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THE

ELEMENTARY ELOCUTIONIST.

To excel in the Arts of Speaking and Writing,
Enthusiasm necessary.

ALLOW me to recommend, in the third place, not only the attainment of useful knowledge, but a habit of application and industry. Without this, it is impossible to excel in any thing. We must not imagine that it is by a sort of mushroom growth that one can rise to be a distinguished pleader, or preacher, or speaker, in any assembly. It is not by starts of application, or by a few years' preparation of study, afterwards discontinued, that eminence can be attained. No: it can be attained only by means of regular industry, grown up into a habit, and ready to be exerted on every occasion that calls for industry. This is the fixed law of our nature; and he must have a very high opinion of his own genius indeed, that can believe himself an exception to it. A very wise law of our nature it is; for industry is, in truth, the great condimentum, the seasoning of every pleasure, without which, life is doomed to languish. Nothing is so great an enemy both to honourable attainments, and to the real, to the brisk, and spirited enjoyment of life, as that relaxed state of mind which arises from indolence and dissipation. One that is destined to excel in any art, especially in the arts of speaking and writing, will be known by this more than by any other mark whatever an enthusiasm

for that art; an enthusiasm which, firing his mind with the object he has in view, will dispose him to refish every labour which the means require. It was this that characterised the great men of antiquity; it is this which must distinguish the moderns who would tread in their steps. This honourable enthusiasm, it is highly necessary for such as are studying oratory to cultivate. If youth wants it, manhood will flag miserably.

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Blair.

What inflection at knowledge, this, assembly, attained, nature, life, writing? What words do you consider emphatic in the first four sentences ? Where would you begin to use the rising or the falling inflection in these sentences? Why? Do they contain within themselves the nature of a question and answer? Or do they only belong to one of these states? What tone of voice do you think is necessary in reading this extract?

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BUT another inference may be drawn from the comparisons into which we have entered. If they prove the extreme pains taken by the Orator, they illustrate as strikingly the delicate sense of rhetorical excellence in the Athenian audience; and seem even to show that they enjoyed a speech, as modern assemblies do a theatrical exhibition, a fine drama, or piece of music, which, far from losing by repetition, can only produce its full effect, after a first, or even a second representation has made it thoroughly understood. It seems hardly possible, on any other supposition, to account for many of the repetitions in Demosthenes. A single sentence, or even a passage of some length, if it contain nothing very striking, might be given twice to a court or a popular assembly in modern times, after no great interval of time; but who could now venture upon making a speech,. about two-thirds of which had been spoken at different times, and nearly half of it upon one occasion the very year before? This would be impossible, how

little soever there might be of bold figures, and other passages of striking effect, But we find Demosthenes repeating, almost word for word, some of his most striking passages those which must have been foreseen by the context. It seems to modern readers hardly possible to conceive, that the functions of the critic thus performed by the Athenians, should not have interfered with the capacity of actors or judges, in which it was certainly the Orator's business chiefly to address them; and that the warmth of feeling, arising from a sense of the reality of all they were hearing, should not sometimes have been cooled by the recollection of the artificial display they were witnessing. Yet no fact in history is more unquestionable than the union of the two capacities in the Athenian audience-their exquisite discrimination, and high relish for rhetorical beauties, with their susceptibility of the strongest emotions which the Orator could desire to excite. The powers of the artist become, no doubt, all the more wonderful on this account; and no one can deny that he was an artist, and trusted as little to inspiration as Clairon, and the other actors, of whose unconcern during the delivery of passages which were convulsing the audience, so many striking anecdotes are preserved. In the whole range of criticism, there is not perhaps a more sound remark than that of Quintilian, which has sometimes been deemed paradoxical, only because it is profound, in his celebrated comparison of the Greek and Roman masters Cura plus in illo, in hoc naturæ.

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addat inflection at orator, audience, supposition, time before,

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them, account? The sentence beginning thus, and no one, and ending with preserved, may be read more rapidly, and in a lower tone of voice than the words immediately preceding. They may also be accompanied with a slight tinge of anger. All similar sentences require the same tone.

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1

The following Description and Reflections among the Ruins of Bijanagur, the last Capital of the last Hindu Empire, overthrown in 1564,

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You cross the garden, where imprisoned beauty once' strayed, you look at the elephant-stable, and the remaining gateway, with a mind busied in conjuring up some associations of luxury and magnifieence. Sorrowfully I passed on. Every stone beneath my feet bore the mark of chisels or of human skill and labour. You tread continually on steps, pavement, pillar, capital, or cornice, of rude relief, displaced or fallen, and mingled in confusion. There large masses of such materials have formed brushcovered rocks, there pagodas* are still standing entire. You may for miles trace the city-walls, and can often discover, by the fallen pillars of the long piazza, where it has been adorned with streets of uncommon width. One, indeed, yet remains nearly perfeet; at one end of it, a few poor ryots, who contrive to cultivate some patches of rice, cotton, or sugar-cane, in detached spots near the river, have formed mud-dwellings under the piazza.

While, with a mind thus occupied, you pass on through this wilderness, the desolating judgments on other renowned cities, so solemnly foretold, so dreadfully fulfilled, rise naturally to your recollection. Now, as you tread, the wild peacock, with a startling whirr, rises in your path; now you disturb the basking snake; and here, as the rustling of a thicket attracts your eye, are reminded that these ruins are the haunts of the hyena and the panther; that the small and frequent patches of sugar-cane give shelter to the wild boar; and that wolves are common in the rocky hills above you. I climbed the very loftiest rock at day-break, on the morrow of my first visit to the ruins, by rude and broken steps, winding between and over immense and detached masses of stone; and seated myself near a small pagoda, at the

* Heathen temples.

very summit.

From hence I commanded the whole extent of what was once a city, described by Cæsar Frederick as twenty-four miles in circumference. Not above eight or nine pagodas are standing, \but there are choultries innumerable. Fallen columns, arches, piazzas, and fragments of all shapes, on every side for miles. Can there have been streets and roads in these choked up valleys? Has the warhorse pranced, the palfrey ambled there? Have jewelled turbans once glittered where those dewdrops now sparkle on the thick-growing bamboos? Have the delicate small feet of female dancers prac tised their graceful steps, where that rugged and thorn-covered ruin bars up the path? Have their soft voices, and the Indian guitar, and the gold bells on their ankles, ever made music in so lone and silent a spot? They have; but other sights and other sounds have been seen and heard among these ruins. There, near that beautiful banyan tree, whole fami lies, at the will of a merciless prince, have been thrown to trampling elephants, kept for a work so savage, that they learn it with reluctance, and must be taught by man. Where those cocoas wave, once stood a vast seraglio, filled at the expense of tears and crimes; there, within that retreat of voluptuousness, have poison or the crease obeyed, often anticipated, the sovereign's wish. By those green banks, near which the sacred waters of the Toombudra flow, many aged parents have been carried forth, and exposed to perish, by those whose infancy they fostered.

Better, thought I, better the wilderness should lie fallow a week of centuries, than be fertile only in errors and crimes; than bring forth nothing but the bitter fruits of man's apostasy!

Sketches of India,

Several parts of this extract, certainly not without its beauties, may be read with a soothing melancholy tone The sentence, you tread continually on steps, has a few particulars-simple series. Would you make can, has, have, emphatic, and thus lead to the downward slide? Have their soft voices--a compound commencing series. centuries?

What inflection at standing, piazzas, wave, thoughts,

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