simple and impulsive style of conversation has been banished from the pulpit, and, to a certain extent, from general oratory; and in its stead have been substituted inflections, tones, and transitions, which have no foundation in nature, and, when carried to an extreme, have something so singular to the unperverted ear as to excite a strong sensation of the ludicrous. These remarks, however, are not ineant to be of general application.
Many preachers are very slightly infected with these peculiarities, others altogether exempt from them; but they are characteristic of the school, and more or less perceptible in the majority of its pupils. Nor is the present generation of speakers to be held responsible for the blemishes of a style which they have not originated but received, and which none can more strongly condemn, or be more anxious to reform, than many of themselves.
The natural style of enunciation being thus abandoned to the stage, has been subjected to much of the prejudice which, in many minds, arises out of that connexion; and the simple and expressive accents of ordinary life, when accompanied with any degree of vivacity, have been stigmatized as theatrical; and it is to be lamented that the bad taste of some popular preachers, who have carried the extreme dramatic style into the pulpit, has given too much plausibility to the imputation. It would seem however that, from some cause or other, possibly from the difficulty of being simple and direct in a highly artificial state of society, the oratory of polished nations has always had a tendency to fall from truth into artifice and false convention. Cicero dwells at considerable length upon this subject, and, in his favourite style of antithesis, charges the Roman orators with having abandoned nature to the actors. “Hæc ego dico pluribus, quod genus hoc totum oratores, qui sunt veritatis ipsius actores, reliquerunt; imitatores autem veritatis histriones occupaverunt."
But any style of delivery, however objectionable, will derive from association a lustre not its own, when adopted by speakers of extraordinary fascination and power. There is a genius of that lofty and gigantic cast which can dispense with manner altogether, or mould any manner into energy and impressiveness, as his very crutch in the hand of Chatham became a powerful instrument of oratory; and there have been men in Scotland, Dr Chalmers for
instance, and there are at this very time, men so highly gifted, and of such extraordinary powers of persuasion, as to throw a dazzling and seductive halo round the most imperfect manner; and these are of all others the most dangerous models to the student, as he is naturally tempted to imitate, not the grandeur of their genius, which is indeed inimitable, but the mere external medium which that genius has elevated and ennobled. Thus early neglect and defective example combine to place the student of ordinary ability in a very painful and embarrassing position.