generally written not to be spoken, but after having been spoken: habita jam non ut habeantur. The fullest disquisition, however, upon the subject is to be met with in Quinctilian, who, whilst he advises writing wherever it is possible, and meditation where there is no time to write, still declares that if a young orator do not acquire the habit of extemporaneous speaking, he were better abandon public life altogether, and devote his talents to literary or other pursuits. But, the fluency of which he speaks is not the circulatoria volubilitas as he so expressively terms it-the volubility of mountebanks and pettifoggers-but the copiousness of a rich, and at the same time select and polished diction--the ripe fruit and crowning honor of long and assiduous study. As for that vulgar faculty of speaking a whole day about nothing, without stopping to breathe or even to think, we have the ample evidence of experience in this country that it may be infallibly acquired by practising a few months in any piepouder court or country circuit.

The truth of the matter is, not that we possess an art in extemporaneous debate, which the ancients did not: but that we have never compassed the higher art of writing and delivering speeches so well as to give them the appearance of arising inmediately and exclusively out of the subject under discussion. Their most studied orations were the most perfectly ex tempore, that is best suited to the time and the occasion. They aimed here, as every where else, at the Beau Ideal, but it was the Beau Idéal of the business speech. They expected the orator to do all he could, by his eloquence, to accomplish his end, and he was not to lose sight of it for a moment. Every thing merely rhetorical, every thing, however slightly irrelevant or unsuitable as a means to it, was censured with more or less severity. They had no taste for an artificial speech as such; on the contrary, ease, simplicity and nature they rigorously exacted; but they knew that it was in this, as it is in every other department of genius, that things done by great masters with most art, appear most natural to the connoisseur-they are refined into simplicity and elaborated into ease. I have taught him, says Boileau, speaking of Racine, à faire difficilement des vers faciles: and the saying is of universal application. Besides, there is no doubt that the orator, carried away by the ardor of discussion, or excited by accidental occurrences, often added much to what he had prepared. The extravagant phrases which Æschynes ridicules in Demosthenes, are not to be found any where in his published orations, and were probably instances of that "brave

* Brut. e. 24 cf. De Orat. lib. i. e. 33-34.

† Lib. x. c. 3.

disorder," not unbecoming and even eminently successful when involved "in such a storm of eloquence." Here too as in other arts,

Great wits, sometimes, may gloriously offend,
And rise to faults true critics dare not mend.

Such at least is the account Cicero gives of these "monsters" of diction, censured by a too fastidious rival.*

Let us pursue the subject a little further. The notion we are combating is (as we have said) founded upon a misconception of the Rhetoric of antiquity. We call their speeches orations, and we mean by that, that they do very well to be spouted by under-graduates from a College rostrum, but that they are not fitted to produce an effect upon the affairs of men-in short, that they are more made for show than for service, for the shade of the palæstra and the gymnasium, rather than for the dust and heat of battle. This is confounding two kinds of speaking, which the ancient masters kept as distinct as possible, and for which they exacted styles differing in their most important characteristics. We have already hinted at this distinction in the preceding paragraph, but it is important to explain it more fully, for it involves a cardinal principle of criticism, and one that was never lost sight of for a moment by the Greek writers-though the Romans, and even Cicero were not so scrupulous, and it is precisely in this, that their inferiority, as mere public speakers consists.

Orations were composed to be delivered either in the sxxλnía, or political assembly of the State, or in a wavyupis, a great meeting or festival such as that at the Olympic games, whither men repaired for purposes of religion, of pleasure or display, &c. To the former, people went exclusively and professedly to do business, and the more speedily their business was done, so it were done well, the better. Every thing said that had not an immediate bearing upon this engrossing object, was impertinent and absurd, and if one spoke with the tongue of an angel, the sed nunc non erat his locus would have been a fatal objection. The eloquence, therefore, of the public assembly was in the strictest sense of the word merely instrumental-a means—and whether it should be approved or not, depended upon its relative rather than absolute merits. One thing, however, was clear, and is continually insisted on by the Greeks, that the more simple and concise the style the better, provided the force and clearness of the argument were not impaired by it. But, besides this, as men are governed, even in the most important affairs, at least

* He said himself ἔτε γραψας οὔτ ̓ ἄγραφα κομιδη λέγειν Plut.

as much by their feelings as by reason, the most earnest, vehement and impassioned speech, other things being equal, was of course the most effective. The object of panegyrical oratory was totally different; it was, itself, an end rather than a means. The audience was collected for no other purpose than to listen to it; it led to no measures—no action. The orator, therefore, whose mind was supposed to be possessed with no engrossing interest and quite at ease, was allowed to display himself to the greatest advantage according to his own fancy, and to sport with musical and balanced periods, adscititious embellishments, lively and brilliant imagery; in a word, to indulge even in the freedom of an excursive and poetical style.* Doubtless the same distinction is to ascertain degree, practically made, in all popular assemblies. We regard the failure of Burke, in the House of Commons, as a decisive proof of this. With incomparably more genius than either Fox or Pitt, he could never command the attention of the audience. Why? Not because of a bad delivery, for, important as elocution is, it is altogether extravagant to ascribe such an effect to the want of it-but because his speeches were dissertations, full of splendid common places and rambling declamation (very philosophical, no doubt, but still) suiting one occasion as well as another. A reader who takes them up at his leisure and passes an hour or two in the perusal of them, without considering well the place where they were delivered, is not a proper judge of their merit as popular harangues, and it is vain to say, at this time of day, that they ought to have made a greater impression than the more practical debating of his celebrated rivals. The fact was certainly otherwise, nor do we at all wonder at it. Now, the Greek assemblies judged their orators by the same criterion; but judged them, as will appear more fully in the sequel, with incomparably greater severity.t

An audience disciplined by the elegance and correctness of elaborate compositions, would, of course, become more fastidious in everything relating to style, than one accustomed to the slovenliness and irregularities even of the best extemporaneous speaking. Accordingly, there can be no question but that both the Greeks and Romans manifested a degree of sensibility upon this subject that is not to be met with even in the most cultivated assemblies of modern times. A striking illustration of this delicacy of ear, is seen in the effect which the rythm of * Demosthenes λóyos 'Egwrixis-Dionys. Halïcarn. Judicium de Lysiâ, c. 12— Isocrates ПavaInvaixòs-Plato apud Diogen. Laert.

The great end of a perfect elocution was to make the orator appear to be in earnest about the subject. Rhetoric, ad Herenn. Lib. iii. c. 14.

their sentences produced even on a promiscuous multitude; where a happy cadence not unfrequently excited the most rapturous applause. Cicero, for instance, informs us that he was present when Carbo pronounced the following words, in the course of a harangue-"Patris dictum sapiens temeritas filii comprobavit❞—in which, the metre of the word comprobavit, drew forth a shout which it was wonderful to hear."* Now, our readers must be informed, that the magic of that word consists in its containing precisely two poetical feet called chorei, (trochees) each made up of a long syllable followed by a short one. After this specimen, they will not be surprised to learn, that the ancient rhetoricianst lay down rules for the composition of this "numerous" prose, which are scarcely less nice and complicated than those of metrical harmony-especially the metres of the comic poets. This art, which was not known, it seems, to Herodotus and Thucydides, was first taught by Gorgias, and subsequently, carried to still greater perfection by Isocrates. But the greatest delicacy was required in the management of it, since nothing was more vicious than to let slip a whole verse in speaking, and nothing was more difficult than to avoid doing so; and even to push the legitimate rythm of prose to excess, destroyed that appearance of earnestness and simplicity which was so essential to popular eloquence.§

Now that an orator should not be willing to encounter such audiences without preparation, if he had time to make it, is surely not at all to be wondered at; more especially when we consider the occasions-momentous and imposing almost beyond any thing that can be imagined in these times-on which he was required to address them. Before such audiences, on such occcasions, it would have been absurd in any speaker of great reputation, to have committed himself to the perils of extemporaneous debating. A lively and animated address-an enthusiastic burst of eloquence upon a sudden emergency-may, indeed, be better done without premeditation, but such effusions are not to be compared with a perfect speech-perfect both in substance and form-perfect in the division of the subject, the arrangement of the topics, and the logical sequence of its reasonings-perfect in saying neither too much nor too little, in bringing out fully all the strong points of the case, in suppressing or palliating the weak ones, in avoiding as far as possible every

† Cicero, 1. c. Longinus.

Orat. c. 56.

* Orator. c. 63. Ibid c. 62. It may be added, that Dionysius of Halicarnassus, seems to con sider this whole art as puerile.-lud. de Isocrat. cc. 2-12-13-20.

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thing odious or exceptionable-perfect in a sublimity that never becomes extravagance, a vehemence tempered with dignity, and a force every where regulated by the most exquisite sense of propriety-in short, such a speech as supposes in the orator an absolute and undisturbed control over all his talents and resources. Some men, there are, indeed, who seem to have a better command of their faculties in the excitement of a public discussion, than in the quiet solitude of the study; but they are only those, as Cicero himself remarks, whose literary education has not been as complete as it might have been, and who, on that account, can never attain to the highest excellence in their art. Nay, we would ask whether, even in modern times, this inartificial and unpremeditated eloquence has always been the most successful? Were Mirabeau's harangues extemporaueous? Is it not probable that Sheridan's famous speeches were as curiously and anxiously prepared, as his comedies or bon-mots? Does any one imagine that the most celebrated passage in the most celebrated of Lord Erskine's pleadingsthe expostulation of the Indian Chief in the defence of Stockdale-was not premeditated, aye, and wrought with most scrupulous care? We are unable to vouch our authority, but we have heard or seen it somewhere stated, that even Lord Chatham's appeal to the figure in the tapestry, was not absolutely the impulse of the moment.

In closing our remarks upon this head, (for the length of which we, perhaps, owe our readers an apology) we will only add, that far as we believe our extemporaneous debating to fall short of antique excellence, we have no doubt it is quite good enough for all practical purposes-at least under a government of laws, and in times of order and repose. The age of chivalrythe heroic age-of eloquence, as of every thing else in this degenerate world, is gone. We may have good speakers, able and skilful debaters-but for the voice of true eloquence-of that mighty eloquence which once shook whole democracies, it cau no more return than the prowess which single-handed, "ran upon embattled armies clad in iron," and put them to rout-than the shout of Stentor, or the blast of the dread horn at Fontarabia. "The schoolmaster has been abroad," as the cant is-and the press, is to the orator, precisely what the invention of gun-powder is represented, in the pathetic lamentations of Orlando and Don Quixotte, to have been to the knight-errantry of Europe- a mighty leveller of all distinctions, and the means of advancing the mass at the expense of the individual.

The in atigable labour, the unceasing assiduity with which the ancient orators cultivated their art, will appear from the