THE ILLUSTRATED PUBLIC SCHOOL SPEAKER AND READER Based on Grammatical Analysis : comprising a Choice Selection of Pieces for Reading and Recitation, annotated for Expression to which is added A Selection of Greek, Latin, French, and German Extracts suitable for BY A. K. ISBISTER, M.A., LL.B. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1870. 260.g 'MANY persons speak well who read badly, and good reading is not necessarily allied with good speaking; but I confidently assert that the two arts are so nearly connected, that the easiest way to learn to speak, is to learn to read. But it is not alone as a pathway to speaking that I earnestly exhort you to the study of reading: it is an accomplishment to be sought for its own sake. It has incalculable uses and advantages apart from its introduction to oratory. Tolerable readers are few good readers are extremely rare. Not one educated man in ten can read a paragraph in a newspaper with so much propriety, that to listen to him is a pleasure, and not a pain. Why should this be? Why should correct reading be rare, pleasant reading be rarer still, and good reading found only in one man in ten thousand?'-EDWARD W. Cox, Letters to a Law Student. 'ELOQUENCE, in this empire, is power. Give a man nerve, a presence, sway over language, and above all, enthusiasm; start him in the public arena with these requisites, and ere many years, perhaps many months, have passed, you will either see him in high station, or in a fair way of rising to it. Party politics, social grievances, and the like, are to him so many newly discovered worlds, wherein he may, with the orator's swordhis tongue-carve out his fortune and his fame.'-FRASER'S MAGAZINE. |