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men, habits of voice, once established, cannot be changed without great and persevering efforts; and it will not seem strange that the number of good readers is so small, even among educated and professional men. British writers have constantly complained of the dull, formal manner in which the Liturgy and the sacred Scriptures are read in their churches. And often, in the pulpits of this country, the reading of the Bible is apparently so destitute, not of feeling and devotion merely, but of all just discrimination, as to remind one of the question put by Philip to the nobleman of Ethiopia; "Understandest thou what thou readest?"

When we consider the extent to which these faults prevail in rhetorical reading, and the correspondent faults which of course prevail in public speaking, it is time that this greatly neglected subject should receive its due share of attention, amid the general advances in other departments of literature and taste.

Now, if there could at once spring up in our country a supply of teachers, competent, as living models, to regulate the tones of boys, in the forming age,-nothing more would be needed. But, to a great extent, these teachers are to be themselves formed. And to produce the transformation which the case demands, some attempt seems necessary to go to the root of the evil, by incorporating the principles of spoken language with the written. Not that such a change should be attempted in respect to books generally; but in books of elocution, designed for this single purpose, visible marks may be employed, sufficient to designate the chief points of established correspondence between sentiment and voice. These princi

ples being well settled in the mind of the pupil, may be spontaneously applied, where no such marks are used.

But as this subject is to be resumed under the head of inflections, I drop it here, with a remark or two in passing.

Be it remembered then, that all directions as to management of the voice, must be regarded as subsidiary to expression of feeling, or they are worse than useless. 'Emotion is the thing. One flash of passion on the cheek, one beam of feeling from the eye, one thrilling note of sensibility from the tongue,-have a thousand times more value than any exemplification of mere rules, where feeling is absent.'* The benefit of analysis and precept is, to aid the teacher in making the pupil conscious of his own faults, as a prerequisite to their correction. The object is to unfetter the soul, and set it free to act. In doing this a notation for the eye, designed to regulate the voice in a few obvious particulars, may be of much advantage: otherwise why shall we not dismiss punctuation too from books, and depend wholly on the teacher for pauses, as well as tones?

The reasonable prejudice which some intelligent men have felt against any system of notation, aes from the preposterous extent to which it has been carried by a few popular teachers, and especially by their humble imitators. A judicious medium is what we want. Five characters in music, and six vowels in writing, enter into an infinitude of combinations in melody and language. So the elementary modifications of voice in speaking are few, and easily

* Knowles.

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understood; and to mark them, so far as distinction is useful, does not require a tenth part of the rules, which some have thought necessary.

The intellectual and moral qualities indispensable to form an orator, are brought into view in the following pages, no farther than they modify delivery. The parts of external oratory, as voice, look, and gesture, are only instruments by which the soul acts;-when the inspiration of soul is absent, these instruments cannot produce eloquence. A treatise on delivery then, must presuppose the existence of genius, mental discipline, and elevation of moral sentiment ;-though a distinct consideration of these belongs to RHETORIC, as a branch of intellectual and Christian philosophy.

The parts of delivery, to be considered in their order, are,―ARTICULATION, INFLECTION, ACCENT and EMPHASIS, MODULATION, AND ACTION.

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I premise here, once for all, that I employ terms according to the best modern use, with as little as possible of technical abstractness. Elocution, which anciently embraced style, and the whole art of rhetoric, now signifies manner of delivery, whether of our own thoughts or those of others. Pronunciation, which anciently signified the whole of denvery, is now equivalent to orthöepy, or the proper utterance of single words. It were easy, by a critical disquisition, to trace out the etymological affinities of all these terms, and to teach the pupil a distinction between an orator, and an eloquent man, between articulation, and distinct enunciation of words &c; but instead of the scientific air adopted in some works on elocution, it seems to me that the better, because the simpler course, is

to use words as they will be most readily understood by men of reading and taste.

In this view I have chosen to make the head of Modulation so generic, as to include pitch, quantity, rate, rhetorical pause, transition, expression, and representation.

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SECT. 1. Importance of a good articulation.

ON whatever subject, and for whatever purpose, a man speaks to his fellow men, they will never listen to him with interest, unless they can hear what he says; and that without effort. If his utterance is rapid and indistinct, no weight of his sentiments, no strength or smoothness of voice, no excellence of modulation, emphasis, or cadence, will enable him to speak so as to be heard with pleasure. For his own sake too, the public speaker should feel the importance of a clear articulation. Without this, the necessary apprehension that his voice may not reach distant hearers, will lead to elevation of pitch, and increase of quantity; till he gradually forms a habit of vociferation, at the expense of all interesting variety, if not, (as in too many cases it has turned out,) with the

sacrifice of lungs and life. Every one who is accustomed to converse with partially deaf persons, knows how much more easily they hear a moderate voice with clear articulation, than one that is loud, but rapid and indistinct. In addressing a public assembly, the same advantage attends a voice of inferior strength, which marks the proper distinction of letters and syllables.

For these reasons the ancients regarded articulation as the first requisite in delivery; without which indeed, all other acquisitions are vain. On this account Cicero says,* the Catuli were esteemed the best speakers of the Latin language; their tones being sweet, and their syllables uttered without effort, in a voice neither feeble nor clamorous. So fastidious was the Roman ear, even among the uneducated, that the same orator says, "in repetition of a verse, the whole theatre was in an uproar, if there happened to be one syllable too many or too few. Not that the crowd had any notion of numbers; nor could they tell what it was which gave the offence, nor in what respect it was a fault." It was not because the fire of genius was wanting in the youthful orator of Athens, that his audience repeatedly met his first efforts in speaking, with hisses; but it was on account of his feeble, hurried, stammering utterance. To correct these faults it was that he betook himself to speaking amid the sound of dashing waves, the effort of walking up hill, and the inconvenience of holding pebbles in his mouth; that he might acquire a body to his voice, and a habit of distinct and deliberate

utterance.

* De Officiis, Lib. I.

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