A Course of Lectures on Elocution

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O. Penniman & Company, 1803 - Elocution - 185 pages

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Page 73 - Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue : but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines.
Page 83 - How then can man be justified with God? or how can he be clean that is born of a woman ? Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not ; yea, the stars are not pure in his sight. How much less man, that is a worm? and the son of man, which is a worm?
Page ix - ... endeavouring to communicate new fimple ideas by definitions ; or .that of attempting to paint founds. ALL writers feem to be under the influence of one -common delufion, that by the help of words alone, they can communicate all that paffes in their minds.
Page 91 - Emphasis is of two kinds, simple and complex. Simple, when it serves to point out only the plain meaning of any proposition ; complex, when, besides the meaning, it marks also some affection or emotion of the mind ; or gives a meaning to words, which they would not have in their usual acceptation.
Page 134 - ... part of his complicated frame ; as the operations of these are attended with an infinite variety of emotions in the mind, both in kind and degree ; it is clear, that...
Page 18 - ... the want of early attention in masters, to correct small faults in the beginning, which increase and gain strength with years; beside bad habits contracted from imitation of particular persons, or the contagion of example, from a general prevalence of a certain tone or chant in reading or reciting, peculiar to each school, and regularly transmitted, from...
Page xii - In fhort that fome of our greateft men have been trying to do that with the pen, which can only be performed by the tongue; to produce effects by the dead letter, which can never be .produced but by the living voice, with its accompaniments.
Page 181 - The office of a public speaker is, to instruct, to please, and to move. If he does not instruct, his discourse is impertinent; and if he does not please, he will not have it in his power to instruct, for he will not gain attention ; and if he does not move, he will not please, for where there is no emotion, there can be no pleasure. To move, therefore, should be the first great object of every public speaker...
Page 39 - GODS. each their own idioms, which uniformly prevail in those countries, but almost every county in England, has its peculiar dialect. Nay in the very metropolis two different modes of pronunciation prevail, by which the inhabitants of one part of the town, are distinguished from those of the other. One is current in the city, and is called the cockney; the other at the court-end, and is called the polite pronunciation. As amongst these various dialects, one must have the preference, and become fashionable,...
Page 88 - But if we confefs our fins, he is faithful and juft to forgive us our fins, and to cleanfe us from all unrighteoufnefs.

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