The Art of Public Speaking and Curiosities of Orators and Oratory: Past and Present - A Practical Treatise on Oratory by Samuel Beeton & Unknown Author

Author:Samuel Beeton & Unknown Author [Beeton, Samuel]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Palmera Publishing
Published: 2012-05-05T16:00:00+00:00

"The Grecian chiefs, and Agamemnon's host,

When they beheld the MAN with shining arms

Amid those shades, trembled with sudden fear.

Part turned their backs in flight, as when they sought

Their ships . . . . . . . . part raised

A feeble outcry; but the sound commenced

Died on their gasping lips."

Reaching his seat he exclaimed, " Now let me hear what the honourable gentleman has to say to me !" One who was present, being asked whether the House was not convulsed with laughter at the ludicrous situation of the poor orator and the aptness of the lines, replied, "No, sir ; we were all too much awed to laugh."

The well-known attachment of Mr. Pitt to the popular party in the government gave rise once to an attack (the exact occasion of it is not known) which called forth one of those keen and contemptuous retorts with which he so often put down his opponents.

Pitt's disinterested services in the cause of his country did not pass unrewarded. In 1774, the Duchess of Marlborough died, leaving him a legacy of £10,000, "on account of his merit in his noble defence of the laws of England, and to prevent the ruin of the country.” This was a seasonable relief to the great orator, who never made any account of money, and whose circumstances, down to this time, were extremely limited. About twenty years afterwards he received a still more ample testimony of the same kind from Sir William Pynsent, who bequeathed him an estate of £2,5oo a year, together with £30,000 in ready money.

It would be difficult in the whole range of British oratory to find more perfect models for the study and imitation of the young orator than the best-reported speeches of Lord Chatham. The words will he found admirably chosen. The sentences are not rounded or balanced periods, but are made up of short clauses, which flash themselves upon the mind with all the vividness of distinct ideas, and yet arc closely connected together, as tending to the same point and uniting to form larger masses of thought. Nothing can be more easy, varied, and natural than the style of these speeches. There is no mannerism about them. They contain some of the most vehement passages in English oratory, and yet there is no appearance of effort, no straining after effect. They have this infallible mark of genius—they make every one feel that, if placed in like circumstances, he would have said exactly the same things in the same manner. "Upon the whole," in the words of Mr. Grattan, "there was in this man something that could create, subvert, or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an eloquence to summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds of slavery asunder, and rule the wildness of free minds with unbounded authority; something that could establish or overwhelm empire and strike a blow in the world that should resound through its history."

"The eloquence of Chatham," remarks a writer in the Edinburgh, "was of

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