from a
speech of Demosthenes or Cicero gives no sort of idea of the original,
because what goes before is withheld. To scholars we need not plead
indulgence for the inadequacy of our translations: they will not expect
what they know to be impossible.
Tacitus, in his Life of Agricola, puts into the mouth of Galgacus the
following oration, when he was animating the Caledonians to their last
battle with the Romans under Agricola.
"As often as I reflect on the origin of the war, and our
necessities, I feel a strong conviction that this day, and your
will, are about to lay the foundations of British liberty. For
we have all known what slavery is, and no place of retreat lies
behind us. The sea even is insecure when the Roman fleet hovers
around. Thus arms and war, ever coveted by the brave, are now
the only refuge of the cowardly. In former actions, in which the
Britons fought with various success against the Romans, our valour
was a resource to look to, for we, the noblest of all the nation,
and on that account placed in its inmost recesses, unused to the
spectacle of servitude, had our eyes even inviolate from its
hateful sight. We, the last of the earth, and of freedom, unknown
to fame, have been hitherto defended by our remoteness; now, the
extreme limits of Britain appear, and the unknown is ever regarded
as the magnificent. No refuge is behind us; naught but the rocks
and the waves, and the deadlier Romans: men whose pride you have
in vain sought to deprecate by moderation and subservience. The
robbers of the globe, when the land fails they scour the sea.
Is the enemy rich, they are avaricious; is he poor, they are
ambitious--the East and the West are unable to satiate their
desires. Wealth and poverty are alike coveted by their rapacity.
To carry off, massacre, seize on false pretences, they call
empire; and when they make a desert, they call it peace.
"Nature has made children and relations dearest to all: they are
carried off by levies to serve elsewhere: our wives and sisters,
if they escape the lust of our enemies, are seduced by these
_friends_ and _guests_. Our goods and fortunes they seize on as
tribute, our corn as supplies; our very bodies and hands they
wear out amidst strifes and contumely, in fortifying stations in
the woods and marshes. Serfs born in servitude are once bought,
and ever after fed by their masters; Britain alone daily buys its
slavery, daily feeds it. As in families the last slave purchased
is often a laughing-stock to the rest, so we, the last whom they
have reduced to slavery, are the first to be agonised by their
contumely, and reserved for destruction. We have neither fields,
nor minerals, nor harbours, in working which we can be employed:
the valour and fierceness of the vanquished are obnoxious to the
victors: our very distance and obscurity, as they render us the
safer, make us the more suspected. Laying aside, therefore, all
hope of pardon, assume the courage of men to whom salvation and
glory are alike dear. The Trinobantes, under a female leader, had
courage to burn a colony and storm castles, and, had not their
success rendered them negligent, they would have cast off the
yoke. We, untouched and unconquered, nursed in freedom, shall we
not show, on the first onset, what men Caledonia has nursed in her
bosom?
"Do not believe the Romans have the same prowess in war as lust
in peace. They have grown great on our divisions: they know how
to turn the vices of men to the glory of their own army. As it
has been drawn together by success, so disaster will dissolve
it, unless you suppose that the Gauls and the Germans, and, I am
ashamed to say, many of the Britons, who now lend their blood to
a foreign usurpation, and in their hearts are rather enemies than
slaves, can be retained by faith and affection. Fear and terror
are but slender bonds of attachment; when you remove them, as fear
ceases terror begins. All the incitements of victory are on our
side: no wives inflame the Romans; no parents are there, to call
shame on their flight; they have no country, or it is elsewhere.
Few in number, fearful from ignorance, gazing on unknown woods
and seas, the gods have delivered them shut in and bound into
your hands. Let not their vain aspect, the glitter of silver and
gold, which neither covers nor wounds, alarm you. In the very
line of the enemy we shall find our friends: the Britons will
recognise their own cause; the Gauls will recollect their former
freedom; the other Germans will desert them, as lately the Usipii
have done. No objects of terror are behind them; naught but empty
castles, age-ridden colonies; dissension between cruel masters and
unwilling slaves, sick and discordant cities. Here is a leader,
an army; there are tributes, and payments, and the badges of
servitude, which to bear for ever, or instantly to avenge, lies
in your arms. Go forth then into the field, and think of your
ancestors and your descendants."[9]
It is scarcely necessary to say that this speech was written by
Tacitus: most certainly nothing half so perfect was ever conceived
by Caledonian chief or Caledonian orator, from that day to this.
But as the great speeches in antiquity were all written, this gives
a specimen, doubtless of the most favourable kind, of the style of
oratory which prevailed amongst them. No modern historian has either
ventured or been able to put anything so nervous and forcible into the
mouth of any orator, how great soever. If he did, it would at once be
known that it had not been spoken, but was the fruit of the composition
of the closet.
Catiline, who, like many other revolutionists, possessed abilities
commensurate to his wickedness, thus addressed the conspirators who
were associated to overturn the sway of the Roman patricians:--
"Had not your valour and fidelity been well known to me, fruitless
would have been the smiles of Fortune: the prospect of as mighty
domination would in vain have opened upon us; nor would I have
mistaken illusive hopes for realities, uncertain things for
certain. But since, on many and great occasions, I have known
you to be brave and faithful, I have ventured to engage in the
greatest and noblest undertaking; for I well know that good and
evil are common to you and me. That friendship at length is
secure which is founded on wishing and dreading the same things.
You all know what designs I have long revolved in my mind; but
my confidence in them daily increases, when I reflect what our
fate is likely to be, if we do not vindicate our freedom by our
own hands. For, since the republic has fallen under the power
and dominion of a few, kings yield their tributes, governorships
their profits to them: all the rest, whether strenuous, good,
noble or ignoble, are the mere vulgar: without influence, without
authority, we are obnoxious to those to whom, if the commonwealth
existed, we should be a terror. All honour, favour, power, wealth,
is centred in them, or those whom they favour: to us are left
dangers, repulses, lawsuits, poverty. How long will you endure
them, O ye bravest of men? Is it not better to die bravely, than
drag out a miserable and dishonoured life, the sport of pride, the
victims of disgrace? But by the faith of gods and men, victory is
in our own hands: our strength is unimpaired; our minds energetic:
theirs is enfeebled by age, extinguished by riches. All that is
required is to begin boldly; the rest follows of course. Where
is the man of a manly spirit, who can tolerate that they should
overflow with riches, which they squander in ransacking the sea,
in levelling mountains, while to us the common necessaries of
life are awanting? They have two or more superb palaces each; we
not wherein to lay our heads. When they buy pictures, statues,
basso-relievos, they destroy the old to make way for the new: in
every possible way they squander away their money; but all their
desires are unable to exhaust their riches. At home, we have only
poverty; abroad, debts; present adversity; worse prospects. What,
in fine, is left us, but our woe-stricken souls? What, then, shall
we do? That, that which you have ever most desired. Liberty is
before your eyes; and it will soon bring riches, renown, glory:
Fortune holds out these rewards to the victors. The time, the
place, our dangers, our wants, the splendid spoils of war, exhort
you more than my words. Make use of me either as a commander or
a private soldier. Neither in soul or body will I be absent from
your side. These deeds I hope I shall perform as Consul with you,
unless my hopes deceive me, and you are prepared rather to obey as
slaves, than to command as rulers."[10]
The topics here handled are the same which in every age have been the
staple of the conspirator and the revolutionist; but it may be doubted
whether they ever were put together with such force and address. The
same desperate chief, on the eve of their last conflict with the
consular legions:--
"I well know, fellow-soldiers, that words add nothing to the
valour of the brave; and that an army will not be made from
slothful, strenuous--from timid, courageous, by any speech from
its commander. Whatever boldness nature or training has implanted
in any one, that appears in war. It is vain to exhort those whom
neither dangers nor glory excite. Terror shuts their ears. But I
have called you together to mention a few things, and to make you
sharers of my councils. You know, soldiers, what a calamity has
been brought upon us by the cowardice of Lentulus; and how, when I
awaited succours from the city, I was unable to set out for Gaul.
Now, however, I will candidly tell you how our affairs stand. Two
armies, one issuing from Rome, one from Gaul, beset us: want of
provisions obliges us quickly to change our quarters, even if we
inclined to remain where we are. Wherever we determine to go, we
must open a way with our swords. Therefore it is that I admonish
you that you have now need of stern and determined minds: and
when you engage in battle, recollect that riches, honour, glory,
in addition to liberty, are to be won by your own right hands. If
we conquer, everything awaits us: provisions will be abundant,
colonies ready, cities open. If we yield from fear, circumstances
are equally adverse: neither solitude nor friend shields him whom
his arms cannot protect. Besides, soldiers, the same necessity
does not impel them as us. We fight for our country, our liberty,
our lives; they for the domination of a few. On that account,
mindful of your pristine valour, advance to the attack. You might
have, with disgrace, lingered out a miserable life in exile:
a few, bereft of their possessions, might have remained, fed
by charity, at Rome: but as such a fate seemed intolerable to
freemen, you have attended me here. If you would shun these evils,
now is the moment to do so. None ever exchanged war for peace,
save by victory. To hope for safety in flight, and, at the same
time, rescue from the enemy the arms by which the body is covered,
is the height of madness. Ever in battle they run the greatest
danger who are most timid: boldness is the only real rampart. When
I reflect on you and your deeds, O soldiers, I have great hopes
of victory. Your spirit, your age, your bravery, encourage me:
besides necessity, which makes heroes even of cowards. The straits
of the ground secure you from being outflanked by the enemy.
Should Fortune fail to second your valour, beware lest you perish
unavenged. Rather fall, fighting like men, and leave a mournful
and bloody triumph to your enemies, than be butchered like sheep
when captured by their arms."[11]
With what exquisite judgment and taste is the stern and mournful style
of this speech suited to the circumstances, all but desperate, in which
Catiline's army was then placed!
No one supposes that these were the identical words delivered by
Catiline on this occasion. Unquestionably, Sallust shines through in
every line. But they were probably his ideas; and, unquestionably,
they were in the true style of ancient oratory. And that what was
spoken fully equalled what has come down to us written, is proved by
innumerable passages in speeches which undoubtedly were spoken; among
which, we select the graphic picture of Antony in his revels--spoken by
Coelius, and preserved by Quintilian:--
"They found him (Antony) oppressed with a half-drunken sleep,
snoring aloud, lying across the most beautiful concubines, while
others were reposing around. The latter, when they perceived the
approach of an enemy, strove to awaken Antony, but in vain. They
called on him by name, they raised him by the neck: one whispered
softly in his ear, one struck him sharply; but to no purpose. When
he was so far roused as to recognise the voice or touch of the
nearest, he put his arms round her neck, unable alike to sleep and
to rise up; but, half in a stupor, he was tossed about between the
hands of the centurions and the harlots."[12]
What a picture of the triumvir and rival of Brutus, as well as of the
corrupted manners of Rome!
Demosthenes, in his celebrated speech against Æschines, burst into the
following strain of indignant invective:--
"You taught writing, I learned it: you were an instructor, I was
the instructed: you danced at the games, I presided over them:
you wrote as a clerk, I pleaded as an advocate: you were an actor
in the theatres, I a spectator: you broke down, I hissed: you
ever took counsel for our enemies, I for our country. In fine,
now on this day the point at issue is--Am I, yet unstained in
character, worthy of a crown? while to you is reserved the lot
of a calumniator, and you are in danger of being silenced by not
having obtained the fifth part of the votes.
"I have not fortified the city with stone, nor adorned it with
tiles, neither do I take any credit for such things. But if you
would behold my works aright, you will find arms, and cities, and
stations, and harbours, and ships, and horses, and those who are
to make use of them in our defence. This is the rampart I have
raised for Attica, as much as human wisdom could effect: with
these I fortified the whole country, not the Piræus only and the
city. I never sank before the arms or cunning of Philip. No! it
was by the supineness of your own generals and allies that he
triumphed."[13]
We add only an extract from the noble speech of Pericles, on those who
had died in the service of their country, which is the more valuable
that Thucydides, who has recorded it in his history, says that the
version he has given of that masterpiece of oratory is nearly the same
as he heard from Pericles himself.
"Wherefore I will congratulate rather than bewail the parents of
those who have fallen that are present. They know that they were
born to suffering. But the lot of those is most to be envied who
have come to such an end, that it is hard to say whether their
life or their death is most honourable. I know it is difficult to
persuade you of this, who had often rejoiced in the good fortune
of others; and it is not when we are deprived of goods not yet
attained that we feel grief, but when we are bereaved of what
we have already enjoyed. To some the hope of other children,
who may emulate those who have gone before, may be a source of
consolation. Future offspring may awaken fresh interests in place
of the dead; and will doubly benefit the city by peopling its
desert places, and providing for its defence. We cannot expect
that those who have no children whom they may place in peril for
their country, can be considered on a level with such as have
made the sacrifices which those have made. To such of you as time
has denied this hope, I would say, 'Rejoice in the honour which
your children have won, and let that console the few years that
still remain to you--for the love of glory alone knows no age;
and in the decline of life it is not the acquisition of gain, as
some say, which confers pleasure, but the consciousness of being
honoured.
"To the children and brothers of those we mourn, who are here
present, I foresee a noble contest. Every one praises the dead.
You should endeavour, I will not say to equal those we have lost,
but to be only a little inferior to them. Envy often divides the
living; but the grave extinguishes jealousy, for it terminates
rivalry. I must speak of the virtue of the women who have shared
in our bereavement; but I shall do so in a few words. Great will
be your renown, if you do not yield to the weakness of your sex;
and place as little difference as possible between yourselves
and the virtue of men. I propose that the children of those who
have fallen should be maintained, till puberty, at the public
expense--a reward at once to the virtue of the dead, and an
incitement to the emulation of the living: for among those to whom
the highest rewards of virtue are opened, the most worthy citizens
are found. And now, having honoured the dead by your mourning,
depart every one to his home."[14]
Enough--and some may, perhaps, think more than enough--has been done to
convey an idea of that far-famed oratory, of which Milton has said--
"Thence to the famous orators repair,
Those ancients, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democracy,
Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece,
To Macedon, and Artaxerxes' throne."[15]
For comparison with these splendid passages, we gladly lay before
our readers the famous peroration of Mr Burke's oration against Mr
Hastings, long esteemed the masterpiece of British eloquence.
"My Lords, at this awful close, in the name of the Commons, and
surrounded by them, I attest the retiring, I attest the advancing
generations, between which, as a link in the great chain of
eternal order, we stand. We call this nation, we call the world to
witness, that the Commons have shrunk from no labour; that we have
been guilty of no prevarication; that we have made no compromise
with crime; that we have not feared any odium whatsoever, in
the long warfare which we have carried on with the crimes--with
the vices--with the exorbitant wealth--with the enormous and
overpowering influence of Eastern corruption. This war, my Lords,
we have waged for twenty-two years, and the conflict has been
fought, at your Lordships' bar, for the last seven years. My
Lords, twenty-two years is a great space in the scale of the life
of man; it is no inconsiderable space in the history of a great
nation. A business which has so long occupied the councils and
the tribunals of Great Britain cannot possibly be huddled over in
the course of vulgar, trite, and transitory events. Nothing but
some of those great revolutions, that break the traditionary chain
of human memory, and alter the very face of nature itself, can
possibly obscure it. My Lords, we are all elevated to a degree of
importance by it; the meanest of us will, by means of it, more or
less, become the concern of posterity--if we are yet to hope for
such a thing, in the present state of the world, as a recording,
retrospective, civilised posterity: but this is in the hand of the
great Disposer of events; it is not ours to settle how it shall
be. My Lords, your House yet stands; it stands as a great edifice;
but let me say, that it stands in the midst of ruins--in the midst
of the ruins that have been made by the greatest moral earthquake
that ever convulsed and shattered this globe of ours. My Lords, it
has pleased Providence to place us in such a state, that we appear
every moment to be upon the verge of some great mutations. There
is one thing, and one thing only, which defies all mutation, that
which existed before the world, and will survive the fabric of
the world itself--I mean justice; that justice which, emanating
from the Divinity, has a place in the breast of every one of us,
given us for our guide with regard to ourselves and with regard to
others, and which will stand, after this globe is burned to ashes,
our advocate or our accuser before the great Judge, when He comes
to call upon us for the tenor of a well-spent life.
"My Lords, the Commons will share in every fate with your
Lordships; there is nothing sinister which can happen to you, in
which we shall not all be involved; and if it should so happen
that we shall be subjected to some of those frightful changes
which we have seen--if it should happen that your Lordships,
stripped of all the decorous distinctions of human society,
should, by hands at once base and cruel, be led to those scaffolds
and machines of murder upon which great kings and glorious queens
have shed their blood, amidst the prelates, amidst the nobles,
amidst the magistrates, who supported their thrones, may you in
those moments feel that consolation which I am persuaded they
felt in the critical moments of their dreadful agony!... My
Lords, if you must fall, may you so fall! but, if you stand--and
stand I trust you will--together with the fortune of this ancient
monarchy--together with the ancient laws and liberties of this
great and illustrious kingdom--may you stand as unimpeached in
honour as in power; may you stand, not as a substitute for virtue,
but as an ornament of virtue, as a security for virtue; may you
stand long, and long stand the terror of tyrants; may you stand
the refuge of afflicted nations; may you stand a sacred temple,
for the perpetual residence of an inviolable justice."[16]
The peroration of Lord Brougham's speech in favour of Queen Caroline,
which was carefully studied, and, it is said, written over several
times, is not unworthy to be placed beside this splendid burst.
"Such, my Lords, is the case before you! such is the evidence in
support of this measure--evidence inadequate to prove a debt,
impotent to deprive of a civil right, ridiculous to convict of
the lowest offence, scandalous, if brought forward to support a
charge of the highest nature which the law knows, monstrous to
ruin the honour and blast the name of an English Queen! What shall
I say, then, if this is the proof by which an act of judicial
legislation, a parliamentary sentence, an _ex post facto_ law,
is sought to be passed against a defenceless woman? My Lords, I
pray you to pause: I do earnestly beseech you to take heed. You
are standing upon the brink of a precipice--then beware! It will
go forth as your judgment, if sentence shall pass against the
Queen. But it will be the only judgment you ever pronounced which,
instead of reaching its object, will return and bound back upon
those who give it. Save the country, my Lords, from the horrors
of this catastrophe--save yourselves from this peril. Revere that
country of which you are the ornaments, but in which you can
flourish no longer, when severed from the people, than the blossom
when cut off from the roots and stem of the tree. Save that
country, that you may continue to adorn it; save the crown, which
is in jeopardy, the aristocracy, which is shaken; save the altar,
which must stagger with the blow that rends its kindred throne!
You have said, my Lords, you have willed, the church to the Queen
have willed that she should be deprived of its solemn service.
She has instead of that solemnity the heartfelt prayers of the
people. She wants no prayers of mine. But I do here pour forth my
humble supplication to the Throne of mercy, that that mercy may be
poured down upon the people, in a larger measure than the merits
of its rulers may deserve, and that your hearts may be turned to
justice."[17]
On the trial of Mr John Stockdale, Lord Erskine thus spoke:--
"I have been speaking of man and his nature, and of human
dominion, from what I have seen of them myself among nations
reluctant of our authority. I know what they feel, and how such
feelings can alone be repressed. I have heard them in my youth
from a naked savage, in the indignant character of a prince,
surrounded by his subjects, addressing the governor of a British
colony, holding a bundle of sticks in his hand, as the notes of
his unlettered eloquence. 'Who is it,' said the jealous ruler
of the desert, encroached upon by the restless foot of English
adventure--'who is it that causes to blow the loud winds of
winter, and that calms them again in summer? Who is it that causes
this river to rise in the high mountains, and to empty itself
into the ocean? Who is it that rears up the shade of these lofty
forests, and blasts them with the quick lightning at his pleasure?
The same Being who gave to you a country on the other side of the
waters, and gave ours to us; and by this title we will defend
it,' said the warrior, throwing his tomahawk upon the ground, and
raising the war-sound of his nation. These are the feelings of
subjugated man all round the globe; and, depend upon it, nothing
but fear will control where it is vain to look for affection."[18]
Some of Mr Grattan's speeches are said to have been the most eloquent
ever delivered in the House of Commons. The following burst of
indignant patriotism, on the supposed wrongs of Ireland, affords a
favourable specimen of his style of oratory:--
"Hereafter, when these things shall be history, your age of
thraldom and poverty, your sudden resurrection, commercial
redress, and miraculous armament, shall the historian stop to
declare, that here the principal men amongst us fell into mimic
traces of gratitude: they were awed by a weak ministry, and bribed
by an empty treasury; and when liberty was within their grasp, and
the temple opened her folding-doors, and the arms of the people
clanged, and the zeal of the nation urged and encouraged them on,
that they fell down, and were prostituted at the threshold.
"I will not be answered by a public lie in the shape of an
amendment: neither, speaking for the subjects' freedom, am I to
hear of faction. I wish for nothing but to breathe in this our
island, in common with my fellow-subjects, the air of liberty. I
have no ambition, unless it be the ambition to break your chains,
and contemplate your glory. I never will be satisfied as long as
the meanest cottager in Ireland has a link of the British chain
clanking in his rags: he may be naked, he shall not be in irons.
And I do see the time is at hand, the spirit is gone forth, the
declaration is planted: and though great men should apostatise,
yet the cause will live: and though the public speaker should die,
yet the immortal fire shall outlast the organ which conveyed it,
and the breath of liberty, like the word of the holy man, shall
not die with the prophet, but survive him."[19]
We shall add only to these copious and interesting quotations two
passages from the greatest masters of French eloquence.
Bossuet, in his funeral oration on Henrietta, daughter of France and
Queen of England, the consort of Charles I., thus expresses himself:--
"Christians!" says he, in the exordium of his discourse, "it is
not surprising that the memory of a great queen--the daughter,
the wife, the mother of monarchs--should attract you from all
quarters to this melancholy ceremony; it will bring forcibly
before your eyes one of those awful examples which demonstrate
to the world the vanity of which it is composed. You will see in
her single life the extremes of human things: felicity without
bounds, miseries without parallel; a long and peaceable enjoyment
of one of the most noble crowns in the universe--all that birth
and grandeur could confer that was glorious--all that adversity
and suffering could accumulate that was disastrous; the good
cause attended at first with some success, then involved in
the most dreadful disasters. Revolutions unheard of, rebellion
long restrained, at length reigning triumphant; no curb there
to license, no laws in force. Majesty itself violated by bloody
hands--usurpation and tyranny, under the name of liberty--a
fugitive queen, who can find no retreat in her three kingdoms, and
was forced to seek in her native country a melancholy exile. Nine
sea voyages undertaken against her will by a queen, in spite of
wintry tempests--a throne unworthily overturned, and miraculously
re-established. Behold the lessons which God has given to kings!
thus does He manifest to the world the nothingness of its pomps
and its grandeur. If our words fail, if language sinks beneath the
grandeur of such a subject, the simple narrative is more touching
than aught that words can convey. The heart of a great queen,
formerly elevated by so long a course of prosperity, then steeped
in all the bitterness of affliction, will speak in sufficiently
touching language; and if it is not given to a private individual
to teach the proper lessons from so mournful a catastrophe, the
King of Israel has supplied the words--'Hear, O ye great of the
earth! Take lessons, ye rulers of the world!'"[20]
A very different man from Bossuet, but who was perhaps his superior in
nervous eloquence, Robespierre, thus spoke on the last occasion when he
addressed the Convention, then bent on his destruction:--
"They call me a tyrant! If I were so, they would fall at my feet:
I should have gorged them with gold, assured them of impunity
to their crimes, and they would have worshipped me. Had I been
so, the kings whom we have conquered would have been my most
cordial supporters. It is by the aid of scoundrels you arrive
at tyranny. Whither tend those who combat them? To the tomb and
immortality! Who is the tyrant that protects me? What is the
faction to which I belong? It is yourselves! What is the party
which, since the commencement of the Revolution, has crushed all
other factions--has annihilated so many specious traitors? It
is yourselves; it is the people; it is the force of principles!
This is the party to which I am devoted, and against which crime
is everywhere leagued. I am ready to lay down my life without
regret. I have seen the past; I foresee the future. What lover
of his country would wish to live, when he can no longer succour
oppressed innocence? Why should he desire to remain in an order
of things where intrigue eternally triumphs over truth--where
justice is deemed an imposture--where the vilest passions, the
most ridiculous fears, fill every heart, instead of the sacred
interests of humanity? Who can bear the punishment of seeing
that horrible succession of traitors, more or less skilful in
concealing their hideous vices under the mask of virtue, and who
will leave to posterity the difficult task of determining which
was the most atrocious? In contemplating the multitude of vices
which the Revolution has let loose pell-mell with the civic
virtues, I own I sometimes fear that I myself shall be sullied in
the eyes of posterity by their calumnies. But I am consoled by
the reflection that, if I have seen in history all the defenders
of liberty overwhelmed by calumny, I have seen their oppressors
die also. The good and the bad disappear alike from the earth;
but in very different conditions. No, Chaumette! 'Death is _not_
an eternal sleep!'--Citizens, efface from the tombs that maxim,
engraven by sacrilegious hands, which throws a funeral pall over
nature, which discourages oppressed innocence: write rather,
'Death is the commencement of immortality!' I leave to the
oppressors of the people a terrible legacy, which well becomes the
situation in which I am placed: it is the awful truth, 'Thou shalt
die!'"[21]
It must be evident to every impartial person, from these quotations,
that the superiority of ancient to modern eloquence, so far as the art
itself is concerned, is great and indisputable. The strong opinion of
Lord Brougham, on this subject, must command the universal assent of
every reasonable mind:--
"It is impossible for any but the most careless observer, to avoid
remarking the great differences which distinguish the oratory of
ancient from that of modern times. The immeasurable superiority of
the former is far from being the only, or even the principal, of
these diversities: that proceeds, in part, from the greater power
of the languages, especially the Greek--the instrument wielded
by the great masters of diction; and in so far the superiority
must for ever remain undiminished by any efforts on the part of
modern rhetoricians. If, in such varied and perfect excellencies,
the most prominent shall be selected, then doubtless is the palm
due to that entire and uninterrupted devotion which throws the
speaker's whole soul into his subject, and will not even--no,
not for an instant--suffer a rival idea to cross its resistless
course, without being swiftly swept away and driven out of sight,
as the most rapid engine annihilates or shoots off whatever
approaches it with a velocity that defies the eye. There is no
coming back on the same ground, any more than any lingering over
it. All is done at once; but the blow is as effectual as it is
single, and leaves not anything to do. All is at each instant
moving forward, regardless of every obstacle. The mighty flood
of speech rolls on in a channel ever full, but which never
overflows. Whether it rushes in a torrent of allusion, or moves
along in a majestic exposition of enlarged principles, descends
hoarse and headlong in overwhelming invective, or glides melodious
in narrative and description, or spreads itself out shining in
illustrations, its course is ever onward and ever entire; never
scattered, never stagnant, never sluggish. At each point manifest
progress has been made, and with all that art can do to charm,
strike, and please. No sacrifice, even the smallest, is ever
made to effect; nor can the hearer ever stop for an instant to
contemplate or admire, or throw away a thought upon the great
artist, till all is over, and the pause gives time to recover his
breath."[22]
It is the more remarkable that this great and decisive superiority on
the part of ancient oratory should exist, when it is recollected that
the information, sphere of ideas, and imagery at the command of public
speakers, in modern times, is so widely extended in comparison of what
it was in Greece and Rome. As much as the wide circuit of the globe
exceeds the limited shores of the Mediterranean Sea, do the knowledge
and ideas which the modern orator may make use of outstrip those which
were at the disposal of the brightest genius in antiquity. Science has,
since the fall of Rome, been infinitely extended, and furnished a great
variety of images and allusions--many of them of the most elevated
kind--which at once convey a clear idea to any educated audience, and
awaken in their minds associations or recollections of a pleasing or
ennobling description. The vast additions made to geographical and
physical knowledge have rendered the wide surface of the globe, and the
boundless wonders of the heavens, the theme alike for the strains of
the poet, the meditations of the philosopher, and the eloquence of the
orator. Modern poetry has added its treasures to those which antiquity
had bequeathed to us, as if to augment the chords which eloquence can
touch in the human heart. Chivalry has furnished a host of images,
ideas, and associations wholly unknown to ancient times; but which,
however at times fantastic or high-flown, are all of an ennobling
character, because they tend to elevate humanity above itself, and
combat the selfish by the very excess of the generous affections.
History has immensely extended the sphere of known events, and not
only studded the annals of mankind with the brightest instances of
heroism or virtue, but afforded precedents applicable to almost every
change that can occur in the varied circumstances of human transaction.
Above all, Religion has opened a new fountain in the human heart, and
implanted in every bosom, with the exception only of those utterly
depraved, associations and recollections at once of the most purifying
and moving kind. The awful imagery and touching incidents of the Old
Testament, exceeding those in the Iliad itself in sublimity and pathos;
the pure ideas and universal charity of the New, as much above the
utmost efforts of unassisted humanity, have given the orator, in modern
times, a store of images and associations which, of all others, are the
most powerful in moving the human heart. If one-half of this magazine
of ideas and knowledge had been at the disposal of the orators of
antiquity, they would have exceeded those of modern Europe as much in
the substance and magnificence of their thoughts, as they already do in
the felicity and force of their expression.
A key may be found to the causes of this remarkable superiority in
ancient eloquence, notwithstanding the comparatively limited extent of
the materials of which they had the disposal, in the very qualities
in which the ancient orators stand pre-eminent. It is the exquisite
taste and abbreviated force of their expression which renders them
unrivalled. In reading their speeches, we are perpetually tempted to
shut the book even in the most interesting passages, to reflect on the
inimitable brevity and beauty of the language. It is a mistake to say
this is owing to the construction of the Greek and Roman languages,
to the absence of auxiliary verbs, and the possibility of combining
expression, as in modern German, so as to convey a complex idea in
a single word. Undoubtedly that is true; but who made the ancient
languages at once so copious and condensed? It was the ancients
themselves who did this. It was they who moulded their tongues into so
brief and expressive a form, and, in the course of their progressive
formation through successive centuries, rendered them daily more brief
and more comprehensive. It was the men who made the language--not the
language the men. It was their burning thoughts which created such
energetic expressions, as if to let loose at once the pent-up fires of
the soul. Those who assert the reverse fall into the same error as the
philosophers who ascribe the character of the Anglo-Saxons to their
institutions, when, in truth, their institutions are owing to their
character.
The main causes to which the extraordinary perfection of ancient
oratory are to be ascribed, are the great pains which were bestowed on
the education of the higher classes in this most difficult art, and the
practice of preparing nearly all their finest orations before delivery.
It will sound strange in modern ears to assign these as the causes of
this undoubted superiority, when the practice with them is in both
particulars directly the reverse; but a very little consideration must
convince every reasonable mind that it is to these that it is to be
ascribed.
Great as is the importance and undoubted the influence of eloquence
in modern Europe, it is by no means so considerable as it was in
the states of antiquity. This arises in part from the different
structure of government in ancient and modern times. We hear nothing
of eloquence in Persia, Egypt, or the East. Military power, political
address, were then, as they have ever since been in that part of
the world, the sole passports to greatness. But it was otherwise in
the republics which studded the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
Universally, in them, supreme power was lodged in the citizens of a
single city, or in them jointly with the landowners in the vicinity,
who could with ease attend its public assemblies. Every free citizen
had a vote in those assemblies, in which every subject, political,
social, and judicial, was discussed and determined. Questions of peace
and war, of imposing or taking off taxes, of concluding treaties, of
domestic laws, of appointing generals and ambassadors, of providing
for the public subsistence, of determining private suits, of criminal
punishments, of life and death, were all submitted to those assemblies,
debated in their presence, and decided by their suffrages. Political
power, personal fame, the direction of the state, the command of its
armaments, the decision of its dearest public and private interests,
were all to be attained by obtaining a sway in these public assemblies,
and could seldom be obtained in any other way. Hence it was that, as
has been finely observed, in modern times, the soldier is brave, and
the lawyer is eloquent; but in ancient, the soldier was eloquent, and
the lawyer was brave. Power of any sort could be attained only by
acquiring an ascendency in the popular assemblies; whoever acquired
that ascendency was liable to be immediately called to command the
fleets or armies of the republic. Whatever opinions may be formed of
the tendency of such a system of government, to insure either the wise
direction of its civil interests or the successful protection of its
military enterprises, there can be but one as to its effect in insuring
the highest attention to oratory, by which alone the command of either
could be obtained.
But, in addition to this, the two great instruments of power which, in
modern times, so often outweigh the influence of spoken oratory, were
awanting. The _press_ was unknown in antiquity; there was no public
religious instruction: there were neither daily newspapers to discuss
passing events, nor a stock of printed works to form the principles
of the people, or mould their judgments, nor an Established Church,
to give them early and creditable impressions. Education, derived
entirely from oral instruction or costly manuscripts, was so extremely
expensive that it was beyond the reach of all but the most wealthy
classes. Three-fourths of the persons who had votes in any public
assembly had their principles formed, their information acquired, their
taste refined, in the theatres and the forum. The temples were open
for sacrifice or ceremonies only; not for instruction in religious
principle or moral duty. Immense was the addition which this entire
want alike of a public press, and a system of religious instruction,
had upon the importance of popular oratory. The tragedian and the
orator had the entire moulding of the public mind in their hand, alike
in fixed principle, previous prepossessions, and instant decision.
No daily, or monthly, or quarterly paper existed to form the subject
of study at home; no standard works were in every one's hands, to
give principles right or wrong, from which they were very unlikely
to swerve:--no religious tuition, to the influence of which, in any
momentous crisis, appeal might be made. The eloquence of the forum, the
transports of the theatre, were all in all.
It resulted, from this extraordinary and most perilous power of oratory
in ancient times, that the attention bestowed throughout life, but
especially in youth, on training to excellence in it, was unbounded.
In truth, education with them was so much directed to the study and
the practice of oratory, that it formed in most of their academies the
main object of instruction. Other topics--philosophy, poetry, science,
mathematics, history--were not neglected, but they were considered
chiefly as _subordinate to oratory_--rather, they were the preparatory
studies, from which a perfect orator was to be formed. Cicero says
expressly, that there is no subject of human knowledge of which the
orator may not avail himself, in his public address, and which may not
serve to enlighten his narrative, strengthen his argument, or adorn
his expression.[23] This shows how lofty was the idea which he had
formed of this noble art, and the aids which he was fain to obtain for
it, from all, even the most dissimilar, branches of human knowledge.
The greatest orators and philosophers of antiquity devoted themselves
to instruction in its principles, and consideration of the manner of
cultivating it with the highest success. Demosthenes taught, as every
schoolboy knows, for a talent: a sum above £200, and equal to at least
£500 in modern times. Cicero has left several beautiful treatises on
oratory; Isocrates owes his fame mainly to his writings on the same
subject; Quintilian has bequeathed to us a most elaborate work on its
principles, and the mode of its instruction; the treatise of Aristotle
on oratory is not the least celebrated of his immortal works. So vast
was the number, and so great was the influence of the schools of
rhetoric, that they came, in the later days of antiquity, to supersede
almost every other subject of study; they attracted the ingenious
youth from every part of the world to the groves of the Academy, and
singly supported the prosperity and fame of Greece, for centuries after
they had sunk under the withering grasp or declining fortunes of the
Byzantine empire.
It is evident from these considerations, as well as the intrinsic
beauties which the great masters of the art exhibit, that oratory in
ancient times was regarded as one of the _Fine Arts_. It was considered
not merely as the means of winning the favour, of convincing the
judgment, or securing the suffrages of the judges, but of moving the
affections, rousing the feelings, and elevating the mind. Quintilian
mentions the various definitions of the art of oratory which had been
invented by the rhetorical writers of antiquity, and he inclines to
that of Cicero, who held that it was the art of speaking "_apte ad
persuadendum_." This was its end, its aim; and undoubtedly it was so:
but the _modes of persuasion_--the methods of influencing the judgment
or moving the affections--were as various as the channels by which the
intellect may be determined, the feelings roused, or the heart touched.
Not less than poetry, painting, or statuary, they classed oratory
among the fine arts; and, indeed, they placed it at the head of them
all, because it embraced all their influences, and retouched, as it
were, by allusion, all the chords which they had previously caused to
vibrate. The surprising force with which they did this, considering the
comparatively limited stock of ideas, knowledge, and imagery which was
at their disposal, compared to what obtains in modern times, affords
the most decisive proof of the great attention they had bestowed on the
principles of the art, and the perfection to which they had brought
the means of influencing the mind--not only by the force of reason, or
the conceptions of genius, but by all the subordinate methods by which
their effect in delivery was to be augmented. With them the object of
oratory was not merely to persuade the understanding, but
"To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To move the passions, and to melt the heart."
Nor was less attention bestowed, in ancient times, upon training young
men, to whatever profession they were destined, in that important and
difficult branch of oratory which consists in intonation and delivery.
It is well known that this is a branch of the art which is susceptible
of the very greatest improvement by education and practice, and that
even the brightest natural genius can rarely attain it, without the aid
of instruction or the lessons of experience. The surprising improvement
which is so often observed in persons trained to different professions
or habits, when they have been for some time engaged in public
speaking--above all, in emphasis and action--affords daily proof of the
vast effects of practice and experience in brightening the delivery of
thought. The prodigious influence of accent and intonation in adding
to the power of eloquence is equally well known, and may often be
perceived in listening to the difference between the same verses when
recited by an ordinary reader, and what they appear when illuminated
by the genius, or enforced by the feeling, of a Kemble or a Faucit.
The ancients, accordingly, were indefatigable in their endeavours
to improve themselves in this particular, and availed themselves of
means to attain perfection in it to which modern genius would scarcely
condescend. Cicero, when advanced in life, and in the meridian of
his fame, took lessons from Roscius, the great tragic actor of the
day; and the efforts of Demosthenes to overcome the impediments of a
defective elocution, by putting pebbles in his mouth, and declaiming
on the shores of the ocean, the roar of which resembled the murmurs
of the forum, demonstrate that the greatest masters of the art of
eloquence were fully alive to the vast influence of a powerful voice
and animated delivery, in heightening the effect even of the most
perfect efforts of oratory, and disdained no means of adding to their
impression. When asked, What is the first requisite of eloquence? the
last of these orators answered "Action;" the second? "Action;" the
third? "Action." Without going so great a length, and admitting the
full influence of the genius of Demosthenes in composing the speeches
which he so powerfully delivered, every one must admit the influence of
an impassioned delivery in heightening the effect of the highest, and
concealing the defects of the most ordinary oratory.
Quintilian opens his second book by a discussion of the question, which
he says occupied a prominent place in the schools of antiquity, at what
age a boy should be taken from the teachers of grammar, and delivered
to the instructors in rhetoric. By the former, they were taught grammar
and the elements of composition; by the latter, exercised in themes,
compositions in their own language, translations from Greek, extempore
debate, and instructed in declamation, intonation, and action. They
were not sent out into the world till they had spent several years in
the latter preparatory studies and exercises; and in them were trained
young men of all sorts, whether intended for the civil or military
classes. It was this which gave its statesmen and generals so wonderful
a command of the means of moving the human heart, and enabled them,
in the most trying situations, and often in the crisis of a battle or
the heat of a tumult, to utter those noble and impassioned sentiments
which so often determined the fate of the day, or even the fortunes
of their country; and which are so perfect that, when recorded in
the historians of antiquity, they have the appearance of having been
imagined by the genius of the writer. Nor was the attention to these
elements of eloquence sensibly diminished in the progress of time, when
the establishment of absolute power in the hands of a single person had
transferred, as in the days of Napoleon, the discussion of all public
or national questions to the council of state, or the private closet
of the emperor. On the contrary, it seems to have daily increased, and
was never so great as when the military fortunes of the empire were
declining, and its external influence yielding to the increasing weight
of the northern nations. A false and turgid style of eloquence, indeed,
became then generally prevalent, as it always does in the later days
of a nation, and in periods of political servitude: but attention to
the means of attaining it underwent no diminution. The wisdom or policy
of the emperors left various important functions to their _municipia_,
or "little senates," as they were called. The judicial functions,
for the most part, were still intrusted to the citizens: they had
the management, almost uncontrolled, of their local concerns: and so
great was the importance of securing their suffrages that the power of
influencing them, by means of oratory, continued to the very last to be
the chief object of instruction to the youth.
The instructors of youth in England have practically solved the
question which divided the teachers of antiquity, for they deliver
the youth at once from the grammar-school to the forum. They teach
him the dead languages incessantly, up to the age of eighteen, at
school: in the universities, mathematics in one university, and logic
in the other, divide his time with the composition of Greek prose or
Latin verse. But in those branches of study which have a bearing on
eloquence, or are likely to improve the style of composition, the
main attention of all is still directed to composition in the _dead
languages_. They think the art of speaking or writing in English is
not to be learned by exercise in that language, but by exercise in
another. They hold we are likely to become eloquent in this our English
isle, not by translating Cicero into English, but by translating
Addison into Latin; to become great poets, not by rendering Horace
into the tongue of Gray and Campbell, but by rendering the immortal
verses of these into the languages of Pindar or Virgil. Cicero and Mr
Pitt were of an opposite opinion. They held that, although the study
of the masterpieces of antiquity is the great school of oratory, and
the best path to rivalling their beauties, yet this is to be done, not
by prosecuting the vain endeavour to emulate, in these days, their
perfection in _their tongue_, but by seeking to _transfer it to our
own_. Translations from the Greek into Latin formed a large part of
the preparatory studies of Cicero,--from Thucydides and Cicero were
the favourite occupation at college of Mr Pitt.[24] It may be that
these great masters of ancient and modern eloquence were wrong--that
their time would have been better employed in composing Greek and
Latin verses, in attaining a thorough knowledge of Greek and Latin
prosody, or becoming masters of all the niceties of Greek or Latin
prose composition; but we shall not enter on the great debate. We are
content to let education for all classes, in our universities, remain
what Mr Locke long ago said it was, the education of schoolmasters;[25]
and shall content ourselves with signalising this peculiar system of
training as one great cause of the admitted inferiority of modern to
ancient eloquence.
None can be more thoroughly impressed than we are with the vast
importance of these noble establishments, or their effect in elevating
the tone of the national mind, and improving the taste of the youth
who daily issue from their walls. It is just from a sense of these
advantages that we are so desirous to enhance and extend the sphere of
their usefulness, and, by keeping them abreast of the age, and prepared
to meet its wants, secure for the classes they instruct the lead in the
national affairs to which they are entitled.
It cannot be disputed that, although English composition, or
translation from the classics into English, is not altogether
overlooked in the English universities, yet it forms a subordinate
object of attention. We are all aware how many eminent men have first
become celebrated by their prize poems. But those are the exceptions,
not the rule. The classics at one university, the higher mathematics at
another, form the great passports to distinction; the highest honours
at either are only to be won by attention to one or other, or both, of
these branches of knowledge. It is not surprising that, when this is
the case, the attention of the young men should be mainly turned to
composition in the dead languages, or to the most abstruse parts of
mathematics; and that when they come to speak in public, or deliver
sermons in their own language, they should, in the great majority of
cases, be entire novices, both as concerns the method of composition
and the graces of oratory. They are, in truth, called upon for the
first time to speak what is to them a _foreign_ language; to discuss
topics, to them, for the most part unknown; and practise a difficult
art, that of delivery, to which they are entire strangers. If they
were to address their audiences in Greek, they might possibly rival
Æschines or Demosthenes; if in Latin, outstrip Cicero; and if required
to compose verses, equal Horace or Pindar. But since they are called
on, when they go out into life, to speak neither in Greek prose nor
Latin prose, to compose neither in Greek verse nor Latin verse, but
to _speak in good English_, and not about gods and goddesses, but the
prices of corn and beef, the evils of pauperism and the load of taxes,
they too often find themselves entirely at a loss, and inwardly lament
the precious years, never to be recalled, which have been devoted to
pursuits of no practical utility in life.
It is the more extraordinary that so little attention should be paid at
our universities to composition, or the art of oratory, in the English
tongue, that every day's experience proves that the power of public
speaking is not only absolutely essential to the most moderate success
in many professions, but is indispensable to the highest grades _in
all_. In the Houses of Lords and Commons, at the Bar, in the Church, it
is of course necessary from the very outset, if the very least eminence
is to be looked for. But not only in the professions of which oratory
is the very foundation, but in every case of life where a certain
degree of eminence has been attained, it becomes of equal importance,
and the want of it will be equally felt. The landed proprietor will
find it impossible to maintain his influence in his county, unless,
on the hustings and in political meetings, on the bench of justices,
at county and railway meetings, he is prepared to take his part in
debate, and can come off with a creditable appearance. The merchant or
manufacturer who has become a _millionnaire_ by a life of laborious
industry, will find that he cannot keep his place in society unless he
call deliver his sentiments with effect at civic dinners, meetings for
business, in the magisterial chair, or at the festive board. Even the
soldier and sailor, when they rise to eminence in their profession,
are called on to speak in public, and grievously suffer if they cannot
do so. Many a gallant spirit, which never quailed before an enemy, has
been crushed, and his reputation injured, by inability to speak in a
public assembly, or to answer appropriately a complimentary speech at a
public dinner. Indeed, the influence of public speaking in the country
is not only great, but daily increasing, and it confers influence and
distinction often far beyond the real merits of the speaker, and, for
its want, the most solid or brilliant parts in other respects can make
no compensation. The great body of men invariably impute inability
to speak well in public to want of ideas; whereas, in reality, it
generally arises from want of practice, and often coexists with the
greatest acquirements and the most brilliant genius. Strange that the
art of English oratory, upon which the experience of all tells them
success in the higher stations of life is entirely dependent, should,
by common consent, be invariably neglected, and that the art of making
Latin verses, which universal experience tells all is of no earthly use
in life, except to one in a thousand, should, by common consent, be
universally cultivated!
It is constantly said, that the object of the extraordinary attention
paid in our schools and colleges to composition in the dead languages,
is to enable the students properly to appreciate the beauties of their
authors, and that, without an exact knowledge of prosody and writing
in them, this appreciation cannot be attained. This is doubtless in
some degree true: but the point is, at what cost is this proficiency
attained, and to what proportion of the students is it of any practical
benefit? Is there one in ten to whom the beauty of poetry will ever be
intelligible, one in a hundred who will ever be a poet? If we were to
live to the age of Methusalem, it might be worth while to set apart
ten years for classical composition, ten more for Italian, and ten for
German; but since our life is limited to threescore and ten years, and
a seventh of that only can be devoted to education, is it expedient to
devote the _whole_ of that time to that one object? If ten years are
devoted to the mastering of Greek composition and Latin prosody, _what
time is left_ for learning to speak or write in English? What should
we say if ten years were devoted by every English young man to the
composition of German or Italian verses, because it would better enable
him to appreciate the beauties of Schiller or Metastasio, of Korner or
Petrarch? Yet is composition in these living languages more practically
useful, both for the business of life and for improvement in our own
tongue, than in the dead, because it is often of advantage in society,
and their tongues are at bottom derived from the same roots, and are
similar in construction to our own.
It is the more to be regretted that, in our Universities, translations
from English into Greek or Latin should be made so great an object,
instead of translations from Greek or Latin into English, because the
latter study is perhaps the most beneficial, both to spread a taste for
ancient beauties, and to diffuse the means of rivalling them in our own
tongue, which the wit of man has ever devised. There is nothing which
improves the style like translation from the masterpieces of foreign
languages. It is far more beneficial than copying or committing to
memory the most perfect specimens of composition in our own tongue,
because it both brings us in contact with the most exquisite specimens
of human genius, and exercises the mind in the endeavour to transfer
them to our own idiom. It varies the thought, it extends the ideas, it
suggests new methods of expression. It is the foreign travelling of the
soul. It renders foreign or ancient languages tributary to our own;
it fills the mind with remote ideas; it not only "elevates us in the
scale of thinking beings," but increases our power of communicating
our thoughts to the world. What boundless treasures have Milton and
Collins, Taylor and Gray, imported into our language from the classical
writers: how much was the nerve and form of their expression enhanced
by their study of antiquity! Of what value are all their Latin
compositions compared to those which, so enriched, they have left in
their own tongue?
The next circumstance which has contributed to stamp its peculiar
style, and hitherto unequalled perfection, on ancient oratory, is the
circumstance that it was all, or nearly all, WRITTEN and committed to
memory. This at least was _certainly_ the case with all the orations
which have come down to our times; for, if not written, how have they
been preserved? There were no short-hand writers in those days. The
art of stenography was unknown. No reporters from the _Times_ were in
attendance, to catch, with almost magical rapidity, every word which
fell from the speaker's lips, and render it with exact fidelity in its
ample columns the following morning. What was written came, and could
only come, from the author himself. It is well known that several of
the most celebrated speeches of Cicero never were delivered at all: the
frequent repetition of the same ideas, in the same identical words, in
the orations of Demosthenes, affords conclusive evidence that they were
not merely carefully prepared, but actually written out. Indeed, to any
one who considers the style of the speeches, not only of these great
masters, but of all the orators of antiquity, it must be sufficiently
evident that nearly all that has come down to us had been written. Some
part, without doubt, was caught from the inspiration of the moment: a
happy retort was sometimes the result of an interruption, a felicitous
reply of an antagonist's attack. But these were the exceptions, not
the rule. These extempore bursts were interwoven with the framework of
the piece, and committed to paper next day, when the author corrected
his speech for permanent preservation. In the dexterous interweaving
consisted no small part of the skill of the orator. But the greater
part of every speech was, beyond all doubt, written and committed to
memory. The style everywhere proves this. It is as impossible for any
man, how bright soever his genius or copious his language, to speak
extempore in the condensed and emphatic style of the ancient orators,
as it would be to compose, as an Improvisatore, the verses of Pope or
Campbell.
This circumstance sounds strange in those times, and especially to an
Englishman, because it is well known that the grand requisite, the
one thing needful to a modern orator, is to speak extempore. Power
in reply is considered as the highest quality; and it is to it, _par
excellence_, that the much coveted phrase "effective" is applied. We
all know what would be the fate of a speaker in the House of Commons
who should commit his speeches to memory, and take lessons from
Macready or Kean in their delivery. Beyond all doubt, derision would
take the place of admiration; the laughs would be much more frequent
than the cheers. Yet this is precisely what Cicero and Demosthenes did;
it was thus that Pericles ruled the Athenian Democracy, and Æschines
all but overturned the giant strength of his immortal adversary. We
are not to imagine that these men, whose works have stood the test
of twenty centuries, were wrong in their system; it is not to be
supposed that every subsequent nation of the earth has misdirected its
admiration. It is more probable that some circumstances have occurred
to turn oratory, in modern times, aside from its highest flights, and
induced a style in public speaking which has now become habitual,
and will alone be tolerated, but which is inconsistent with the most
perfect style of oratory. Nor is it difficult, if we consider the
composition of modern senates, and the objects for which they are
assembled, to see what these circumstances are.
As freedom and popular institutions are indispensable to eloquence,
it is in England and France, since the Revolution, that oratory of
a high description can alone be looked for. But the Anglo-Saxons
are essentially a _practical_ race; and the stamp in this respect
which nature has affixed to their character, appears, in every age,
not less in their deeds than their accomplishments. Imagination has
shone forth most brilliantly in many individuals of the race--but,
generally speaking, we are not an imaginative people. The Fine Arts
have never struck their roots in the open air amongst us; they are
the delicate plants of southern realms, which require the shelter and
warmth of our conservatories. It is in the highly educated classes
alone that a taste for them is general. The romantic, not the classical
drama, alone has ever been popular with the mass of our people; the
attractions and fashion of the opera are required to make even the
beauties of Metastasio tolerable to the very highest ranks. In matters
of business, the same disposition is apparent. What is required, what
commands success, is neither the flowers of oratory nor brilliancy of
imagination nor elegance of diction, but argument to the point. It is
thus that the suffrages of jurymen are to be obtained; it is thus that
a majority in the House of Commons is to be secured. As the assemblies
to whom modern oratory is addressed are much less numerous than those
of antiquity--as they are representatives, not citizens; juries, not
Areopagites--a different style of speaking has become established from
that which was universally felt to be essential in the assemblies of
antiquity. When the crowds of a theatre were no longer to be addressed,
the theatrical style of oratory fell into disuse.
As argument to the point, accurate acquaintance with the subject,
and the power of communicating something of value to the interests
with which senates in modern times are intrusted, are the great
requisites which are now looked for, set and prepared speeches have
been abandoned. It was soon discovered that they would seldom meet
the exigencies of a debate, and still less furnish the materials of
a reply. They were felt to be of little value, because they did not
meet what the audience wished. They were as much out of place as a
set speech would be to a jury, after evidence had been led in a case.
It will always be so in situations where real business is to be done,
and the persons by whom it is to be done are not numerous assemblies,
little acquainted with the subjects of discussion--and therefore liable
to be swayed by the eloquence of the orator--but a limited number of
persons, most of whom are somewhat acquainted with it, and desire to
have their information extended, rather than their feelings touched.
It has accordingly been often observed, that the style of speaking in
the House of Commons has sensibly declined in beauty, though it has
increased in knowledge of the subject, since the Reform Bill introduced
the representatives of the commercial towns, and business men have
found a place in such numbers in the House of Commons. It may be
anticipated that, as their numbers and influence increase, the same
change will become still more conspicuous.
But although these considerations sufficiently explain how it has
happened that the style of speaking, in our national assemblies,
has become more business-like and less ornate than in the republics
of antiquity, and extempore speaking has grown into a universal
practice with all public men who aspire to the honours of "effective"
oratory--or such as would acquire a practical sway in the assemblies
to which it is addressed--it by no means follows from this, that
this system is not a deviation from the method by which alone a
perfect style of eloquence is to be attained, or a step in descent
in that noble art. Because a thing is useful and necessary, or even
unavoidable, with a view to attain certain ends, it is not to be
concluded, that it is by attending exclusively to it that the highest
and most perfect style in it is to be attained. The simple style of
singing best suits private performers, and often appears in the highest
degree charming, when flowing from the lips of taste and beauty; but no
one would compare art, in these its early stages, to what it appears
in the hands of Grisi or Mademoiselle Lind. The style of speaking
adopted by our leaders at the Chancery bar, or on the North Circuit, is
probably the best that could be devised to attain the object to which
the gentlemen of the long robe aspire--that of influencing the judges
or juries of those courts; but every one must see that that object is a
much inferior one to that which was aimed at by Cicero, Demosthenes, or
Bossuet. Their business is with oratory as an art; but, in addition to
this, eloquence is a fine art. Great eminence in the latter department
can never be attained but by sedulous preparation, and the committing
to memory of written compositions; and unless this is done, the fame of
no orator, how much soever he may be celebrated during his career, can
possibly be durable, or exceed the lifetime of the contemporaries to
whom his extempore effusions were addressed.
Nothing is more common than to hear it said, after a powerful speech in
the House of Lords or Commons has been delivered, that it rivalled the
most finished pieces of ancient eloquence; nay, it is sometimes added
that it was "above all Greek, above all Roman fame." In no instance,
however, has it been found that this reputation has been lasting, or
even long survived the actual appearance of the orator before the
Houses of Parliament. The ample columns of Hansard's _Parliamentary
Debates_ are often searched to discover inconsistencies in the
delivered opinions of public men; sometimes to bring to light facts
on statistics which subsequent time has caused to be forgotten; but
rarely, if ever, to cull out specimens of elevated thought, condensed
argument, or felicitous expression. None of these speeches will take
their place beside those of Cicero and Demosthenes, or the _Oraisons
Funèbres_ of Bossuet, all of which were written compositions. When the
historian comes to record the arguments used on the opposite sides, on
great public questions, he cannot refer to a more valuable and faithful
record than the Parliamentary Debates; for they tell at once what was
advanced in the legislature, and said in the nation, on every subject
that came under discussion: but he cannot turn to one which it will be
less safe to transfer unaltered to his pages. If he means to render
the arguments interesting, or even intelligible, to the great body of
readers, he must distil them into a twentieth part of their original
bulk: he must dismiss all the repetitions and circumlocutions; he must
say in words what he finds delivered in sentences; he must abridge a
hundred pages into four or five; he must, in short, do _ex post facto_,
and to convey an impression of the argument to future times, what the
ancient orators did _ab ante_, and in order to secure the suffrages
of the present. It is surprising, when this is carefully done, how
effectually a lengthened argument can be condensed into a few pages;
and how powerful the bone and muscle appears when delivered from the
oppression of the superincumbent flesh.
It is not to be wondered at that it should be so. The reason for it
is permanent, and will remain the same to the end of the world. In
the heat and animation of a debate, a happy idea may occasionally be
struck out, a felicitous retort may be suggested by an interruption.
The Parliamentary speeches contain many instances of such ready talent;
and it need hardly be said that the effect of it, at the moment of
delivery, is in general prodigious. But it is altogether impossible
to keep up a speech extempore in that style. Preparation and previous
study are the parents of brief and emphatic expression: without their
meeting, the offspring need not be looked for. The reason is, that it
is while one thought is in the course of delivery that the mind is
arranging those which are to succeed it. The conception of a ready
extempore speaker must always be two or three sentences ahead of his
elocution. Thence the necessity for circumlocution and repetition. It
is to _gain time_ for thought--to mould future ideas. If it were not
so, he would come to a dead stop, and break down at the end of the
first sentence. The faculty of doing this--of speaking of one thing
and thinking of another; of composing words in one sentence, and
arranging ideas for another, without pause or hesitation--and doing
this often in the midst of applause or interruption, is one of the most
wonderful efforts of the human mind; and it is its extreme difficulty
which renders elegant extempore speaking so very rare, and makes it,
when it does appear, the object of such general admiration. But we
are persuaded that the greatest master of extempore speaking will
admit, that it is wholly impossible to keep up eloquent and condensed
expression, for any length of time, without previous preparation.
Whenever you hear an orator bringing out condensed and elegant
expression for any length of time together, it may be concluded, with
absolute certainty, that he is speaking from preparation.