that as powerful or captivating diction in a pure English, is, after all, the attainment they are in search of, the study of the best English models affords the shortest road to this point; and even admitting the ancient examples to have been the great fountains from which all eloquence is drawn, they would rather profit, as it were, by the classical labours of their English predecessors, than toil over the same path themselves. In a word, they would treat the perishable results of those labours as the standard, and give themselves no care about the immortal originals. This argument, the thin covering which indolence weaves for herself, would speedily sink all the fine arts into barrenness and insignificance. Why, according to such reasoners, should a sculptor or painter encounter the toil of a journey to Athens or to Rome? Far better work at home, and profit by the labour of those who have resorted to the Vatican and Parthenon, and founded an English school, adapted to the taste of our own country. Be you assured, that the works of the English chisel fall not more short of the wonders of the Acropolis than the best productions of modern pens fall short of the chaste, finished, nervous, and overwhelming compositions of them that "resistless fulmined over Greece." Be equally sure, that, with hardly any exception, the great things of poetry and of eloquence have been done by men who cultivated the mighty exemplars of Athenian genius with daily and with nightly devotion. Among the poets there is hardly an exception to this rule, unless may be so deemed Shakspeare, an exception to all rules, and Dante, familiar as a contemporary with the works of Roman art, composed in his mother tongue, having taken, not so much for his guide as for his "master," Virgil, himself almost a translator

from the Greeks. But among orators, I know of none among the Romans, and scarce any in our own times. Cicero honoured the Greek masters with such singular observance, that he not only repaired to Athens for the sake of finishing his rhetorical education, but afterwards continued to practise the art of declaiming in Greek; and although he afterwards fell into a less pure manner, through the corrupt blandishments of the Asian taste, yet do we find him ever prone to extol the noble perfections of his first masters, as something placed beyond the reach of all imitation. Nay, at a mature period of his life, he occupied himself in translating the greater orations of the Greeks, which composed almost exclusively his treatise "De Optimo Genere Oratoris;" as if to write a discourse on oratorical perfection, were merely to present the reader with the two immortal speeches upon the Crown. Sometimes we find him imitating, even to a literal version, the beauties of those divine originals,— as the beautiful passage of Æschines, in the Timarchus, upon the torments of the guilty, which the Roman orator has twice made use of, almost word for word; once in the oration for Sextus Roscius, the earliest he delivered, and again in a more mature effort of his genius, the oration against L. Piso.

I have dwelt the rather upon the authority of M. Tullius, because it enables us at once to answer the question, Whether a study of the Roman orators be not sufficient for refining the taste? If the Greeks were the models of an excellence which the first Roman orators never attained, although ever aspiring after itnay, if, so far from being satisfied with his own success, he even in those, his masters, found something which his ears desiderated-(ita avidæ et

capaces ut semper aliquid immensum infinitumque desiderent. Orator. 29.) -he either fell short while copying them, or he failed by diverting his worship to the false gods of the Asian school. In the one case, were we to rest satisfied with studying the Roman, we should only be imitating the imperfect copy, instead of the pure original-like him who should endeavour to catch a glimpse of some beauty by her reflection in a glass, that weakened her tints, if it did not distort her features. In the other case, we should not be imitating the same, but some less perfect original, and looking at the wrong beauty; not her whose chaste and simple attractions commanded the adoration of all Greece, but some garish damsel from Rhodes or Chios, just brilliant and languishing enough to captivate the less pure taste of half-civilized Rome.

But there are other reasons too weigh ty to be passed over, which justify the same decided preference. Not to mention the incomparable beauty and power of the Greek language, the study of which alone affords the means of enriching our own, the compositions of Cicero, exquisite as they are for beauty of diction, often remarkable for ingenious argument and brilliant wit, not seldom excelling in deep pathos, are nevertheless so extremely rhetorical, fashioned by an art so little concealed, and sacrificing the subject to a display of the speaker's powers, admirable as those are, that nothing can be less adapted to the genius of modern elocution, which requires a constant and almost exclusive attention to the business in hand. In all his orations which were spoken, (for, singular as it may seem, the remark applies less to those which were only written, as all the Verrine, except the first, all the Philippics, except the first and ninth, and the

VOL. XVIII. PART III.

Pro Milone,) hardly two pages can be found which a modern assembly would bear. Some admirable arguments on evidence, and the credit of witnesses, might be urged to a jury; several passages, given by him on the merits of the case, and in defence against the charge, might be spoken in mitigation of punishment after a conviction or confession of guilt; but whether we regard the political or forensic orations, the style, both in respect of the reasoning and the ornaments, is wholly unfit for the more severe and less trifling nature of modern affairs in the senate or at the bar. Now, it is altogether otherwise with the Greek masters: Changing a few phrases, which the difference of religion and of manners might render objectionable,-moderating, in some degree, the virulence of invective, especially against private character, to suit the chivalrous courtesy of modern hostility-there is hardly one of the political or forensic orations of the Greeks that might not be delivered in similar circumstances before our senate or tribunals; while their funeral and other panegyrical discourses are much less inflated and unsubstantial than those of the most approved masters of the Epideictic style, the French preachers and Academicians. Whence this difference between the masterpieces of Greek and Roman eloquence? Whence but from the rigid steadiness with which the Greek orator keeps the object of all eloquence perpetually in view, never speaking for mere speaking's sake;-while the Latin rhetorician, ingenii sui nimium amator, and as though he deemed his occupation a trial of skill or display of accomplishments, seems ever and anon to lose sight of the subject matter in the attempt to illustrate and adorn it; and pours forth passages sweet indeed, but unprofitable-fitted to tickle the ear,

R

without reaching the heart. Where, in all the orations of Cicero, or of him who almost equals him, Livy, miræ facundiæ homo, (Quinct.) shall we find anything like those thick successions of short questions, in which Demosthenes oftentimes forges, as it were, with a few rapidly following strokes, the whole massive chain of his argument;-as, in the Chersonese, Εἰ δ' άπαξ διαφθαρήσεται καὶ διαλυ‐ βήσεται, τί ποιήσομεν, ἂν ἐπὶ Χεῤῥόνησον ἴη ; κρινοῦμεν Διοπείθην ; νὴ Δία. Καὶ τί τὰ πράγματα ἔσται βελτίω ; ἀλλ ̓ ἐνθένδε μοηθήσομεν αὐτοῖς ; ἂν δ ̓ ὑπὸ τῶν πνευμάτων βὴ δυνώμεθα; ἀλλὰ μὰ Δί ̓ οὐχ ἥξει. καὶ TÍS EYYUNTÁS BOTI TOUTOV ;-or, comprising all of a long narrative that suits his argument in a single sentence, presenting a lengthened series of events at a single glance,-as in the Παραπρεσβεία :-Πέντε γὰς γεγόνασιν ἡμέκαι μόναι, ἐν αἷς—οὗτος ἀπήγγειλε τὰ ψευδῆ ὑμεῖς ἐπιστεύσατε, — οἱ Φωκεῖς ἐπύθοντο ἐνέδωκαν ἑαυτοὺς ἀπώλοντο.

But though the more business-like manner of modern debate approaches much nearer the style of the Greek than the Latin compositions, it must be admitted that it falls short of the great originals in the closeness, and, as it were, density of the argument; in the habitual sacrifice of all ornament to use, or rather in the constant union of the two; so that, while a modern orator too frequently has his speech parcelled out in compartments, one devoted to argument, another to declamation, a third to mere ornament, as if he should say, Now your reason shall be convinced; now I am going to rouse your passions; and now you shall see how I can amuse your fancy-the more vigorous ancient argued in declaiming, and made his very boldest figures subservient to, or rather an integral part of, his reasoning. The most figurative and highly wrought passage in all antiquity is the famous oath in Demosthenes, yet,

in the most pathetic part of it, and when he seems to have left the farthest behind him the immediate subject of his speech, led away by the prodigious interest of the recollections he has excited; when he is naming the very tombs where the heroes of Marathon lie buried, he instantly, not abruptly, but by a most felicitous and easy transition, returns into the midst of the main argument of his whole defence that the merits of public servants, not the success of their councils, should be the measure of public gratitude towards thema position that runs through the whole speech, and to which he makes the funeral honours bestowed alike on all the heroes, serve as a striking and appropriate support. With the same ease does Virgil manage his celebrated transition in the Georgies; where, in the midst of the Thracian war, and while at an immeasurable distance from agricultural topics, the magician strikes the ground on the field of battle, where helmets are bu ried, and suddenly raises before us the lonely husbandman, in a remote age, peacefully tilling its soil, and driving his plough among the rusty armour and mouldering remains of the warrior.

But if a further reason is required for giving the preference to the Greek orators, we may find it in the greater diversity and importance of the subjects upon which their speeches were delivered. Beside the number of admirable orations and of written arguments upon causes merely forensic, we have every subject of public policy, all the great affairs of state successively forming the topics of discussion. Compare them with Cicero in this particular, and the contrast is striking. His finest oration for matter and diction together, is in defence of an individual charged with murder, and there is nothing in the case

to give it a public interest, except that the parties were of opposite factions in the state, and the deceased a personal as well as political adversary of the speaker. His most exquisite performance in point of diction, perhaps the most perfect prose composition in the language, was addressed to one man, in palliation of another's having borne arms against him in a war with a personal rival. Even the Catilinarians, his most splendid declamations, are principally denunciations of a single conspirator; the Philippics, his most brilliant invectives, abuse of a profligate leader; and the Verrine orations, charges against an individual governor. Many, indeed almost all the subjects of his speeches, rise to the rank of what the French term Causes Celèbres; but they seldom rise higher. Of Demosthenes, on the other hand, we have not only many arguments upon cases strictly private, and relating to pecuniary matters, (those generally called the 'Idirixe,) and many upon interesting subjects more nearly approaching public questions, as the speech against Midias, which relates to an assault on the speaker, but excels in spirit and vehemence perhaps all his other efforts; and some which, though personal, involve high considerations of public policy, as that most beautiful and energetic speech against Aristocrates; but we have all his immortal orations upon the state affairs of Greece-the Пigi Erpávov, embracing the history of a twenty years' administration during the most critical period of Grecian story; and the Philippics, discussing every question of foreign policy, and of the stand to be made by the civilized world against the encroachments of the barbarians. Those speeches were delivered upon subjects the most important and affecting that could be conceived to the whole community;

the topics handled in them were of universal application and of perpetual interest. To introduce a general observation, the Latin orator must quit the immediate course of his argument; he must for the moment lose sight of the object in view. But the Athenian can hardly hold too lofty a tone, or carry his view too extensively over the map of human affairs, for the vast range of his subject-the fates of the whole commonwealth of Greece, and the stand to be made by free and polished nations against barbaric tyrants.

After forming and chastening the taste by a diligent study of those perfect models, it is necessary to acquire correct habits of composition in our language, first by studying the best writers, and next by translating copiously into it from the Greek. This is by far the best exercise that I am acquainted with for at once attaining a pure English diction, and avoiding the tameness and regularity of modern composition. But the English writers who really unlock the rich sources of the language, are those who flourished from the end of Elizabeth's to the end of Queen Anne's reign; who used a good Saxon dialect with ease, but correctness and perspicuity,-learned in the ancient classics, but only enriching their mother tongue where the Attic could supply its defects,-not overlaying it with a profuse pedantic coinage of foreign words,-well practised in the old rules of composition or rather collocation (rus) which unite natural ease and variety with absolute harmony, and give the author's ideas to develope themselves with the more truth and simplicity when clothed in the ample folds of inversions, or run from the exuberant to the elliptical without ever being either redundant or obscure. Those great wits had no foreknowledge of such times as succeeded their brilliant age, when styles

should arise, and for a season prevail over both purity, and nature, and antique recollections-now meretriciously ornamented, more than half French in the phrase, and to mere figures fantastically sacrificing the sense-now heavily and regularly fashioned as if by the plumb and rule, and by the eye rather than the ear, with a needless profusion of ancient words and flexions, to displace those of our own Saxon, instead of temperately supplying its defects. Least of all could those lights of English eloquence have imagined that men should appear amongst us professing to teach composition, and, ignorant of the whole of its rules, and incapable of relishing the beauties, or indeed apprehending the very genius of the language, should treat its peculiar terms of expression and flexion, as so many inaccuracies, and practise their pupils in correcting the faulty English of Addison, and training down to the mechanical rhythm of Johnson the lively and inimitable measures of Bolingbroke.

But in exhorting you deeply to meditate on the beauties of our old English authors, the poets, the moralists, and perhaps more than all these, the preachers of the Augustan age of English letters, do not imagine that I would pass over their great defacts when compared with the renowned standards of severe taste in ancient times. Addison may have been pure and elegant; Dryden airy and nervous; Taylor witty and fanciful; Hooker weighty and various; but none of them united force with beauty-the perfection of matter with the most refined and chastened style; and to one charge all, even the most faultless, are exposed-the offence unknown in ancient times, but the besetting sin of latter days-they always overdid never knowing or feeling when they had done enough. In no

thing, not even in beauty of collocation and harmony of rhythm, is the vast superiority of the chaste, vigorous, manly style of the Greek orators and writers more conspicuous than in the abstinent use of their prodigious faculties of expression. A single phrase

sometimes a word-and the work is done-the desired impression is made, as it were, with one stroke, there being nothing superfluous interposed to weaken the blow, or break its fall. The commanding idea is singled out; it is made to stand forward; all auxiliaries are rejected; as the Emperor Napoleon selected one point in the heart of his adversary's strength, and brought all his power to bear upon that, careless of the other points, which he was sure to carry if he won the centre, as sure to have carried in vain if he left the centre unsubdued. Far otherwise do modern writers make their onset; they resemble rather those campaigners who fit out twenty little expeditions at a time, to be a laughing stock if they fail, and useless if they succeed; or if they do attack in the right place, so divide their forces, from the dread of leaving any one point unassailed, that they can make no sensible impression where alone it avails them to be felt. It seems the principle of such authors never to leave anything unsaid that can be said on any one topic; to run down every idea they start; to let nothing pass; and leave nothing to the reader, but harass him with anticipating everything that could possibly strike his mind. Compare with this effeminate laxity of speech, the manly severity of ancient eloquence; or of him who approached it, by the happy union of natural genius with learned meditation; or of him who so marvellously approached still nearer with only the familiar knowledge of its least perfect ensamples. Mark, I