a young student. He is also known to have studied delivery under Roscius and Esopus, two actors,-the former in comedy, the latter in tragedy.

It is further certain that the ancient orators gave lessons, even the most celebrated of them. Mention has already been made of Molo, Gnipho, and other professors of Rhetoric. But Isocrates, Isæus, and Demosthenes himself, taught their art to those who would excel in forensic pursuits. Isocrates is said to have received twenty pounds from his pupils; but Isæus and Demosthenes, two hundred,-a convincing proof how great a value was set in those times upon the accomplishment of oratory; but a proof also how differently a studious devotion to it was then viewed; for assuredly it would be in the last degree perilous to any modern speaker's success in public, were he to teach rhetoric while he continued to practise it.

II.-5. Nor is it foreign to our present inquiry to remark, that the exquisite taste of the Athenian audience both proved their delight in the pleasures of the Forum, or Ecclesia, so to speak, and showed how well they were trained to a nice discernment of oratorical merit. It may be remarked generally, that a speaker who thinks to lower his composition in order to accommodate himself to the habits and taste of his audience, when addressing the multitude, will find that he commits a grievous mistake. All the highest powers of eloquence consist in producing passages which may at once affect even the most promiscuous assembly; but even the graces of composition are not thrown away upon such auditors. Clear, strong, terse, yet natural and not strained expressions; happy antitheses; apt comparisons; forms of speech that are natural without being obvious; harmonious periods, yet various, spirited, and never monotonous or too regularly balanced;— these are what will be always sure to captivate every audience, and yet in these mainly consists finished, and

elaborate, and felicitous diction. "Mirabile est," says Cicero," cum plurimum in faciendo intersit inter doctum et rudem, quam non multum differat in judicando."* The best speakers of all times have never failed to find, that they could not speak too well and too carefully to a popular assembly; that if they spoke their best, the best they could address to the most learned and critical assembly, they were sure to succeed; although it may be very true that the converse of the proposition is not equally well founded; for bad diction and false taste will not be so sure to obtain their merited reprobation from a promiscuous auditory. The delight with which certain passages were listened to by the Roman audience, has been recorded by ancient critics and rhetoricians. Two sentences spoken or recorded by Cicero, the one by its fine and dignified composition, the other by its rhythm, are said to have produced an electrical effect; and yet, when we attend to them, we perceive that this could only be in consequence of the very exquisite taste of the audience. The former was his description of Verres: "Stetit soleatus Prætor Populi Romani, cum pallio purpureo, tunicaque talari, mulierculâ nixus, in littore." The other is given by him as spoken by Carbo:† "Patris dictum sapiens, temeritas filii comprobavit." But the nicety of the Attic taste seems to have been still more remarkable. It is related of Theophrastus, who had lived many years at Athens, had acquired great fame in eloquence, and valued himself extremely on the purity of his Attic style, that he was much mortified by an old woman, with whom he was cheapening some wares at a stall, detecting his foreign origin, and addressing him, Eve. Nor could she give any other reason for it than a word he had used which seemed rather affectedly Attic.‡

There may be added two other peculiarities to

*De Orat., iii. 51.

† Cic. Orat., 63.

Both Cicero (Brutus, 46) and Quintilian (viii. 1) mention this anecdote; but the latter alone gives the ground of the old woman's conjecture.

complete the picture of that attention to oratorical composition, and that refinement in the audience which we have been contemplating, and to illustrate the difference in this respect between ancient and modern eloquence. Any merely critical remarks in a modern speech are hardly permitted. It is not a charge which can now-a-days be made against an adversary either at the Bar or in debate, that he has made a bad speech, that his eloquence is defective, that his figures are out of keeping, his tones inharmonious, or his manner awkward. Yet these are topics of ordinary recrimination and abuse between Demosthenes and Eschines. To have argued inconclusively, to counsel badly, to act corruptly, or feebly, or inconsistently, are the charges to which the combatants in the more close and businesslike battles of our Senate must confine themselves. With us it is no matter of attack that an adversary's tropes are in bad taste, or his manner inelegant, or his voice unmusical. So we may perceive the exquisite care taken by the ancient orators to strike and to please their audience, in the attention paid by them to the rhythm or numbers of their periods. In the ancient institutes of Rhetoric, that subject forms a separate and important head, which, or even the mention of which, would scarcely be borne among us. It must at the same time be observed, that although we are so suspicious of whatever would give an appearance of theatrical display to the business of debate, our greatest orators nevertheless have excelled by a careful attention to rhythm, and some of the finest passages of modern eloquence owe their unparalleled success undeniably to the adoption of those Iambic measures which thrilled and delighted the Roman Forum, and the Dactylus and Pæonicus, which were the luxury of the Attic Ecclesia.* Witness the

* Examples of this artificial composition occur in every page of the old Orators. See particularly, the famous climax of Demosthenes, in the Oration on the Crown, Appendix, No. V.; and the quotation from the Argument of Cicero Pro Milone, Appendix, No. VII.

former in Mr. Erskine's celebrated passage respecting the Indian chief, and the latter in Mr. Grattan's peroration to his speech on Irish independence."

*

That the ancients, and particularly the Attic school, were sparing of the more elaborate ornaments of eloquence, figures, is certain; unless indeed we regard as such, enumeration, repetition, antithesis, interrogation, and the other forms of condensed and vigorous expression, which are not to be reckoned tropes at all. But with metaphor, hyperbole, apostrophe, they certainly did not overload their oratory. It is nevertheless quite untrue that Demosthenes has so few as some have represented, although undoubtedly he produces a prodigious effect, enlivens his discourse, awakens and sustains the ready attention, in short, is striking and brilliant, with fewer than would have sufficed to any other man. There are preserved to us three orations supposed to be of Pericles; and Thucydides, who has recorded them, certainly represents himself to have heard generally, the words which he sets down in his history, as well as to have examined the evidence of the facts. The most admired of these speeches is the 'Emiτápios λóyos, the Funeral Oration. Its style is unquestionably chaste and noble; it is of a touching simplicity, and from the judicious choice of the topics, as well as their skilful disposition and treatment, the effect must have been great of such an address it is of a sustained and perfect dignity; indeed its solemnity seems peculiarly suited to the occasion. But notwithstanding the moving nature of that occasion, and although in the epideictic branch of oratory, more figurative display might have been expected than in the ordinary harangues of the Ecclesia, there can be found hardly any tropes at all in the whole compass of the Speech. Only one passage, properly speaking, can be called figurative,

:

that

beautiful one where he says that illustrious men have the whole earth for their tomb. It may, however, be remarked, that Aristotle mentions another as having been in the oration,-a comparison of the loss occasioned by war to the act of him who should take the Spring out of the year. But in Thucydides' version no such passage is to be found.

It is impossible to deny that the ancient Orators fall nearly as far short of the modern in the substance of their orations as they surpass them in their composition. Not only were their views far less enlarged, which was the necessary consequence of their more confined knowledge, but they gave much less information to their audience in point of fact, and they applied themselves less strenuously to argument. The assemblies of modern times are eminently places of business; the hearers are met to consider of certain practical questions, and not to have their fancy charmed with choice figures, or their taste gratified with exquisite diction, or their ears tickled with harmonious numbers. They must therefore be convinced; their reason must be addressed by statements which shall prove that the thing propounded is just or expedient, or that it is iniquitous or impolitic. No far-fetched allusions, or vague talk, or pretty conceits, will supply the place of the one thing needful, argument and information. Whatever is beside the question, how gracefully soever it may be said, will only weary the hearer and provoke his impatience; nay, if it be very fine and very farfetched, will excite his merriment and cover the speaker with ridicule. Ornament of every kind, all manner of embellishment, must be kept within its subordinate

* ̓Ανδρῶν γὰρ ἐπιφανῶν πᾶσα γῆ τάφος, καὶ οὐ στηλῶν μόνον ἐν τῇ οἰκείᾳ σημαίνει ἐπιγραφή, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐν τῇ μὴ προσηκούσῃ ἄγραφος μνήμη παρ ἑκάστῳ τῆς γνώμης μᾶλλον ἢ τοῦ ἔργου ἐνδιαιτᾶται.—Thuc., ii. 43.

† Τὴν νεότητα τὴν ἀπολομένην ἐν τῷ πολέμῳ οὕτως ἐφανίσθαι ἐκ τῆς πόλεως, ὥσπερ εἴ τις τὸ ἔαρ ἐκ τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ ἐξέλοι.— Arist. Rhet., i. 7, iii. 10. Herodotus (vii. 162) puts this figure in the mouth of Gelon.