Hear you this triton of the minnows?--_Coriolanus_.
"Yet Mr. Pinkney is not an eloquent man; he is convincing, to be
sure--and that is to be eloquent in one way; but he would be more, and
fails." "Nothing can be further from eloquence, if by eloquence be
understood any thing that is persuasive, beautiful, dignified or
natural, than the declamation or reasoning of William Pinkney." "His
best speeches are a compound of stupendous strength, feeble ornament,
affected earnestness, and boisterous turbulent declamation." "But God
never meant him for an orator; he has no property of mind or body--no
not one, calculated to give him dominion in eloquence."
As old Doiley says in the farce, when told that "gold in the balance of
philosophy was light as phlogisticated air," this must be deep, for I
don't understand a word of it. The above are extracts from a work, in
which the author undertakes to deny to Mr. Pinkney the praise of
eloquence. No kind of composition confounds me more than criticism, and
especially that sort which pretends to develope the characteristics of
some distinguished orator. If one
----------------should
So get the start of the majestic world
as to "bear the palm alone," we feel a very natural curiosity to know
what was his appearance, his manner, and peculiar style of eloquence;
but alas! in the hands of the critic, he assumes so many shapes, that
the imagination is absolutely bewildered, and we turn away in despair
of finding out what the man was like. The critic like the newspaper,
contradicts himself at every step. One sentence tells us what another
denies; and we rise from the perusal of his sketch jaded and worn out
with the variety of contrariant ideas which have passed through our
brains. I am no critic, and heaven forbid I should ever belong to that
cold hearted fraternity, who more often pervert taste than improve it;
but I cannot forbear contesting the truth of this writer's assertions,
and declaring that he seems to me to be a Lilliputian about the body of
a Gulliver.
It has been said of Demosthenes, "that he has been deservedly styled
the prince of orators. His orations are strongly animated, and full of
the impetuosity and ardor of public spirit. His composition is not
distinguished by _ornament_ and splendor. Negligent of the lesser
graces, he seems to have aimed at the sublime, which lies in sentiment.
His action and pronunciation are said to have been uncommonly
_vehement_ and _ardent_. The Archbishop of Cambray gives him the
preference to Cicero, against whom he makes the objection of too much
_ornament_." According therefore to this author, if Wm. Pinkney was not
an orator, it follows that Demosthenes was none; because their style of
eloquence seems to have been alike in almost every particular, except
that Pinkney aimed at _ornament_, of which Demosthenes had none and
Cicero too much. If speeches, characterized by _stupendous strength_,
and _turbulent declamation_, and _convincing argument_, are neither
"persuasive, nor dignified, nor natural," then was not Demosthenes
persuasive, nor dignified, nor natural, and of course he was no orator
according to this definition. If ornament be a fault in Mr. Pinkney, he
had it in common with Cicero; but perhaps the author may say that
Cicero attained what Pinkney only aimed at. Hear him then again on the
subject of ornament, so passionately loved by Mr. Pinkney. "Bring him
in contact with a truly poetical mind, and his argument resembles a
battery of colored fire-works, giving out incessant brightness and
reverberation." It would seem then that ornament is not a common trait
of his eloquence, but a glitter which is effected by attrition against
poetical minds. It is then that he draws upon the inexhaustible stores
of beauty laid up in his mind, gathered from the writings of Shakspeare
and others, and retained by the force of a powerful memory. He has no
fancy of his own, but uses the fancy of others. Then surely he is so
far superior to Demosthenes, whose eloquence was thought to border on
the hard and dry; alike impetuous, vehement, stupendous and convincing
with him, and superadding a relish for the beauties of poetry; not
aiming at any _ornament_ of his own, but contented with what suggested
itself in illustration of his argument from the pen of others. Then how
is he feeble in ornament? But again; if there be nothing of dignity or
nature in Pinkney's _reasoning_, how is it discovered that his mind is
"_adamant clamped with iron_," [a poor conception, and suiting the
ideas of a blacksmith better than a belles-lettres scholar--for the
iron adds nothing to our thoughts of the strength of adamant;] that it
is "a colossal pile of granite, over which the thunders of heaven might
roll," &c. &c. It is useless to quote the rest of the unmeaning fustian
of the sentence.
After all this avowal of stupendous strength of argument, we are told
in a subsequent paragraph, that say what we will of Mr. Pinkney's
argument, he the author, never saw him yet--no never, pursue his
argument steadily for ten minutes at a time. Then how can it be so
overwhelming and convincing? Nothing lessens so much the force of
argument as a perpetual aberration from the subject. Again; "God never
meant him for an orator; he has no property of mind or body," &c. &c.
Not to say any thing of the presumption and impiety of determining for
God, I would ask what are the _bodily properties_ of an orator? This
writer has not condescended to define them, although he dwells at large
upon such as he thinks cast discredit upon Mr. Pinkney. It is scarcely
necessary to observe that Demosthenes was ungraceful in figure and
action; and that not only _orators_, but very wise and learned men,
have been repulsive in their persons, their features, and their manners
also. Though Cæsar and Cicero were exempt from defect in this respect,
as far as I remember Demosthenes stuttered--Socrates was bald and
flatnosed--Anthony a rough soldier--Lord Chatham's eloquence was
forcible, but uniform and ungraceful--Fox was a fop of Bond street, and
wore high heeled morocco shoes. Mr. Pinkney therefore may, without
reproach, be a "_thick, stout man, with a red fat English face_," and
Mr. Fox will keep him in countenance as a fashionable man. The
facetious Peter Pindar has said, that
Love hates your large fat lubberly fellows,
Panting and blowing like a blacksmith's bellows;
but I never heard that oratory did.
In the next breath we hear that "Mr. Pinkney has a continual appearance
of natural superciliousness and affected courtesy." _Continual_--and
yet afterwards "his manner is exceedingly arrogant and unpropitiating;"
and his deportment had been already described as "_brutal, arrogant,
full of sound and fury, accompanied by the rude and violent gestures of
a vulgar fellow_." One moment he is a giant, not only _metaphorically_,
but in sober truth, if we may judge from his stentorian lungs, which
have caused the author's whole system to jar--and from those violent
gesticulations, which indicate uncommon personal strength;--the next,
he turns out to be only five feet ten, and a petit maitre, and
affectedly courtly and conciliatory; and yet "nothing could make a
gentleman of him; he can neither look, act, _speak_, sit, nor _talk_
like one." Notwithstanding all this scurrility and abuse of Mr.
Pinkney's person, the author is not yet exhausted, but lavishes more
upon his intellect. "The physical powers of Mr. Pinkney," he says, "are
to my notion, strictly correspondent with his intellectual ones; both
arc solid, strong and substantial, but without grace, dignity or
loftiness." Loftiness! the same man who has such "prodigious elevation
and amplitude of mind," "and both have _a dash of fat English
dandyism_." I confess myself wholly at a loss to comprehend what the
fat dandyism of the intellectual powers is. A man's mind might, by a
forced metaphor, be said to be dandyish, perhaps; but a _fat mind_, is
a solecism in words wholly inadmissible, I think. "His style of
eloquence," it is added, "is a most disagreeable and unnatural compound
of the worst faults of the worst speakers." "He is said to resemble
Lord Erskine as he was in the day of his power: it is a libel on
Erskine, who was himself a libel on the reputation of his country as a
speaker." "The language of Mr. Pinkney does resemble that of Lord
Erskine; his reasoning is about as forcible." If the term style here be
the manner of speaking appropriate to particular characters, I have
shown that the censure is equally applicable to Demosthenes, the prince
of orators, who, in addition to his vehemence, was so ungraceful in his
motions, that it was necessary for him to practice with a naked sword
hanging over his shoulder; and therefore to compare Demosthenes to Lord
Erskine is a libel on Lord Erskine, himself a libel on his country as a
speaker--and _argal_, as Shakspeare says, Demosthenes is inferior to
English orators. If, again, the word style mean the manner of writing
with regard to language, these sentences would involve a contradiction,
and Mr. Pinkney is like and unlike Lord Erskine at the same time.
Yet why do I talk of Demosthenes? In the following sentences the author
admits that Mr. P. copied too closely after Cicero and Demosthenes. "He
desired to be eloquent; he thought of Demosthenes and Cicero, and his
heart swelled with ambition. He remembered not that he was to be a
lawyer, and that Demosthenes and Cicero were declaimers. He who should
look to move a body of Americans in a court of justice by the best
thundering of Demosthenes, would only make himself ridiculous." Very
true; and this may certainly prove that Mr. Pinkney might have been a
greater _lawyer_, by bending the whole force of his mind to that one
pursuit; but it has nothing to do with the premises. The ground is here
changed; this is not the point to be proved--not the quod erat
demonstrandum. The point to be proved is not the _propriety_ of
displaying eloquence before a jury, but that Wm. Pinkney was never
meant by God for an orator; that he has no property of mind or body to
make one. This is assuredly the scope of the extracts. Had Mr. P. not
aimed at _ornament_, his ashes might have passed undisturbed by the
author, who allows that he was decidedly the greatest _lawyer_ in
America, but is very angry that he was not the greatest in the world.
In spite of all this, however, Pinkney "pursued his way like a
conqueror, and had well nigh established himself as the high priest of
eloquence in America." Why, what a stupid, blind, misjudging race we
must be, to think of choosing a man for our high priest of eloquence
whom God never meant for an orator, and who had no property, not one,
of mind or body, for his business--and never to awaken from our folly
until this writer tore the urim and thummim from his breast. "The
giant," he says, "is gone down like a giant to the household of death,"
and there should at least have escaped the imputation of baseness which
deserved shooting. How _giants_ die, I pretend not to know; but imagine
such giants die pretty much like other people; and it seems to me
perfectly ridiculous to talk of a man's dying like a giant. At that
awful hour, the littleness of the greatest genius is a subject of
melancholy reflection. I will only add that I know nothing of this
writer. If his object was to guard us against the mischievous effects
of a false taste in eloquence, he cannot be angry with me for wishing
to guard against the equally bad effects of a false taste in criticism.