adopt the brevity he assumed after he had been warned to be short by the son of Sophroniscus, while on the other the temptation to be long is as great as the literature of eloquence is vast. In such a dilemma the probable interest in the topic assigns a limit so moderate that a representative presentation of the phases of oratory in different centuries and countries is compelled, and a comprehensive view of the diversities in its fortunes.

It will doubtless be admitted that in a survey which is at all comprehensive, some inquiry should be made for remote records and for the beginnings of a growth which at length became wide-spread and vigorous.

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Such investigation will necessarily meet with much that is foreign to the immediate object of search. abundance of material is encountered which is not the vein of gold that is traced, so the vestiges of eloquence are imbedded in other forms of literature in such intricate ways as to be well-nigh obscured. It is possible, however, that it may antedate them all, as speech precedes writing, and prose poetry in ordinary composition. For if the latest conclusion of evolutionists be accepted, supported as it is by ethnic examples, it will appear that the germ of oratory is found in the primitive laudation of a conqueror returning with the spoils of war, a brief and simple proclamation of victory at first, developed later into eulogistic speech. However this may be, it is evident that the orator left his mark upon primeval literatures along with the poet and the historian, the philosopher and the dramatist. In the compositions of such writers themselves public address often appears here and there like a continuous thread running through the fabric

which primitive artisans were weaving. Protoplasmic eloquence may not be found in early folk-songs to Spring and to Autumn, to Apollo, Adonis, and Tammuz, or in the verses of bard and minstrel, in epic, elegiac, and choral poetry; but there were brave speeches in the Epos which underlay our present Iliad that were not composed by Æolic poets and rhapsodists without the living model in their memory. Neither is it promising ground to look for eloquence in the philosophic prose which next follows; still it is in the beginning of a treatise of Diogenes of Apollonia that the following ท rhetorical precept is found: entombed like a trilobite in limestone: "It appears to me that every one who begins a discourse ought to state the subject with distinctness and to make the style simple and dignified."

It is, however, when the domain of history is reached that public address takes a definite place in literature. Especially in the episodes of Herodotus appear numerous examples of formal speech; for into the historical narrative, and to enforce certain dominant ideas, particularly concerning the envy of the gods and the danger of pride, Herodotus has introduced speeches, which he puts into the mouths of one and another of his characters. Being somewhat of a theologian and poet, as well as historian, his speeches have a lyric rather than a dramatic part to perform; that is, they set forth the composer's own thoughts and feelings, rather than the external circumstances and events of the story. They are the author's meditations and reflections upon the course of time, the choral song which succeeds the dialogue in the tragedy. As to the ethical character of these reflec

tions it has been femarked that they resemble, the writings of the Old Testament both in matter and in the oriental manner of their expression, as might be expected from the historian's acquaintance with Persian affairs.

Thucydides also diversified his historical narrative with imputed oratory-speeches of his heroes at important crises, in which he exhibits their motives and their thoughts as if he had seen them through and through. And although he was criticised by contemporaries for leaving the domain of history, his example was followed by subsequent writers, who gave to Greek and Roman history a rhetorical flavor. There are forty-one such speeches in his first seven books, panegyrical, judicial, and deliberative. Fourteen are from generals to soldiers, short and to the point. Others are obscure through too great condensation and compression, and are faulty through certain mannerisms, as repetitions of "nominally” and “really," "in word and in deed,” needless definitions and distinctions; and in one place the mistake is made of attributing a spirit of niggardly detraction to his audience in the very opening of a speech ascribed to Pericles. But there is much in these speeches to illustrate the methods of the time, and as Grote remarks, "The modern historian strives in vain to convey the impression which is made by the condensed, burning phrases of Thucydides." There is not so much a crowding of ideas, as of aphorisms about an idea, which we may best understand by reading a page of Carlyle or Emerson. Expounding an obvious or familiar thought he betrays a tendency to astonish the reader by the new and strange way in which it is developed.

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In accordance with the training which epic poetry had given the Greeks, they expected the account of a man's bodily deeds to be accompanied by his spoken words, as an indication of his mental character. Historians, therefore, could not satisfy their readers with the record of any hero's achievements without giving some report of his intentions or reflections as revealed by his public utterances. Accordingly, the speeches of generals and counselors are often incorporated with plain narration of events. The artless simplicity with which Thucydides makes the following admission in regard to such speeches is creditable alike to his honesty as a historian and his ability as a rhetorician. He says, “As to the speeches made on the eve of war, or in its course, I have found it difficult to retain a memory of the precise words which I had heard spoken; and so it was with those who brought me reports. But I have made persons say what it seemed to me most opportune for them to say in view of each situation; at the same time I have adhered as closely as possible to the general sense of what was actually said." His frankness recalls the naïveté of an artist whose portraits of certain distinguished persons were charitably criticized by a brother artist as "Beautiful productions, but not remarkable for their resemblance to the originals." "But," replied the undaunted idealist, "don't you know that is just how they ought to look ?"

Thucydides' ingenuous confession might be made with reference to much that has been set down in type as the veritable utterance of many orators, both ancient and modern. This accounts for the uniformity of style in

which his generals addressed their troops, and his coun selors their auditors. One exception, however, is prom. inent in the general Thucydidean host, namely, Pericles, to whose eloquence the historian had listened so often and so eagerly that, consciously or unconsciously, he caught a distinctive manner and transferred it to his reports of that orator's eloquence.

But in all these speeches Thucydides finds a place to incorporate his own views, sentiments, and opinions. As a relator of facts he is exact and faithful in the body of his narrative; but when he comes to making a speech for one of the generals or ambassadors, he finds an excellent opportunity to give the impression which the course of events has made on the mind of Thucydides as a philosophical historian, and not Thucydides the chronicler, like Herodotus who was a very Froissart of Greece.

Any sketch preliminary to the study of oratory would be incomplete without the mention, at least, of its place in the Greek drama. Indeed, dramatic poetry and oratory were so near one another from the beginning "that they often joined hands over the gap which separates poetry and prose." Accustomed to listen to long speeches in their assemblies, the Athenians tolerated a large interpolation of them in their tragedies, and so kindly that the oratorical element outgrew the others, and the speeches at length became the chief business of the play. But as they lacked the reality of daily life, their rhetoric resembled the speaking of the Sophists rather than the genuine eloquence of the Attic orators, and accordingly the people at last demanded the genuine oratory instead of the dramatic speech.