ELOQUENCE

Adaptation to the audience and the occasion

The object of rhetoric is persuasion, —of logic, conviction, —of grammar, significancy. —COLERIDGE.

De Quincey divides all literature into two classes—the literature of knowledge and the literature of power. The function of the first is to teach ; the function of the second is to move.

For the beat definition which I think can be given of Eloquence is, the art of speaking in such a manner as to obtain the end for which we speak. -13Laia.

The word Eloquence in its greatest latitude denotes that art or talent by which the discourse is adapted to its end. "The best orator is he that so speaks as to instruct, to delight, and to move the minds of his hearers. " —C AAAAALL.

A new element enters into the construction of the Oration. The fundamental purpose of Conversation is to entertain, of Letter-writing to inform, of the Essay to interest. The Oration must entertain, must inform, must interest ; but it must do more, it must persuade. A speech has a purpose, and it is or is not a good speech according its it does or does not effect that purpose. It may be wise and witty and weighty, but if it does not move the audience it is a failure. The essayist or the poet may feel

inly-assured that his work is worthy ; that though neglected now, it will some time tie recokniiêd as a masterpiece. The orator has no such solace. Ms speech is for the moment and the occasion of its delivery ; if it fails then, it is a failure forever.

These two varieties of power are illustrated in the styles of Daniel Webster and Rufus Choate. Both were powerful speakers ; but Webster was the superior, because of his superior power of selection. Much as one is dazzled by Choate's marvellous command of vocabulary, still one cannot avoid thinking of his style in the reading. That always indicates a defect. An absolutely perfect style attracts no attention to itself. Criticism of it is an afterthought. Members of the Boston bar all alike yielded to the spell of Choate's rhetoric ; yet, in the very act of admiring, they found time to note that he "drove the substantive and six, " alluding to the multitude of adjectives which he harnessed to a noun. Men with tears coursing down their cheeks, in listening to his sonorous periods in his eulogy upon Webster, yet slyly made a memorandum that they would count the words in some of those periods when they should be printed, and afterward remarked that one of them was the longest but one in the English language. Who ever heard of any such arithmetical criticism of Webster's reply to General Hayne of South Carolina ? When Choate spoke, men said, "What a marvellous style. How beautiful, how grand, how immense his vocabulary, how intricate his combinations, how adroit his sway over the mother-tongue. " When Webster spoke, men said, "He will gain his case. " Webster's vocabulary was much mbre limited than that of Choate, but he had a much sterner power of selection and rejection. His command of language was like Darwin's law of species in the struggle for existence—only that lived which deserved to live. -PHELPS.