of that meaning. For if it is true that a speaker is sometimes not understood because he doth not express his meaning with sufficient clearness, it is also true that sometimes he is not understood because he hath no meaning to express.

The last advice I would give on the head of perspicuity is, in composing, to aim at a certain simplicity in the structure of your sentences, avoiding long, intri cate, and complex periods. Remember always that the bulk of the people are unused to reading and study. They lose sight of the connection in very long sentences, and they are quite bewildered, when, for the sake of rounding a period, and suspending the sense till the concluding clause, you transgress the customary arrangement of the words. The nearer, therefore, your diction comes to the language of conversation, the more familiar to them it will be, and so the more easily apprehended. In this, too, the style of Scripture is an excellent model. So much for perspicuity.

The next quality I mentioned in the style, was, that it be affecting. Though this has more particularly a place in those discourses which admit and even require a good deal of the pathetic, yet, in a certain degree, it ought to accompany everything that comes from the pulpit. All from that quarter is conceived to be, mediately or immediately, connected with the most important interests of mankind. This gives a propriety to the affecting manner in a certain degree, whatever be the particular subject. It is this quality in preaching, to which the French critics have given the name of onction, and which they explain to be an affecting sweetness of manner which engages the heart. It is, indeed, that warmth and gentle emotion in the address and language, which serves to show that the speaker is much in earnest in what he says, and is actuated to say it from the tenderest concern for the welfare of his hearers. As this character, however, can be considered only as a degree of that which comes under the general denomination of pathetic, we shall have occasion to consider it more fully afterwards. It is enough here to observe, that as the general strain of pulpit expression ought to be seasoned with this quality, this doth necessarily imply that the language be ever grave and serious. The necessity of this results from the consideration of the very momentous effect which preaching was intended to produce, as the necessity of perspicuity, the first quality mentioned, results from the consideration of the character sustained by the hearers. That the effect designed by this institution, namely, the reformation of mankind, requires a certain seriousness, which, though occasionally requisite in other public speakers, ought uniformly to be preserved by the preacher, is a truth that will scarcely be doubted by any person who reflects. This may be said in some respect to narrow his compass in persuasion, as it will not permit the same free recourse to humor, wit, and ridicule, which often prove powerful auxiliaries to other orators at the bar and in the senate, agreeably to the observation of the poet,

"Ridiculum acri

Fortius et melius magnas plerumque secat res.»

Ridicule often decides important matters more readily than acute reasoning.

At the same time, I am very sensible that an air of ridicule in disproving or dissuading, by rendering opinions or practices contemptible, hath been attempted with approbation by preachers of great name. I can only say that when the contemptuous manner is employed (which ought to be very seldom) it requires to be managed with the greatest delicacy. For time and place and occupation seem all incompatible with the levity of ridicule; they render jesting impertinence, and laughter madness. Therefore anything from the pulpit which might provoke this

emotion would now be justly deemed an unpardonable offense against both piety and decorum. In order, however, to prevent mistakes, permit me here, in passing, to make a remark that may be called a digression, as it immediately concerns my own province only. The remark is, that in these prelections, I do not consider myself as limited by the laws of preaching. There is a difference between a school, even a theological school, and a church, a professor's chair and a pulpit; there is a difference between graduates in philosophy and the arts, and a common congregation. And though in some things, not in all, there be a coincidence in the subject, yet the object is different. In the former, it is purely the information of the hearers; in the latter, it is ultimately their reformation. I shall not, therefore, hesitate, in this place, to borrow aid from whatever may serve innocently to illustrate, enliven, or enforce any part of my subject, and keep awake the attention of my hearers, which is but too apt to flag at hearing the most rational discourse, if there be nothing in it which can either move the passions or please the imagination. The nature of my department excludes almost everything of the former kind, or what may be called pathetic. A little of the onction above explained is the utmost that here ought to be aspired to. There is the less need to dispense with what of the latter kind may be helpful for rousing attention. I hope, therefore, to be indulged the liberty, a liberty which I shall use very sparingly, of availing myself of the plea of the satirist,—

"Ridentem dicere verum Quid vetat?»

So much for the perspicuous and the affecting manner, qualities in the style which ought particularly to predominate in all discourses from the pulpit. There are other graces of elocution which may occasionally find a place there, such as the nervous, the elegant, and some others; but the former ought never to be wanting. The former, therefore, are characteristic qualities. The latter are so far from being such, that sometimes they are rather of an opposite tendency. The nervous style requires a conciseness that is often unfriendly to that perfect perspicuity which ought to predominate in all that is addressed to Christian people, and which leads a speaker rather to be diffuse in his expression, that he may the better adapt himself to ordinary capacities. Elegance, too, demands a certain polish that is not always entirely compatible with that artless simplicity with which, when the great truths of religion are adorned, they appear always to the most advantage, and in the truest majesty. They are "when unadorn'd, adorn'd the most."

EDMUND BURKE

(c. 1729-1797)

DMUND BURKE devotes Part V. of his "Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful" to eloquence as it attracts and sways us in oratory and poetry. Everything he writes is entitled to respectful study. He was himself the greatest orator of modern times, and he knew as much as anyone has known of the methods by which a great mind gains the power of sublime expression. There is a secret of his own eloquence which he does not tell, however, though he once suggested it, when, in a conversation with his friend, Philip Francis, he asserted that he had wetted with his tears the paper on which he wrote of Marie Antoinette as the repulsive scenes attending her death on the guillotine brought to his mind the time, when sixteen or seventeen years before, he had seen her in her fresh youth,-"just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in,-glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendor and joy." Though Burke opposed to those who would have probed his weaknesses a lofty bearing which compelled them to feel their inferiority and keep their distance, he had a deep and tender soul, full of sympathy for everything living, as, in consequence, it was for everything beautiful and sublime in inanimate nature. He derived from the great classics of oratory and poetry,-from Homer and Virgil, not less than from Demosthenes and Cicero,—a most intimate knowledge of the art of expression. But his own greatest strength of expression,-his power of using melodious language, is associated with the tender sensitiveness of his sympathies. It does not seem probable in the nature of things that if anyone could wholly lack this gift, the gift of eloquent expression would be possible at all:

"If you would make me grieve, go learn to weep!"

This is the fundamental rule of persuasion,- that we ourselves must feel all we wish our words to convey to others. But there is in the words of such an orator as Burke at his best, a sweet and lofty music which has a power and charm of its own, apart from the sense which inspired it. At such times his ear unerringly rejects every harsh and discordant sound. His words, when he expresses pathos, are as soft as Italian. He illustrates the fundamental law that the ear for the sweet and sublime concords of language is the ear for music. The ear, even when untrained, will catch and hold far more than the best-trained mind can analyze and define; and to read over and over aloud from Burke those passages in

which he shows himself most deeply moved, is to gain an idea of the possibilities of English prose which cannot be gained from analysis,- a new sense of the dignity of true oratory as the connecting link between the sublimest prose and the sublimest poetry.

Burke was born in Dublin about January 12th, 1729. This is the date according to a generally-accepted authority, though there has been a long controversy over it which is never likely to be settled. After graduating from Trinity College, Dublin, he studied law, but was soon diverted to literature and politics. In 1766, he made his first speech in Parliament and at once took his place as the greatest Whig orator of England, -a place he retained without a rival until his death, July 9th, 1797. His essay "On the Sublime and Beautiful" is, next to his speeches, his greatest work; but his speeches are incomparable.

RELATION OF ELOQUENCE TO THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL

N^

ATURAL objects affect us by the laws of that connection which Providence has established between certain motions and configurations of bodies, and certain consequent feelings in our mind. Painting affects in the same manner, but with the superadded pleasure of imitation. Architecture affects by the laws of nature and the law of reason; from which latter result the rules of proportion, which make a work to be praised or censured, in the whole or in some part, when the end for which it was designed is, or is not, properly answered. But as to words: they seem to me to affect us in a manner very different from that in which we are affected by natural objects, or by painting or architecture; yet words have as considerable a share in exciting ideas of beauty and of the sublime as many of those, and sometimes a much greater than any of them; therefore an inquiry into the manner by which they excite such emotions is far from being unnecessary in a discourse of this kind.

Section 1, Part V. "On the Sublime and Beautiful.»

THE

THE POWER OF ELOQUENCE

HE common notion of the power of poetry and eloquence, as well as that of words in ordinary conversation, is, that they affect the mind by raising in it ideas of those things for which custom has appointed them to stand. To examine the truth of this notion, it may be requisite to observe that words may be divided into three sorts. The first are such as represent many simple ideas united by nature to form some one determinate composition, as man, horse, tree, castle, etc. These I call aggregate words. The second are they that stand for one simple idea of such compositions, and no more: as red, blue, round, square, and the like. These I call simple abstract words. The third are those which are formed by a union,- an arbitrary union,- of both the others, and of the various relations between them in greater or less degrees of complexity: as virtue, honor, persuasion, magistrate, and the like. These I call compound abstract words. Words, I am sensible, are capable of being classed into more curious distinctions; but these seem to be natural, and enough for our purpose; and they are disposed in that order in

which they are commonly taught, and in which the mind gets the ideas they are substituted for. I shall begin with the third sort of words: compound abstracts, such as virtue, honor, persuasion, docility. Of these I am convinced that whatever power they may have on the passions, they do not derive it from any representation raised in the mind of the things for which they stand. As compositions, they are not real essences, and hardly cause, I think, any real ideas. Nobody, I believe, immediately on hearing the sounds, virtue, liberty, or honor, conceives any precise notions of the particular modes of action and thinking, together with the mixed and simple ideas, and the several relations of them for which these words are substituted; neither has he any general idea compounded of them; for if he had, then some of those particular ones, though indistinct perhaps, and confused, might come soon to be perceived. But this, I take it, is hardly ever the case. For put yourself upon analyzing one of these words, and you must reduce it from one set of general words to another, and then into the simple abstracts and aggregates, in a much longer series than may be at first imagined, before any real idea emerges to light; before you come to discover anything like the first principles of such compositions; and when you have made such a discovery of the original ideas, the effect of the composition is utterly lost. A train of thinking of this sort is much too long to be pursued in the ordinary ways of conversation; nor is it at all necessary that it should. Such words are in reality but mere sounds; but they are sounds which, being used on particular occasions, wherein we receive some good, or suffer some evil, or see others affected with good or evil; or which we hear applied to other interesting things or events; and being applied in such a variety of cases that we know readily by habit to what things they belong, they produce in the mind, whenever they are afterwards mentioned, effects similar to those of their occasions. The sounds being often used without reference to any particular occasion, and carrying still their first impressions they at last utterly lose their connection with the particular occasions that give rise to them; yet the sound, without any annexed notion, continues to operate as before.

Section 2, Part V.

Μ*

WORDS AND IDEAS

R. LOCKE has somewhere observed, with his usual sagacity, that most general words,—those belonging to virtue and vice, good and evil, especially,— are taught before the particular modes of action to which they belong are presented to the mind; and with them the love of the one and the abhorrence of the other; for the minds of children are so ductile that a nurse, or any person about a child, by seeming pleased or displeased with anything, or even any word, may give the disposition of the child a similar turn. When, afterwards, the several occurrences in life come to be applied to these words, and that which is pleasant often appears under the name of evil; and what is disagreeable to nature is called good and virtuous, a strange confusion of ideas and affections arises in the minds of many, and an appearance of no small contradiction between their notions and their actions. There are many who love virtue and who detest vice, and this not from hypocrisy or affectation, who, notwithstanding, very frequently act ill and wickedly in particulars without the least remorse, because these particular occasions never came into view when the passions on the side of virtue were so warmly affected by certain words heated originally by the breath of others; and for this reason it is hard to repeat certain sets of words, though