Great thanks might justly be given to our days, most excellent Ammæus, for an improvement in other branches of culture, and particularly for the signal advance that has been made by the study of Civil Oratory.- Dionysius of Halicarnassus, on the Decline and Revival of Oratory.

PREFACE.

IF Oratory is what the ancients called it, "The Art of

Arts," it should have a history of its own, like the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, of music, poetry, and the drama. If, also, it is a science, as Aristotle and his successors have shown, its fundamental principles must have been derived from a series of experiments whose record becomes historical. Again, if there is a philosophy of public discourse, referring its laws to methods of mental and moral action, such reference is the better established and confirmed the farther back observation extends and the more complete the account becomes of such successes and failures as attend any continuous endeavor. Furthermore, if modern methods of study are to be applied to the art, the science, or the philosophy of public address, something like a connected narrative of its beginning and growth, its decadences and revivals is requisite.

These phases of the subject cannot, of course, be formally separated from each other in its historical treatment. As in ordinary discourse itself they are mingled in varying proportions, so in any continuous account of it these several elements must appear in solution rather than as precipitated or crystallized with exact formality;

a process which has sometimes followed the other. Nevertheless, notice may with propriety be taken of such analytic and synthetic methods when they occur in the history of public speech.

Such considerations have led to the preparation of the following chapters, in the failure to find the fortunes of oratory, during a period of about twenty-four centuries, traced in any single work.

The treatment of the subject within the compass of one volume has its obvious limitations. To do this as exhaustively as Professor Jebb, following German and English scholars, has treated the one section, from Antiphon to Isæus, would require several volumes. The immense body of oratorical literature, and of biographical and historical material related to it, imposes a constant necessity of selection and condensation. In view of this it has been attempted to give only a brief account of each typical orator's place in the long succession, to note the rhetorical principles that he exemplified, and to observe the trend of eloquence in the several periods which may be designated as the Greek, Roman, Patristic, Mediæval, Reformation, Revolution, Restoration, Parliamentary, and American.

It should be added that the substance of these chapters was originally delivered in a course of lectures, and that the principal changes have been made in the way of abridgement. It is also due to the writer, as well as to the reader, to say that if in the course of composition

the possibility of publication had been clearer, references might have been kept to authorities which are now beyond immediate recall. Still, the sources of helpful material have been indicated with tolerable fulness in the text. The editions of orations and speeches are, likewise, so many and various that no attempt at reference to volume and page has been considered desirable in the relatively few citations made. If, however, some notion shall be conveyed of the elevations and depressions of eloquence through many centuries, and some facts recalled which contribute to a just appreciation of its higher achievements; above all, if any impulse shall be imparted to the study of oratory, in which there are present indications of revived interest, especially among students; if these results shall be in any degree attained, the purpose of this sketch will be accomplished.

The author appends his grateful recognition of valuable assistance rendered in the reading of proof by his friend, Mr. Harry Lyman Koopman, Librarian of the University.

BROWN UNIVERSITY, PROVIDENCE, R. I.

DECEMBER, 1895.