RHETORIC,.

The founder of modern philosophy describes the subject of our present inquiry as being “that science which we call Rhetoric or Art of Eloquence; a science excellent, and excellently well laboured.” But Bacon’s praise of the science itself, and of its ancient cultivators, has been fair from commanding universal assent. The prejudice with which rhetorical studies are regarded by so many, has, it must be confessed, been fostered, if not generated, by the fault of some of its students and expositors. Rhetoricians, like teachers of the kindred science logic, have too often claimed for their art the possession of powers which do not belong to it: their systems of precepts have become most ponderous, and their pretensions most extravagant, in times when eloquence was sunk in the deepest decay; and in the rhetorical writings of the lower empire and the dark ages, it seems to be implicitly assumed that every man who submits to learn and practise certain prescribed rules, will attain skill in speech and writing, as certainly as he would, by an industrious apprenticeship, acquire the mastery of a mechanical trade. Accordingly, in more than one period, and in none perhaps more decidedly than in our own, the very name of Rhetoric has been put under the ban of the empire of literature; and the sentence has been justified by misrepresentations both of the purposes of the art, and of the works which result from it. Its rules have been described as a scheme of petty sophistical artifices, designed to aid in smuggling falsehood into the mind under the disguise of logical quibbles or oratorical ornaments; and, the worst declamations of the worst declaimers being exhibited as adequate specimens, rhetorical composition has been defined to be, that which possesses the forms of eloquence without its spirit. We hear truth, good taste, and eloquence, severally spoken of as the antitheses of rhetoric. Words, to use Mirabeau’s paradox, are things; and the subject which we are now to consider is not the only one, nor by any means the most important, in which infinite mischief has been done by the attaching of contemptible associations to terms of neutral meaning, and by the affixing of odious names to objects in themselves innocent or useful.

The truth is, that the uses of rhetoric, as well as of all the other arts or sciences which, in different departments, aim at the training of the human mind for exertions in which it is itself its own instrument, are principally negative. Neither in reasoning nor in oratory can any scheme of rules, logical or rhetorical, nor any study of models however profound, nor any practice however long and intelligent, enable the intellect to perform, even moderately well, a task for which it has an inherent incapacity; and if excellence be the end in view, it will assuredly never be reached, either with the observance of rules or independently of them, unless genius be present to give the primary impulse, and to sustain the mind in its course. Logic, strictly speaking, does not teach us how to reason, but only how to avoid violations of those essential principles on which all reasoning is founded. In like manner, a legitimate system of rhetoric would teach, not what eloquence is, but what it is not; it would disclaim all purpose of qualifying its students to compound an eloquent discourse by rule, as a medicine is compounded after a prescription; and it would occupy itself mainly in discovering, by the immediate study of the mind itself, and by critical examination of the works of genius, those guiding and universal laws of human intellect which the student of eloquence must not disobey, if he wishes to attain, in any shape, the end which he pursues.

It must be that such principles exist: if we apprehend rightly what eloquence is, we may reasonably hope to discover at least some of them; and even if we could discover them all,—which no sound thinker has ever yet pretended to do,—the speaker or writer would still retain ample space for the exertion of his natural powers, which indeed would act with redoubled ease and vigour from his distinct knowledge of the limits of their domain. A chart does not teach the mariner how to navigate his vessel; but it may fare hardly with him if he wants one in a narrow sea, with whose soundings he is imperfectly acquainted.

It is designed, in this paper, not to present a dissertation having any claim to be considered as a complete exposition of the subject in any of its sections, but simply to sketch in outline a plan of rhetorical studies, which the student may not find altogether useless as a clue when he attempts to master the details under the guidance of more ambitious works; and it may be well to state at the outset the view which, in common with those who have thought most deeply on the matter, we entertain as to the means by which rhetoric is qualified to execute the very important task which it undertakes.

In the first place, then, we hold that the systematic view of the principles and rules of eloquence which rhetorical treatises usually offer, must peremptorily be embraced, as an essential part, in the studies of every one who would become really eloquent in speech or in writing. But this proposition must be understood with two cautions. First, in regard to many particulars indispensable towards the attainment of eloquence, every sound scheme of rhetorical precepts, abandoning all claim to primary discovery, contents itself with informing or reminding the student, that he must seek for knowledge elsewhere, from reflection on the phenomena of his own mind, from the best works in philosophy, and from an observation of the world and of human nature. This is true, not merely as to the matter on which eloquence may employ itself, as to which, however, it is true universally; but also as to most of the instruments which the art uses. Secondly, and more particularly, the real usefulness of rhetoric rests, not on its special rules, but on its general principles. As soon as a rule diverts the student’s attention from the principle, it for him ceases to be an aid, and becomes a positive hindrance. As soon as a treatise on rhetoric has impressed on the student’s mind distinctly and indelibly the great principles on which eloquence is founded, it has given him a talisman to guard him against all seductions into error, and even against the very mistakes which may be inculcated in the book itself. Systems of rhetoric aid effectually in the attainment of eloquence, only so far as they teach the student to reflect on its principles.

But, further, we have called systematic rhetoric a part only of the studies leading towards eloquence. It is in truth a part which, by itself, is insufficient for the attainment of the end; for we must add to it a critical acquaintance with the best models of literature, extending over as many of its departments as possible, but especially minute in that which the student chiefly designs to cultivate. What is here meant is a study of literary works, not for the knowledge which they contain, but as models; a study directed towards an analysis of the mode in which they communicate knowledge, and of the conformity or disagreement of that mode with the laws of eloquence. Such a study may be said to bear towards the systematic portion of rhe[7:19:200]toric a relation similar to that which, in physical science, an examination of the experiments made by the best philosophers bears towards the series of fundamental propositions in which the result of the experiments is embodied; but the study of the experiments is incalculably more imperative in rhetoric than in natural science, from the incompleteness of the systematic result in the one case compared with that which is reached in the other. Treatises on eloquence which aim at expounding its principles, can seldom, in regard to the critical branch, do more than recommend its prosecution, or practically countenance it by incidental illustrations; but it possesses such importance as to merit a more prominent place than it occupies in most systematic works on the subject.

Lastly, long practice must be added to all these studies before the end can even be approached. This requisite, however, a treatise on rhetoric can do little more than acknowledge and urge.

In pursuance of the opinions now expressed, these pages will endeavour to illustrate the subject in Three Divisions. The First will embrace general observations, intended to elicit the true principles of Eloquence, and to exhibit them in various points of view. From our strong impression as to the predominant importance of the general principles over the special rules, we shall be tempted to linger on this branch longer than may be approved by those who are attached to the minutiae of the study; and for the same reason we will not allow ourselves to be deterred by the fear of being charged with truisms, from stating considerations which seem calculated to lead us nearer to the goal. The Second Division will contain a brief summary of the most important principles which have been expounded in the best systems of rhetoric; our principal guides, however, being the treatises of Aristotle, Dr Campbell, and Archbishop Whately. The Third Division will attempt to furnish the student with some aids towards his critical acquaintance with models.

I.

“The word Eloquence,” says Campbell, adopting the ancient definitions, “in its greatest latitude, denotes ‘ that art or talent by which a discourse is adapted to its end.’ All the ends of speaking are reducible to four; every speech being intended to enlighten the understanding, to please the imagination, to move the passions, or to influence the will.” The observations by which the same most acute writer immediately afterwards illustrates this his leading proposition, have much truth and great value. It is said, first, that “any one discourse admits only one of these ends as the principal,” to which the others, so far as they are admissible at all, must be rendered conducive; secondly, that “each preceding species, in the order above exhibited, is preparatory to the subsequent ;” thirdly, that, in addressing the understanding, the speaker proposes either to explain to his hearers something unknown or not distinctly comprehended, or to prove something disbelieved or doubted; so that, “in the one case, his aim is their information, in the other their conviction ;” fourthly, that the address to the imagination is common to oratory with poctry, to which indeed it may be added, that the address to the passions must also be considered common to these two arts; and, lastly, that the height of success in persuasion, the fourth end of the orator, is attained by effecting all these ends in the same discourse.

The analysis, to the extent to which it goes, is strictly accurate; and there is no just reason for refusing to predicate eloquence of every composition written or spoken, which fulfils its conditions. A simple and perspicuous narrative of facts,-—an unimpassioned but convincing argument in proof of a controverted proposition in any department of moral knowledge,—and a harangue which, convincing our understanding of what is, or seems to be, an important truth, summoning before our fancy vivid images of its consequences, and, kindling into flame the most powerful emotions of our nature, hurries us irresistibly to resolution and to action,—each of these exertions of intellect may, in its own sphere, be fully deserving of the appellation of eloquent, because each may possess all the qualities which fit it for producing its end. But we shall still be in danger of misapprehending the real essence of eloquence, unless we state to ourselves substantively, and bring prominently to light, certain principles which the analysis involves, but which it passes over slightly.

It is rightly said, that each of the purposes of eloquence rises out of, and is necessarily founded on, those which precede it. In other words, the information or conviction of the understanding does, in the first place, he at the root of all eloquence; no composition is eloquent which does not effect this end. The state of mind which eloquence in all circumstances necessarily produces, is that of Belief. This is the fundamental proposition of the Rhetorical Art, and on it depends every well-founded rule which Rhetoric can deduce from its principles. We cannot have the proposition too strongly impressed on our minds; and we may be assured that, the farther we diverge from its central point, the more we shall find ourselves removed from the ability to apprehend or reduce to practice the principles of Eloquent Composition.

The most common definition of Rhetoric describes it as the Art of Persuasion, a view derived from some of the ancient writers, whose instructions were almost wholly addressed to the case of public speaking in courts of law and popular assemblies. The definition, although it involves the true principle, is slightly faulty, both by excess and by defect. It says more than is true, in stating influence on the will as essential to eloquence; and, on the other hand, it is apt to lead us away from the principle, by tempting us to forget that, as is well said by Whately, the latest and one of the very ablest of the rhetorical writers, “the conviction of the understanding is an essential part of persuasion.” If we must describe Rhetoric by a reference to its purpose, we shall perhaps incur the least risk of mistake by stating simply, that it aims, through the instrumentality of language, at the Production of Belief; and we may perhaps venture to suggest, that this seems to be the true meaning, both of the introductory definition, and of the numerous incidental illustrations, which we find in a treatise at once the oldest and the best upon the subject, namely, the Rhetoric of Aristotle.

But since rhetoric, so far as it can be treated as a science (which to a certain extent it may), is called on to investigate principles which a writer or speaker must obey, in order to command belief, and since, too, its inquiries must embrace, not only the laws which regulate the conviction of the understanding, but also those which rule in the excitement of the imagination and the feelings,— it may be asked w hether its province does not in several quarters extend over ground belonging properly to Other departments of the mental philosophy. The answer to this question is twofold. There are certain principles which rhetoric does not establish for itself, but assumes as proved by common observation, and by the researches instituted in other branches of mental science; but it also possesses principles which are peculiar to itself, and bring it into no collision even with those other walks of philosophy with which it may be suspected of being identical. By endeavouring at this stage to illustrate both of these propositions, we shall be enabled to bring into a strong light some considerations which might be overlooked if introduced incidentally as bearing on specific rules.
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First, then, Rhetoric is not a primary science. Its first principles are the phenomena and laws of the human mind, which it assumes as known to us from consciousness and observation, and as taught in rational systems of psychology, logic, and ethics. Aristotle, among the many instances in which he protested against errors that had arisen before his time, and have survived in spite of his remonstrances, was especially careful in determining the point at which rhetoric should commence its investigations. He lays it down as a fundamental principle, that the student of eloquence must prepare himself by an adequate acquaintance with three primary branches of knowledge which rhetoric cannot teach him; the science of dialectics, the philosophy of human character and morals, and the philosophy of the passions. The Stagyrite’s requirement of skill in logic for one who desires to acquire skill in oratory, will seem unreasonable, not only to those who disdain the assistance of rules in every department of mental exertion, but to some who are disposed in certain matters to avail themselves of the aids which philosophy offers. If, however, we merely advise them to make themselves familiar, so far as they are not so already, with the principles and practice of reasoning, they cannot fairly consider the counsel as useless; and if they admit the necessity of this study, we can only remind them further, that they must either be content to receive the syllogistic logic of Aristotle, as expounding justly the principles on which all reasoning is founded, or engage in that attempt at discovering a new system, which has baffled the human intellect for two thousand years. “I cannot but consider him,” Says Whately, “as undertaking a task of unnecessary difficulty, who endeavours, without studying logic, to become a thoroughly good argumentative writer.” That Aristotle’s other demands on the student are well founded, will be more readily admitted, how far soever men may disagree as to the mode in which these branches of knowledge may be best acquired. For those who aim principally at applying their acquaintance with human nature to the purpose here in view, the world is doubtless a better school than the closet of the metaphysician; especially as metaphysical writers have, almost without exception, devoted themselves chiefly to those sections of their science which are least closely allied to active life. But the philosopher’s attention is nevertheless directed to many important points which the unsystematic observer is in danger of overlooking; and no one will find cause to regret the time bestowed on a course of metaphysical study, when he proceeds to the task of convincing and persuading his fellow-men. Unfortunately, however, the falsity and extravagance of several very famous systems of ethics, make caution indispensable in regard to such studies. A disciple of Hobbes, who, in addressing himself to any body of men by speech or writing, should frame all his appeals to their feelings, on the assumption that a degrading selfishness was the ruling passion in every breast, would, if he should be within the reach of conviction, discover the best practical refutation of his master’s dogmas in his own utter failure; and one whose mind is thoroughly attuned to the low key of Paley’s philosophy, would probably, although his heresy in morals is less dangerous, find the application of his creed to the purposes of eloquence scarcely less ineffectual.

But, secondly, there are certain other principles of rhetoric, constituting indeed its essence, which, though they touch the frontier of other mental sciences, are yet sub. Stantially distinct and peculiar. The two subjects of inquiry with which the Philosophy of Eloquence comes most nearly into contact are, on the one hand, Logic, and, on the other, the Philosophy of Poetry. We shall be easily able to distinguish the points at which it branches oft’ from both, if we keep firmly in view the main proposition, that the purpose of eloquence is the production of belief.

And, first, as to logic. In the first place, this science is conversant about the three discursive operations of the mind, apprehension, judgment, and reasoning, and takes no cognizance of any others. Secondly, logic is strictly “a formal science.” In regard to reasoning, which is its principal object, it guarantees, to use the words of a very distinguished living metaphysician, “neither the premises nor the conclusion, but merely the consequence of the latter from the former.” Of the truth or falsehood of the propositions which form the logician’s premises, his science teaches him absolutely nothing. Here, then, are two barriers, by both of which logic, omnipotent within its own domain, has that domain limited; and beyond each of them lies a wide class of principles essentially affecting human belief. Let us even suppose that the human mind were biassed, in arriving at its conclusions, by no extra-logical operations of its own. Even on this supposition, logical rules would not teach us how to produce belief of any given proposition. For though they would enable us to discover premises from which the required conclusion might be logically inferred, they possess no machinery which would qualify us for judging whether those premises would command the belief of those whom we wished to convince. Logic could neither inform us whether our premises are absolutely true, nor (which is here the real subject of inquiry) whether they are likely to seem true to others. Therefore, even for producing conviction by pure reasoning, the discovery of arguments is a task, and one of unquestionable importance, which logic cannot perform; and if rhetoric, or any other science, undertakes to lay down principles facilitating its execution, we shall do well to examine, at least candidly, its capacity for fulfilling its professions.

But, in the next place, the mind of man is not so simply constituted, and his position in the system of nature has, as it were, fenced round his rational faculties with those powers which issue in action. The emotions pervade every operation of the mind, as the life-blood circulates through the body: within us and without, in the corporeal world and in the spiritual, in the past, the present, and the future, there is no object of thought which they do not touch, few, very few, which they do not colour and transmute. The argument which, if it could be presented pure to the reasoning faculties, would be fairly weighed, and calmly received or rejected, is sometimes disguised by passion, as completely as a landscape is by clouds, whose stormy piles we mistake for the distant mountains; and in almost every case the conclusion or its proof, or both the one and the other, are seen through a medium more or less hazy, in which they present themselves as the objects of our bodily appetites, or our mental fears and desires, as instruments or hindrances of our affections, kind or malevolent, towards our fellow-men, or as falling under the jurisdiction of that supreme judge and monarch, the moral faculty, which sits enthroned in the inmost recesses of the heart, always able, when accurately informed, to confirm the decisions of reason, but, like other despots, often allowing its power to slumber, and often misled by faithless ministers. If we would command the belief of minds thus variously affected, it is manifest that other principles, besides those of logic, must aid us both in the discovery of arguments, and in their form and arrangement. 1. As to the discovery of arguments, we must always, both for protecting our own minds against error, and for qualifying us to deal with men of cold and unimaginative temper, aim at making ourselves masters of such premises as would probably command the belief of those on whose minds pure reasoning could fall directly, without being turned aside by intervening obstacles. We may always encounter some men whose minds, wdlen directed to certain objects, are more or less nearly in this position. 2. In regard to the same department of our business of conviction, we must endeavour to perform the far more diffi[7:19:202]cult task, of discovering what propositions are likely to be received as truths, by minds affected by all the incongruous influences of imagination, passion, self-love, and ill-instructed conscience. The proof of a proposition from considerations of moral duty may appear weak to a man in whom some strong passion rebels against the principle; but it may yet be possible for us to combat his scepticism by arguments of other kinds, drawing their topics, perhaps, from self-love, or from other passions to which we know him to be subject. 3. The necessity of watching the operations of the active powers of the mind, before we determine on the form and arrangement of arguments, may be sufficiently illustrated for the purpose here in view, by tracing the example last given for one step farther. Our proof of a proposition from ethical principles, although, in the case supposed, it would probably be met by incredulity or ridicule if stated at the outset, may gain a very different reception after we have cut a path for it by arguments addressed to the personal feelings of the auditor. When we have convinced him, that the truth on which we insist is conducive to his interest, and that, if it opposes one of his strongest passions, it is favourable to another, we have prepared his understanding for receiving attentively, and without prejudice, that argument from morality on which the proof of the proposition truly rests.

Those applications of the principles of eloquence which have been last before us, lead to the consideration of the second question that was proposed as to the connection of this branch of philosophy with others :—what is the relation which eloquence bears to poetry? Both endeavour to arouse the imagination and the feelings; the latter indeed always aiming at this effect, but the former too striving to attain it on those occasions when it puts forth all its strength: what, then, is it that distinguishes the one art from the other? The answer is not hard to find. Both arts, in attempting to excite the fancy and the feelings, are only using means, which each applies to its own peculiar end; and the ends which the two propose to reach are essentially dissimilar. The dissertation on poetry in this work has correctly stated the end of that art to be “the creation of intellectual pleasure we have here considered the end of eloquence to be “the production of belief.” Poetry, like the other fine arts, appeals to the taste; its compositions attain their proper and final result in the pleasure of contemplation; and the truth or falsehood of their representations, and, in short, their agreement or disagreement with all the laws of the mental system, are qualities which enter into our conception of the essence of poetry only so far as they are subservient to that one peculiar result. The mathematician who complained that the Paradise Lost proved nothing, stated accurately the principle which separates poetry from eloquence and science.

Indeed the principle of distinction, when thus broadly enunciated, is something very like a palpable truism; but it is one of those truths, unfortunately common in the affairs of real life as well as in the field of speculation, which are in theory universally acknowledged, and in practice very frequently forgotten: and no age can more pressingly need to be reminded of this truth than one like our own, in which what is called poetical prose has gained such general favour. We are in constant danger of being led astray by the fact, that eloquence, in addressing itself to cultivated minds (which is the only application of its powers that entitles it to be called an art, or to be investigated either philosophically or critically), does always include the gratification of taste as one of its purposes. We forget that this purpose is altogether a subordinate one, and that, if it ever comes in competition with the proper and principal purpose of the art, it ought to be unhesitatingly sacrificed. The authority of Aristotle will once more support our view, to which indeed his reasoning has conducted us. It is one of the earliest and most valuable propositions in his treatise, that the arguments and other instruments tending to produce belief constitute the essence of eloquence, and that everything else is merely accessory.

Our review leads us, in the next place, to consider two objections, which are very often urged against the study of the subject. The first of these is chiefly directed against the practical application of eloquence, the second against the science or art which undertakes to expound its laws.

First, it is said that rhetoric is a dishonest art, which, so far as it is supposed to have any practical uses, is designed to qualify its students for inculcating falsehood as readily as truth. In answering this cavil, we must, if we would not altogether lose sight of the real principle, face boldly the difficulty which it suggests. We cheerfully admit that rhetoric directs the student to search, not for such propositions as are absolutely true, but merely for such as are likely to seem true to those whom he wishes to convince or persuade. But, in the first place, it does not follow that it directs him to search for falsehoods, or that these are the propositions which will best serve his purpose. The very reverse is the fact. The highest of all authorities on the subject lays it down most justly, as at once an essential principle of human nature, and a warning to the aspirant after eloquence, that mankind have a natural love and predisposition towards truth, and seldom fail in finding it out. Eloquence may doubtless be abused by being applied to wrong purposes; but so may every science, mental and physical, which admits of any practical application at all, with the single exception of the science of morals, which, unlike all other branches of inquiry, has moral good for its object, and, if it has discovered the truths which it seeks, has thereby secured itself against all misuse of its investigations. Eloquence may be used for disseminating falsehood or heresy, as it may be for teaching truth and recommending genuine religion; and the most important discoveries in physics may be turned to purposes of destruction, or made to promote the comfort and happiness of mankind. But, it must be once again repeated, he who attempts to apply this art, or any other which uses for its materials the principles of moral belief, to ends adverse to the cause of truth and morality, will speedily discover that he is misusing his instrument, by the imperfection of the results which he will usually produce. In the second place, however, rhetoric, assuming it to be capable of fulfilling the promise which it holds out, is not merely harmless, but positively beneficial, and is in fact necessary for the protection of truth and goodness. The argumentative writer or speaker, in the legitimate exercise of his art, addressing himself with the view of expounding or proving valuable truths to men in general, who possess but fragmentary knowledge, and are unaccustomed to discussions in scientific form, knows that he cannot convince the understanding, unless he at the same time engages the attention and conciliates the affections; and also that he possesses no media of proof by which he can arouse the discursive faculties of those whom he addresses, except the knowledge and opinions which are already fixed in their minds. A felicitous image presented to the fancy, a gentle dealing with angry passions, an avoidance of collision with a rooted prejudice, may, without the slightest violation of truth or moral rectitude, open the minds of an assembly or a nation to receive with honest conviction a system of knowledge, religious, ethical, or political, which philosophical reasoning or uncompromising dogmatism might have striven for ages to force upon them, and striven in vain. But skill in rhetoric admits of another application. It may and will enable one to detect and expose sophistry and empty declamation. The art does unquestionably aid those who wish to mislead; but it is on [7:19:203]that account the more necessary that an instrument so powerful should not be abandoned to dangerous hands. A mischievous boy in a steam-vessel may, by the simple pressure of his foot, cause an explosion that shall destroy the ship’s whole company; but the danger should induce us, instead of undervaluing or discarding this wonderful combination of machinery, to study means which make it difficult or impossible to effect the mischief. This is really the result which such risks of abuse have produced in all the powerful applications of mechanical science; and it is the result which ought to be produced in those far more important cases where the materials of the art are seated in the mind, and the evils which may be derived from them extend over the moral world.

The second objection frequently taken to the art of rhetoric is, that it is useless. The objectors of this class are not by any means agreed as to the ground on which their allegation is to be defended; but the only section of them whose argument is plausible enough to deserve refutation, are those who, while they admit that practice and the study of models are necessary for the production of eloquent compositions, deny the utility of attempts to investigate the principles of eloquence systematically and philosophically. In this shape the opinion is very far from being uncommon; and, like all other common prejudices, it appears on analysis to contain a mixture of truth along with its errors. The discussion of it will bring us yet nearer to the point which, in all these general observations, it is our wish to reach.

In the first place, then, the objection, in whatever shape it is put, assumes the fact, of which also the objectors make much use in maintaining their argument, that the laws of eloquence are inherent in every intelligent mind, and are put in daily practice by those who are quite guiltless of rhetorical studies. Now this is the fact which lies at the root of all philosophical discussions on the subject, and of all rules which can be fairly deduced from the investigations. “All men,” says Aristotle, “in some sort practise both dialectics and rhetoric; for all to a certain extent endeavour both to discover arguments and to maintain them, to accuse and to defend. Accordingly, of people in general, some, in the performance of these tasks, obey merely the impulses of their own minds, without having present to their thoughts any rule or general principle; while others avail themselves of all the principles and precepts which they have been able to gather from experience and practice. Now, since the end which men thus speaking have in view, can be reached both in the one way and in the other, it is manifest that both classes must act upon the same principles, and that these, since they at the same time form legitimate subjects of speculation, and are capable of being put to practical uses, may be combined so as to form a system of rules which will be universally admitted to deserve the name of an art.” Those, if there are any such, who go so far as to maintain that the natural powers are sufficient for the production of eloquence without training of any sort, are contradicted by notorious and invariable facts. And those who maintain or conceive that practice and the study of models are in themselves sufficient aids, must be reminded that, so far as their Success exceeds that of the unlearned speaker, it is gained for them by this circumstance, that, whether they are conscious of it or not, they obey more closely than he does those principles which are common to them with him. If we suppose that the practised speaker who decries rhetoric is a perfect orator, he may be safely assured that no sound system of rhetoric which he may condescend to study, will expound to him a single principle which he has not already reduced to practice; and even if we suppose him more moderately skilled in the art, he may be told with equal truth, that the system will not contradict any principle which he has used in practice, and found effectual for his end.

If, then, a student of eloquence, who declines to listen to a rhetorical exposition of the principles of his art, attempts to justify his refusal by maintaining, as an universal proposition, that, in every art, a systematic acquaintance, with the principles is useless or injurious to one who wishes, to practise it, his assertion, contradicted by common sense and immemorial experience, deserves no serious answer. But if he maintains that this particular art forms an exception to the general rule, and that in regard to it his proposition is true, he will find that the arguments by which his position may be most plausibly supported are two. He may allege, either, first, that the experience of modern Europe has shown rhetorical studies to be useless for the end at which they profess to aim, or, secondly, that rhetoric has failed in furnishing such a systematic view of principles as can be considered either complete or useful. These arguments lead us to consider a difference, to which we have not yet adverted, between the ancient and the modern methods of studying eloquence.

We have already fully admitted, or rather we have laid it formally down as an element in the view which we take of the subject treated in these pages, that the philosophical principles, or (which in certain respects is the same thing) the preceptive rules, of rhetoric, are not by themselves sufficient even for that negative purpose which, as we have also said, all schemes of mental training have most prominently in view. A critical examination of models in oratory, and the other branches of literature, is an indispensable part of the task which the rhetorical student is bound to perform. Now, of these two divisions, or modes of studying eloquence, the former is emphatically the ancient, and the latter the modem method.

Aristotle’s treatise is strictly and wholly didactic: his criticisms are short, infrequent, and closely limited to the immediate purpose of explaining his argument; and although he strenuously recommends the study of the historical and other branches of literature as a means of collecting the materials of eloquence, we cannot with certainty gather from any part of his work a distinct advice to the prosecution of these studies, as furnishing models of composition. From the temper of the great philosopher’s mind, it may not be rash to suspect that, even if he had been unfettered in his method of dealing with his subject, he might perhaps have placed a higher value than most men will do on the systematic precepts of the art, and have too much neglected its critical portion; but there are certain reasons which deprive us of the right to infer positively that this was really his view of the matter. His main purpose was the formation of a system of precepts for spoken eloquence, written composition being adverted to but occasionally, and by way of digression; but, down to his time, the only high specimens of spoken oratory were the harangues of his Attic contemporaries; and for him, the tutor of Alexander, and the pensioner of Philip, the orations of Demosthenes (if the best of these were composed before the treatise on rhetoric, which is a doubtful point) were no safe themes of criticism or commendation After Aristotle’s time, it is true, criticism became more prominent in the manuals of eloquence: the best works which remain to us of some of its most renowned teachers, such as Dionysius of Halicarnassus, are purely critical; and in the writings of some others, which are principally preceptive, by far the most valuable portions are critical analyses of literary works, examples of this latter sort being the spirited and refined dissertations of Cicero, the judicious and liberal remarks of Quinctilian, and the severe but often very instructive criticisms of the boy-philosopher Hermogenes. But although criticism grew as the models of excellence accumulated, the tendency to theorize and systematize kept equal pace with its increase; and in the latest and worst days of ancient rhetoric, criticism, which, if not [7:19:204]so difficult as philosophical generalization, demands a wider union of powers and knowledge, died entirely away, leaving the rhetorical systems as bare of the highest kind of illustration as Aristotle’s work, while they were a thousand times more complicated in the rules which they expounded.

Since the revival of learning, men seem in general to have derived their opinions as to the real nature and value of the ancient rhetoric, not so much from the works of Aristotle, or even those of Cicero, Quinctilian, and Hermogenes, as from treatises like the curious rhetorical dialogue of Alcuin with Charlemagne, a production which, with its burdensome, wearisome, and useless subdivisions, its odd, impossible, and unpractical examples, and its confident claims to infallibility, is a fair specimen, but by no means one of the worst, of those treatises which fill the collection of the Rhetores Latini, and the separate volumes of such men as Theon, Aphthonius, and the other Greek rhetoricians of the declining ages. We have consequently, in modern times, run into the opposite extreme; and, as we have already admitted, the prevalent tendency has long been to deny that the systematic rules are of any use whatever. The writings of a few very able men have been insufficient to stem the current, although the list of rhetorical writers includes Bacon in our own country, and Fenelon in France.

But we must return to the two arguments against rhetorical studies, from which we have diverged in order to collect materials for answering them; and, first, as to the objection from the supposed experience of modern times. In the first place, it will surely be confessed that there is an antecedent presumption against the supposition that the study of principles is unnecessary; and, in the next place, any appeal to the success of modern oratory or prose literature in general, in proof that certain methods are useless which the ancients practised and the moderns do not, would require to be accompanied by an assertion,—which, if we are competently informed, we shall scarcely venture to make,— that in excellence of composition, taken in its highest sense, modern oratory and prose literature are not inferior to those of the ancients. But, further, we must also recollect that the study of models is in itself a study of principles, if it be conducted with intelligence, or so as to serve any good purpose whatever; for he who adopts this mode of study to the exclusion of the other, is just playing the part of a traveller, who, undertaking a journey on foot through a difficult country, begins by throwing his map into the fire, and resolves to trust to the guidance of chance passengers. We are, indeed, strongly inclined to hold one doctrine, which, if it be sound, would compel us to believe that the immediate study of the principles is far more necessary in modern times than it ever could have been in the ancient world. We believe that, for the attainment of a certain degree of success, this study may be much more safely dispensed with by the public speaker than by the author who gives his thoughts to the world in books. The former is, in the delivery of his harangues, instituting per force a series of experiments, from which, doubtless at the expense of many a mortifying failure, he must, if he possesses natural powers capable of producing cloquence in any circumstances, at length learn, or approach to learning, both the principles of eloquence, and its most useful practical rules. The author almost wholly wants this aid. His experiments, if they are to be called so, are usually few, and he has but the most imperfect means of judging what has been their issue; for the success or failure of a book is dependent on so many circumstances, that it can seldom enable the writer to determine how far it has been owing to his success or failure in the great end of composition. But, lastly on this head, a late writer, Whately, has thrown out a hint which has in it much truth as well as ingenuity. He remarks that, after all, the modern disavowal of rhetorical studies may not be strictly consistent with truth. The suspicion of rhetorical artifice, he says, creates such distrust that every one is eager to disclaim it, and none more so than those who have availed themselves of it most widely and successfully. The ancients were freed from the necessity of this venial duplicity by the peculiar nature of their education, in which, under the name of rhetorical training, were included all the branches of learning requisite for the accomplishment of a man qualified to shine in political life. The Greek rhetorician taught his pupil the principles of politics, legislation, and every department of general knowledge; and the pupil, when he had taken his place in the nation as a public man, was called an orator (p⅙riuD and not, as we should now call him, a statesman. No man required to conceal his having studied the subsidiary sciences; or rather every one wished to have it believed that he was familiar with them; and his skill in rhetoric proper escaped notice in the general muster. The dissimilar position of the ancients is further illustrated by a second consideration, which is commented on for a different purpose by another writer of high authority, namely, that the Greek orators seem always to have had in view the communication of an aesthetical pleasure to their hearers, as an end scarcely subordinate even to the principal one of moving their minds to belief and action. An assembly which did not listen to Demosthenes with the less admiration, nor with the less disposition to be convinced by his argument, for knowing that he had devoted months to the preparation of his speech, and who recognised in some of its most impassioned appeals whole paragraphs which they had heard him pronounce before, were not likely to be staggered by reflecting that the speaker had long studied oratory under Isocrates.

But the second objection, levelled against the preceptive section of rhetoric, asserts that every system of the kind is incomplete, and therefore useless. The allegation of incompleteness is perfectly true; but it does not warrant the inference. No rational inquirer into rhetorical principleshas ever pretended to have fully explored all the regions of mind over which eloquence holds its empire; indeed, in entering on such investigations, as far as they involve simply matters of fact and experience, he is encroaching on the province of other branches of the mental philosophy, and abandoning that of rhetoric, which, receiving its facts from without, busies itself properly in determining the relation which the facts bear to a certain end. Neither from ordinary and unscientific observation, nor from the systematic inquiries of philosophy, do we yet know nearly all that may be learned as to the principles of the mental economy; and, moreover, when psychology and its kindred sciences shall have reached their utmost development, they will still find their province to be surrounded on all sides by a darkness which created intellect cannot penetrate. But those who have studied the philosophy of mind most practically and most profoundly, are also those who can bear the most decided testimony to the fact, that the incompleteness of its results does not deprive it either of interest or usefulness. The same thing is even more palpably true of this particular branch of inquiry, in which every experiment is instituted with a direct view to a certain practical end.

The avowed incompleteness, however, not merely of all existing, but of all possible, rhetorical systems, not only forms no valid ground for denying their usefulness, but may suggest very strong positive arguments in their favour. Those rhetorical rules which are really sound and useful do not mark out, like guide-posts inscribed with the penalties of a turnpike statute, one fixed road in which they tell the student of eloquence that he must travel, although there are other roads which will equally well lead him to his journey’s end: the most important and certain [7:19:205]of them, indeed, are not even directions which indicate to him the best road in which to travel; but they are peremptory warnings, set up at certain places to inform him, that the cross-roads which at these points diverge from the highway, will lead him quite astray if he shall be tempted to strike into them. Now, it so happens that rhetoric would completely attain this its purpose of protecting us against error, if, discarding all special rules, it were simply to hold up to view, at all points suspected of being the commencement of bewildering paths, a statement of its own fundamental and ruling principle, and of two or three of the most obvious corollaries which the principle involves. If the student of eloquence has been enabled, no matter by what means, firmly to apprehend and retain these essential truths, he has made an acquisition which is more valuable than any other connected with his art.

To the apprehension of those truths we have here endeavoured to aid in leading him. The aim of all composition not poetical being the Production of Belief, the great task of the speaker or writer should be the study of the character of those whom he addresses, or, in other words, the study of human nature, in all its regions, if possible, but at any rate in those with whose peculiarities his purpose is most likely to bring him into collision. This study must be prosecuted both in the closet and in the world, by reflection as well as by study and observation. In those departments of it which bear reference to human nature in the abstract, the hints of some writers on eloquence may aid a little, and metaphysical studies greatly more; but even in this field the investigation of the recluse will often be barren; and for the infinitely more varied and interesting study of individual character, the aspirant after literary or oratorical fame must repair to the crowded scenes of active life. But the knowledge with which study so conducted will store and fortify the mind, must be applied by the mind, in its constant meditations, to the special purpose of enabling us to accommodate our discourse both to the intellect, the imagination, and the feelings, the temper and prejudices, the state and amount of knowledge, and, in short, to the whole character, of our readers or hearers. There are some minds endowed with vigorous understanding, active imagination, and deep and varied sensibilities, in which much of this knowledge seems to be almost instinctive; the possessors of such minds are men of genius, and eloquent almost as soon as experience has enabled them to overcome preliminary and practical difficulties; and it is only from minds thus naturally full and strong that eloquence of the highest class will ever issue. Even genius, however, is a light that too often leads astray; and the highest genius has always been the most warm in its gratitude to philosophy for stretching out her hand to lead it back to truth and nature. But there are innumerable and endless degrees and kinds of intellect, all below the highest, all imperfectly fitted for the tasks of conviction and persuasion, all requiring aid from without, all capable of receiving and profiting by such aid, and all more or less deficient in a distinct apprehension of the true aim of eloquence. In eloquence, as in morality, every class of minds is liable in its own way to forget and abandon the right path. The man of strong intellect and firm will degenerates into dogmatism, and reasons with his fellow-men in the same spirit in which the Jews built the second temple, where every man worked with one hand, and with the other hand held a weapon. If, in the common intercourse of society, we refuse to humour the characters of those around us, we shall receive our reward in the loss of confidence and love; if, when we reason with or endeavour to instruct them, we refuse to make a similar allowance for those principles in their minds on which we seek to operate, the result will be that we shall leave them careless, uninformed, and unconvinced.

On the other hand, the man of fancy and warm feelings soars into the fairy-land of poetry; amidst clouds of imagery and tempests of passion his hearers catch but the faintest glimpse of the truth which he designed to unfold; and a weighing of proofs or a comprehension of explanations are things altogether out of the question. The poet and the dogmatist are equally distant from genuine eloquence; and both equally forget, that he who wishes to convince others of a truth should aim principally at discovering, not in what aspect the assertion and its proofs present themselves to his own mind, but in what light they are likely to be view ed by those to whom he is about to communicate them.

II.

Rhetoric, though etymologically referring only to spoken eloquence, was, even by the ancients, considered as fairly and necessarily embracing written composition likewise; and in modern times, in which the press discharges so many of the functions which the public speaker of old exercised in his own person, the extension is quite indispensable. In the widest acceptation, then, Rhetoric is the art of Composition in Prose. However, even in treatises far more detailed than the present, it has been found convenient to limit the subject to Argumentative Composition; and accordingly this view will be taken in the illustrations now to be offered. One who has accurately studied the philosophy and practice of Rhetorical Argument, will have little to learn when he turns to other branches of composition.

It will be advisable to adopt, with only an immaterial deviation from the order, the division of the subject which is laid down in the treatise of Aristotle; according to which the rules of Rhetoric will be treated in three sections; the first embracing the principles on which Belief must be produced by rhetorical composition; the second treating very briefly of the Disposition or Arrangement of the Parts of an argumentative discourse; and the third entering on the examination of the principles of Style.

It is laid down by Aristotle, as the foundation of the rhetorical art, that the Belief which it is the purpose of elo-

quence to produce, flows, so far as it is produced by the discourse, from one or another of three causes, and from no others. Either, first, the conclusion has been proved, or seems, to those to whom it is addressed, to have been proved, by arguments directly appealing to the understanding; or, secondly, the discourse has created a bias in favour of the writer or speaker, which makes the conclusion be received on the authority of his assertion; or, thirdly, the discourse has excited in the minds of the hearers or readers other feelings (besides those favourable to the speaker or writer), by which the understanding is in the same way biassed. These in their order will now engage our attention.

Under the first head we are invited to examine the principles which should direct us in the Discovery of Arguments, and in their Arrangement.


And, first, as to the Discovery of Arguments. For assisting the writer or speaker in this task, the ancient rhetori-cians offered means of two kinds. The one was a Classification of Arguments into their different kinds, with illustra-tive hints as to the proper uses of each. The second was, the amassing of a collection of Topics or Common-places, of which some were arguments that admitted of being applied in any question of moral reasoning; while others, although not so widely available, were so for all questions embraced under the particular department of oratory in which they were classed.
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In modem times the use of common-places has been universally decried, as a mere device for qualifying a man to speak or write fluently on subjects of which he is utterly ignorant; and if all objections to the art were as well founded as this, it would be truly a waste of time to study it. The invention was well suited for enabling a subtile and flowery declaimer, like the sophist Gorgias 1 to justify his famous boast, that he could speak extempore on any given question; but the systematic use of these storehouses of universal topics was utterly preposterous in the business of real life. “Such discourse,” says Blair, with great truth, “could be no other than trivial. What is truly solid and persuasive must be drawn ex visccribus causae, from a thorough knowledge of the subject, and profound meditation on it. They who would direct students of oratory to any other sources of argumentation, only delude them; and, by attempting to render rhetoric too perfect an art, they render it in truth a trifling and childish study.” If we thought the ancient Topics really worthy of defence, we would not be deterred from defending them, either by this grave reasoning, or by the recollection of Corporal Trim’s extemporaneous oration on the white bear; but the rebuke of the critic, and the ridicule of the wit, are both well deserved. And yet in this, as in most other errors, we detect merely the misapplication of a truth. For the invention of the Topics is founded on a consideration of the common principles and relations of matters of reasoning in general, and of those matters which are embraced under each particular division of knowledge; and it is manifest that reflection on such general truths as these, although it should not be applied as those ancient sophists applied it, is in itself not merely an unobjectionable, but a positively useful and necessary duty, for those who wish either to write well or to think rightly. Even as to the practical use of commonplaces, no one who has been accustomed to hear practised public speakers can have failed to remark, that most of them tall more or less into the repetition of set phrases and ideas, which are as truly common-places as if they had been learned by rote from Boethius or Fortunatianus: and in the oratory of the bar, where extemporaneous fluency is indispensable, the systematic use of common-places is to some extent both advantageous and ordinary. For written compositions common-places are unnecessary and absurd; and we are not much encouraged to their adoption by the example of Cicero, who, having sent to Atticus a treatise prefaced by an eloquent introduction, was reminded by his friend that he had already used the passage as the prooemium of another work.

Knowledge of the subject of the composition, and meditation on its facts and principles, must, as our authority just cited has told us, be substituted for treasuries of commonplaces; and no one has insisted on the necessity of such studies more strenuously than Aristotle, who, although he wrote with the view of aiding public speakers, and therefore, both in his Rhetoric and his Topics, collected those common-places which he considered most useful, yet broadly and repeatedly lays down the doctrine of their total insufficiency as the principal source of the orator’s materials. One chapter of the Rhetoric contains as much practical sense on this subject as might satisfy the most determined of modern utilitarians; and we cannot do better than dismiss the topics by stating its substance, which, although addressed immediately to the case of public speaking, possesses much value even with regard to purely literary compositions. It has been observed, says he, that, for plebeian assemblies, unlearned men are by far the most persuasive orators. And why is this? Simply because they state the particular facts from which they themselves have drawn their inferences, and which the audience know and are qualified to comprehend; while instructed men, addressing the same hearers, puzzle and repel them by enunciating universal truths. This remark is followed by four advices to the orator. First, he is warmly urged to the anxious study of his subject, as in every view essential to his success. Secondly, the advice is enforced by reminding him, that the more facts he knows as to the matter to be handled, the better chance has he of discovering among them some argument which will prove convincing. Thirdly, he is warned that the general rule of oratory which directs the speaker to study and condescend to the characters of his hearers, must be specially applied, so far as his means of knowledge allow him, to the particular persons whom he happens to address. Fourthly, he is cautioned not to shun the statement of common and well-known facts, but rather to consider these as the great magazine of his arguments.

The second sort of aid which the ancient rhetoricians held out for the Discovery of Arguments, namely, that which results from a Classification of their Kinds, is as truly sound and valuable as the other sort is the reverse. It has, however, met with little more favour in the eyes of the moderns; but in our own times, one of the ablest writers on rhetoric has adopted Aristotle’s division of arguments, analysing it satisfactorily, and increasing its utility by several excellent supplements of his own. All that follows on this part of the subject may be considered as either suggested by Aristotle and Whately, or in substance directly borrowed from them, except a few incidental remarks and illustrations.

It must be premised, however, that in every thing to be said on this head, reference is made solely to moral truths, as the conclusions sought to be established in argument. All reasoning is of course ultimately founded on admitted truths, and such reasoning as will serve the orator’s purpose must be founded on truths admitted by those whom he addresses. Necessary truths, constituting the first principles of the mathematical sciences, can scarcely ever enter into rhetorical consideration in any shape, and may be safely left out of view altogether. Contingent truths, composing the other great class of ultimate principles, and embracing truths moral and physical, compose the great quarry of materials for human thought and reasoning; the latter class, however, occupying, in most applications of rhetorical principles, a place comparatively subordinate.

With regard to the Division of Arguments, then, it is to be observed, in the first place, that the division which aids the rhetorical student, is one neither founded on differences in the mode of stating them (as syllogistic, unsyllogis-tic, or the like), nor on differences in their subject (as moral or necessary), nor on differences in the purpose of using them (as direct or indirect, probative or refutative arguments). That which is here useful is a division of arguments as such. Upon this principle Aristotle may be understood as dividing all arguments in moral reasoning into three kinds; what he calls the uz⅛s (literally, Proof of Probability); the Sign or Symptom ( βr ∣ μttw); and the Example f-a^Mtιγ ∣ ιa). Whately first divides all arguments into Two Classes, the first consisting of “such as might have been employed to account for the fact or principle maintained, supposing its truth granted ;” the second, of “such as could not be so employed.” The former class he considers to be the unira of Aristotle, and terms them Arguments α priori, or Arguments from Antecedent Probability. Those of the second class he considers as all referable to Aristotle’s two classes of Signs and Examples.

The f∕xJ{, or Argument a priori, is an argument from cause to effect, these words being understood in the popular and ordinary sense. The conviction which it bears evidently admits of innumerable degrees of strength, from the faintest shadow of likelihood to complete moral certainty. The shades of distinction cannot be marked by appropriate terms, either in the language of common life or in that of [7:19:207]philosophy; both because they run into each other imperceptibly at every point of the progression, and because the same proof, perhaps, does not appear to any two minds as involving exactly the same strength of evidence. Nevertheless there are in popular language some distinguishing words, of which rhetoric may advantageously avail itself. The two most ordinary and useful of these are, Plausibility and Probability, both of them wide words, but each marked in common use by its own essential and distinctive character. Probability, indeed, in the philosophical and proper sense, embraces all the degrees of moral evidence; but in the popular meaning here adverted to, it imports a degree of evidence higher than that of plausibility. Plausibility is a faint degree of likelihood, whose essence Campbell, quite accurately as it should seem, has analysed thus. The hearer considers an argument as plausible which does not contradict his own experience, or that system of general truths which, more or less extensive in different minds, has been collected by every mind from particular facts remembered. If the argument goes farther than this point, it loses the character of plausibility, and acquires a higher rank, passing, in ordinary language, into the class of probabilities; if it falls short, by contradicting any of our habitual conclusions, it is less than plausible, and utterly worthless towards effecting conviction. The only objection to the term plausibility arises from this; that, on account of ordinary associations, it suggests to most minds an unfavourable impression, which does not necessarily or properly belong to the species of evidence it is here used to designate; for, although a plausible proof must never be taken for more than it is worth, it may often do infinite service in preparing the way for others more convincing. Campbell has proposed to substitute for it the word verisimilitude, but his advice has not been followed. It has been observed by the same writer, that this quality of a non-contradiction of experience, is the essential condition of what in poetical invention is called truth to nature. We pronounce the characters in a poem to be well sustained if the acts ascribed to them are similar to those which we have seen such men perform in such circumstances; and as the poet undertakes to prove nothing, we rest in the intellectual pleasure which the invention affords us. If a similar picture of character in action is laid before us, as a step towards convincing us that a certain act has really been done, we try the representation by the former test; but then, if the argument holds good to the extent to which it professes to go, we retain our conviction of this faint antecedent probability, as an element to aid us in judging of the sufficiency of other proofs, if such shall afterwards be adduced. Arguments a priori which deserve the name of probable, go farther than this, and rise gradually till they operate complete conviction. “As far as any cause, popularly speaking, has a tendency to produce a certain effect, so far its existence is an argument for that of the effect-If the cause be fully su fficient, and no impediments intervene, the effect in question follows certainly; and the nearer we approach to this, the stronger the argument.”

The class of Signs forms a very large numerical proportion of our materials in argumentative composition. It is satisfactorily analysed by Whately, whom we here follow closely in all our observations on it, venturing only on one point a silent dissent. “As far as any circumstance is what may be called a condition of the existence of a certain effect or phenomenon, so far it may be inferred from the existence of that effect; if it be a condition absolutely essential, the argument is of course demonstrative; and the probability is the stronger in proportion as we approach to that case. Of this kind are the following arguments. A man is suspected as the perpetrator of a murder, from the circumstance of his clothes being bloody; the murder being considered as, in a certain degree, a probable condition of that appearance; that is, it is presumed that his clothes would not otherwise have been bloody. Again, from the appearance of ice, we infer decidedly the existence of a temperature below the freezing point; that temperature being an essential condition of the crystallization of water.”

Arguments which infer effect from cause having been ranked as our first branch, and examples, the third branch, being, as we shall immediately discover, incapable by themselves of leading to absolute moral conviction,—the class of signs must include both those proofs which from an admitted phenomenon infer its cause, and those which from the same datum infer a condition which is not the cause. And, first, as to those arguments which prove the existence of causes by that of their effects, it must be specially observed, that the cause “is never so proved so far forth as it is a cause, but so far forth as it is a condition, or necessary circumstance.” This is far from being so shadowy a distinction as might be supposed; it enters radically into the mode in which the mind is affected by the different methods of using causes and effects to prove each other. The proposition as it is here maintained, without involving, or tempting us to institute, any inroad into the debateable land of the philosophy of causation, is simply this: that my conviction of the existence of a fact, from my knowledge of another fact which is its effect, is exactly the same kind of conviction as I should derive of the same truth from my knowledge of any fact which was not an effect, but a simple condition, or other concomitant; any difference in the strength of evidence in particular cases depends solely on the circumstances, and, as these vary, the one kind of proof may now be the stronger, and now the other. From the fact that Moscow was burned in the month of September 1812, we infer the existence of the city in the preceding month, because that previous existence, although no cause of the conflagration, in any sense of the word, is a condition, but for which the catastrophe could not have taken place; and as the previous existence is a necessary condition, the conviction which the inference gives amounts to complete moral certainty; but, from the same fact, as it is now stated, we can draw, as to the causes of it, no inferences whatever that amount to more than the weakest of all plausibilities, being just an enumeration of causes, by any of which it is possible the event may have been produced, though, with regard to most of them, we cannot pronounce any one to be more probable than the rest. On the other hand, if, when we have perused the writings of an author, our feelings and our critical judgment agree in declaring them to possess high and genuine eloquence, we infer at once the genius of the writer (the cause, or one of the concurring causes, of the excellence), and our inference is one of positive certainty, because we know genius to be a necessary condition, without which the work could not have possessed the merit it does: while, in the same case, on this naked enunciation of it, our inferences as to many of those conditions of the excellence, which are not in any sense causes, must be founded on plausibilities as weak as those described under the last example.

Of Signs, then, many are not causes. It is needless to illustrate this species of signs further by individual examples; but it is important to observe, that some general classes of, arguments fall under this second division of signs. Of this sort is the Argument from Testimony, to which, if we were to embrace in our view any besides moral truths, we should have to add the argument from Calculation of Chances, on which so much rests in the science of natural theology. Both of these arguments are signs from which we infer conditions that are not causes. The argument from testimony has been thus analysed. “The premise is the existence of the testimony; the conclusion, the truth of what is attested; which is considered as a condition of the testimony having been given; since it is evident, that so far only as this is allowed (i. e. so far only as it is allowed that the testimony would not have been given had it not been true)
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can this argument have any force.” The testimony of the inspired writers is before us, declaring the truth of the Bible history; we believe in the truth thus testified, because,— assuming that we have examined the antecedent steps of the argument, and have reached the point at which the argument from testimony comes in unmixed,—we believe the witnesses, or, in other words, we are convinced that, but for the truth of their testimony (its condition), it would not have been given. On this head we must content ourselves with simply urging the study of one of the most deeply important inquiries connected with the argument, namely, the genuine test of concurrent testimonies. The subject is ably treated both by Campbell and Whately, and the former writer thus states the principle. “In a number of concurrent testimonies (in cases wherein there could have been no previous concert), there is a probability distinct from that which may be termed the sum of the probabilities resulting from the testimonies of the witnesses,—a probability which would remain, even though the witnesses were of such a character as to merit no faith at all. This probability arises purely from the concurrence itself. That such a concurrence should spring from chance, is as one to infinitude; that is, in other words, morally impossible. If, therefore, concert be excluded, there remains no other supposition but the reality of the fact.”

We now pass to the third and last kind of Arguments, those from Example, which Whately analyses thus. In all the arguments designated by this name, “we consider one or more known individual objects, or instances of a certain class, as fair specimens, in respect of some point or other, of that class; and consequently draw an inference from them respecting either the whole class, or other less known individuads of it. In arguments of this kind, then, it will be found, that, universally, we assume as a major premise, that what is true (in regard to the point in question) of the individual or individuals which we bring forward and appeal to, is true of the whole class to which they belong: the minor premise next asserts something of that individual; and the same is then inferred respecting the whole class; whether we stop at that general conclusion, or descend from thence to another unknown individual; in which last case, which is the most usually called the argument from example, we generally omit, for the sake of brevity, the intermediate step, and pass at once, in the expression of the arguments, from the known to the unknown individual.” These principles apply not only to the common argument from Example, but to those from Induction, Experience, Analogy, and the like.

The easiest way of discovering the real force of this class of arguments for direct conviction, is (for those at least who are not wilfully resolved on creating difficulties for themselves) to examine its relation to the principles of logic. Both the Argument from Antecedent Probability and the Argument from Signs are strictly logical; or, in other words, they can be so stated that their form will of itself show whether the conclusion is legitimate or not; for, in order to reduce arguments of these kinds to formal syllogisms, we have only to restore the premise suppressed in ordinary discourse, and to limit in such a way the expression of both premises, that the degree of probability may distinctly appear in each, and may thence pass regularly into the conclusion. If the premises are certain, the conclusion will be so likewise; if that element is wanting, the conclusion will only reach one or another of the infinite degrees of probability. Now, on the other hand, the Argument from Example, in all its varied shapes, is always one which will not stand the test of transformation into a logical shape. We may comprehend this most readily in the case of a rhetorical Induction, which, assuming Whately’s analysis as our guide, is an argument stopping short at the general conclusion from the premises, without going on to the last step, which infers as to the unknown individual. The process thus performed corresponds with what most logicians call an Imperfect Induction, which is truly no logical induction at all, but merely something wearing the appearance of it-The logical induction (to borrow again from a high metaphysical authority already cited) is governed by the rule, “That what belongs (or does not belong) to all the constituent parts, belongs (or does not belong) to the constituted whole.” The imperfect or rhetorical induction assumes, that what belongs (or does not belong) to some of the constituent parts, belongs (or does not belong) to the constituted whole. This conclusion may or may not be true in the particular case, but it is always illogical.

There is a pressing reason for urging the importance of this view of the subject. In matters of moral reasoning, the argument from example is oftener misused than any other, and is altogether a very dangerous one in unskilful hands, the mischief sometimes falling on him who uses it, and sometimes on those to whom it is addressed. We are apt to be widely misled by the analogies of physical science, which give the name of induction to arguments in which an inference is drawn respecting a whole class from experiments on a few individuals, or even from one solitary experiment. If this experiment has been cautiously and un-objectionably made, so as to insure the essential point, that the individual is truly an adequate specimen of the class, the inference is sound and the induction valid. The process of reasoning, in short, sets out from a number of silent assumptions, and it is worthless if any one of these has been unwarranted. The history of the material sciences abounds with instances of the most grievous errors which have arisen from such assumptions of false data; and this notwithstanding the facilities generally existing there for decisive experiments, by which the philosopher may place the subjects of his inquiries almost in any circumstances he will. In moral science we can scarcely ever experiment at all; we are confined to the task of watching the phenomena which the course of nature evolves, and of drawing our conclusions from facts as to which we are often exceedingly in doubt whether we may not have misapprehended their real nature and causes. “The experimentum crucis” says Playfair, in his Preliminary Dissertation to this work, “is of such weight in matters of induction, that in all those branches of science where it cannot easily be resorted to (the circumstances of an experiment being out of our power, and incapable of being varied at pleasure), there is often a great want of conclusive evidence.......Men deceive themselves continually, and think they are reasoning from fact and experience, when in reality they are only reasoning from a mixture of truth and falsehood.” I learn from a few experiments that certain acids act on certain other bodies as solvents; and the inferences are correct, not because they are logically drawn, but because all the assumptions on which they proceed have been tested by observation, and discovered to be well founded. Afterwards, turning to subjects of moral reasoning, I infer that all political revolutions are accompanied by wars and bloodshed, because I know that such evils attended the French Revolution of the eighteenth century, and that which took place in England in the first half of the seventeenth. The conclusion, as every one will tell me, is false; but it is also logically inconsequent; for the reasoning has silently assumed as true an infinite number of principles, all of which are essential to its validity, and many of which are utterly destitute of truth and probability.

The principles to which it has been here attempted to invite the student’s notice, are convincingly illustrated by Campbell, in his analysis of arguments from experience. The evidence of Analogy, as the same writer observes, “is but a more indirect experience, founded on some remote similitude ;” and its force is always small, requiring indeed [7:19:209]a very unusual accumulation of comparisons before it can ' be relied on for any further purpose in argument than that which it has often served so well, namely, the repelling of captious refutations. In this kind of argument, quite as strictly as in any other instance of example, the things compared are assumed, in regard to the point of comparison, to belong to the same genus; but there is evidently here a still greater risk than that which prevails in other reasonings of the same class, of either over-estimating or underestimating the weight of the evidence. The generic and specific names in common use alternately involve us in mistakes and help to extricate us from them. All of these are accurate for their own purposes; but the purpose for which we use the example may, though quite legitimate, be extremely different from that which has dictated the common divisions. If, taking any number of men, who form a class in respect of social or civil relations,—a nation, a civic community, or even a large household,—we discover a certain physical peculiarity in one individual, and thence, without examination, infer it of another,—we are arguing, not from similarity, but from one of the remotest and most worthless of all analogies; an analogy founded, not on any of those qualities of the individuals which came into view in their classification, but on one which merely happens to belong to one of them, and possibly or probably may not be found in any other, being, in short, what logicians would call an inseparable accident. On the other hand, direct and close similarities may be continually discovered between individuals which have in ordinary language no common name, and which could not be classed together for any of the practical purposes of life. Amidst the countless variety of natures and ends which divides the universe into such an interminable number of classes, genera, and species, all the individuals arc united by at least one common relation, that which the created bear to the Creator; and when we endeavour to contemplate the world in its position towards God, we discover near and essential resemblances between the highest sentient beings and the most insignificant atoms of matter,—between the spirit of the archangel and the trodden grain of sand.

In estimating the force of Arguments from Example, our great task should always be, to discover the principle of the division which the reasoning assumes. Ifwe clearly apprehend the principle, and keep it steadily in view, we shall be able to steer safely through all the perplexities of individual cases. When the alleged point of similarity makes up the whole essence of the genus, the pioof, supposing the genus really to exist, is morally certain: when it appears on analysis to be only a separable accident of an individual, the proof is a worthless analogy. Between these two extreme points lies the wide channel through whose shoals the principle will always be able to pilot us.

In regard to the Comparative Efficiency and the Proper Order of the several kinds of arguments, as indeed in regard to every other point essential to the rhetorical art, Aristotle will furnish us with the germ of all the principles, and with many of their elucidations; but Whately’s work is extremely valuable in this section, and will aid us scarcely less than it has aided us in the inquiry which we have just left. All that is most important on this subject may be comDrehended under the answers to three questions.

First, what is the Comparative Efficiency of the several sorts of arguments, considered with reference to the nature of the conclusions sought to be established by them? Our guide answers as follows. “Matters of opinion, as they are called (that is, where we are not said properly to know, ,but to judge), are established chiefly by Antecedent Probability (arguments of the first class, from cause to effect), though the Testimony of wise men is also admissible; past facts, chiefly by Signs of various kinds (that term, it must be remembered, including Testimony); and future events, by Antecedent Probabilities and Examples.” Cases may often occur which form exceptions to these principles; but reflection will easily convince every one that the outline of them here given is substantially accurate; and any doubts which may arise on an abstract consideration of the question may be certainly removed by an examination of the most, convincing argumentative compositions. In few instances where argument is applied to practical uses, does any of the several sorts of conclusions constitute the whole of the end which the discourse proposes; but, in every discourse, one or another of the kinds holds the most prominent place. Compositions chiefly designed for instruction or exhortation, such as ethical and most religious discourses, being principally conversant about conclusions of the first class, appeal mainly to the argument from cause to effect, strengthening this argument by authorities fairly and judiciously selected, and also making frequent use of examples, seldomer however as proofs than as illustrations, which are not introduced for the purpose of proving anything, but merely in order to place imperfectly-apprehended proposi∙ tions in a stronger light. Judicial oratory, when employed on those questions which fall within the province of juries, has mainly reference to the second class of conclusions, so that signs compose the chief weapons of the legal speaker’s armoury. Harangues addressed to deliberative assemblies embrace the whole field of conclusions, but in most cases are chiefly directed tow ards those of the third class.

Secondly, what is the Comparative Efficiency of the several sorts of argument, considered with reference to our position towards the party whom we desire to convince? Which sort is best calculated for direct Conviction? and which for Refutation? We again borrow an answer. “It should be considered whether the principal object of the discourse be, to give satisfaction to a candid mind and convey instruction to those who are ready to receive it, or to comped the assent or silence the. objections of an opponent. The former of these purposes is in general principally to be accomplished by the former of those two great classes into which arguments were divided (viz. by those from cause to effect), the other by the latter. To whatever class, however, the arguments we resort to may belong, the general tenor of the reasoning will in many respects be affected by the present consideration. The distinction in question is nevertheless in general little attended to. It is usual to call an argument simply strong or weak, without reference to the purpose for which it was designed; whereas the arguments which afford the most satisfaction to a candid mind, are often such as would have less weight in controversy than many others, which, again, would be less suitable for the former purpose. For example; the internal evidence of Christianity in general proves the most satisfactory to a believer’s mind, but is not that which makes the most show in the refutation of infidels. The arguments from analogy, on the other hand, which are the most unanswerable, are not so pleasing and consolatory.”

Thirdly, where we are in possession of arguments of all the kinds, all bearing on the conclusion which we wish to reach, what Arrangement of these is most effectual for producing conviction? This question is one of the most important in rhetoric: indeed there is scarcely any other which goes so closely to the foundation of all eloquence. A just Arrangement of Arguments is indispensable towards success in conviction or persuasion; and the leading principles of eloquence carry us by a very short journey to general rules on the subject, which may be considered as infallible. Aristotle has not enlarged on this point further than to press the necessity of using probative examples in the very last place; but Whately has very justly observed that the principle should be extended much more widely. The [7:19:210]three kinds of argument,—supposing that in the particular case each is accessible, applicable, and necessary,—should be used in the order in which they were explained in preceding paragraphs; the Argument from Antecedent Probabilities coming first, that from Signs second, and that from Examples last of all. If we violate the principle of this rule, we cripple every branch of our proof, as we may readily convince ourselves by trying the experiment on any case in which all the classes of argument must have place. Let us take the instance of a judicial address, intended to convince a jury that a certain man has committed a murder, supposing also the state of the proof to be such that the speaker rightly considers it necessary to use all the three kinds of argument; and let us adduce the arguments in the order opposite to that which the rule suggests. By commencing with analogical arguments, or other proofs from example, we instantly prepossess our hearers against the conclusion which we wish to establish. All men feel, more or less, the weakness of this sort of proof when taken by itself, whether they clearly perceive the cause of the weakness or not; and the defect will strike them forcibly and painfully in a case like that supposed, in which they are naturally reluctant to come to the conclusion which is urged on them: a single example is in such a place even worse than worthless; accumulated examples perplex the mind, and excite it to an effort of memory which withdraws it from its proper task; and, lastly, the argument, if adduced at this stage, is a building reared without a foundation; for, as we have proved no circumstances of the special fact, our hearers have no materials for determining whether our analogy holds or not. Let us next proceed to the argument from signs: we still want something. For, even although we had been able to convince our hearers by the first branch of our argument, that our allegation has in it nothing which common experience has shown to be impossible, or very highly improbable, we have as yet not advanced a single step towards proving a priori, that the fact is positively likely to be true, and our audience are still indisposed to believe that it is so. On the supposition made, the proof from signs is stated as in itself not conclusive (for, if it were so, there would be no use for either of the other two kinds of proof); and, the case being so,—the fact being, by its accompanying circumstances, made more or less probable, but not certain, and nothing having been established which, like a strong motive, or such probable cause, would lead our hearers to anticipate the fact as likely, before they become acquainted with the corroborating symptoms,—we shall still have failed in gaining our end, and perhaps have come little nearer to it than the point at which we stood in the beginning. In order to complete our evidence, we must, therefore, proceed to the third series of arguments, tending to establish antecedent probability, which now come forward with every possible disadvantage. Our hearers have to apply the argument to the preceding facts, by a toilsome exertion of memory, which prevents the discursive faculties from acting freely, and, if the proof is complicated, may, after all, be completely unsuccessful; or, if we endeavour to remove this risk, we must do so by a recapitulation, which will be wearisome, inefficient, and in itself an adequate reason for believing that our arrangement has been radically wrong. Let us reverse the arrangement, and everything will find quick and easy access to the mind. We first establish that our conclusion has antecedent presumptions in its favour, and the hearers are thus prepared for receiving with attention, candour, and even prepossession, all specific proofs in support of it. We next adduce those concurrent circumstances which we maintain would not have happened had not the fact taken place which we wish to prove. And, lastly, after we have conducted thus far those whom we address, examples or analogies complete the chain of probabilities. “After the other proofs have been adduced,” says Aristotle, “a single example comes in with as much force as the testimony of a single honest witness.” The application of the same principles to the refutation of an address like that now analysed, is too obvious to require illustration.

In any treatise which should aim at following out the principles of rhetoric to their detailed consequences (a design far beyond the limits of these pages), it would be of the highest advantage to devote a separate section to a systematic consideration of the most usual Rhetorical Fallacies. Under this head would be analysed, not only those artifices by which falsehood may in argument be most easily made to pass current for truth, but also those others, by means of which conclusions may be represented as fallacies without really being so. It is not more important to expose the foundations of real fallacies, than to exhibit the unsoundness of those objections which represent as fallacies arguments truly sound. Although this double task belongs, in most of its applications, to logical science, there are many cases in which it is from the principles of rhetoric, not from those of dialectics, that the refutation of the error must be drawn. From Aristotle’s two admirable chapters on Fallacies, and on the Refutation of Arguments and of Objections, only one observation shall here be cited, on account of the practical importance of the truth which it contains. Where, remarks the philosopher, the aim of an argument is merely to establish a probability, contrary facts may always be truly alleged. But the existence of such facts does not prove the argument to be fallacious; for a probability is not disproved till we have proved that the fact does usually happen contrariwise. The cavil which this remark exposes, lies at the root of very much of the sophistry which has been put in use against truth, both in religion and in politics.

Our next subject of inquiry is Aristotle’s Second Rhetorical ground of Belief; namely, that which arises from the favourable impression created by the discourse as to the Character of the Writer or Speaker. The impression here meant is one arising wholly from the discourse; for, so far as it is produced by previous knowledge possessed by those who are addressed, it is no subject of rhetorical consideration. This is a ground of belief, which, although it is sometimes very effective in written discourses, and although in such discourses the violation of its principle often occasions lamentable failures, has yet its principal field in spoken oratory. A speaker who is skilled in producing conviction in this way, has often applied to him, in common language, the epithet of plausible. Aristotle places high reliance on this ground of belief; observing of it, in two different places, that it is most effectual indeed when the audience are very imperfectly informed on the matter of the discourse, but that, taken all in all, it is probably the most extensively powerful of all means of persuasion; and that, in deliberative assemblies, it very often triumphs over all other oratorical artifices. The speaker’s Character must be favourably developed in three particulars; the hearers must be led to have faith in his Moral Worth, in his Understanding, and in his Good Dispositions towards them. It is scarcely possible to overrate the power of the first point. Indeed the art of persuading the audience into a belief of his high moral principle, or of his perfect honesty and fairness, is one of the most valuable an orator can acquire. Its attainment should be a leading aim; but it is not equally attainable in every kind of oratory; and, in particular, the acquisition of this kind of plausibility is one of the most difficult tasks of a barrister who struggles for success in addressing juries. His difficulties are of two kinds; the one arising from his audience, mainly founded on their knowledge of his professional position, and their consequent tendency to distrust; the [7:19:211]other inherent in himself, founded on the abstract nature and the over-cautious, captious spirit, of the legal arguments which in most courts form the greater part of the ordinary practice, and which, as we see in everyday experience, disqualify most lawyers, by various defects (and most of all by want of apparent candour), from success as popular speakers. For success in pulpit-oratory, this instrument of persuasion is absolutely and without exception indispensable. The hearer’s confidence in the speaker’s understanding requires scarcely any illustrative remark but this; that it must not be a confidence in his oratorical skill, which has an inevitable tendency to check belief: but it may advantageously extend to an unlimited admiration of his general intelligence, and of the profundity of his acquaintance with the matter of the address; with this restriction, however, that the display of these qualities will lose all their force, if, by exhibiting a want of modesty, they draw the speaker into a violation of the first section of the rule. The hearer’s confidence in the speaker’s good-will is as essential as the rest, and the want of this confidence is the main obstacle which makes a speaker on political questions almost inevitably unable to make an impression on men belonging to an opposite faction.

We have now reached the Third Ground of Belief; that which the writer or speaker produces by exciting, in the minds of those whom he addresses, such an Emotion, or series of Emotions, as for a time excludes the application of their discursive faculties to the arguments regarding the question discussed. The operation which Eloquence here effects on the mind is, it must be observed, complex. The faculty primarily excited is the Imagination; but the agency of this faculty is merely instrumental; for the office which it is made to discharge is, that of calling up images which are adequate objects of the Emotions, and are calculated to arouse them. But, further, these objects of the imagination and the feelings, so far as they are useful towards the Production of Belief, are either themselves conclusions presented to the Reason to be pronounced by it true or false, or they are at least steps leading towards such conclusions. This appeal to the Reason, however, is the very last stage of the process: and if the discourse has effected its end, the operation of judgment is instantaneous, and as it were instinctive: the conclusion is admitted by the mind, not as the result of a train of argument, but as an element, so to speak, of the mind’s own experience or consciousness.

This is the true analysis of all animated and passionate eloquence; and yet, when so represented, this process, in which the art gains its highest triumphs, and without which it would be quite powerless as an instrument for persuading the mass of mankind, may at first sight appear more open to the charge of unfairness than any other means which literature and oratory employ. But the objection is unsound. This, like every other element of eloquence, is a neutral power, which may be made to ally itself either with good or evil, being, however, always most willing to serve truth and rectitude. We shall be enabled to discern its real position, by examining two of its most usual applications.

The first case is that in which the aim of the discourse is to determine the hearers or readers to a certain course of action, of whose abstract justice and propriety they are convinced by a simple statement of its principles, but towards which neither the abstract statement, nor their previous feelings on the subject, tend strongly enough to prompt them; in other words, a case in which persuasion (in the strict sense of the word), not conviction, is the proper aim. The mere conviction would clearly not lead to the result required; because men act not from convictions, but from motives; not from simple belief of truth, reposing ultimately in the understanding, nor even from a belief superinduced on this, that the truth is also an object adequate to the gra tification of one or more of the active powers of the mind,— but from the suggestions of these active faculties themselves, aroused to energy, and directed to the truths in question as their fittest or only objects. Eloquence strives to communicate the impulse thus needed. The most important truth stated abstractly and barely, and the same truth set forth with the adornment of eloquence, often bear to each other, in respect of their comparative value for mankind, the same relation which the skeleton-hull in the building-yard bears to the gallant ship at sea, armed, manned, and in full sail.

We next take a case which brings us nearer to the disputable ground; being one in which we attempt, by the excitement of emotion, to lead men to a conclusion in which they would not have acquiesced but for such excitement. There is nothing to prevent us from assuming, that the conclusion which we maintain in the case supposed is true, although it may seem to those whom we address to be either positively false, or exceedingly problematical. Now this belief or doubt of theirs, adverse at once to the truth and to the end of the discourse, may arise in their minds in a variety of ways, all of these, however, being reducible to two; for it must either be founded on an antecedent process of pure reasoning which has gone on in their minds, or it must rest on some other antecedent mental process, in which the discursive faculties are either not at all, or not alone, active. The former class of wrong conclusions arise much seldomer from any defect in the process of reasoning which has conducted to them, than from the assumption of erroneous premises; and this makes it the more difficult to combat them directly by argument. The latter class, however, is that to which belong the great mass of common prejudices; opinions often resulting from an inextricable combination of shallow reflection, hasty observation, ruling passion, imperfect views of moral duty, and personal or local affections and dislikes; prepossessions on which arguments can take no hold, but which are often quickly displaced by other notions suggested without argument: just as, in a siege, the shot and shells rebound without effect from the masonry of a casemated bastion, which a storming party, if they can once enter the trenches, will carry at the first assault If we undertake to instruct or convince minds engrossed by false opinions of either class, we have only two alternatives: either a direct attack on the reason by argument, which will meet with an inevitable and signal repulse, or a well-directed appeal to other principles of the mind, which will often insure a gratifying success. No doubt it would be better if truth could be protected and disseminated without the use of these indirect methods: no doubt we can conceive, and ardently desire to witness, an advancement of human knowledge, a purification of human desires and affections, an elevation of the standard of conscience as well as intellect, which should make a simple presentation of truth to the reason always adequate for the dislodgement of error: but our mortal nature does not stand on this height, and will never rise so high till it has put on immortality; and the aspirant after eloquence, like the philosopher and the man of business, must, in his endeavours to act on the minds of others, be contented to take their condition as he finds it. This is all that Aristotle has said, or intended to say, in a passage which has been strangely cited as expressing an opinion, that all the appeals of eloquence to the passions are wrong and illegitimate; we say strangely, when the assertion is made as to a writer who placed so much weight on this instrument of the art, that he devoted a large proportion of his rhetorical work to an analysis of the most common passions, although, according to his own view of the province of rhetoric, the subject lies beyond its limits.

The Aristotle of modern times has at once beautiftiliy illustrated and convincingly defended the operation of elo[7:19:212]quence on the imagination and the feelings. “If the affections in themselves,” says Bacon, “were pliant and obedient to reason, it were true there should be no great use of persuasions and insinuations to the will, more than of naked proposition and proofs. But in regard of the continual mutinies and seditions of the affections, reason would become captive and servile if eloquence of persuasions did not practise and win the imagination from the affections’ part, and contract a confederacy between the reason and imagination against the affections. For the affections themselves carry ever an appetite to good, as reason doth: the difference is, that the affection beholdeth merely the present; reason beholdeth the future and sum of time. And therefore, the present filling the imagination more, reason is commonly vanquished: but after that the force of eloquence and persuasion hath made tilings future and remote appear as present, then upon the revolt of the imagination reason pre-vaileth.”

But this is a department in which rhetoric can aid the student less than in any other. As it is the field in which genius gathers its fairest harvest, so it is also that which she is called on chiefly to cultivate from her own resources. No rules, and no study or experience, will qualify one for attaining this loftiest stage of eloquence, unless the mind glows spontaneously with that warmth and depth of feeling which its exertions aim at communicating to the breasts of others. To the active and searching intellect, whose suggestions, operating on the stores of knowledge possessed by the writer or speaker, lead him to the sources and instruments of conviction in the argumentative part of his task, and whose acuteness and energy can be incalculably aided by philosophical and critical study, and by experimental practice,—to this foundation and groundwork of success must be added, for the acquisition of excellence in impassioned eloquence, natural powers to which external aids can minister but weakly. A very few observations, therefore, may suffice on this head.

The philosophy of those regions of the human mind on which eloquence here seeks to work, must be learned, not from rhetoric, but from consciousness, observation, and the systematic study of the mental philosophy. It is most usual to consider the class of mental phenomena which are here brought into play as embracing only the active principles of human nature; but the student will unquestionably gain many incidental hints which would otherwise have escaped his notice, and will probably find his general view over this province of the art made at once clearer and wider, if he investigates with reference to it the whole of that class of phenomena which Thomas Brown ranks together in his analysis of the emotions, in their three genera of the immediate, retrospective, and prospective, and their subdivision (still more valuable for the present purpose) into those which do, and those which do not, involve the feelings that form the criterion of the objects of the moral faculty.

All advices which rhetoric can give on the subject are immediate corollaries from one part of the proposition laid down as our definition; namely, that the emotion sought to be produced excludes the action of the discursive faculties. The moment an argument, or a hint towards one, is suggested by the impassioned portions of a discourse, the emotion begins to be chilled, and the effect is lost. The emo tion is generated through the excitement of the imagination; and this fact, with the exclusion of argument, is nearly all that art can here teach. “The first and most important point to be observed in every address to any passion, sentiment, feeling, &c. is, that it should not be introduced as such, and plainly avowed.” This rule follows both from the principles just laid down, and from another consideration: if the feeling sought to be excited is wrong, the avowal of the intention is manifestly destructive: if it is right and honourable, the self-love of those whom we address is offended by having it hinted that they are deficient in it. Another rule, following from the instrumentality of the imagination, teaches us that conciseness, which in argument is a virtue if it does not degenerate into obscurity, is in the impassioned parts of a discourse always a positive, fault. The imagination is operated on, not by general, views, but by special circumstances, by pictures held up to it and brought close that they may be distinctly seen. On this, as on other questions connected with the impassioned parts of a discourse, Cicero, himself one of the greatest proficients in this branch, peculiarly attached to its study, and inclined to undervalue other sections of the art, has thrown out, in his attractively desultory fashion, hints that are extremely instructive. A third rule, nearly akin to the last, which may indeed be considered as a portion of it, prescribes an examination and knowledge of all those circumstances which are chiefly instrumental in affecting the feelings; and Campbell has ably illustrated this precept, classing the most obvious of such circumstances under the seven heads of “probability, plausibility” (which he considers as different from probability in kind, not in degree), “importance, proximity of time, connection of place, relation of the actors or sufferers to the hearers or speaker, and interest of the hearers or speaker in the consequences.” But, fourthly, such an examination will discover to us many-circumstances which tend to check the flow of feeling, and against which consequently we must guard. Among these, a prominent place is occupied by tediousness, a fault into which the second rule just propounded may entice those who want a complete apprehension of its principle. “Nothing,” says an ancient critic, “dries up more quickly than a tear ;” and what is thus true of the softer feelings, is equally so of the more vehement: none of them can be adequately supported by eloquence for more than a certain period, the length of which an impassioned orator must learn from his own consciousness and observation, being always, however, in danger of extending its limits too far, rather than of unduly restricting them. Appeals to the sense of the ludicrous by means of wit or humour may, if well supported, be responded to for a much longer time than the serious emotions, even although they should be conducted with little variety and intermission; but no class of feelings is more completely inconsistent with the exercise of the reasoning faculties; and a discourse which rests its strength solely or mainly on the use of ridicule, thereby shows that, whatever the author’s motives may be for the choice, he is at any rate disinclined to attempt reaching his end by any thing like pure conviction. Some of the instruments of the ludicrous, too, are apt to fail in their purpose with many people, from being misunderstood; and against irony in particular, the sharpest of all the weapons of wit, dulness of heart or fancy cases very many in armour of proof. This truth has been remarkably experienced by Swift, who is perhaps the greatest master of irony in any language, but whose polemical dissertations, often clothed in an ironical dress from beginning to end, are thus, in many cases, as little appreciable by a large majority of his readers as if they had been written in an unknown language. As instances of this fault, we may cite two of his most severe satires; the one his “Argument against abolishing Christianity,” aimed both at the irreligion and the false religion of the times; and the other, still more celebrated, the “Modest proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public,” being the bitterest of all sarcastic invectives against the misgovernment of that unhappy island, whose miseries Swift professes to see no possible means of alleviating, except by devoting the superabundant population to the shambles. The only other questions connected with the inquiry which we shall allude to, are those which address themselves to the case [7:19:213]in which those whom we address are already under the influence of some emotion, which we must endeavour to allay, or to divert from its original object. The main principle applicable to this head is, that a passion may generally be destroyed most easily, not by the excitement of another which may be considered as its opposite, but by that of passions which do not lie so far distant from it. Anger towards a person, for example, may be removed, not only by exciting good-will towards him, but by holding him up as a proper object of fear. “Compassion, likewise, may be counteracted either by disapprobation, by jealousy, by fear, or by disgust; and horror and envy either by good-will or by contempt.” Aristotle, in his minute analysis of the passions most usually appealed to in oratory, which is well worthy of being deeply studied, has several very valuable observations on this head; as Whately and Campbell have on the whole subject of impassioned eloquence: and Cicero and Quinctilian are much more useful here than they are in relation to the philosophy of arguments.

Our general plan of the Systematic portion of Rhetoric now presents to us its Second Division, which treats of what the ancients called Disposition, or the Arrangement of the several Parts of a Discourse. This department of the inquiry, a favourite one with the classical rhetoricians, especially those of the later ages, has, in modern systems of the art, seldom received a place as a distinct branch, and has, indeed, been generally overlooked altogether; but the consideration of it suggests illustrations of the laws of eloquence, which claim for it some attention at least, although we shall not be tempted to dwell long upon it.

In reference to the animation of a discourse, and to every appeal which it makes to any principles of the mind besides the reasoning powers, Cicero has well said, that an eloquent composition should be constructed on the principle of the climax, rising gradually in its demands on the fancy and feelings of those to whom it is addressed, in the same ratio in which it has succeeded in opening the way for their rational conviction. This rule is in truth a very simple application of the fundamental proposition of rhetoric; and all special directions regarding arrangement will, so far as they are sound, be immediately deducible from it. Aristotle, desirous, as he always is, to expel the prevailing errors of his time, by maintaining the due prevalence of the argumentative element of eloquence, observes that, in despite of that complication of divisions which already reigned in the schools, the essential parts common to all argumentative compositions are two only; the proposition or statement of the question, and the proof or argument in support of it. And this is quite true; for every other portion is introduced solely for the sake of these two, and has no value, unless in so far as it promotes their purpose. In most cases, however, an argument cannot with advantage be maintained thus barely; but a complete discourse may always be with little difficulty analysed by a division into four parts; the Exordium or Introduction, the Proposition or Statement of the Question, the Proof or Argument, and the Peroration.

The Exordium, when it finds a place, is designed for conciliating the minds of the persons addressed; and Quinctilian reduces to three the dispositions which it should aim at producing—Good-will, Attention, and Docility. The materials of the introduction should be drawn as closely as possible from the subject of the discourse, and as little as possible from common-places; and it therefore follows, that the ancient oratorical practice of keeping a stock of exordia prepared beforehand, which Cicero generally followed, and which Demosthenes has exemplified by a collection of more than fifty specimens, one or two of them introduced in his extant harangues, was unsatisfactory and dangerous even for public speakers, unless used with great judgment, and was quite preposterous in the case of all other writers. Both for the writer and the speaker, but more especially for the latter, the chief difficulty is, the passing naturally and safely from the theme suggested in the introduction, to that which is to be propounded in the next part of the composition.

If we say that the Proposition requires little illustration and few precepts, we shall find that Aristotle is with us,Quinctilian neutral, and the later rhetoricians, both Greek and Latin, decidedly against us. Even if we professed to deliver a complete system, we should not be easily induced to try the student’s patience, by following Severianus, or the pseudo-Augustin, far through the mazes of the Status Quaestionis; but the principles which should guide us in laying down our proposition, and in choosing it when that is in our power, are far too little studied (if gross violation of the principle be a proof that it has not been studied or understood) by many argumentative writers, and by a still greater number of argumentative speakers. Preachers are in this respect decidedly the most faulty class; and orators of other kinds are protected against the error less by their own familiarity with the principles than by their liability to those checks by contradiction which the preacher wants. The most important rule, and one which is but too often broken, is to frame in our own minds a clear notion of the proposition, which involves among other contained rules that of ascertaining, that what we are about to argue is truly a proposition, and not a mere term. “In an ethical work,” says Whately, “one may be treating of virtue, while discussing all or any of these questions—wherein virtue consists? whence our notions of it arise? whence it derives its obligation? &c.; but if these questions were confusedly blended together, or if all of them were treated of within a short compass, the most just remarks and forcible arguments would lose their interest and their utility.”

Of the Argumentative, or third portion of the composition, which has been already discussed at such length, little seems necessary to be added. It must, of course, include the Refutation of an opponent’s argument, as well as the statement of those by which our own proposition is directly supported. The proper places for such refutative arguments, and the best arrangement of arguments in general, in cases where the rules draw n from the kind of the argument do not apply, have given rise to much discussion, and to many contradictory rules, from which it is not easy to extract general laws, or any very positive inference beyond the advice, to study the aspect of the evidence, and the disposition of those who are to judge of it. The rule most commonly received, which directs that the strongest arguments be placed first and last, and the weakest in the middle, is subject to constantly recurring exceptions, of which we only cite one from Quinctilian, namely, the case where a harangue preceding ours has created in the minds of the hearers on certain points an impression strongly unfavourable to us, which we must at all hazards endeavour immediately to remove. Under this head, in respect both of their nature and their place, fall most of those passages occasionally introduced in argumentative composition, which, under the names of Narration, Digression, and the like, rhetoricians have often classed separately as integral parts of a discourse; and here also there frequently occur fitting occasions for the introduction of appeals to the feelings.

But the Conclusion or Peroration is the place for pressing such appeals to the utmost, to which office it adds that of bringing together into one view, by a Recapitulation, when one is thought necessary, the heads of the argument, or at least the results to which the speaker wishes it to be believed that they conduct. The Recapitulation is, for those who are maintaining a weak cause, a favourite and advantageous place for varnishing over the defects of the proof,—by assumptions of things as proved which have not been proved,— by exaggeration of the favourable points in our own cause,—
[7:19:214]

by the explaining away of such points in the argument opposed to us,—and by other artifices belonging to the numerous class of Rhetorical Fallacies. In its passionate parts the peroration has, both in ancient and in modern times, prompted some of the noblest flights of human eloquence.

If Eloquence depended solely on Style, those lofty pretensions of rhetoricians which were alluded to in the first paragraph of this paper would be not merely excusable or plausible, but to a considerable extent justified by their results. The highest qualities of style indeed are emanations from the mind; but many of its excellences may be attained by industrious practice, conducted in obedience to systematic rules. The expression may be feeble, because words, phrases, and sentences cannot be strong, unless the thoughts which they represent be strong likewise; it may be wanting in precision, because this is another quality flowing essentially from the nature of the author’s conceptions; and if ornament be introduced, it may be destitute of originality and liveliness, because no rules can confer either the power of felicitous invention or that of extensive and acute observation. But even in these very particulars, art, although weak, is not altogether powerless; accuracy, or even strength of thinking, and closeness of observation, may be increased by sound precepts and active exercise, which, by thus improving the faculties of the intellect, will necessarily facilitate the expression of its thoughts by language. And, again, if a man can only be taught to apprehend distinctly the limits of the province within which his mind may act with advantage, and to adapt the character of his style to that of his natural powers, the rules of composition may suffice to render his style, if not positively good, at least negatively faultless.

But Style, instead of solely constituting eloquence, might, if we chose to court contradiction by stating a truth in the shape of a paradox, be even said to be no essential part of it. It is an unavoidable inference from the principles which we have laid down, that all eloquence is relative. The harangues which a chief in the centre of Africa delivers to his fellow-savages, or by which a demagogue in religion or politics excites an uneducated mob, such as unfortunately may still be found in our country as well as in others, may be truly and powerfully eloquent, because fitted beyond all other discourses for convincing and impelling to action the persons on whose understanding and will they are designed to operate; and yet, not only may these orations contain constant violations of all rules of style, except those few which are directly referable to the thought, but they may owe to such violations no mean part of their persuasive efficacy. This view, however, is stated solely for the purpose of guarding against error in our notions as to the place which style really holds as an element of eloquence. In all the applications of preceptive systems of the art in civilized and cultivated society, or, in other words, in all cases in which such preceptive systems can arise, the rules of style must be obeyed more or less closely, and the acquisition of them is indispensable for every student of rhetoric.

But the details of the subject cannot here be taught. Our plan is that of a mere outline, and in tilling it up we confine ourselves to an attempt to illustrate some of those points which bear most strongly on the mental laws of rhetorical belief. Those useful rules which affect style chiefly or essentially as such, may be satisfactorily learned from many works of different kinds, both in our own language, and in others, both ancient and modern. The principles of style in the classical tongues are not truths foreign to our own, but only truths which, always analogically useful, do in many instances hold as to all languages, while in some they cannot be applied to the tongues of modern Europe, without cautions and modifications: we may learn much from Aristotle, Quinctilian, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and even from the later rhetoricians and critics, Greek as well as Latin. On English style we have many good works: Campbell, Blair, Karnes, and Whately, abound with valuable illustrations of the subject in its relation to rhetorical principles; and of those treatises which are designed chiefly as manuals of style, without aiming at a general exposition of the philosophical principles of eloquence, more than one might be safely recommended. Of those works which have attained reputation in this latter class, none will be found so useful as one of the latest, Irving’s unpretending and excellent Elements of English Composition.

We may here confine ourselves almost to a simple enumeration of those Qualities of Style which are strictly Rhetorical, and which, availing ourselves of Whately’s extension of the analysis proposed by Campbell, we may reduce to three: Perspicuity, Vivacity, and Beauty.

The first quality is of course an indispensable requisite in compositions of every kind; and the principles of rhetoric remind us, that, while style, in order to be perspicuous at all, must obey certain general laws, the quality is also in a very important sense relative to the knowledge and intellect of those whom the language is intended to instruct, convince, or persuade. The same statement which is abundantly perspicuous to one audience, may be quite unintelligible to another less informed. In the adaptation of style in this respect to different classes of readers and hearers, the student cannot be so much aided by any rules as by his own judgment and observation; but in order to avoid, on the one hand, the obscurity which may arise from conciseness, and, on the other, the wearisomeness which inevitably attends prolixity, it has been recommended to repeat the thought and argument in several different forms, “each in itself brief, but all together affording such an expansion of the sense to be conveyed, and so detaining the mind upon it, as the case may require.” “Cicero among the ancients, and Burke among the modern writers, afford perhaps the most abundant practical exemplifications of this rule.” But, as we shall speedily discover that an overflow of figurative language is inconsistent with perspicuity in all circumstances, we must not be thus tempted to believe that the style which is least figurative is the most perspicuous. Illiterate audiences, in particular, are not only-pleased with figurative language, but may often by means of it be made to comprehend a principle, which would have remained perfectly dark to them if conveyed in abstract and unimaginative terms.

Vivacity of style is the quality by which it makes its appeal to the imagination, or, through that faculty, to the passions and other active powers. Independently of those considerations as to the number and arrangement of words, upon which we cannot here enter, Vivacity is chiefly produced by the use of figurative language, which critical and rhetorical writers have divided into two kinds, Tropes and Figures. It has been said by some writers of authority, that the distinction implied in these terms is of little importance, because, it is added, “nothing can be built upon it in practice, nor can it always be clearly observed.” The language of the imagination and passions, however, does naturally fall into two classes, the characteristics of which correspond substantially with those assigned by the rhetoricians to their two divisions; and the student of the principles of eloquence may find it worth while to recollect the distinction. In the former class, which one may consider as properly Tropes, taking the metaphor as an example, a word is used in a sense different from its usual and appropriate one. In the other class, composing the Figures, a word or sentence, without being either employed in a different sense from its usual one, or put into any unusual form, derives its figurative or exciting power merely from the fact, that the form of expression is not that which an unimpassioned mind would have used in the place where it occurs, but that [7:19:215]which would have suggested itself to one whose feelings or imagination were at the time highly active: the Interrogation, the Apostrophe, the Exclamation, and similar rhetorical figures, may be cited as instances. There is at least one practical inference deducible from the distinction; namely, that the Trope proper may sometimes be safely used by rule, while the Figure proper will always be ridiculous unless prompted by genuine emotion. The former may have place in all the degrees of style, from the calmest to the most animated; the latter is appropriate to eloquence of a highly passionate or imaginative cast, and is indeed much more rarely admissible in written prose composition than in poetry or in spoken oratory.

Perspicuity and Vivacity are qualities of style, which minister directly to the great purpose of eloquence, and which, indeed, language must possess before it can reach its rhetorical end by both of its two leading paths; the former being essential for the conviction of the understanding, and the latter for the awakening of the fancy and the feelings. The same thing cannot be said, at least not without qualification, as to the third quality of style, namely, Beauty or Elegance, whose immediate purpose is the gratification of taste. Either in this place, or at a former stage of the inquiry, there might have been room for some curious speculations as to the functions which taste really exercises as an oratorical instrument of belief; but the practical inferences, on which alone it is proper to enter, are very plain, and may be very briefly stated. If it is found that the gratification of the taste of those whom we address is likely to impede our progress towards impressing on their minds the truth which we wish to teach, we should at once abandon all attempts to furnish such gratification, and pursue our principal end by means of clearness and animation. But if it is found, as it most usually will be, that our purpose may be promoted by gratifying the sense of beauty in our hearers, either through the general elegance of our composition, or even through longer and more sustained addresses to the imagination, not issuing in the excitement of passion, but resting ultimately in the mere pleasure of contemplation,— we shall be bound to use, so far as we are able, this lawful means of persuasion; taking care however to recollect, that, as soon as we have reason to believe the minds of the hearers in danger of being tempted towards such a lively attention to those incidental ornaments of our discourse as will exclude from their thoughts the main subject of it, we have thus evidence that it is time to discard the assistant, which, like a spoiled domestic servant, has begun to play the part of the master.

III.

The last division of the three, in which we undertook to treat the subject of this paper, embraces what may be called the Criticism of Rhetoric.

This branch, as it must present itself to the student, should engage him in an examination of the most celebrated efforts of eloquence which have been given to the world, either by speech or by writing, in ancient as well as in modern times; the philosophical principles of the art being assumed throughout as the standard, and the analysis of the works being instituted for the purpose of discovering the extent and particulars of their obedience to those fundamental laws, or their departure from them. In reflecting, however, on the limits within which the plan of this work necessarily and properly restricts our contribution to it, we have more than once, convinced of the inadequacy of all that could be here performed, towards aiding the student in this interesting and valuable department of his training, felt strongly inclined to content ourselves with a brief though earnest exhortation to this branch of rhetorical stu -dies, as indispensable for all who would derive full advantage from a systematic acquaintance with the principles. But there is one consideration which imperatively forbids this. We would not willingly, it is true, be suspected of hoping that we shall be able to convert to the orthodox doctrine any who remain incredulous after perusing the higher and more elaborate works on rhetoric; but our outline may fall into the hands of some who either have not studied the subject at all, or have not derived their notions of it from the best sources. To such readers, indeed, our illustrations are particularly addressed; and we shall have failed altogether in our purpose, if our mode of treating the subject should lead to a radical misapprehension of the relative importance belonging to the several branches into which the study of rhetoric divides itself; a result which would be not unlikely to happen, if one essential department were dismissed with a simple recommendation, however warm.

But the plan adopted in our systematic section, resembling that of a map, in which the chief cities of an empire are laid down in their relative bearings, is inapplicable to the present division, in which, as we assume the office of topographers, we must select one or two narrow districts as the scene of our labours. The province from which our very few specimens will be exclusively selected, is that of Political Oratory, which offers to the student of eloquence peculiar advantages, arising chiefly from the universally acknowledged excellence of the ancient masterpieces, from the high merit, as well as interest, of many works of the kind in our own country, and from the immense variety which the compositions display, both in matter and in form.

In many of the qualities essential to eloquent composition, the historical writings of the moderns, and some of their philosophical works, will, at least, suffer no dishonour by comparison with those of the ancients; although on a close and comprehensive parallel they cannot, with respect to the mere manner of delivery, be fairly said to equal the philosophy and history of the heathen world. But, in Public Speaking, the Eloquence of the Ancients has left modern oratory at an immeasureable distance; and in this field the Greeks are even farther superior to the Romans, than these are to the nations of Christian Europe.

The great age of the Grecian Orators embraces scarcely three generations, and the most celebrated names are to be found about the middle of the period, all within the petty district of Attica. The critics of the Alexandrian school, when they issued in a later time that sovereign decree, which declared certain authors and no others, in every department of literature, to be classical and worthy of study, admitted into their approved list ten Attic orators, of each of whom, excepting Hyperides, we possess some remains. Antiphon, Andocides, Lycurgus, and Dinarchus, must not here detain us; and Lysias, Isocrates, and Isaeus, can scarcely receive more attention, although their works are far from being undeserving of study as models of eloquence, and are singularly instructive as illustrating, in many varied cases of private litigation, points which bear upon the merits and character of the two great orators, and which present themselves less prominently in the political, and even the judicial harangues which have been bequeathed to us by these latter. Lysias, one of the simplest and purest of Attic writers, is especially commended by the ancient critics for his skill in the introductory and narrative parts of his orations; and Dionysius of Halicarnassus considers Isaeus as closely resembling him, with less real eloquence and less nature. Isocrates, who merely composed discourses to be delivered by others, and was the teacher of all the most celebrated orators who succeeded him, is one of the greatest masters of style whom Grecian literature possesses; while he unites this quality [7:19:216]with others of a higher class in some of his discourses, such as the oration written in the name of Archidamus, which, with another composition of the same author, is our only example of ancient political pamphlets, or argumentative discussions on temporary topics, avowedly composed for circulation, not for oral delivery.

But the most exalted place, not among the Athenian ora-tors only, but among those of ancient times in general, belongs to the two celebrated contemporaries and rivals, Demosthenes and Aeschines, of both of whom we possess adequate specimens.

The fame of Demosthenes has suffered less question from modem critics, than that of any other ancient author whatever; and no one who studies the works of the mighty Athenian with intelligence, sensibility, and becoming information, will dream of dissenting from the universal judgment. The secret of his success lay unquestionably in that predominant quality which, difficult or impossible of analysis, but instinctively felt by his readers, while they are carried along on his irresistible current of thought and feeling, the ancients called his vehemence (inviτηf),— that strong firmness of soul with which he threw himself upon his subject, grasping its details in all their relations, forcing them to support him as he hurried towards the end which lay before him, and kindling them, by the flashes of his imagination and passion, into lights which illuminated his headlong course. Dionysius, one of his best critics,—who analyses his style into a combination of all those which had preceded, uniting, in particular, the austerity of the early orators and historians with the polish of the later,—describes the effects of his orations upon the feelings, when compared with that which is produced by such compositions as those of Isocrates, by saying that the latter leave us in the same contemplative mood as if we had been listening to strains of exquisite music, while the former inspire us by turns with all the passions incident to humanity, and with an agitation as fierce as that which raged among the initiated during the celebration of the mystic rites of Cybele. And yet the man who, by stamping upon his subject the impress of his own vigorous and impassioned mind, has made himself thus eloquent in the very loftiest sense which the word can bear, attained this high excellence and unchallenged fame by a course of self-training the most severe that is on record, and, after all his exertions, wanted altogether many of those lesser attractions, both of matter and of style, which have of themselves been sufficient to establish the fame of meaner orators. A writer in the Edinburgh Review in 1820, whose hand is easily recognisable as the same which annexed the Dissertation on the Eloquence of the Ancients to the collected edition of Lord Brougham’s speeches, has not one whit overstated the amount of Demosthenes’s deficiencies, in describing him as having gained his ascendancy “without any ostentation of profound reflection or philosophical remark—with few attempts at generalization—without the glare and attraction of prominent ornaments—with extremely few, and those not very successful, instances of the tender and pathetic—with a considerable degree of coarseness, and what we should call vulgarity—and absolutely without any pretension to wit or humour.” “Could the manner of Demosthenes be copied,” says David Hume, with an unusual warmth of commendation, “its success would be infallible over a modern assembly. It is rapid harmony exactly adjusted to the sense; it is vehement reasoning, without any appearance of art; it is disdain, anger, boldness, freedom, involved in a continued stream of argument; and, of all human productions, the orations of Demosthenes present to us the models which approach the nearest to perfection.”

It would be easy, if our limits allowed us, to indicate, in every one of the political orations of Demosthenes, instances illustrating his favourite and characteristic methods of influencing his hearers ;—his striking and lively narratives of interesting facts, like the scene at Athens on the taking of Elatea, painted in the oration for the Crown ;—the happy illustrations from familiar life which abound everywhere ;— the metaphors few and brief, and effective in proportion to their briefness and rarity, like the example in the first Philippic, where Philip is represented as a hunter, and the Athenians as his prey lying quietly within the toils ;—those tremendous invectives launched by turns against Philip and his Athenian partisans ;—those apparently unpremeditated bursts of feeling, in which every strong emotion, personal or political, in the minds of the audience, is awakened by an honest, indignant, conversational remonstrance,—a class of appeals exemplified in the celebrated reproach to the Athenians for their newsmonging indolence, while events the most extraordinary were summoning them loudly to action (introduced originally in the first Philippic, and again more briefly in the speech on Philip’s Letter);—and those grandest and most sustained flights of all, in which the nationality of Greece, and of Attica, the proudest tribe of Grecians, is at once aroused and flattered by the most dramatic exhibitions of their ancient glory and greatness. For those who wish to see most of the orator’s characteristics developed within a moderate compass, none of the orations perhaps is better suited than the third Philippic. His favourite paradoxical argument, that the utter wretchedness of the Athenian affairs at that juncture, caused, as it had been, by their own shameful inactivity, gave them truly the best reason to hope for success on a change of measures,—is followed by an argument, not unlike Canning’s in 1826 for the war with Spain, in which the speaker maintains that peace is unattainable from the position and character of the enemy, whose treachery is exemplified in a style of the most powerful irony: the arbitrary government of Philip, and its results, are set in strong contrast to the nature and consequences of the liberal supremacy which Athens, Sparta, and Thebes, had by turns exercised over the free states of Greece: a bitterly contemptuous simile, the celebrated one of the heir and the slave, introduces a noble parallel between ancient honesty and modern corruption: the story of Euphraeus adds individual interest to the general picture of the misusage of the Greeks by Philip, which receives its finishing touches in the indignantly sarcastic description of the fate which had befallen Philip’s submissive victims, the men of Oreum and Eretria: and the brief practical Summary of advices which closes the speech is ushered in by a declaration which the speaker thunders in the ears of the Athenian people, with the majesty of a king commanding his subjects—that if all mankind should consent to be slaves, the struggle for liberty must still be maintained by them, who of old had been so proudly illustrious and free.

But both Demosthenes and Aeschines may be studied to most advantage in the extant orations delivered by each of them on two occasions, in which their personal character and fortunes were at stake. The former of the two was that on which Demosthenes impeached his rival for corruption and misconduct in the famous Embassy to Philip. His speech in support of the accusation is as characteristic as any of his which we possess, and, while it abounds with his other excellencies, is particularly happy in its wealth of picturesque and pointed incident; Philip’s oath in the tavern, the anecdote of Satyrus, the supper of Phaidimos, and the melancholy group of the Olynthian prisoners, being singularly beautiful examples of this kind. The answer of Aeschines is yet finer, being, indeed, the acknowledged masterpiece of that, most skilful and eloquent orator, whose fame, but, for the overshadowing neighbourhood of his immortal rival, would have grown up higher and more widely than that of any other public speaker of the ancient world. But these two orations on the β-α^αiΓfsi⅛ι∕α, as they are usually called, are not so well fitted to become rhetorical exercises [7:19:217]as the other two, being the Orations on the Crown, or the accusation and defence of Ctesiphon. Upon these we must enter more minutely, the latter being by far the most admirable of Demosthenes’s works.

While the Athenians were engaged in their struggle against Philip, Ctesiphon had moved and carried in the assembly of the people a decree for honouring Demosthenes with a civic crown, as a benefactor of his country. After the battle of Chaeronaea had made Greece truly a province of Macedon, Philip and his son, by a very sound policy, allowed the Greek citizens to fight out their old political quarrels; and Athens continued to be torn in pieces by her two factions, as incessantly as when the one, headed by Demosthenes, had opposed Philip to the death, and the other, actuated by very various motives, and led by Aeschines in alliance with the virtuous Phocion and others of the aristocratic party, had urged early submission to the conqueror. The latter faction eagerly seized Ctesiphon’s decree as a means of crushing Demosthenes. It was grossly and undeniably illegal in two respects; having been issued before Demosthenes had given in his accounts for certain public offices which he then held, and having directed the proclamation of the honour to be made in the theatre, not in one of the national assemblies; both of which acts were forbidden by subsisting laws. If, then, the sole end had been to procure a conviction against Ctesiphon, and if the court appointed to try him had been well informed and impartial, the issue could not have been for a moment doubtful. The court, however, possessed neither of these qualifications; and, moreover, although Ctesiphon was nominally the person impeached, yet the sentence against him was avowedly intended to be used as a vote of censure on the whole political conduct of Demosthenes, and the proceedings would not, to the slightest extent, have answered the purpose of their promoters unless this should be their understood result. On this ground both parties prepared to fight the battle; and the contest, prompted by party spirit and personal animosity, involving in its decision no great political question, and debased in its progress by number-less instances of calumny and malevolence on both sides, has nevertheless given us two such specimens of eloquence as neither judicial nor political oratory has equalled before or since.

Those who recollect that this was the real state of the question, will admire the skill and judgment exhibited by Aeschines in conducting his argument in support of the accusation; in which, if we are to believe that the parties understood Ctesiphon to be the real and only defendant, he cannot be absolved from the charge of having made a most injudicious, and indeed partially irrelevant choice of topics, and of having by his line of remark wilfully drawn upon himself the triumphant reply of his adversary.

The exordium is simple, but very fine: it contains a complaint of factious and unlawful exertions made by the opposite party, and of an inveterate disuse of certain old regulations, which disuse had enabled demagogues to carry laws destructive of the constitution: it declares the right of impeaching the proposers of such measures to be the only remaining safeguard of the state: and it concludes with an animated address, calling on the judges to deal fearlessly with the cause, as the sworn administrators of justice and as citizens intrusted with the protection of the laws and of freedom, like soldiers placed in the front of the battle.

The speaker instantly passes to the strong part of his case,—a clear exposition of the several laws which Ctesiphon’s decree was alleged to have transgressed, a proof from the public records that the decree had in fact violated those enactments, and a statement and refutation of every sophism by which the adversary could be conceived likely to support the plea that the laws did not apply to the notorious facts. His argument, in all its parts, is completely unanswerable; but it occupies barely a sixth part of the oration; and the words of the decree, assigning as reasons for the honour conferred on Demosthenes, his virtue, his courage, and his constant pursuit of the true weal of the state, give the cue for the commencement of the attack upon him, the real object of the prosecution. The nominal defendant is dropped as an incumbrance, and the orator girds himself manfully for the serious part of the onset. We cannot follow him through the details of his enemy’s political conduct, private life, doubtful pedigree, and faulty oratory, all of which are described with a plausible minuteness, and with the keenest sarcasm. Political folly is the slightest of the charges: Demosthenes is accused, at every step, of political dishonesty,—of peculation and corruption,—of favour to the Persian king, and co-operation with his views, a charge which was quite true and quite creditable to the accused, but was as skilfully chosen for rousing Athenian prejudices as a charge of combination with France would have been for exciting an English mob in 1793,—and (which sounds rather oddly) he is roundly taxed with a secret attachment to the Macedonian interest, and with the secret acceptance of bribes from Philip. There were two points in which Aeschines had a strong hold on his antagonist, and with which he therefore taunts him incessantly: the unhappy issue of the war with Philip, which, it is again and again asserted, had been wholly caused by the policy of Demosthenes; and that orator’s unfortunate deficiency in personal courage, which had prompted him to a disgraceful flight at the battle of Chaeronaea. There are many fine passages in the earlier parts of this long review; but the orator does not begin to rise steadily till, in closing the main section of his argument under this head, he recalls the glory of the Persian times, and contrasts the simple honours which rewarded the patriotism of Miltiades, Aristides, and the soldiers who conquered in the battle of the Strymon, with the profuse decorations now every day lavished on the chiefs of petty factions.

He then reminds the judges that, after all, from the terms of those articles of impeachment which they sat there to try, even his failure in convincing them that Demosthenes was a bad man and a bad citizen would not entitle Ctesi-phon to an acquittal, since his decree, as proved in the first part of the argument, was at any rate manifestly illegal: he urges them to insist on Ctesiphon or his advocate keeping closely to the point; and he exhorts them yet more strenuously to compel his adherence to the division of the argument which Aeschines had laid down, and still more parti-cularly to the order of the topics adopted in that division. He now proceeds with increased rapidity and vehemence. He anticipates Demosthenes’s passionate style of address, cautions the judges against its effects, and endeavours to render it ridiculous by mimicry. He answers by anticipation, and with much manliness and candour, though with severe recrimination, the personal abuse which he professed to be certain that Demosthenes would heap upon him.

He then, entering on his peroration, passes to a summary of the whole argument, amounting to this, that the decree was illegal, and that, although it had been perfectly regular, Demosthenes was utterly unworthy of the honours which it conferred. He thence rises into one of the noblest and most effective exhortations which the records of oratory have to exhibit; opening with skilfully chosen instances of the severity with which the existing laws had recently punished citizens who deserted their country, as Demosthenes had deserted his place in battle and his duty as an adviser of the state; reminding the judges of those feelings of shame with which the Athenians would appear in the presence of Greece at the approaching national convocation, if they should have failed to brand with infamy the destroyer of their country; and closing with what is perhaps the very grandest extant example of solemn imaginative eloquence.
[7:19:218]

He calls on the judges to conceive the wise and good of old as rising and surrounding the tribunal,—Solon entreating the judges to respect their oaths and the laws,—Aristides in anguish deploring the perversion of justice. “Think ye not,” exclaims he in conclusion, “think ye not that Themistocles, and they who died at Marathon and at Plataea,— ay, and the very graves of your forefathers,—will utter groans, if he who avows that he conspired with the barbarians against the Greeks shall be publicly honoured by your decree ?” It is provoking to be compelled to add, that this admirable close does not conclude the oration. A few common-place words of application would have wound up the discourse in the usual way; and these accordingly Aes-chines does not fail to insert; but not till, with the sound of his own magnificent exorcism still ringing in his ears, he has marred everything by a tragic invocation of the earth and the sun, and virtue, and intelligence, and instruction, conceived in the very worst taste of Euripides, all but non sensical in itself, misplaced in any oration, and in this a most humiliating spectacle of incorrect judgment degrading and disarming genius.

Every one knows what was the issue of the contest.

Ctesiphon was acquitted; and his accuser, having failed in gaining the number of votes which would have protected the charge from being considered frivolous and malicious, was fined, and compelled to go into exile. We do not possess such materials as enable us to judge of the relative strength of the two factions among the numerous judges who pronounced this decision; but the splendid oration of Demosthenes for the defence, now perused by us under every possible disadvantage, would tempt us to believe that, in an audience so volatile and susceptible as the Athenians, who were confessedly on many occasions impelled hither and thither by the orators at their will, even party-spirit may for once have been compelled to deny its own nature, and to become silent and impartial.

The oration of Demosthenes, admirable though it be, will not call for a more minute analysis than that of Aeschines; both because it is better known and more generally accessible, and because its strain may in part be anticipated from the outline which has just been given. Many of its most striking beauties we must pass unnoticed, and we can but indicate one or two others; such as the skill of insinuation throughout, with which the orator endeavours at once to kindle the feelings of his own party, and to conciliate those of the other; the frequent felicity of illustration, as where he compares Aeschines to a physician, who, after having watched his patient through a long sickness, propounds his remedies for the first time on the day of the funeral; the fine sketches of character, like that noble one of Philip, crippled in every member of his body, but unsubdued in mind, and burning with the love of power and honour.

The Exordium is exceedingly skilful. After briefly claiming credit for good will, the speaker protests, with a very well acted indignation, against the attempt of his adversary to bind him to a particular order of topics, which, he asserts, the judges cannot countenance without violating their oath and every principle of justice: he then, after adverting to his own disadvantages, declares with artful earnestness, that the turn which Aeschines had given to the accusation had, as he now found, put the character of Demosthenes himself distinctly in issue, forcing him, whether he would or not, to defend the whole tenor of his public life: he asserts peremptorily, that if Aeschines had confined himself to the matters really suggested by the articles of impeachment, he, in the defence, would have entered at once on the question of the legality of the decree, but that he was now obliged to follow a different course in order to dispel unfounded prejudices: and he closes his introduction by insinuations against the accuser, both for his long delay in bringing the charge, and for the form in which it was at length presented.

He commences the body of the oration by intimating his intention to answer specifically each article of the charge, after he shall have premised a general view of the state of affairs when he first entered on political life. We cannot follow him through the details by which he redeems, or seems to redeem, this promise; but two or three points may be selected as prominently instructive. Indignant denials of unproved charges are thrown out at the very commencement, and accompanied by that overwhelming strength of recrimination which is exerted in almost every page of the whole speech: again and again, from the very opening of the argument, he protests that his line of reasoning had been forced on him by his adversary; and not till after he had endeavoured to destroy the whole credit of the accuser, by repeated and detailed charges of gross dishonesty and corruption, does he venture to approach the articles of impeachment themselves. At length he recites them, and enters on his answer; but, protesting once more against the accuser’s tactics, he professes himself compelled to defend, in the first place, that part of the decree which sets forth his own character, which he vindicates by a long and animated history. He then, with a contemptuous negligence of expression, intimates that there seems to be no other task left him, than to prove the strict legality of the decree, in favour of which he delivers an argument extending to about one twentieth part of the whole discourse. On this point, which was the one formally at issue, his defence is as lame as can well be conceived: Aeschines, indeed, by his arguments in anticipation, had beaten away from beneath his feet all the ground on which he could have hoped to stand: one such plea, however, from the existence of a contradictory law, he does plausibly support; and one unanticipated ground which he urges, intended as a denial of the fact, proves, on close examination, to amount nearly to this, that although he had not accounted when the decree was passed, he had done so before the accusation was brought, and his accounts had not been challenged.

But the great orator, strong as was his faith in the legal inaptitude and factious prepossessions of the judges, dared not to close his case on such sophisms as this; and accordingly, when he leaves the question as to the legality of the decree, never again to mention it, the oration is not quite half over. He immediately resumes his former detail of facts, grappling, however, more and more closely with Aeschines, and following up every proof of his own patriotism and sagacity with a stinging contrast between his conduct and that of his enemy. Of the two points on which his argument was weakest, the one, his own personal courage, does not draw from him a single word; but the other, the undeniable failure of the policy which he had advised, it behoved him to touch; and as it was a matter in which, till some answer should be attempted, there might prevail in the minds of the audience a lurking conviction ruinous to Demosthenes and his cause, he summons up all his energies to dislodge the impression, introducing the subject boldly almost immediately after he had dismissed the legal argument, and disposing of it in one of his noblest appeals to national pride and the sense of honour. This magnificent passage of the speech is composed in the same lofty key in which we heard the orator closing the third Philippic: it rolls on in a mingled flood of rapid illustration, of proudly patriotic spirit, and of declarations of that love of freedom which must burn in Athens though all the world besides were dark; and it is terminated by the tremendous oath, in which the brave who had died in battle for their country are called as witnesses to the truth of the principles which the speaker maintained. This most eloquent and celebrated passage is not an argument: it will bear no analysis as such; but it is one of the most strongly felt and admirably wrought of all addresses to the feelings of national honour, pride, and independence. The alterna[7:19:219]tions of argumentative with narrative matter which make up the staple of the oration are next resumed, and close at last in a remonstrance against the unfairness of the comparison proposed by rEschines, between the honours of the ancient times and those now conferred.

A short peroration follows, in which Demosthenes, without attempting any summary, claims for himself, and denies to his rival, credit for possessing what he maintains to be the two principal qualifications of a good citizen; namely, unchangeable love for his country, and a constant inclination to prompt his countrymen to noble and ambitious deeds. The foreign faction are then painted with a few bold and hurried strokes; and the oration closes with a prayer to the gods to convert them if they will be converted, and if they will not, to cut them off from among the people, destroying a few men that the nation may be saved.

We had designed to attempt exhibiting the eloquence of the great Attic masters in a yet stronger light, by contrasting it with specimens from the lowest ages of Greek oratory; and for that purpose we had selected one or two disputations of the learned and skilful sophist Libanius, the panegyrist of Julian the Apostate. Want of space, however, compels us to abandon this intention; and as the same cause prevents us from entering minutely on the Orations of Cicero, we prefer leaving these altogether untouched, to passing them with a few vague generalities. The characteristics of Cicero’s admirable eloquence, and the differences between it and that of Demosthenes, are matters familiar to every one; and the study of the Latin orator is more common than that of the Greek, nearly in the inverse proportion of the real merits of the two.

mens of oratory; and indeed, for those who have purity of Rbetorie.

taste enough to relish the severer graces of a manly and prac- ''"“'v—

tical eloquence, always drawing its materials from a vigorous and richly stored understanding, always animated by at least a calm and lofty feeling of truth and freedom, and sometimes inspired by a genuine and rapid enthusiasm, but never stooping to be graceful, nor pausing to gather ornaments on its way,—for minds which can appreciate eloquence like this, the speeches of Fox will form a treasure of models, in which they will not only find successful exemplifications of most of the principles of eloquence, but much that will remind them of the calmer moods of Demosthenes. But several The speech-

others of our British statesmen, especially of those who es °f G rat-

flourished in the end of last century and the earliest years of this, deserve from the student of eloquence more indus-j^ n> en "

trious study than those two great men. Among these, we can do no more than name Grattan, Erskine, and Sheridan; and we pause at the threshold of the present age, naming no man who is still alive.

But of the political orators who have preceded the present The three time both in the last century and this, by far the most re-great ora-markable, in a merely rhetorical point of view, were these tors- three; Chatham, Burke, and Canning.

Very many of Chatham’s speeches are unreported; many The elo-of the earlier ones have reached us with much distortion; quence of and there are but a very few in which we can believe our- ^ orci *-**at-selves to be listening throughout to the exact words of the ham ‘ speaker. But enough remains to convince us that Chatham was the most powerful and striking political orator whom our country has ever produced. His celebrated youthful retort to the elder Horace Walpole bears unequivocal marks of being, in the shape in which we possess it, the manufacture of Samuel Johnson; and we have scarcely any speech completely and genuinely reported, which was delivered before his fiftieth year. In the orations succeeding that time, our recollection of the speaker’s age and lofty position in the state prepares our minds to harmonize with the tone of address, and to consider that as noble boldness, which in a younger and meaner man might have received another name. The tone is never varied; it is always uncompromising, stern, and admonitory: the speaker is not an advocate devising means to conciliate and persuade, but a preacher of truth and right, denouncing judgments on political transgression. Chatham’s mind never grew old; to the last hour of his public life the feelings glowed as passionately, and prompted images as vivid, and alternately checked, and impelled, and transformed the language, in figures as abrupt and varied, as in the morning of his youth and dawning ambition; the sickness and decay of the body were overcome by the resistless energy of the fiery soul; and the British House of Lords trembled before the cripple who stood up feebly in the midst of them, to grow strong as he spoke by the impulse of his own fervent imagination. The idol of Chatham’s mind was the baronial constitution of England as confirmed in Magna Charta, which, indeed, with the Petition and Bill of Rights, he himself called the Englishman’s political bible: all the strong and diversified powers of his intellect, in observation, judgment, and rapidly convincing argument, and all the array of his chivalrously generous feelings, did continual homage at the one sacred shrine: attempts from below to widen the area of the political edifice, that the mass of the people might come in, the aristocratic Whig would have laughed to scorn: insidious endeavours from above and within to shake the pillars of the temple, roused him repeatedly to overwhelming indignation.

His eloquence found its most favourable field of display in two questions of his time: the famous elections of Wilkes for Middlesex, which were made the occasion of fierce debates as to the constitutional rights of the subject; and the more [7:19:220]important discussions"on the American war. The former of these themes, in which Chatham stood, forth as the champion of the people against the supposed usurpation of the House of Commons, drew from him some of his most electric flashes of passion and imagery. One is the speech in 1770, on the Marquis of Rockingham’s motion for an inquiry into the state of the nation; in which occurs the splendid passage beginning with the bold prayer for the prevalence of discord, if freedom could not otherwise be preserved, thence passing to the parallel between the scriptural records and the charters of the English constitution, and ending with the stern allusion to the value which the Revolution of 1688 possessed as a warning to succeeding British monarchs. But it is to the American question that we owe his finest speeches; and on this subject we have a series of harangues, exhibiting in admirable union the intellectual, the imaginative, and the passionate elements of oratory, and invaluable to the student, both for their high rank in these points of excellence, for the pointed nervousness of the style, and for the singular force and nature of the rhetorical figures,—indignant interrogation, sudden self-correction, and anxious and solemn repetition. The finest of all is undoubtedly the speech on the address to the throne in November 1777. But no parliamentary speech whatever is more interesting, or more honourable to the speaker, than the extemporaneous address elicited from the old man in the same year, by the ministerial defence of the employment of the Indians in America. In the imperfectly reported speech which he delivered on that memorable evening, his last in public life, when he fell down in convulsions, on rising to reply to the attacks of the Duke of Richmond, he related the whole history of the war with America; he repeated the predictions which he had himself day after day pronounced as warnings to the state; and, like a dying prophet reproaching an unbelieving generation, he followed his recital of every prediction by the words, “And so it proved !”

Burke’s speeches and political pamphlets compose by far the most valuable body of lessons in eloquence which our language possesses. They instruct us sometimes by those failures into which the orator was betrayed by his teeming, imaginative, and exciteable genius; but they teach us at least as often by examples of the most signal and splendid success. As Burke, more than any other of our statesmen, nourished the ambition of rivalling ancient eloquence, so his works, in the variety of their oratorical qualities, and in the finish which they frequently exhibit, do unquestionably come nearer than any others to the ancient character. They are, it is true, in their prevailing manner, more like to the ornate and redundant elocution of Cicero, than to the severe simplicity of the great Athenian; but some of their happiest images and thoughts are derived from Demosthenes, and some equally happy are not unworthy of him. Burke’s style, while it is highly argumentative, is distinguished, beyond that of any other political writer or speaker, for the continual distrust which it exhibits in the hearers’ ability or willingness to follow trains of pure argument: the imagination is constantly excited by illustration and imagery: and, to use our rhetorical terminology, the favourite argument is the example, instances real and fictitious being crowded upon each other, as if the speaker were resolutely determined to appropriate one to every individual who listened to him; and the argument being at length usually closed by a strongly worded aphorism, sometimes true and as often erroneous, very seldom logically proved by the arguments which have preceded it, but always strikingly illustrated by them, and exhibited in the most conciliating and attractive light. Perhaps Burke’s oratorical skill and genius are not anywhere displayed so remarkably as in his Reflections on the Revolution of France, in which the writer, besides the prejudice to which he exposed himself by his sudden change of party, had another and stronger disadvantage in his own mind; namely, that of defending and representing as paramount a series of principles in politics and legislation, which, if he had not substantively denied their truth, he had at least, in common with his party, always represented as subordinate to other principles which it was now his task to decry. But the man of genius did not shrink from the undertaking, and the powers of his remarkable mind bore him triumphantly through it; for no discourse could have been more skilfully conducted, or better calculated to make a strong impression. He even labours again and again to enlist in his new cause those feelings in favour of constitutional freedom, which he had so long been accustomed to rally round him; but he rests his hopes of success mainly on the excitement of other ideas and feelings, which he paints to the fancy in colours as bright as any in which his pencil was ever dipped. The horror of bloodshed, attachment to order, and fear of anarchy, now hold in the writer’s mind that prevailing place which had formerly belonged to the hatred of despotism and the love of freedom: the sentiment of chivalrous devotion to kings and ladies is aroused by that beautifully and pathetically romantic picture of the Queen of France as the morning star: the departure of the ancient days of knightly strength and honour is seriously and warmly deplored; their very vices, it is declared, have given place to others worse, and their religious superstition is boldly preferred to the philosophical superstition of the modern sceptics. Among Burke’s speeches, the masterpieces are admittedly those on the impeachment of Warren Hastings, which compose a field too wide to be here surveyed. Of the minor speeches there is scarcely one that is not both characteristic and highly instructive. None of them possesses greater variety than the speech of 1775 for Conciliation with America; the beauties of which it is not easy to select :—the vision of the guardian angel, who, drawing aside a curtain, displays the glories of Britain in sunshine, darkened but by one faint and distant spot (an image which, like many others of the same speaker, hovers on the very verge of poetry, and can scarcely have been successful in the House of Commons); the picturesque description of the kingdom of the backwoodsmen; the animated appeals to English freedom and free habits, like that in which he tells his hearers, that if they preach unconstitutional doctrines to the Americans, their English speech will betray them; the bold figures by which he introduces the resolutions which he was to move; and the classical image of the temple of peace, with which the oration closes. The speech of 1780, on Economical Reform, is at once manly, practical, and well reasoned, and full of the most happily-conceived ridicule. The celebrated speech at Bristol, and that on Fox’s East India Bill, although possessing high oratorical merit, and abounding with fine passages, are yet less valuable to the student than to the politician. The speech on the Nabob of Arcot’s Debts exhibits Burke at once in his full strength, and with much of his weakness; it is full of pertinent inferences from granted facts; rich in picturesque oriental imagery; and adorned by a profusion of oratorical figures, varying in character and success from the grand image of Hyder Ali and the cloud (after Demosthenes), down to the familiar one which represents the minister as sowing corruption broadcast, and the disgusting one in which one of the orator’s most disliked adversaries is compared to the most unclean of animals.

Of Canning we mean to say very little, besides recommending his speeches to the student as exceedingly instructive lessons. They are in the hands, and familiar to the recollection, of every one; and no estimate of their merits could be complete which should not analyse, by way of comparison, the oratory of one or more of his rivals who have not yet quitted the scene. In Canning’s speeches, the [7:19:221]orator seldom rises into strong passion himself, and never elevates the audience along with him: the loftiest atmosphere in which he ever moves is that of noble and generous feeling, expressed with warmth enough to kindle its glow in the breasts of others, but never so warmly as Undeprive either them or the speaker of perfect self-possession. The direct and ultimate appeal to the imagination is practised much oftener and more boldly, and, in many beautiful and poetical pictures, is conducted with singular taste and success: a keen and playful wit, now veiled in irony, now half disguised in bitter sarcasm, and now shedding a fiery shower of open invective, is everywhere present, and almost everywhere holds a prominent place; and the oration, considered as an address to the understanding, is always clear and well reasoned, generally close and pointed, and often, in dealing with difficult materials, distinguished by consummate rhetorical skill. Of Canning’s ingenuity in debating a delicate and hazardous question, we can desire no better instance than his eloquent and most skilful argument against Parliamentary Reform, delivered at the election dinner at Liverpool in 1818. The most passionate specimens of his eloquence are contained in some of his speeches on Catholic Emancipation; and his genius probably nowhere displayed its powers so commandingly as in two of its latest efforts, the speech and reply on the projected invasion of Portugal by Spain, delivered in December 1826. (b. l.)