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default of teeth, scarce intelligible; hams weak, knees tottering, head paralytic, hollow coughing, frequent expectoration, breathless wheezing, laborious groaning, the body stooping under the insupportable load of years, which soon will crush it into dust, from whence it had its origin. Folly, that is, of a natural idiot, gives the face an habitual, thoughtless, brainless grin. The eyes dance from object to object, without ever fixing steadily upon any one. A thousand different and incoherent passions, looks, gestures, speeches and absurdities, are played off every moment.

Distraction opens the eyes to a frighful wildness; rolls them hastily and wildly from object to object; distorts every feature; gnashes with the teeth; agitates all the parts of the body; rolls in the dust; foams at the mouth; utters, with hideous bellowings, execrations, blasphemies, and all that is fierce and outrageous; rushes furiously on all who approach; and, if not restrained, tears its own flesh, and, destroys itself.

Sickness has infirmity and feebleness in every motion and utterance. The eyes dim, and almost closed; cheeks pale and hollow; the jaw fallen; the head hung down ; as if too heavy to be supported by the neck. A general inertia prevails. The voice trembling; the utterance through the nose; every sentence accompanied with a groan; the hand shaking, and the knees tottering under the body; or the body stretched helpless on the bed.

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Fainting, produces a sudden relaxation of all that holds the human frame together, every sinew and ligament unstrung. The colour flies from the vermillion cheek; the sparkling eye grows dim. Down the body drops, as helpless, and senseless, as a mass of clay, to which, by its colour and appearance it seems hastening to resolve itself. Which leads me to conclude with

Death, the awful end of all flesh; which exhibits nothing in appearance different from what I have been just describing; for fainting continued ends in death; a subject almost too serious to be made a matter of artificial imitation.

Lower degrees of every passion are to be expressed by ore moderate exertions of voice and gesture, as every public speaker's discretion will suggest to him.

Mixed passions, or emotions of the mind, require a

mixed expression. Pity, for example, is composed of grief and love. It is therefore evident, that a correct speaker must, by his looks and gestures, and by the tone and pitch of his voice, express both grief and love, in expressing pity, and so of the rest.

There may be other humours or passions, besides these, which a reader, or speaker, may have occasion to express. But these are the principal. And, if there be any others, they will occur among the following examples for practice, taken from various authors, and rules will be given for expressing them. And though it may by alledged, that some of these passions, or humours, are such, as hardly ever come in the way of the speaker at the bar, in the pulpit, or either house of parliament, it does not therefore follow, that the labour of studying and practising the proper ways of expressing them is useless. On the contrary, every speaker will find his account in enlarging his sphere of practice. A gentleman may not have occasion every day, to dance a minuet: but he has occasion to go into company every day and he will go into a room with much the better grace for his having learned to dance in the most elegant manner. The orator may not have actual occasion to express anger, jealousy, malice, and some few others of the more violent passions, for which I have here given rules. But he will, by applying his organs of elocution to express them, acquire a masterly ease and fluency, in expressing those he has actully occasion to express.

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It is to be remembered, that the action, in expressing the various humours and passions, for which I have here given rules, is to be suited to the age, sex, condition, and circumstances of the character. Violent anger, or rage, for example, is to be expressed with great agitation (see Anger) but the rage of an infirm old man or of a woman, and of a youth, are all different from one another, and from that of a man in the flower of his age, as every speaker's discretion will suggest.

A hero may shew fear, or sensibility of pain; but not in the same manner as a girl would express those sensations. Grief may be expressed by a person reading a melancholy story, or description, in a room. It may be

acted upon the stage. It may be dwelt upon by the pleader at the bar; or it may have a place in a sermon. The passion is still grief. But the manner of expressing it will be different in each of the speakers, if they have judgment. A correct speaker does not make a movement of limb, or feature, for which he has not a reason. If he addresses heaven. he looks upward. If he speaks to his fellow-creatures, he looks round upon them. The spirit of what he says, or is said to him, appears in his look. If he expresses amazement, or would excite it, he lifts up his hands and eyes. If he invites to virtue and happiness, he spreads his arms, and looks benevolence. If he threatens the vengeance of heaven against vice, he bends his eyebrows into wrath, and menaces with his arm and countenance. He does not needlessly saw the air with his arm, nor stab himself with his finger. He does not clap his right hand upon his breast unless he has occasion to speak of himself, or to introduce conscience, or somewhat sentimental. He does not start back, unless he wants to express horror or aversion. He does not come forward, but when he has occasion to solicit. He does not raise his voice, but to express somewhat peculiarly emphatical. He does not lower it, but to contrast the raising of it. His eyes, by turns, according to the humour of the matter he has to express, sparkle fury; brighten into joy; glance disdain; melt into grief; frown disgust and hatred; languish into . love; or glare distraction.

But to apply properly, and in a masterly manner, the almost endlessly various expression of the different passions and emotions of the mind, for which nature has so curiously fitted the human frame-hic labor-here is the difficulty. Accordingly a consummate public speaker is truly a phoenix. But much less than all this, is generally speaking, sufficient for most occasions.

There is an error, which is too inconsiderately received by many judicious persons, viz. that a public speaker's shewing himself to be in earnest, will alone secure him of duly affecting his audience. Were this true, the enthusiastic rant of the fanatic, who is often very much in earnest, ought to please the judicious; in whom, on the contrary we know, it excites only laughter, or pity.

It is granted, that nature is the rule by which we are to speak and to judge of propriety in speaking. And every public speaker, who faithfully, and in a masterly manner, follows that universal guide, commands attention and approbation. But a speaker may, either through incurable natural deficiency, or by deviating into some incorrigible absurdity of manner, express the real and the warm sentiments of his heart, in such an awkward way as shall effectually defeat his whole design upon those who hear him, and render himself the object of their ridicule. It is not enough, as Quintilian * says, to be a human creature, to make a good speaker. As, on one hand, it is not true, that a speaker's shewing himself in earnest is alone sufficient, so on the other, it is certain, that if he does not seem to be in earnest, he cannot but fail of his design.

There is a true sublime in delivery, as in the other imi-. tative arts; in the wanner as well as in the matter, of what an orator delivers. As in poetry, painting, sculpture, music, and the other elegancies, the true sublime consists in a set of masterly, large, and noble strokes of art, superior to florid littleness; so it is in delivery. The accents are to be clear and articulate; every syllable standing off from that which is next to it, so that they might be numbered as they proceed. The inflections of the voice are to be so distinctly suited to the matter, that the humor or passions might be known by the sound of the voice only, where there could not be one word heard. And the variations are to be, like the full swelling folds of the drapery in a fine picture, or statue, bold and free, and forcible.

True eloquence does not wait for cool approbation. Like irresistible beauty, it transports, it ravishes, it commands the admiration of all, who are within its reach. If it allows time to criticise, it is not genuine. It ought to hurry us out of ourselves, to engage and swallow up our whole attention; to drive every thing out of our minds, besides the subject it would hold forth, and the point, it The hearer finds himself as unable to

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resist it, as to blow out a conflagration with the breath of his mouth, or to stop the stream of a river with his hand. His passions are no longer his own. The orator has taken possession of them; and with superior power, works them to whatever he pleases.

There is no earthly object capable of making such various, and such forcible impressions upon the human mind, as a consummate speaker. In viewing the artificial creations, which flow from the pencil of a Raphael, the critical eye is indeed delighted to a high pitch, and the delight is rational, because it flows from sources, unknown to beings below the rational sphere. But the ear remains wholly unengaged and unentertained.

In listening to the raptures of Corelli, Geminiani, and Handel, the food of pleasure which pours upon the ear, is almost too much for human nature. And music applied to express the sublimities of poetry, as in the oratorio of Samson, and the Allegro and Pensoroso, yields a pleasure so truly rational, that a Plato, or a Socrates, need not be ashamed to declare their sensibility of it. But here again, the eye has not its gratification. For the opera (in which action is joined with music, in order to entertain the eye at the same time with the ear) I must beg leave, with all due submission to the taste of the great, to consider as a forced conjunction of two things, which nature does not allow to go together. For it never will be other than unnatural, to see heroes fighting, commanding, threatening, lamenting, and making love, in the warblings of an Italian song.

It is only the elegant speaker who can at once regale the eye with the view of its most amiable object, the human form in all its glory; the ear with the original of all music, the understanding with its proper and natural food, the knowledge of important truth; and the imagination with all that in nature, or in art, is beautiful, sublime or wonderful. For the orator's field is the universe, and his subjects are all that is known of God, and his works; of superior natures, good and evil, and their works, and of terrestrials, and their works. c is of corporeal

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