Imatges de pàgina
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INTRODUCTION.

General Division of the Subject.-Of the Pains taken by the Ancients for the Acquisition of perfect rhetorical Delivery.

THE

HE management of the voice, the expression of the countenance, and the gesture of the head, the body, and the limbs, constitute the external part of oratory; and relate to the personal talents and efforts of the public speaker, in like manner as the other divisions of rhetoric, invention, disposition, choice of words, and memory, relate to those of his understanding.

By the ancients the external part of oratory was called pronunciation or action; the former name derived from the voice, the latter from the gesture.' Cicero, in one place, says, action is, as it were, the language of the body; in another, that it is a specics of corporal eloquence. Under gesture he comprehends the

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• Pronunciatio a plerisque actio dicitur, sed prius nomen a voce, sequens a gestu videtur accipere. Namque actionem Cicero alias quasi sermonem, alias eloquentiam quamdam corporis dicit. Quint. lib. xi. c. 3.

2 Est enim actio quasi sermo corporis. Cic. de Orat. lib. iii. c. 59.

3 Est enim actio quasi corporis quædam eloquentia. Cum constet e voce atque motu. . . Dicerem etiam de gestu, cum quo junctus est vultus. Cic. Orat. xii.

B

expression of the countenance. The above enumeration of the external parts of oratory appears to be sanctioned by Quintilian, in some places he makes three divisions, in others two. We have also his authority, and shall adduce many others, for calling the art of gesture, to which this work is principally devoted, by the name of Chironomia. The modern name is Delivery, it has been frequenty called Elocution, particularly by late writers; but, as it appears, improperly. The term elocution is, by this acceptation, diverted from its original signification as established by the ancient rhetoricians. They used this term for the name of the third division of the art of rhetoric, which treats principally of the choice and arrangement of words.56 7-8 9-10 It would therefore seem adviseable to restore it to its proper sense; particularly in our enquiries, which refer us often to the ancients, as the great masters of the

4 Affectus omnes languescant necesse est, nisi voce, vultu, totius prope inardescant. Quint. lib. xi. c. 3.

habitu corporis

Cum sit autem actio ut dixi in duas divisa partes, vocem gestumque, quorum alter oculos, altera aures movet. Quint. ib.

Igitur quam Græci Pęά

bis aut singulis aut conjunctis.

vocant, Latine dicimus Elocutionem. Eam spectamus in verQuint. lib. viii. c. 1.

Tertia rhetoricæ pars est clocutio, quæ verborum delectu et collocatione maxime constat. Capperonius in Quint. lib. x. c. 1.

7 Videamus nunc, quas res debeat habere elocutio commoda et perfecta. Quæ maxime admodum oratori accommodata est, tres res in se decet habere, elegantiam, compositionem, dignitatem. Elegantia est, quæ facit, ut unumquidque pure et aperte dici videatur. ... Compositio est verborum constructio, quæ facit omnes partes orationis æquabiliter perpolitas. . . . . . . Dignitas est, quæ reddit ornatam orationem varietate distinguens. Rhet. ad Herenn. lib. iv. c. 12.

8 Elocutio est, quæ arripit verba vel propria vel translata quæque nova facit veteraque componit. . . . . Pronunciatio vocis, motus, gestusque pro rerum et verborum dignitate moderatio. Isidori de Arte Rhet. p. 356. Antiqui Rhetores.

9 Elocutio est idoneorum verborum ad inventionem accommodata perceptio. Cassiodorus, ib. p. 336.

10 Elocutio oratoria est rerum inventarum et dispositarum, per verba sententiasque expositio ad persuadendum idonea. Ger. Joan. Vossii Part. Orat. lib. iv. c. 1.

art. To express what the Roman writers understood by pronunciatio and actio, we shall use the word Delivery, which is already established, in this sense, in our language.

That the ancients studied the art of delivery, with the most particular attention to every circumstance connected with it, cannot be doubted. They attached to it an importance almost equal to that of composition. The failure of Demosthenes himself, before he cultivated this art with sufficient care, and his extraordinary success afterwards, induced him to overvalue delivery, by giving it the preference to every other requisite which contributes to form the perfect orator. Plutarch relates, in his life of this great man, that he had failed in his first attempts at speaking in public, on account of his inattention to the art of delivery. Eunomius, on one occasion, endeavoured to encourage him to continue to make his utmost exertions, by assuring him that he approached the excellence of Pericles himself. On another occasion, when much cast down by a similar failure, he met the player Satyrus, his friend, and when he complained to him, that, notwithstanding his having laboured more than all the other orators, he could not succeed, whilst very wretched speakers were admired; Satyrus, in reply, desired him to pronounce for him some lines of Euripedes or Sophocles. When he had spoken them, Satyrus repeated them over again to Demosthenes, but with tones and gestures so appropriate, that they appeared to him to be altogether of superior excellence. "And being persuaded how much " of ornament and grace is added to the speech by the delivery, "he considered of little or no value the labour of any man who neglected the pronunciation and the gesture suited to the

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