ting up the frieze. We turn into ano-Sir Thomas Lethbridge would stare at ther street; a rhapsodist is reciting the political economy of Xenophon; and there : men, women, children are the author of Soirées de Pétersbourg thronging round him: the tears are would be ashamed of some of the merunning down their cheeks: their taphysical arguments of Plato. But eyes are fixed: their very breath is the very circumstances which retarded still; for he is telling how Priam fell the growth of science were peculiarly at the feet of Achilles, and kissed those favourable to the cultivation of elohands, the terrible,—the murderous, quence. From the early habit of taking -which had slain so many of his sons.* a share in animated discussion the inWe enter the public place; there is a telligent student would derive that ring of youths, all leaning forward, with readiness of resource, that copiousness sparkling eyes, and gestures of expec- of language, and that knowledge of the tation. Socrates is pitted against the temper and understanding of an audfamous atheist, from Ionia, and has ience, which are far more valuable to just brought him to a contradiction in an orator than the greatest logical terms. But we are interrupted. The powers. herald is crying-" Room for the Prytanes." The general assembly is to meet. The people are swarming in on every side. Proclamation is made-stand. "Who wishes to speak." There is a shout, and a clapping of hands: Pericles is mounting the stand. Then for a play of Sophocles; and away to sup with Aspasia. I know of no modern university which has so excellent a system of education. Knowledge thus acquired and opinions thus formed were, indeed, likely to be, in some respects, defective. Propositions which are advanced in disCourse generally result from a partial view of the question, and cannot be kept under examination long enough to be corrected. Men of great conversational powers almost universally practise a sort of lively sophistry and exaggeration, which deceives, for the moment, both themselves and their auditors. Thus we see doctrines, which cannot bear a close inspection, triumph perpetually in drawing-rooms, in debating societies, and even in legislative or judicial assemblies. To the conversational education of the Athenians I am inclined to attribute the great looseness of reasoning which is remarkable in most of their scientific writings. Even the most illogical of modern writers would stand perfectly aghast at the puerile fallacies which seem to have deluded some of the greatest men of antiquity. καὶ κύσε χεῖρας, δεινὰς, ἀνδροφόνους, αἳ οἱ πολέας κτάνον vias. Horace has prettily compared poems to those paintings of which the effect varies as the spectator changes his The same remark applies with at least equal justice to speeches. They must be read with the temper of those to whom they were addressed, or they must necessarily appear to offend against the laws of taste and reason; as the finest picture, seen in a light different from that for which it was designed, will appear fit only for a sign. This is perpetually forgotten by those who criticise oratory. Because they are reading at leisure, pausing at every line, reconsidering every argument, they forget that the hearers were hurried from point to point too rapidly to detect the fallacies through which they were conducted; that they had no time to disentangle sophisms, or to notice slight inaccuracies of expression; that elaborate excellence, either of reasoning or of language, would have been absolutely thrown away. To recurto the analogy of the sister art, these connoisseurs examine a panorama through a microscope, and quarrel with a scenepainter because he does not give to his work the exquisite finish of Gerard Dow. Oratory is to be estimated on principles different from those which are applied to other productions. Truth is the object of philosophy and history. Truth is the object even of those works which are peculiarly called works of fiction, but which, in fact, bear the same relation to history which algebra bears to arithmetic. The merit of dress of the speakers. He must not poetry, in its wildest forms, still con- dwell maliciously on arguments or sists in its truth,-truth conveyed to phrases, but acquiesce in his first imthe understanding, not directly by the pressions. It requires repeated perusal words, but circuitously by means of and reflection to decide rightly on any imaginative associations, which serve other portion of literature. But with as its conductors. The object of oratory respect to works of which the merit alone is not truth, but persuasion. The depends on their instantaneous effect admiration of the multitude does not the most hasty judgment is likely to make Moore a greater poet than be best. Coleridge, or Beattie a greater phi- The history of eloquence at Athens losopher than Berkeley. But the is remarkable. From a very early criterion of eloquence is different. A period great speakers had flourished speaker who exhausts the whole phi-there. Pisistratus and Themistocles losophy of a question, who displays are said to have owed much of their every grace of style, yet produces no influence to their talents for debate. effect on his audience, may be a great essayist, a great statesman, a great master of composition; but he is not an orator. If he miss the mark, it makes no difference whether he have taken aim too high or too low. We learn, with more certainty, that Pericles was distinguished by extraor dinary oratorical powers. The substance of some of his speeches is transmitted to us by Thucydides; and that excellent writer has doubtless The effect of the great freedom of faithfully reported the general line of the press in England has been, in a his arguments. But the manner, which great measure, to destroy this distinc-in oratory is of at least as much consetion, and to leave among us little of quence as the matter, was of no imporwhat I call Oratory Proper. Our tance to his narration. It is evident legislators, our candidates, on great that he has not attempted to preserve occasions even our advocates, address it. Throughout his work, every speech themselves less to the audience than to on every subject, whatever may have the reporters. They think less of the been the character or the dialect of the few hearers than of the innumerable speaker, is in exactly the same form. readers. At Athens the case was The grave king of Sparta, the furious different; there the only object of the demagogue of Athens, the general enspeaker was immediate conviction and couraging his army, the captive sup persuasion. He, therefore, who would plicating for his life, all are represented justly appreciate the merit of the Gre-as speakers in one unvaried style,-a cian orators should place himself, as nearly as possible, in the situation of their auditors: he should divest himself of his modern feelings and acquirements, and make the prejudices and interests of the Athenian citizen his own. He who studies their works in this spirit will find that many of those things which, to an English reader, appear to be blemishes,-the frequent violation of those excellent rules of evidence by which our courts of law are regulated,--the introduction of extraneous matter,-the reference to considerations of political expediency in judicial investigations,-the assertions, without proof-the passionate entreaties,-the furious invectives,—are really proofs of the prudence and ad style moreover wholly unfit for oratorical purposes. His mode of reasoning is singularly elliptical,--in reality most consecutive,-yet in appearance often incoherent. His meaning, in itself sufficiently perplexing. is compressed into the fewest possible words. His great fondness for antithetical expression has not a little conduced to this effect. Every one must have observed how much more the sense is condensed in the verses of Pope and his imitators, who never ventured to continue the same clause from couplet to couplet, than in those of poets who allow themselves that license. Every artificial division, which is strongly marked, and which frequently recurs, has the same tendency. The natural and per spicuous expression which spontaneously rises to the mind will often refuse to accommodate itself to such a form. It is necessary either to expand it into weakness, or to compress it into almost impenetrable density. The latter is generally the choice of an able man, and was assuredly the choice of Thucydides. It is scarcely necessary to say that such speeches could never have been delivered. They are perhaps among the most difficult passages in the Greek language, and would probably have been scarcely more intelligible to an Athenian auditor than to a modern reader. Their obscurity was acknowledged by Cicero, who was as intimate with the literature and language of Greece as the most accomplished of its natives, and who seems to have held a respectable rank among the Greek authors. Their difficulty to a modern reader lies, not in the words, but in the reasoning. A dictionary is of far less use in studying them than a clear head and a close attention to the context. They are valuable to the scholar as displaying, beyond almost any other compositions, the powers of the finest of languages: they are valuable to the philosopher as illustrating the morals and manners of a most interesting age: they abound in just thought and energetic expression. But they do not enable us to form any accurate opinion on the merits of the early Greek orators. Though it cannot be doubted that, before the Persian wars, Athens had produced eminent speakers, yet the period during which eloquence most flourished among her citizens was by no means that of her greatest power and glory. It commenced at the close of the Peloponnesian war. In fact, the steps by which Athenian oratory approached to its finished excellence seem to have been almost contemporaneous with those by which the Athenian character and the Athenian empire sunk to degradation. At the time when the little commonwealth achieved those victories which twenty-five eventful centuries have left unequalled, eloquence was in its infancy. The deli verers of Greece became its plunderers and oppressors. Unmeasured exaction, atrocious vengeance, the madness of the multitude, the tyranny of the great, filled the Cyclades with tears, and blood, and mourning. The sword unpeopled whole islands in a day. The plough passed over the ruins of famous cities. The imperial republic sent forth her children by thousands to pine in the quarries of Syracuse, or to feed the vultures of Egospotami. She was at length reduced by famine and slaughter to humble herself before her enemies, and to purchase existence by the sacrifice of her empire and her laws. During these disastrous and gloomy years, oratory was advancing towards its highest excellence. And it was when the moral, the political, and the military character of the people was most utterly degraded, it was when the viceroy of a Macedonian sovereign gave law to Greece, that the courts of Athens witnessed the most splendid contest of eloquence that the world has ever known. The causes of this phenomenon it is not, I think, difficult to assign. The division of labour operates on the productions of the orator as it does on those of the mechanic. It was remarked by the ancients that the Pentathlete, who divided his attention between several exercises, though he could not vie with a boxer in the use of the cestus, or with one who had confined his attention to running in the contest of the stadium, yet enjoyed far greater general vigour and health than either. It is the same with the mind. The superiority in technical skill is often more than compensated by the inferiority in general intelligence. And this is peculiarly the case in politics. States have always been best governed by men who have taken a wide view of public affairs, and who have rather a general acquaintance with many sciences than a perfect mastery of one. The union of the political and military departments in Greece contributed not a little to the splendour of its early history. After their separation more skilful generals and greater speakers appeared; but the breed of statesmen dwindled and became almost extinct. Themistocles or Pericles would have been no match for Demosthenes in the assembly, or for Iphicrates in the field. But surely they were incomparably better fitted than either for the supreme direction of affairs. There is indeed a remarkable coincidence between the progress of the art of war, and that of the art of oratory, among the Greeks. They both advanced to perfection by contemporaneous steps, and from similar causes. The early speakers, like the early warriors of Greece, were merely a militia. It was found that in both employments practice and discipline gave superiority. Each pursuit therefore became first an art, and then a trade. In proportion as the professors of each became more expert in their particular craft, they became less respectable in their general character. Their skill had been obtained at too great expense to be employed only from disinterested It has often occurred to me, that to the circumstances mentioned in the text is to be referred one of the most remarkable events in Grecian history; I mean the silent but rapid downfall of the Lacedæmonian power. Soon after the termination of the Peloponnesian war, the strength of Lacedæmon began to decline. Its military discipline, its social institutions, were the same. Agesilaus, during whose reign the change took place, was the ablest of its kings. Yet the Spartan armies were frequently defeated in pitched battles,an occurrence considered impossible in the earlier ages of Greece. They are allowed to have fought most bravely; yet they were no longer attended by the success to which they had formerly been accustomed. No solution of these circumstances is offered, as far as I know, by any ancient author. The real cause, I conceive, was this. The Lacedæmonians, alone among the Greeks, formed a permanent standing army. While the citizens of other commonwealths were engaged in agriculture and trade, they had no employment whatever but the study of military discipline. Hence, during the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, they had that advantage over their neigh. bours which regular troops always possess over militia. This advantage they lost, when other states began, at a later period, to employ mercenary forces, who were probably as superior to them in the art of war as they had hitherto been to their antagonists. views. Thus, the soldiers forgot that they were citizens, and the orators that they were statesmen. I know not to what Demosthenes and his famous contemporaries can be so justly compared as to those mercenary troops who, in their time, overran Greece; or those who, from similar causes, were some centuries ago the scourge of the Italian republics,-perfectly acquainted with every part of their profession, irresistible in the field, powerful to defend or to destroy, but defending without love, and destroying without hatred. We may despise the characters of these political Condottieri; but it is impossible to examine the system of their tactics without being amazed at its perfection. I had intended to proceed to this examination, and to consider separately the remains of Lysias, of Eschines, of Demosthenes, and of Isocrates, who, though strictly speaking he was rather a pamphleteer than an orator, deserves, on many accounts, a place in such a disquisition. The length of my prolegomena and digressions compels me to postpone this part of the subject to another occasion. A Magazine is certainly a delightful invention for a very idle or a very busy man. He is not compelled to complete his plan or to adhere to his subject. He may ramble as far as he is inclined, and stop as soon as he is tired. No one takes the trouble to recollect his contradictory opinions or his unredeemed pledges. He may be as superficial, as inconsistent, and as careless as he chooses. zines resemble those little angels, who, according to the pretty Rabbinical tradition, are generated every morning by the brook which rolls over the flowers of Paradise,-whose life is a song,who warble till sunset, and then sink back without regret into nothingness. Such spirits have nothing to do with the detecting spear of Ithuriel or the victorious sword of Michael. It is Maga enough for them to please and be forgotten. ing, a grand national Epic Poem, worthy to be compared with the Iliad, A GRAND NATIONAL EPIC the Æneid, or the Jerusalem, will be POEM, ΤΟ BE ENTITLED "THE WELLINGTONIAD," AND TO BE PUBLISHED A.D. 2824. (NOVEMBER, 1824.) A PROPHETIC ACCOUNT OF How I became a prophet it is not very important to the reader to know. Nevertheless I feel all the anxiety which, under similar circumstances, troubled the sensitive mind of Sidrophel; and, like him, am eager to vindicate myself from the suspicion of having practised forbidden arts, or held intercourse with beings of another world. I solemnly declare, therefore, that I never saw a ghost, like Lord Lyttleton; consulted a gipsy, like Josephine; or heard my name pronounced by an absent person, like Dr. Johnson. Though it is now almost as usual for gentlemen to appear at the moment of their death to their friends as to call on them during their life, none of my acquaintance have been so polite as to pay me that customary attention. I have derived my knowledge neither from the dead nor from the living; neither from the lines of a hand, nor from the grounds of a tea-cup; neither from the stars of the firmament, nor from the fiends of the abyss. I have never, like the Wesley family, heard "that mighty leading angel," who "drew after him the third part of heaven's sons," scratching in my cupboard. I have never been enticed to sign any of those delusive bonds which have been the ruin of so many poor creatures; and, having always been an indifferent horseman, I have been careful not to venture myself on a broomstick. published in London. Men naturally take an interest in the adventures of every eminent writer. I will, therefore, gratify the laudable curiosity, which, on this occasion, will doubtless be universal, by prefixing to my account of the poem a concise memoir of the poet. Richard Quongti will be born at Westminster on the 1st of July, 2786. He will be the younger son of the younger branch of one of the most respectable families in England. He will be lineally descended from Quongti, the famous Chinese liberal, who, after the failure of the heroic attempt of his party to obtain a constitution from the Emperor Fim Fam, will take refuge in England, in the twenty-third century. Here his descendants will obtain considerable note; and one branch of the family will be raised to the peerage. Richard, however, though destined to exalt his family to distinction far nobler than any which wealth or titles can bestow, will be born to a very scanty fortune. He will display in his early youth such striking talents as will attract the notice of Viscount Quongti, his third cousin, then secretary of state for the Steam Department. At the expense of this eminent nobleman, he will be sent to prosecute his studies at the university of Tombuctoo. To that illustrious seat of the muses all the ingenuous youth of every country will then be attracted by the high scientific character of Professor Quashaboo, and the eminent literary attainments of Professor Kissey Kickey. My insight into futurity, like that of In spite of this formidable competition, George Fox the quaker, and that of however, Quongti will acquire the our great and philosophic poet, Lord highest honours in every department of Byron, is derived from simple pre-knowledge, and will obtain the esteem sentiment. This is a far less artificial of his associates by his amiable and process than those which are employed unaffected manners. The guardians of by some others. Yet my predictions the young Duke of Carrington, premier will, I believe, be found more correct peer of England, and the last remainthan theirs, or, at all events, as Siring scion of the ancient and illustrious Benjamin Backbite says in the play, house of Smith, will be desirous to "more circumstantial." secure so able an instructor for their prophesy, then, that, in the year ward. With the Duke, Quongti will 2824, according to our present reckon-perform the grand tour, and visit the |