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'son of his personal disgraces with the fall of the 'powerful Carthagenian empire, Marius had in' tended to teach the Roman Prætor the instabil"ity of the highest condition*.'

The English can boast of some strokes of this kind, although far inferior to the answer of Marius.

When the parliament of Great Britain intended to pass a bill, which denied to persons accused on a criminal account the privilege of defending themselves by the help of council, Lord BOLLINGBROKE, who was against this intended law, attempted to oppose it; but intimidated by the assembly before which he was speaking, he could not articulate a syllable, and the words he attempted to utter were at every breath dying away on his lips; when making an extraordinary effort, he cried out, 'You wish, Gentlemen, that "the accused should appear before you in order 'to defend themselves. If your presence hath imposed silence upon me, judge of the impres'sion which it would produce upon the unfortu

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nate, who should behold in you judges ready 'to send them to the scaffold.' This single reflection, unquestionably more eloquent than all the arguments which Lord Bollingbroke could have alleged, caused the rejection of this new design.

* VERTOT's Revolutions of Rome, liv. 10. See also Uniu Hist. vol. xiii. p. 56.

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Mr. CHARLES Fox, who is in the present day, considered as the most eloquent man of Great Britain, pronounced in parliament, the eulogium of the late General Montgomery: one of the court party interrupted him in these words; 'How dare you praise a rebel before the repre'sentatives of the nation? I will not refrain,' Mr. Fox immediately replied, from repelling ⚫ the outrage done to the memory of a great man. • You all know the meaning of the word rebel in the mouth of my adversaries. If you have any 'doubts of the true sense of this expression, I ❝ would entreat you to recollect, that it is to these 'pretended rebellions we owe our present con'stitution, and the privilege of being assembled ' at Westminster to deliberate upon the interests of our country*.'

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*The late celebrated Irish parlimentary Orator, Mr. FLOOD, is said to have rendered himself, at times, distinguished for such sort of oratorical strokes, as those which the Abbé Maury here ascribes to Bollingbroke and Mr. Fox and also for ingenious and sentimental expressions.

As a specimen of the latter sort, it is recorded, that, at the commencement of the American war, having indulged himself in one of those prophecies, which experience has since proved to be so erroneous, relative to the ruin of this country, by the loss of America, Mr Flood said, Destruc❝tion shall come upon the British empire, like the coldness ' of death; it shall creep upon it from the extreme parts :" and in speaking of the conduct of Lord Chatham, upon the stamp act, and alluding to a passage in Thucydides, he introduced the following beautiful episode: Illustrious man! to

These are specimens, which would be no discredit to the writings of Demosthenes. But a sublime idea does not constitute a discourse; a beautiful detached passage does not compose the art of Eloquence.

Even until the present period, the value of English Orators is restrained within narrow bounds. Famous Islanders! It is not genius, it is the < genius of Oratory, that you want,' may we say

'whose tomb posterity shall come and say, as Pericles did, ¿ over the bodies of his diseased fellow-soldiers, You are like to the Divinities above us-you are no longer with us, you are known only by the benefits, which you have con'ferred.' Such an enlivening stroke deserves to be rescued from oblivion.

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In BoswLLL's Life of the celebrated Dr. JOHNSON, there is a remark inserted, in relation to the written Life of Young, which may be quoted as one of those strokes of energetic and prompt Eloquence which M. Maury acknowledges the English possess.

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The life of Dr. Young,' (in Johnson's Lives of the Poets,) was written,' says Mr. Boswell, by Mr. Croft, and displays a pretty successful imitation of Johnson's style. • A certain very eminent literary character opposed this idea ' vehemently; exclaiming, No, no, it is not a good imitation of Johnson; it has all his pomp, without his force it has all the nodosities of the oak without its strength.' 'This was an image so happy that one might have thought The would have been satisfied with it; but he was not: and " setting his mind again to work, he added, with great felicity, It has all the contortions of the Sybil, without the 'inspiration.' BoSWELL's Life of Johnson, vol. ii, p. 361, 4to.

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to you, as Cicero did formerly to some of his cotemporaries*.

The human mind owes an unceasing debt of gratitude for your sublime discoveries on light, on gravitation, on electricity, on the aberration of the stars; but let not your pride be wounded, if we contest the pre-eminence with your Orators. Eloquence, the usual companion of liberty, is a stranger in your country. Do not affect a false and barbarous contempt of gifts, which nature hath denied you. Turn your attention to the models of antiquity, and to the examples of Greece and Rome. Add to the glory of the good actions, which are so common in your country,. the merit perhaps, no less honourable, of knowing how to celebrate them.

I mean to set bounds to myself in this discussion. I shall not speak of the discourses of BOYLE, which are entirely argumentative disser

* Illis non ingenium, sed Oratorium ingenium deficit. Brutus

110.

† Sermons preached by different able divines at the lecture founded by the hon. BOYLE.

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Concerning these, Mr. KNOX, observes, that They are among the best argued in our language. They have 'been the laboured productions of the most ingenious men. • But the whole collection never did so much as a single 'practical discourse of Tillotson.' KNOX's Essays, No. 168.

tations. I shall not detain myself with the sermons of CLARKE ;* they are written with such metaphysical abstraction, that it is difficult to comprehend in the retirement of the closet the discourses of this well known rector of St. James's.

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* The sagacious CLARKE pretended not to wit. He af'fected not the ambitious ornaments of rhetoric. He rarely 'reaches the sublime, or aims at the pathetic; but in a clear, Imanly, flowing style, he delivers the most important doc'trines, confirmed on every occasion by well applied passages from scripture. If he was not a shining Orator, according to the ideas of rhetoricians, he was a very agreeable as well as useful preacher. He was not perfectly 'orthodox in his opinions; a circumstance which has lowered 'his character among many. Certain it is, that he would ⚫ have done more good, had he confined his labours to prac'tical divinity.' Ibid.

The following is the character of this divine, which was given in the Gentleman's Magazine: SAMUEL CLARKE, ་ D.D. Rector of St. James's, Westminster: in each several 'part of useful knowledge and critical learning, perhaps without a superior: in all united, certainly without an 'equal: in his works, the best defender of religion; in his ́ practice, the greatest ornament to it: in his conversation ' communicative, and in an uncommon manner instructive ; ' in his preaching and writing, strong, clear, and calm; in 'his life high in the esteem of the wise, the good, and the great in his death, lamented by every friend to learning, truth, and virtue.'

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Dr. Clarke's principal sermons were those preached at Boyles lecture on The Being and Attributes of God,' and • The Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion ;' besides which, there are published many other sermons of his preached on particular occasions. Dr. Clarke was born 1673, died 1729.

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