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

It is the more remarkable that this great and decisive superiority on the part of ancient oratory should exist, when it is recollected that the information, sphere of ideas, and imagery at the command of public speakers, in modern times, is so widely extended in comparison of what it was in Greece and Rome. As much as the wide circuit of the globe exceeds the limited shores of the Mediterranean Sea, do the knowledge and ideas which the modern orator may make use of outstrip those which were at the disposal of the brightest genius in antiquity. Science has, since the fall of Rome, been infinitely extended, and furnished a great variety of images and allusions – many of them of the most elevated kind – which at once convey a clear idea to any educated audience, and awaken in their minds associations or recollections of a pleasing or ennobling description. The vast additions made to geographical and physical knowledge have rendered the wide surface of the globe, and the boundless wonders of the heavens, the theme alike for the strains of the poet, the meditations of the philosopher, and the eloquence of the orator. Modern poetry has added its treasures to those which antiquity had bequeathed to us, as if to augment the chords which eloquence can touch in the human heart. Chivalry has furnished a host of images, ideas, and associations wholly unknown to ancient times; but which, however at times fantastic or high-flown, are all of an ennobling character, because they tend to elevate humanity above itself, and combat the selfish by the very excess of the generous affections. History has immensely extended the sphere of known events, and not only studded the annals of mankind with the brightest instances of heroism or virtue, but afforded precedents applicable to almost every change that can occur in the varied circumstances of human transaction. Above all, Religion has opened a new fountain in the human heart, and implanted in every bosom, with the exception only of those utterly depraved, associations and recollections at once of the most purifying and moving kind. The awful imagery and touching incidents of the Old Testament, exceeding those in the Iliad itself in sublimity and pathos; the pure ideas and universal charity of the New, as much above the utmost efforts of unassisted humanity, have given the orator, in modern times, a store of images and associations which, of all others, are the most powerful in moving the human heart. If one-half of this magazine of ideas and knowledge had been at the disposal of the orators of antiquity, they would have exceeded those of modern Europe as much in the substance and magnificence of their thoughts, as they already do in the felicity and force of their expression.

A key may be found to the causes of this remarkable superiority in ancient eloquence, notwithstanding the comparatively limited extent of the materials of which they had the disposal, in the very qualities in which the ancient orators stand pre-eminent. It is the exquisite taste and abbreviated force of their expression which renders them unrivalled. In reading their speeches, we are perpetually tempted to shut the book even in the most interesting passages, to reflect on the inimitable brevity and beauty of the language. It is a mistake to say this is owing to the construction of the Greek and Roman languages, to the absence of auxiliary verbs, and the possibility of combining expression, as in modern German, so as to convey a complex idea in a single word. Undoubtedly that is true; but who made the ancient languages at once so copious and condensed? It was the ancients themselves who did this. It was they who moulded their tongues into so brief and expressive a form, and, in the course of their progressive formation through successive centuries, rendered them daily more brief and more comprehensive. It was the men who made the language – not the language the men. It was their burning thoughts which created such energetic expressions, as if to let loose at once the pent-up fires of the soul. Those who assert the reverse fall into the same error as the philosophers who ascribe the character of the Anglo-Saxons to their institutions, when, in truth, their institutions are owing to their character.

The main causes to which the extraordinary perfection of ancient oratory are to be ascribed, are the great pains which were bestowed on the education of the higher classes in this most difficult art, and the practice of preparing nearly all their finest orations before delivery. It will sound strange in modern ears to assign these as the causes of this undoubted superiority, when the practice with them is in both particulars directly the reverse; but a very little consideration must convince every reasonable mind that it is to these that it is to be ascribed.

Great as is the importance and undoubted the influence of eloquence in modern Europe, it is by no means so considerable as it was in the states of antiquity. This arises in part from the different structure of government in ancient and modern times. We hear nothing of eloquence in Persia, Egypt, or the East. Military power, political address, were then, as they have ever since been in that part of the world, the sole passports to greatness. But it was otherwise in the republics which studded the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Universally, in them, supreme power was lodged in the citizens of a single city, or in them jointly with the landowners in the vicinity, who could with ease attend its public assemblies. Every free citizen had a vote in those assemblies, in which every subject, political, social, and judicial, was discussed and determined. Questions of peace and war, of imposing or taking off taxes, of concluding treaties, of domestic laws, of appointing generals and ambassadors, of providing for the public subsistence, of determining private suits, of criminal punishments, of life and death, were all submitted to those assemblies, debated in their presence, and decided by their suffrages. Political power, personal fame, the direction of the state, the command of its armaments, the decision of its dearest public and private interests, were all to be attained by obtaining a sway in these public assemblies, and could seldom be obtained in any other way. Hence it was that, as has been finely observed, in modern times, the soldier is brave, and the lawyer is eloquent; but in ancient, the soldier was eloquent, and the lawyer was brave. Power of any sort could be attained only by acquiring an ascendency in the popular assemblies; whoever acquired that ascendency was liable to be immediately called to command the fleets or armies of the republic. Whatever opinions may be formed of the tendency of such a system of government, to insure either the wise direction of its civil interests or the successful protection of its military enterprises, there can be but one as to its effect in insuring the highest attention to oratory, by which alone the command of either could be obtained.

But, in addition to this, the two great instruments of power which, in modern times, so often outweigh the influence of spoken oratory, were awanting. The press was unknown in antiquity; there was no public religious instruction: there were neither daily newspapers to discuss passing events, nor a stock of printed works to form the principles of the people, or mould their judgments, nor an Established Church, to give them early and creditable impressions. Education, derived entirely from oral instruction or costly manuscripts, was so extremely expensive that it was beyond the reach of all but the most wealthy classes. Three-fourths of the persons who had votes in any public assembly had their principles formed, their information acquired, their taste refined, in the theatres and the forum. The temples were open for sacrifice or ceremonies only; not for instruction in religious principle or moral duty. Immense was the addition which this entire want alike of a public press, and a system of religious instruction, had upon the importance of popular oratory. The tragedian and the orator had the entire moulding of the public mind in their hand, alike in fixed principle, previous prepossessions, and instant decision. No daily, or monthly, or quarterly paper existed to form the subject of study at home; no standard works were in every one's hands, to give principles right or wrong, from which they were very unlikely to swerve: – no religious tuition, to the influence of which, in any momentous crisis, appeal might be made. The eloquence of the forum, the transports of the theatre, were all in all.

It resulted, from this extraordinary and most perilous power of oratory in ancient times, that the attention bestowed throughout life, but especially in youth, on training to excellence in it, was unbounded. In truth, education with them was so much directed to the study and the practice of oratory, that it formed in most of their academies the main object of instruction. Other topics – philosophy, poetry, science, mathematics, history – were not neglected, but they were considered chiefly as subordinate to oratory– rather, they were the preparatory studies, from which a perfect orator was to be formed. Cicero says expressly, that there is no subject of human knowledge of which the orator may not avail himself, in his public address, and which may not serve to enlighten his narrative, strengthen his argument, or adorn his expression.23 This shows how lofty was the idea which he had formed of this noble art, and the aids which he was fain to obtain for it, from all, even the most dissimilar, branches of human knowledge. The greatest orators and philosophers of antiquity devoted themselves to instruction in its principles, and consideration of the manner of cultivating it with the highest success. Demosthenes taught, as every schoolboy knows, for a talent: a sum above £200, and equal to at least £500 in modern times. Cicero has left several beautiful treatises on oratory; Isocrates owes his fame mainly to his writings on the same subject; Quintilian has bequeathed to us a most elaborate work on its principles, and the mode of its instruction; the treatise of Aristotle on oratory is not the least celebrated of his immortal works. So vast was the number, and so great was the influence of the schools of rhetoric, that they came, in the later days of antiquity, to supersede almost every other subject of study; they attracted the ingenious youth from every part of the world to the groves of the Academy, and singly supported the prosperity and fame of Greece, for centuries after they had sunk under the withering grasp or declining fortunes of the Byzantine empire.

It is evident from these considerations, as well as the intrinsic beauties which the great masters of the art exhibit, that oratory in ancient times was regarded as one of the Fine Arts. It was considered not merely as the means of winning the favour, of convincing the judgment, or securing the suffrages of the judges, but of moving the affections, rousing the feelings, and elevating the mind. Quintilian mentions the various definitions of the art of oratory which had been invented by the rhetorical writers of antiquity, and he inclines to that of Cicero, who held that it was the art of speaking "apte ad persuadendum." This was its end, its aim; and undoubtedly it was so: but the modes of persuasion– the methods of influencing the judgment or moving the affections – were as various as the channels by which the intellect may be determined, the feelings roused, or the heart touched. Not less than poetry, painting, or statuary, they classed oratory among the fine arts; and, indeed, they placed it at the head of them all, because it embraced all their influences, and retouched, as it were, by allusion, all the chords which they had previously caused to vibrate. The surprising force with which they did this, considering the comparatively limited stock of ideas, knowledge, and imagery which was at their disposal, compared to what obtains in modern times, affords the most decisive proof of the great attention they had bestowed on the principles of the art, and the perfection to which they had brought the means of influencing the mind – not only by the force of reason, or the conceptions of genius, but by all the subordinate methods by which their effect in delivery was to be augmented. With them the object of oratory was not merely to persuade the understanding, but

"To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,To move the passions, and to melt the heart."

Nor was less attention bestowed, in ancient times, upon training young men, to whatever profession they were destined, in that important and difficult branch of oratory which consists in intonation and delivery. It is well known that this is a branch of the art which is susceptible of the very greatest improvement by education and practice, and that even the brightest natural genius can rarely attain it, without the aid of instruction or the lessons of experience. The surprising improvement which is so often observed in persons trained to different professions or habits, when they have been for some time engaged in public speaking – above all, in emphasis and action – affords daily proof of the vast effects of practice and experience in brightening the delivery of thought. The prodigious influence of accent and intonation in adding to the power of eloquence is equally well known, and may often be perceived in listening to the difference between the same verses when recited by an ordinary reader, and what they appear when illuminated by the genius, or enforced by the feeling, of a Kemble or a Faucit. The ancients, accordingly, were indefatigable in their endeavours to improve themselves in this particular, and availed themselves of means to attain perfection in it to which modern genius would scarcely condescend. Cicero, when advanced in life, and in the meridian of his fame, took lessons from Roscius, the great tragic actor of the day; and the efforts of Demosthenes to overcome the impediments of a defective elocution, by putting pebbles in his mouth, and declaiming on the shores of the ocean, the roar of which resembled the murmurs of the forum, demonstrate that the greatest masters of the art of eloquence were fully alive to the vast influence of a powerful voice and animated delivery, in heightening the effect even of the most perfect efforts of oratory, and disdained no means of adding to their impression. When asked, What is the first requisite of eloquence? the last of these orators answered "Action;" the second? "Action;" the third? "Action." Without going so great a length, and admitting the full influence of the genius of Demosthenes in composing the speeches which he so powerfully delivered, every one must admit the influence of an impassioned delivery in heightening the effect of the highest, and concealing the defects of the most ordinary oratory.

Quintilian opens his second book by a discussion of the question, which he says occupied a prominent place in the schools of antiquity, at what age a boy should be taken from the teachers of grammar, and delivered to the instructors in rhetoric. By the former, they were taught grammar and the elements of composition; by the latter, exercised in themes, compositions in their own language, translations from Greek, extempore debate, and instructed in declamation, intonation, and action. They were not sent out into the world till they had spent several years in the latter preparatory studies and exercises; and in them were trained young men of all sorts, whether intended for the civil or military classes. It was this which gave its statesmen and generals so wonderful a command of the means of moving the human heart, and enabled them, in the most trying situations, and often in the crisis of a battle or the heat of a tumult, to utter those noble and impassioned sentiments which so often determined the fate of the day, or even the fortunes of their country; and which are so perfect that, when recorded in the historians of antiquity, they have the appearance of having been imagined by the genius of the writer. Nor was the attention to these elements of eloquence sensibly diminished in the progress of time, when the establishment of absolute power in the hands of a single person had transferred, as in the days of Napoleon, the discussion of all public or national questions to the council of state, or the private closet of the emperor. On the contrary, it seems to have daily increased, and was never so great as when the military fortunes of the empire were declining, and its external influence yielding to the increasing weight of the northern nations. A false and turgid style of eloquence, indeed, became then generally prevalent, as it always does in the later days of a nation, and in periods of political servitude: but attention to the means of attaining it underwent no diminution. The wisdom or policy of the emperors left various important functions to their municipia, or "little senates," as they were called. The judicial functions, for the most part, were still intrusted to the citizens: they had the management, almost uncontrolled, of their local concerns: and so great was the importance of securing their suffrages that the power of influencing them, by means of oratory, continued to the very last to be the chief object of instruction to the youth.

The instructors of youth in England have practically solved the question which divided the teachers of antiquity, for they deliver the youth at once from the grammar-school to the forum. They teach him the dead languages incessantly, up to the age of eighteen, at school: in the universities, mathematics in one university, and logic in the other, divide his time with the composition of Greek prose or Latin verse. But in those branches of study which have a bearing on eloquence, or are likely to improve the style of composition, the main attention of all is still directed to composition in the dead languages. They think the art of speaking or writing in English is not to be learned by exercise in that language, but by exercise in another. They hold we are likely to become eloquent in this our English isle, not by translating Cicero into English, but by translating Addison into Latin; to become great poets, not by rendering Horace into the tongue of Gray and Campbell, but by rendering the immortal verses of these into the languages of Pindar or Virgil. Cicero and Mr Pitt were of an opposite opinion. They held that, although the study of the masterpieces of antiquity is the great school of oratory, and the best path to rivalling their beauties, yet this is to be done, not by prosecuting the vain endeavour to emulate, in these days, their perfection in their tongue, but by seeking to transfer it to our own. Translations from the Greek into Latin formed a large part of the preparatory studies of Cicero, – from Thucydides and Cicero were the favourite occupation at college of Mr Pitt.24 It may be that these great masters of ancient and modern eloquence were wrong – that their time would have been better employed in composing Greek and Latin verses, in attaining a thorough knowledge of Greek and Latin prosody, or becoming masters of all the niceties of Greek or Latin prose composition; but we shall not enter on the great debate. We are content to let education for all classes, in our universities, remain what Mr Locke long ago said it was, the education of schoolmasters;25 and shall content ourselves with signalising this peculiar system of training as one great cause of the admitted inferiority of modern to ancient eloquence.

None can be more thoroughly impressed than we are with the vast importance of these noble establishments, or their effect in elevating the tone of the national mind, and improving the taste of the youth who daily issue from their walls. It is just from a sense of these advantages that we are so desirous to enhance and extend the sphere of their usefulness, and, by keeping them abreast of the age, and prepared to meet its wants, secure for the classes they instruct the lead in the national affairs to which they are entitled.

It cannot be disputed that, although English composition, or translation from the classics into English, is not altogether overlooked in the English universities, yet it forms a subordinate object of attention. We are all aware how many eminent men have first become celebrated by their prize poems. But those are the exceptions, not the rule. The classics at one university, the higher mathematics at another, form the great passports to distinction; the highest honours at either are only to be won by attention to one or other, or both, of these branches of knowledge. It is not surprising that, when this is the case, the attention of the young men should be mainly turned to composition in the dead languages, or to the most abstruse parts of mathematics; and that when they come to speak in public, or deliver sermons in their own language, they should, in the great majority of cases, be entire novices, both as concerns the method of composition and the graces of oratory. They are, in truth, called upon for the first time to speak what is to them a foreign language; to discuss topics, to them, for the most part unknown; and practise a difficult art, that of delivery, to which they are entire strangers. If they were to address their audiences in Greek, they might possibly rival Æschines or Demosthenes; if in Latin, outstrip Cicero; and if required to compose verses, equal Horace or Pindar. But since they are called on, when they go out into life, to speak neither in Greek prose nor Latin prose, to compose neither in Greek verse nor Latin verse, but to speak in good English, and not about gods and goddesses, but the prices of corn and beef, the evils of pauperism and the load of taxes, they too often find themselves entirely at a loss, and inwardly lament the precious years, never to be recalled, which have been devoted to pursuits of no practical utility in life.

It is the more extraordinary that so little attention should be paid at our universities to composition, or the art of oratory, in the English tongue, that every day's experience proves that the power of public speaking is not only absolutely essential to the most moderate success in many professions, but is indispensable to the highest grades in all. In the Houses of Lords and Commons, at the Bar, in the Church, it is of course necessary from the very outset, if the very least eminence is to be looked for. But not only in the professions of which oratory is the very foundation, but in every case of life where a certain degree of eminence has been attained, it becomes of equal importance, and the want of it will be equally felt. The landed proprietor will find it impossible to maintain his influence in his county, unless, on the hustings and in political meetings, on the bench of justices, at county and railway meetings, he is prepared to take his part in debate, and can come off with a creditable appearance. The merchant or manufacturer who has become a millionnaire by a life of laborious industry, will find that he cannot keep his place in society unless he call deliver his sentiments with effect at civic dinners, meetings for business, in the magisterial chair, or at the festive board. Even the soldier and sailor, when they rise to eminence in their profession, are called on to speak in public, and grievously suffer if they cannot do so. Many a gallant spirit, which never quailed before an enemy, has been crushed, and his reputation injured, by inability to speak in a public assembly, or to answer appropriately a complimentary speech at a public dinner. Indeed, the influence of public speaking in the country is not only great, but daily increasing, and it confers influence and distinction often far beyond the real merits of the speaker, and, for its want, the most solid or brilliant parts in other respects can make no compensation. The great body of men invariably impute inability to speak well in public to want of ideas; whereas, in reality, it generally arises from want of practice, and often coexists with the greatest acquirements and the most brilliant genius. Strange that the art of English oratory, upon which the experience of all tells them success in the higher stations of life is entirely dependent, should, by common consent, be invariably neglected, and that the art of making Latin verses, which universal experience tells all is of no earthly use in life, except to one in a thousand, should, by common consent, be universally cultivated!