The civil law, as we had occasion to observe in a former number, was yet in its infancy-the necessity of sacred and inflexible rules, to the well-being of society, had not been so generally impressed upon the minds of men-not only did the Prætor disregard the precedents set him by his predecessors, but he could not always be compelled even to adhere to his own Edict, and the "fear, favour and affection," which are abjured by a modern tribunal, were necessarily, in cases of great public interest, governing impulses in those of antiquity. Accordingly, every art was made use of to inflame their passions. Antony, tearing open the tunic of the old Aquilius, and exposing the wounds he had received in battle, while even the stern Marius, his brother in arms, whom the orator apostrophised in a most pathetic appeal, stood before him bathed in tears, is a memorable instance of the kind.* This appears extravagant to us; but what should we say of the case of the courtezan Phryne, whom, among a people more susceptible than the Romans, Hyperides saved from a just condemnation, by laying bare her beautiful bosom before her judges? The custom of putting on mourning, neglecting the dress, letting the hair and beard grow, and assuming all the other badges of wretchedness and despair, when one was to be tried for any crime, made these scenes still more dramatic and striking. When Cicero was about to be impeached by Clodius, he did all this, and the whole Equestrian Order went into mourning with him, while he was surrounded wherever he walked, by twenty thousand young men, of the noblest families, all expressing the deepest sympathy and solicitude for him. What an earnest of a strict and impartial trial! 2. It seems to be the opinion of some of our contemporariest that there is an essential difference, not in degree only, but in kind, between ancient and modern eloquence; the former being represented as more elaborate, artificial and showy, the latter as more unpremeditated and business-like, and withal more effective. Debating, we are told, is an art which the Greeks and Romans never possessed. Their celebrated harangues are not speeches, but orations-like their tragedies, they were elaborately composed for solemn occasions, and if not delivered at the appointed time, were published as what was "intended to have been spoken," without the least suspicion that there was any thing very ridiculous in it. Nay, we may go still further: the orators, themselves, make no secret at all of their laborious preparation, and talk familiarly to the very faces of their audiences, of writing their speeches-an avowal, which, in this coun * Cic. de Orat. lib. 2. c. 47. + Edinburgh Review. ‡ Demosth. xara Meidig. try, we fancy, would be regarded as little short of infamous. That the ancient harangues were prepared with infinite pains, is unquestionable; but that they were less practical or business-like, we confidently deny. We have no hesitation in repeating what Hume says about the eloquence of Demosthenes, viz. that could it be copied, its success would be infallible over a modern assembly. The only difference between the oratory of the Greeks, and that of the very best of our debaters—making suitable allowance for the change of circumstances and occasions―is, that the former is a hundred times more finished and exquisite, more sublime, ravishing and irresistible. But there is not a single excellence, either in matter or manner, which the speeches, for instance, of Fox and Pitt possess, that is not to be found in those immortal master-pieces in equal or greater perfection, whether the effect of it be to enlighten the understanding or to move the passions of the hearer upon the immediate subject of discussion. And as for any thing like artificial stateliness and studied ornament, we venture to affirm that every scholar has experienced, in reading the orations of Demosthenes for the first time, precisely such a disappointment as young painters of genius express when they first see the master-pieces of their art in the Vatican and Sistine Chapel. The austere simplicity of his style-the hearty, downright, unpretending manner in which the orator sets himself about his business in the first Philippic, makes an uninitiated reader think like Partridge, that there is nothing at all in it, and that if he had a mind himself to make an audience declare war or dispatch an expedition, he should speak in the same way, and no doubt, do just as well. It must not be supposed that the ancients underrated extemporaneous speaking because they did not excel in it. They had their improvisatori both in prose and verse.* Demades, for instance, is said to have delivered speeches on the spur of the occasion, which were nowise inferior to the best harangues of Demosthenes. This, we may be sure, was an exaggeration, but there is no doubt of his possessing the talent alluded to in great perfection, since so competent a judge as Theophrastus preferred him, probably on that very account, to all the orators of Athens. No example, however, is more apposite for our purpose than that of Demosthenes himself. We have the express assurance of the author of the "Lives of the Ten Orators" that he excelled particularly in extemporary speaking, and Plutarch Cic. de Orat. lib. iii. c. 50. Archias was one. Ib. c. 8. + Demosthenes, he said, was worthy of the city, Demades beyond it. iπεp Tño πολεῶς. Plut. in Demosth. tells us the same thing. Nay, his celebrated reply to Pytho of Byzantium was altogether unpremeditated, and when the news of the capture of Elateia arrived, he had but a single night to prepare himself for one of the most important occasions (as we shall presently shew) that ever called forth the united talents of a statesman and a public speaker. Yet, he never trusted to the inspiration of the moment, if he had the least room for meditation, and refused, at times, to come forward, when the people cried out for him by name, if he happened not to be fully prepared. In this respect, he was only imitating the example of incomparably the most successful and celebrated demagogue that the world has ever seen, we mean Pericles. The reason which Demosthenes assigned for his backwardness, was his profound respect for the audience he had to address. He knew what they required and expected of him-he felt what he was himself capable of—and, having conceived the image of perfect excellence, he could not bear the thought of falling short of that exalted standard. Besides, like Cicero and Crassus, he was subject to fits of nervous excitement that sometimes totally disabled him from speaking—an instance of which is to be found in that very awkward failure, when he attempted to address Philip, so malignantly dwelt upon by Æschynes, in his oration on the Embassy. But the contemporaries of the greatest of orators scoffed at him for his elaborate preparation, and represented him as what Snug calls "slow of study.' His answer is the true one: his lamp was conscious of far higher things than theirs; and so that he attained perfection, he gave himself very little trouble about what his rivals said, knowing that his audiences, transported with his eloquence, would never stop to inquire why his speeches were the best, or whether he bestowed more or less pains upon the composition of them. The Latin orators were probably somewhat less careful in preparation than the Greekst-yet their notions upon the subject we are treating of were precisely the same. Cicero spoke extempore with pre-eminent success, as in the case of the great riot in the theatre on account of Otho's law. Yet, he repeats the injunction over and over again, to write as much as possible, pronouncing the pen to be the best and most effectual teacher of eloquence. Most of his own harangues were, no doubt, elaborately prepared-yet he tells us expressly that speeches were Snug. Have you the lion's part written? Pray you if it be give it me, for I am slow of study. Quince. You may do it extempore, it is nothing but roaring. [Mids. Night Dream. Act. I. sc. I. + Cie. de Orat. lib. i. c. 59. generally written not to be spoken, but after having been spoken: habitæ jam non ut habeantur.* The fullest disquisition, however, upon the subject is to be met with in Quinctilian,† who, whilst he advises writing wherever it is possible, and meditation where there is no time to write, still declares that if a young orator do not acquire the habit of extemporaneous speaking, he were better abandon public life altogether, and devote his talents to literary or other pursuits. But, the fluency of which he speaks is not the circulatoria volubilitas as he so expressively terms it-the volubility of mountebanks and pettifoggers-but the copiousness of a rich, and at the same time select and polished diction--the ripe fruit and crowning honor of long and assiduous study. As for that vulgar faculty of speaking a whole day about nothing, without stopping to breathe or even to think, we have the ample evidence of experience in this country that it may be infallibly acquired by practising a few months in any piepouder court or country circuit. The truth of the matter is, not that we possess an art in extemporaneous debate, which the ancients did not but that we have never compassed the higher art of writing and delivering speeches so well as to give them the appearance of arising im mediately and exclusively out of the subject under discussion. Their most studied orations were the most perfectly ex tempore, that is best suited to the time and the occasion. They aimed here, as every where else, at the Beau Idéal, but it was the Beau Idéal of the business speech. They expected the orator to do all he could, by his eloquence, to accomplish his end, and he was not to lose sight of it for a moment. Every thing merely rhetorical, every thing, however slightly irrelevant or unsuitable as a means to it, was censured with more or less severity. They had no taste for an artificial speech as such; on the contrary, ease, simplicity and nature they rigorously exacted; but they knew that it was in this, as it is in every other department of genius, that things done by great masters with most art, appear most natural to the connoisseur-they are refined into simplicity and elaborated into ease. I have taught him, says Boileau, speaking of Racine, à faire difficilement des vers faciles: and the saying is of universal application. Besides, there is no doubt that the orator, carried away by the ardor of discussion, or excited by accidental occurrences, often added much to what he had prepared. The extravagant phrases which Eschynes ridicules in Demosthenes, are not to be found any where in his published orations, and were probably instances of that "brave Brut. c. 24 cf. De Orat. lib. i. c. 33-34. + Lib. x. c. 3 disorder," not unbecoming and even eminently successful when involved "in such a storm of eloquence." Here too as in other arts, Great wits, sometimes, may gloriously offend, And rise to faults true critics dare not mend. Such at least is the account Cicero gives of these "monsters" of diction, censured by a too fastidious rival.* Let us pursue the subject a little further. The notion we are combating is (as we have said) founded upon a misconception of the Rhetoric of antiquity. We call their speeches orations, and we mean by that, that they do very well to be spouted by under-graduates from a College rostrum, but that they are not fitted to produce an effect upon the affairs of men-in short, that they are more made for show than for service, for the shade of the palæstra and the gymnasium, rather than for the dust and heat of battle. This is confounding two kinds of speaking, which the ancient masters kept as distinct as possible, and for which they exacted styles differing in their most important characteristics. We have already hinted at this distinction in the preceding paragraph, but it is important to explain it more fully, for it involves a cardinal principle of criticism, and one that was never lost sight of for a moment by the Greek writers-though the Romans, and even Cicero were not so scrupulous, and it is cisely in this, that their inferiority, as mere public speakers consists. pre Orations were composed to be delivered either in the ɛxxλŋσía, or political assembly of the State, or in a Tavyʊpis, a great meeting or festival such as that at the Olympic games, whither men repaired for purposes of religion, of pleasure or display, &c. To the former, people went exclusively and professedly to do business, and the more speedily their business was done, so it were done well, the better. Every thing said that had not an immediate bearing upon this engrossing object, was impertinent and absurd, and if one spoke with the tongue of an angel, the sed nunc non erat his locus would have been a fatal objection. The eloquence, therefore, of the public assembly was in the strictest sense of the word merely instrumental-a means—and whether it should be approved or not, depended upon its relative rather than absolute merits. One thing, however, was clear, and is continually insisted on by the Greeks, that the more simple and concise the style the better, provided the force and clearness of the argument were not impaired by it. But, besides this, as men are governed, even in the most important affairs, at least * He said himself τε γραψας οὔτ ̓ ἄγραφα κομιδη λέγειν. Plut. |