who regarded, as the noblest effort of human genius, the mechanical talent of collecting, into one period, accumulated substantives, crowded epithets, rapid contradictions, unexpected antitheses, trivial or unnatural metaphors, repetitions re-echoed, abundance of synonymous words, symmetry of combinations, and unceasing contrasts.

But, it hath been at length understood, that this tiresome prating was not true eloquence, and it is now become disgustful.

Guard against tedious enumerations, which occasion you such painful efforts of memory, and are so soon forgotten

When an Orator studies his sermon, he is the best judge of it; and experience daily teaches him, that the passages, which he finds the greatest difficulty to commit to memory, scarcely ever deserve to be learnt.

OF ORATORICAL PREPARATION.

CONNECTED. arguments imprint them

selves more easily on the memory, than those collections of words, which are destitute of

ideas; and, especially, when the progress of Eloquence is advanced by a combination of proofs.

The difficult and necessary art of oratorial preparation is sure to be decisive of the success of a

sermon.

A sudden stroke is merely a hasty sally; if it be well prepared, it becomes a sublime move

ment.

May I be permitted to render my idea more familiar by a comparison?-You walk by yourself, in the fields, on a summer's day. You give scope successively to a variety of thoughts, with which the view of the country, and the silence of nature, inspire you. When your mind is thus wholly engaged with these pleasing reveries, all of a sudden you hear thunder which crashes at a distance. This noise at first alarms you. In the mean time, the sky is serene, the air is calm, all is tranquil about you; and this first impression of terror is soon erased from your memory. But, when the horizon lowers, and is covered with dark clouds; when the sun disappears; when the hurricane rolls whirlwinds of dust; when the lightning flashes; when the atmosphere is inflamed; and when the thunder afterwards roars over your head; you will be alarmed; and your mind, prepared by gradual emotions, will then have a

more lively sensation of the violence of the shock arising from such continued perturbation. It is the same with Eloquence. Through a multitude of adventitious ideas, the mind must be gradually prepared to participate in all the transports of passion or terror, of joy or grief, of love or indignation, with which you yourself are agitated. The impression too soon wears off, if the heart be not sufficiently mollified to enable it to penetrate without meeting with opposition.

Doth Bossuet intend to give you a high idea of the courage, with which the queen of England struggled against all her misfortunes? His relations, were they introduced even without art, would astonish you; but, when ushered in by this sublime image, they transport you: Like a 'column, whose solid mass appears the firmest 'support of a ruinous temple, when that lofty ed'ifice which it sustains rests upon it without ' overthrowing it; thus the queen discovers her'self to be the firm support of the state, when, ' after having for a long time borne its weight, 'she is not even bowed down under its fall.' Your mind, struck with this spectacle, which the Orator had the art of representing before you, beholds the queen of England constantly raised above her adversities and your imagination is continually describing to itself this column, which remains standing in the midst of the ruins with which it is surrounded.

SECTION XL.

OF ORATORIAL PRECAUTIONS.

ESIDES those preparations, which tend to set off excellent ideas to advantage, there are also precautions, which Orators ought not to neglect. Precautions of modesty, with a view to conciliate the good-will, or confidence, of their auditory Precautions of complaisance, in order to apologize for ideas, which would appear too bold if they bluntly thwarted the prejudices intended to be opposed: Precautions of prudence: Appear as if you dared not accuse your hearers of certain excesses, of which they are but too culpable, and which the remorse of their consciences affect still more than the reproaches of your zeal. 'When you make known unpallatable truths,' says Cicero, it is proper that you seem to do it with ' reluctance :'* Precautions of decency: Throw a veil over particulars, to which you ought to refer, without too minutely investigating them. Bossuet does not chuse to say in direct terms, in his funeral oration for the queen of England, that Charles I. died upon a scaffold; but, to recall

* Si quid persequare acriùs et invitus et coactus facere videare. CIC. de Orat. lib. ii. § 182. p. 62.

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that event, he makes an ingenious application; he contents himself with causing the queen to adopt those words of the prophet Jeremiah, who, alone, he says, is capable of equalling his lamentations to his calamities. O Lord, behold my affliction, for the enemy hath magnified him'self. The adversary hath spread out his hand upon all my pleasant things: my children are 'desolate, because the enemy prevailed. The kingdom is polluted, and the princes thereof. For these things I weep; mine eye runneth 'down with water, because the comforter that 'should relieve my soul is far from me:'* Precautions of judgment: Write agreeably to, and sometimes in a style different from, your peculiar talent. Is it the pathetic that characterizes you? Guard against languor and monotony. Doth energy please you? Avoid obscurity and bombast. Observe the extreme, towards which your mind inclines, and endeavour to shun it : Precautions in the cadences of sentences; and particularly, in beginning paragraphs, The auditor forms his opinion of you whenever the conclusion of your periods leaves him a moment's pause; and his attention relaxes if you neglect to terminate your compositions with luminous ideas, or striking images: in a word, precautions of courage, occasioned by subjects which present difficulties, where you are attended to with an equal mixture of eagerness and severity.

*Lam. i. 9, 16 and ii. 2.