Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 68, No 422, December 1850

The topics here handled are the same which in every age have been the staple of the conspirator and the revolutionist; but it may be doubted whether they ever were put together with such force and address. The same desperate chief, on the eve of their last conflict with the consular legions: —

"I well know, fellow-soldiers, that words add nothing to the valour of the brave; and that an army will not be made from slothful, strenuous – from timid, courageous, by any speech from its commander. Whatever boldness nature or training has implanted in any one, that appears in war. It is vain to exhort those whom neither dangers nor glory excite. Terror shuts their ears. But I have called you together to mention a few things, and to make you sharers of my councils. You know, soldiers, what a calamity has been brought upon us by the cowardice of Lentulus; and how, when I awaited succours from the city, I was unable to set out for Gaul. Now, however, I will candidly tell you how our affairs stand. Two armies, one issuing from Rome, one from Gaul, beset us: want of provisions obliges us quickly to change our quarters, even if we inclined to remain where we are. Wherever we determine to go, we must open a way with our swords. Therefore it is that I admonish you that you have now need of stern and determined minds: and when you engage in battle, recollect that riches, honour, glory, in addition to liberty, are to be won by your own right hands. If we conquer, everything awaits us: provisions will be abundant, colonies ready, cities open. If we yield from fear, circumstances are equally adverse: neither solitude nor friend shields him whom his arms cannot protect. Besides, soldiers, the same necessity does not impel them as us. We fight for our country, our liberty, our lives; they for the domination of a few. On that account, mindful of your pristine valour, advance to the attack. You might have, with disgrace, lingered out a miserable life in exile: a few, bereft of their possessions, might have remained, fed by charity, at Rome: but as such a fate seemed intolerable to freemen, you have attended me here. If you would shun these evils, now is the moment to do so. None ever exchanged war for peace, save by victory. To hope for safety in flight, and, at the same time, rescue from the enemy the arms by which the body is covered, is the height of madness. Ever in battle they run the greatest danger who are most timid: boldness is the only real rampart. When I reflect on you and your deeds, O soldiers, I have great hopes of victory. Your spirit, your age, your bravery, encourage me: besides necessity, which makes heroes even of cowards. The straits of the ground secure you from being outflanked by the enemy. Should Fortune fail to second your valour, beware lest you perish unavenged. Rather fall, fighting like men, and leave a mournful and bloody triumph to your enemies, than be butchered like sheep when captured by their arms."11

With what exquisite judgment and taste is the stern and mournful style of this speech suited to the circumstances, all but desperate, in which Catiline's army was then placed!

No one supposes that these were the identical words delivered by Catiline on this occasion. Unquestionably, Sallust shines through in every line. But they were probably his ideas; and, unquestionably, they were in the true style of ancient oratory. And that what was spoken fully equalled what has come down to us written, is proved by innumerable passages in speeches which undoubtedly were spoken; among which, we select the graphic picture of Antony in his revels – spoken by Cœlius, and preserved by Quintilian: —

"They found him (Antony) oppressed with a half-drunken sleep, snoring aloud, lying across the most beautiful concubines, while others were reposing around. The latter, when they perceived the approach of an enemy, strove to awaken Antony, but in vain. They called on him by name, they raised him by the neck: one whispered softly in his ear, one struck him sharply; but to no purpose. When he was so far roused as to recognise the voice or touch of the nearest, he put his arms round her neck, unable alike to sleep and to rise up; but, half in a stupor, he was tossed about between the hands of the centurions and the harlots."12

What a picture of the triumvir and rival of Brutus, as well as of the corrupted manners of Rome!

Demosthenes, in his celebrated speech against Æschines, burst into the following strain of indignant invective: —

"You taught writing, I learned it: you were an instructor, I was the instructed: you danced at the games, I presided over them: you wrote as a clerk, I pleaded as an advocate: you were an actor in the theatres, I a spectator: you broke down, I hissed: you ever took counsel for our enemies, I for our country. In fine, now on this day the point at issue is – Am I, yet unstained in character, worthy of a crown? while to you is reserved the lot of a calumniator, and you are in danger of being silenced by not having obtained the fifth part of the votes.

"I have not fortified the city with stone, nor adorned it with tiles, neither do I take any credit for such things. But if you would behold my works aright, you will find arms, and cities, and stations, and harbours, and ships, and horses, and those who are to make use of them in our defence. This is the rampart I have raised for Attica, as much as human wisdom could effect: with these I fortified the whole country, not the Piræus only and the city. I never sank before the arms or cunning of Philip. No! it was by the supineness of your own generals and allies that he triumphed."13

We add only an extract from the noble speech of Pericles, on those who had died in the service of their country, which is the more valuable that Thucydides, who has recorded it in his history, says that the version he has given of that masterpiece of oratory is nearly the same as he heard from Pericles himself.

"Wherefore I will congratulate rather than bewail the parents of those who have fallen that are present. They know that they were born to suffering. But the lot of those is most to be envied who have come to such an end, that it is hard to say whether their life or their death is most honourable. I know it is difficult to persuade you of this, who had often rejoiced in the good fortune of others; and it is not when we are deprived of goods not yet attained that we feel grief, but when we are bereaved of what we have already enjoyed. To some the hope of other children, who may emulate those who have gone before, may be a source of consolation. Future offspring may awaken fresh interests in place of the dead; and will doubly benefit the city by peopling its desert places, and providing for its defence. We cannot expect that those who have no children whom they may place in peril for their country, can be considered on a level with such as have made the sacrifices which those have made. To such of you as time has denied this hope, I would say, 'Rejoice in the honour which your children have won, and let that console the few years that still remain to you – for the love of glory alone knows no age; and in the decline of life it is not the acquisition of gain, as some say, which confers pleasure, but the consciousness of being honoured.

"To the children and brothers of those we mourn, who are here present, I foresee a noble contest. Every one praises the dead. You should endeavour, I will not say to equal those we have lost, but to be only a little inferior to them. Envy often divides the living; but the grave extinguishes jealousy, for it terminates rivalry. I must speak of the virtue of the women who have shared in our bereavement; but I shall do so in a few words. Great will be your renown, if you do not yield to the weakness of your sex; and place as little difference as possible between yourselves and the virtue of men. I propose that the children of those who have fallen should be maintained, till puberty, at the public expense – a reward at once to the virtue of the dead, and an incitement to the emulation of the living: for among those to whom the highest rewards of virtue are opened, the most worthy citizens are found. And now, having honoured the dead by your mourning, depart every one to his home."14

Enough – and some may, perhaps, think more than enough – has been done to convey an idea of that far-famed oratory, of which Milton has said —

"Thence to the famous orators repair,Those ancients, whose resistless eloquenceWielded at will that fierce democracy,Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece,To Macedon, and Artaxerxes' throne."15

For comparison with these splendid passages, we gladly lay before our readers the famous peroration of Mr Burke's oration against Mr Hastings, long esteemed the masterpiece of British eloquence.

"My Lords, at this awful close, in the name of the Commons, and surrounded by them, I attest the retiring, I attest the advancing generations, between which, as a link in the great chain of eternal order, we stand. We call this nation, we call the world to witness, that the Commons have shrunk from no labour; that we have been guilty of no prevarication; that we have made no compromise with crime; that we have not feared any odium whatsoever, in the long warfare which we have carried on with the crimes – with the vices – with the exorbitant wealth – with the enormous and overpowering influence of Eastern corruption. This war, my Lords, we have waged for twenty-two years, and the conflict has been fought, at your Lordships' bar, for the last seven years. My Lords, twenty-two years is a great space in the scale of the life of man; it is no inconsiderable space in the history of a great nation. A business which has so long occupied the councils and the tribunals of Great Britain cannot possibly be huddled over in the course of vulgar, trite, and transitory events. Nothing but some of those great revolutions, that break the traditionary chain of human memory, and alter the very face of nature itself, can possibly obscure it. My Lords, we are all elevated to a degree of importance by it; the meanest of us will, by means of it, more or less, become the concern of posterity – if we are yet to hope for such a thing, in the present state of the world, as a recording, retrospective, civilised posterity: but this is in the hand of the great Disposer of events; it is not ours to settle how it shall be. My Lords, your House yet stands; it stands as a great edifice; but let me say, that it stands in the midst of ruins – in the midst of the ruins that have been made by the greatest moral earthquake that ever convulsed and shattered this globe of ours. My Lords, it has pleased Providence to place us in such a state, that we appear every moment to be upon the verge of some great mutations. There is one thing, and one thing only, which defies all mutation, that which existed before the world, and will survive the fabric of the world itself – I mean justice; that justice which, emanating from the Divinity, has a place in the breast of every one of us, given us for our guide with regard to ourselves and with regard to others, and which will stand, after this globe is burned to ashes, our advocate or our accuser before the great Judge, when He comes to call upon us for the tenor of a well-spent life.

"My Lords, the Commons will share in every fate with your Lordships; there is nothing sinister which can happen to you, in which we shall not all be involved; and if it should so happen that we shall be subjected to some of those frightful changes which we have seen – if it should happen that your Lordships, stripped of all the decorous distinctions of human society, should, by hands at once base and cruel, be led to those scaffolds and machines of murder upon which great kings and glorious queens have shed their blood, amidst the prelates, amidst the nobles, amidst the magistrates, who supported their thrones, may you in those moments feel that consolation which I am persuaded they felt in the critical moments of their dreadful agony!.. My Lords, if you must fall, may you so fall! but, if you stand – and stand I trust you will – together with the fortune of this ancient monarchy – together with the ancient laws and liberties of this great and illustrious kingdom – may you stand as unimpeached in honour as in power; may you stand, not as a substitute for virtue, but as an ornament of virtue, as a security for virtue; may you stand long, and long stand the terror of tyrants; may you stand the refuge of afflicted nations; may you stand a sacred temple, for the perpetual residence of an inviolable justice."16

The peroration of Lord Brougham's speech in favour of Queen Caroline, which was carefully studied, and, it is said, written over several times, is not unworthy to be placed beside this splendid burst.

"Such, my Lords, is the case before you! such is the evidence in support of this measure – evidence inadequate to prove a debt, impotent to deprive of a civil right, ridiculous to convict of the lowest offence, scandalous, if brought forward to support a charge of the highest nature which the law knows, monstrous to ruin the honour and blast the name of an English Queen! What shall I say, then, if this is the proof by which an act of judicial legislation, a parliamentary sentence, an ex post facto law, is sought to be passed against a defenceless woman? My Lords, I pray you to pause: I do earnestly beseech you to take heed. You are standing upon the brink of a precipice – then beware! It will go forth as your judgment, if sentence shall pass against the Queen. But it will be the only judgment you ever pronounced which, instead of reaching its object, will return and bound back upon those who give it. Save the country, my Lords, from the horrors of this catastrophe – save yourselves from this peril. Revere that country of which you are the ornaments, but in which you can flourish no longer, when severed from the people, than the blossom when cut off from the roots and stem of the tree. Save that country, that you may continue to adorn it; save the crown, which is in jeopardy, the aristocracy, which is shaken; save the altar, which must stagger with the blow that rends its kindred throne! You have said, my Lords, you have willed, the church to the Queen have willed that she should be deprived of its solemn service. She has instead of that solemnity the heartfelt prayers of the people. She wants no prayers of mine. But I do here pour forth my humble supplication to the Throne of mercy, that that mercy may be poured down upon the people, in a larger measure than the merits of its rulers may deserve, and that your hearts may be turned to justice."17

On the trial of Mr John Stockdale, Lord Erskine thus spoke: —

"I have been speaking of man and his nature, and of human dominion, from what I have seen of them myself among nations reluctant of our authority. I know what they feel, and how such feelings can alone be repressed. I have heard them in my youth from a naked savage, in the indignant character of a prince, surrounded by his subjects, addressing the governor of a British colony, holding a bundle of sticks in his hand, as the notes of his unlettered eloquence. 'Who is it,' said the jealous ruler of the desert, encroached upon by the restless foot of English adventure – 'who is it that causes to blow the loud winds of winter, and that calms them again in summer? Who is it that causes this river to rise in the high mountains, and to empty itself into the ocean? Who is it that rears up the shade of these lofty forests, and blasts them with the quick lightning at his pleasure? The same Being who gave to you a country on the other side of the waters, and gave ours to us; and by this title we will defend it,' said the warrior, throwing his tomahawk upon the ground, and raising the war-sound of his nation. These are the feelings of subjugated man all round the globe; and, depend upon it, nothing but fear will control where it is vain to look for affection."18

Some of Mr Grattan's speeches are said to have been the most eloquent ever delivered in the House of Commons. The following burst of indignant patriotism, on the supposed wrongs of Ireland, affords a favourable specimen of his style of oratory: —

"Hereafter, when these things shall be history, your age of thraldom and poverty, your sudden resurrection, commercial redress, and miraculous armament, shall the historian stop to declare, that here the principal men amongst us fell into mimic traces of gratitude: they were awed by a weak ministry, and bribed by an empty treasury; and when liberty was within their grasp, and the temple opened her folding-doors, and the arms of the people clanged, and the zeal of the nation urged and encouraged them on, that they fell down, and were prostituted at the threshold.

"I will not be answered by a public lie in the shape of an amendment: neither, speaking for the subjects' freedom, am I to hear of faction. I wish for nothing but to breathe in this our island, in common with my fellow-subjects, the air of liberty. I have no ambition, unless it be the ambition to break your chains, and contemplate your glory. I never will be satisfied as long as the meanest cottager in Ireland has a link of the British chain clanking in his rags: he may be naked, he shall not be in irons. And I do see the time is at hand, the spirit is gone forth, the declaration is planted: and though great men should apostatise, yet the cause will live: and though the public speaker should die, yet the immortal fire shall outlast the organ which conveyed it, and the breath of liberty, like the word of the holy man, shall not die with the prophet, but survive him."19

We shall add only to these copious and interesting quotations two passages from the greatest masters of French eloquence.

Bossuet, in his funeral oration on Henrietta, daughter of France and Queen of England, the consort of Charles I., thus expresses himself: —

"Christians!" says he, in the exordium of his discourse, "it is not surprising that the memory of a great queen – the daughter, the wife, the mother of monarchs – should attract you from all quarters to this melancholy ceremony; it will bring forcibly before your eyes one of those awful examples which demonstrate to the world the vanity of which it is composed. You will see in her single life the extremes of human things: felicity without bounds, miseries without parallel; a long and peaceable enjoyment of one of the most noble crowns in the universe – all that birth and grandeur could confer that was glorious – all that adversity and suffering could accumulate that was disastrous; the good cause attended at first with some success, then involved in the most dreadful disasters. Revolutions unheard of, rebellion long restrained, at length reigning triumphant; no curb there to license, no laws in force. Majesty itself violated by bloody hands – usurpation and tyranny, under the name of liberty – a fugitive queen, who can find no retreat in her three kingdoms, and was forced to seek in her native country a melancholy exile. Nine sea voyages undertaken against her will by a queen, in spite of wintry tempests – a throne unworthily overturned, and miraculously re-established. Behold the lessons which God has given to kings! thus does He manifest to the world the nothingness of its pomps and its grandeur. If our words fail, if language sinks beneath the grandeur of such a subject, the simple narrative is more touching than aught that words can convey. The heart of a great queen, formerly elevated by so long a course of prosperity, then steeped in all the bitterness of affliction, will speak in sufficiently touching language; and if it is not given to a private individual to teach the proper lessons from so mournful a catastrophe, the King of Israel has supplied the words – 'Hear, O ye great of the earth! Take lessons, ye rulers of the world!'"20

A very different man from Bossuet, but who was perhaps his superior in nervous eloquence, Robespierre, thus spoke on the last occasion when he addressed the Convention, then bent on his destruction: —

"They call me a tyrant! If I were so, they would fall at my feet: I should have gorged them with gold, assured them of impunity to their crimes, and they would have worshipped me. Had I been so, the kings whom we have conquered would have been my most cordial supporters. It is by the aid of scoundrels you arrive at tyranny. Whither tend those who combat them? To the tomb and immortality! Who is the tyrant that protects me? What is the faction to which I belong? It is yourselves! What is the party which, since the commencement of the Revolution, has crushed all other factions – has annihilated so many specious traitors? It is yourselves; it is the people; it is the force of principles! This is the party to which I am devoted, and against which crime is everywhere leagued. I am ready to lay down my life without regret. I have seen the past; I foresee the future. What lover of his country would wish to live, when he can no longer succour oppressed innocence? Why should he desire to remain in an order of things where intrigue eternally triumphs over truth – where justice is deemed an imposture – where the vilest passions, the most ridiculous fears, fill every heart, instead of the sacred interests of humanity? Who can bear the punishment of seeing that horrible succession of traitors, more or less skilful in concealing their hideous vices under the mask of virtue, and who will leave to posterity the difficult task of determining which was the most atrocious? In contemplating the multitude of vices which the Revolution has let loose pell-mell with the civic virtues, I own I sometimes fear that I myself shall be sullied in the eyes of posterity by their calumnies. But I am consoled by the reflection that, if I have seen in history all the defenders of liberty overwhelmed by calumny, I have seen their oppressors die also. The good and the bad disappear alike from the earth; but in very different conditions. No, Chaumette! 'Death is not an eternal sleep!' – Citizens, efface from the tombs that maxim, engraven by sacrilegious hands, which throws a funeral pall over nature, which discourages oppressed innocence: write rather, 'Death is the commencement of immortality!' I leave to the oppressors of the people a terrible legacy, which well becomes the situation in which I am placed: it is the awful truth, 'Thou shalt die!'"21

It must be evident to every impartial person, from these quotations, that the superiority of ancient to modern eloquence, so far as the art itself is concerned, is great and indisputable. The strong opinion of Lord Brougham, on this subject, must command the universal assent of every reasonable mind: —

"It is impossible for any but the most careless observer, to avoid remarking the great differences which distinguish the oratory of ancient from that of modern times. The immeasurable superiority of the former is far from being the only, or even the principal, of these diversities: that proceeds, in part, from the greater power of the languages, especially the Greek – the instrument wielded by the great masters of diction; and in so far the superiority must for ever remain undiminished by any efforts on the part of modern rhetoricians. If, in such varied and perfect excellencies, the most prominent shall be selected, then doubtless is the palm due to that entire and uninterrupted devotion which throws the speaker's whole soul into his subject, and will not even – no, not for an instant – suffer a rival idea to cross its resistless course, without being swiftly swept away and driven out of sight, as the most rapid engine annihilates or shoots off whatever approaches it with a velocity that defies the eye. There is no coming back on the same ground, any more than any lingering over it. All is done at once; but the blow is as effectual as it is single, and leaves not anything to do. All is at each instant moving forward, regardless of every obstacle. The mighty flood of speech rolls on in a channel ever full, but which never overflows. Whether it rushes in a torrent of allusion, or moves along in a majestic exposition of enlarged principles, descends hoarse and headlong in overwhelming invective, or glides melodious in narrative and description, or spreads itself out shining in illustrations, its course is ever onward and ever entire; never scattered, never stagnant, never sluggish. At each point manifest progress has been made, and with all that art can do to charm, strike, and please. No sacrifice, even the smallest, is ever made to effect; nor can the hearer ever stop for an instant to contemplate or admire, or throw away a thought upon the great artist, till all is over, and the pause gives time to recover his breath."22