Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1874-03-16
HABITS OF ORATORS.
some PeculinrIties of EngIand's
Great Men.


The London correspondent of the New
York Times furnishes the following:
Mr.. Bright has just written letter to
a young theological student, in which he
gives his opinions on the art of public
speaking. He is for extempore speak
ing when a man knows his subject and
has good hold of it; but for preach
er who has to deliver sermon week
on the same topic to the same people,
written sermon is, he says, almost indis-
pensable; "only men of great mind,
great knowledge and great power can
do this with success, and he won
ders that any man can do 1T at
all. The best preparation for speak
ing, is, he suggests, to think over
what is TO be said, and to form an out
line in a few brief notes. He says he
has never been in the habit of writing
out his speeches, certainly not for more
than thirty years past, the labor OF
writing being bad enough, and the labor
of committing to memory intoleraole.
The statement must, however, be taken
with certain qualification. Mr. Bright,
| believe, does not write. out all his
speeches, but he writes out the most i'm
portant and highly worked passages,
and gets them by heart. The rest ne
fills in as he goes along, and any one
who examines his speeches carefully
can tell by the great precision and point
of the language in certain parts
what has been written and
what spoken off-hand. All his
, speeches are very carefully pre-
pared, but chiefly in his head. He
goes over the points he wishes to bring
out for weeks, and, perhaps, months and
broods over the subject till it takes. form
and substance in his mind. he has a
small slip of letter paper with notes on
it of the points in their order, and in the
House of Commons | have often noticed
him for hours before he rose coming
over his notes and rehearsing passages
with his eyes on the ceiling. Mr.. Glad.
stone uses notes, but only for facts, and
the order Of his points, and trusts exclu.
sively to the moment for his words.
Lord Palmerston always spoke extern
pore, and scarcely eve. condescended to
refer to paper. His great speech five
hours long, in the Don Pacitico debate,
was delivered in this manner; he had
only a set of the dispatches before him
in order to make exact quotations. Long
practice in dictations to private secre.
taries had given him mastery of pre-
else and easy language, but he was not
flowing speaker. He thought great
| deal more about how q speech would
read than how it sounded at the moment
and was determined not to use any but
the words he really wanted. This made
him hesitate occasionally Mr.. Lowe
acquired similar precision from debating
leader articles for the Times. MIR. Dis
raeli despises notes, except note OF dates
and other figures. He prepares his
speeches with great care, planing them
out, grouping his points artistically, and
polishing up his epigrams; but his
speeches, though partly drafted before
hand, are not repeated from men,
ory. The late Lord Derby was an
| impulsive extempore speaker, but
his son writes his speeches from begin
ming to end and learns them laborlously.
Lord Granville speaks of-hand, and is
very unequal in his style, which is. for
| the most part, loose and slovenly. Lord
Russell also trusts to the words OF the
moment; and this, l imagine, was the
rule with all the speakers of the last
generation. MIR. Horsman, have heard,
writes his speeches many times over,
each time destroying the manuscript,
and then writing another with as many
i'm orovements as he can think Of. The
object is, of course, to procure firm
hold on the subject generally, as well as
on his premeditated language, so that he
may drop the latter if he chooses, and
insert anything that occurs to him.