TRANSITION. Transition, in elocution, signifies a sudden change in the pitch, force, quality, quantity, or movement of the voice, as from a high to a low pitch, from a subdued to a very loud tone, from a slow to a very rapid rate of utterance, and the reverse of these. It refers, also, to the changes in style, as from the didactic to the declamatory; also to the expression of passion or emotion. Transition, when required by the subject or sentiment, if properly delivered, adds much to the pleasing variety and to the impressiveness of discourse; but when indulged in too much, is as unpleasant as monotony. A transition should be in every respect appropriate to the sentiment and the occasion. It should be given as if involuntarily, and not in accordance with any pre-arranged plan of delivery. Careful practice of the following examples, if persevered in, will soon enable the student to execute difficult transitions with skill and ease. First.-Repeat one, two, three, four, with gradually increasing force, and elevate the voice, as in the climax, up to the last number, which pronounce with great force, then pause for a moment and pronounce five, six, seven, eight, very slowly, in the lowest and deepest tone you can command. Increase the number of particulars as you acquire the power of sustaining the voice in a lower or a higher pitch. Second. Give the short and the open vowels, mingled in any order that you please, or a number of words or names, with increasing force and rapidity to the last one, then pause and let the voice fall as before advised, and give other sounds, words, or names very slowly with long quantity and in the lowest pitch of voice that you can reach. Third. Select for yourself suitable examples for practice. Also write out examples of transition of your own and exercise on them. EXAMPLES. 1. Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! 2. I know not what course others may take; but, as for me, give me liberty or give me death. 3. The bones of her sons, fallen in the great struggle for independence, lie intermingled with the soil of every State, from New England to Georgia, and there they will lie forever. 4. I an itching palm? you know that you are Brutus that speak this, or, by the gods, this speech were else your last. 5. They fought-like brave men, long and well; They piled that ground with Moslem slain; They conquered, but Bozzaris fell, Bleeding at every vein. CLIMAX. A Climax is a series of particulars, members, or sentences in which each successive particular, member, or sentence rises in force and importance to the last. Its delivery requires an increase of voice, energy, animation, or passion corresponding with the degree and nature of the climax. As to the manner in which the earnestness, passion, or emotion of any sentence should be expressed, no rules or directions can be given by which the student will be enabled to render it correctly. From a teacher who is able to give vivid exemplification of the modulation and manner best suited to this or any other class of examples, the student can derive more advantage than from all the rules which have ever been written upon the subject. Every example must be studied until it is understood and appreciated. Then, and not till then, the pupil will have a standard in his own mind by which he can test his performance. EXAMPLES. 1. It is, in my opinion, the shortest, easiest, and the best way of doing it. 2. Eloquence must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. It comes, if it comes at all, like the bursting of a fountain from the earth, with spontaneous, native, original force. 3. We shall make this a glorious, an immortal day. When we are in our graves our children will honor it'; on its annual return they will shed tears, copious, gushing tears, not of subjection and slavery, not of agony and distress, but of gratitude, of exultation, and of joy! 4. The only principles of public conduct that are worthy of a gentleman and a man are to sacrifice estate, ease, health, and even life itself in the sacred cause of liberty. 5. A day, an hour of virtuous liberty, is worth a whole eternity of bondage. 6. Cry God for Harry, England, and Saint George! 7. A hungry, lean-faced villain, A mere anatomy, a mountebank, A thread-bare juggler, and a "Fortune-teller," 8. As a peer of parliament, as speaker of this right honorable house, as keeper of the great seal, as guardian of His Majesty's conscience, as Lord High Chancellor of England, I am as much respected, nay, I will add as respectable, as the proudest peer I now look down upon. 9. Ask ye what ye should do? Would ye seek instruction? Ask ye yon conscious walls, Ask yonder senate house, whose stones are purple Go to the tomb where lie his murdered wife, And swell the general sound revenge! revenge! 10. All that lightens labor and sanctifies toil; all that renders man good, patient, wise, benevolent, just, humble, and at the same time great, worthy of intelligence, worthy of liberty, is to have perpetually before him the vision of a better world, darting its rays of celestial splendor through the dark shadows of the present life. I believe, I profoundly and reverently believe in God and in a future state of existence. 11. Live, loathed and long, You smiling, smooth, detested parasites, Courteous destroyers, affable wolves, meek bears, Cap and knee slaves, vapors, and minute jacks 12. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves at the foot of the throne and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and parliament. Our petitions have been slighted, our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult, our supplications disregarded, and we have been spurned with contempt from the foot of the throne. 13. It is utterly, totally, basely, and meanly false ! 14. This, this is eloquence, or rather it is greater and higher than all eloquence: it is action,-noble, sublime, God-like action. 15. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! 16. The cloud-cap't towers, the gorgeous palaces, Yea, all that it inherit, shall dissolve, EXCLAMATION. Exclamatory passages are such as show that the mind of the speaker is affected by some feeling, emotion, or passion. As to the nature of the feeling expressed in each of the following passages, and the manner in which it should be expressed, the reader must decide for himself from the language employed. EXAMPLES. 1. Now for the fight! forward through blood and cloud and fire! 2. Pity the sorrows of a poor old man, Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door, O give relief, and heaven will bless your store! 3. Ay, cling to your masters, judges, Romans, slaves! his charge is false. I dare him to his proofs ! 4. I am alone in all this wide, wide world; there's not one soul that cares for me! 5. Hence! home, ye idle creatures-get ye gone! 6. Hush!- Hark!-a deep sound strikes like a rising knell. 7. They're gone! they're gone! the glimmering spark hath fled! The wife and child are numbered with the dead! 8. Did you, sir, throw up a black crow? Not I! Bless me, how people propagate a lie! 9. Clarence has come! false! fleeting! perjured Clarence! 10. Praise ye the Lord! The Lord's name be praised! 11. Banished from Rome! what's banished, but set free from daily contact of the things I loath? 12. Hark! 'tis the watchman's faithful cry, Proclaims a conflagration nigh; See! yon flame upon the sky Confirms the dreadful tale. 13. Great heaven! how frail thy creature man is made! How by himself insensibly betrayed! 14. Thou slave! thou wretch! thou coward! Thou little valiant, great in villainy! Thou ever strong upon the stronger side! |