Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

great masters have frequently displayed in the pulpit the fine talents of painting by sounds, and of formingrese mblances of imitative harmony, which poetry would find it difficult to equal.

Bossuet meant to intimate in the funeral oration for Tellier, that that magistrate had breathed his last while repeating this verse of the psalm: "I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever ;" and see how the orator recalls, if I may so say, before all his auditory, this circumstance of the death of the chancellor: "Enraptured that he could pour forth his grateful acknowledgments even with his dying breath, he began the hymn of praise for divine mercies. I will sing, says he, of the mercies of the Lord forever. He expires while repeating these words, and continues singing with angels the sacred song."

It is genius alone which can form such excellent pictures, and the art of producing them is above rules; but it is no less true, that rules of art are often useful to the orator in laying open to him the chief secrets of harmony.

clear and distinct. The Romans generally arranged their words according to the order in which the ideas rose in the speaker's imagination. We arrange them according to the order in which the understanding directs those ideas to be exhibited, in succession, to the view of another. Our arrangement, therefore, appears to be the consequence of greater refinement in the art of speech, as far as clearness in communication is understood to be the end of speech."-BLAIR's Lectures, vol. i., p. 119 and 121.

Never conclude your sentences with monosyllables, unless they are sufficiently sonorous to strike the ear and to assist the cadence of a period.*

* As a useful caution against the injudicious conclusion of sentences with monosyllables, we have this reflection :

"How disagreeable is the following sentence of an author speaking of the Trinity! It is a mystery which we firmly believe the truth of, and humbly adore the depth of."* And how easily could it have been mended by this transposition: It is a mystery, the truth of which we firmly believe, and the depth of which we humbly adore.' In general, it seems to hold that a musical close in our language

[ocr errors]

* Dr. Blair's opinions in regard to style were so much shaped by the practice of his own times and by the then prevailing influence of French criticism, that his animadversions on the older writers of our language are to be received with caution. It is by no means certain that a good English sentence cannot end with a preposition. What is true of French sentences constructed on the Latin model does not always apply to languages so essentially Teutonic as our own. In this class of languages the form referred to is common, and is not, therefore, always to be rejected in English composition. "The form," says Mr. Hallam, "is, in my opinion, sometimes emphatic and spirited, though its frequent recurrence appears slovenly. I remember my late friend, Mr. Richard Sharp, whose good taste is well known, used to quote an interrogatory of Hooker, 'Shall there be a God to swear by, and none to pray to?' as an instance of the force which this arrangement, so eminently idiomatic, sometimes gives." He notices the curious fact, first pointed out by Malone, that in printing a second edition of his Essay on Dramatic Poesy, after an interval of sixteen years, Dryden substitutes the form now preferred for the older and more idiomatic one which he had employed in the first edition. This indicates what change was then taking place in our language.—Am. Ed.

Guard against multiplying words whose uniform terminations introduce consonances, or, rather, rhymes, which prose ought to reject. You will find in the organization of every language a sort of mechanical harmony, in the use of which we should not too freely indulge.*

SECTION XXXV.

OF VARIETY OF STYLE.

Ir variety be requisite, even in the termination of words, it is still more indispensable in the construc

requires either the last syllable or the penult, that is, the last but one, to be a long syllable. Words which consist mostly of short syllables, as contrary, particular, retrospect, seldom conclude a sentence harmoniously, unless a run of long syllables before has rendered them agreeable to the ear."-BLAIR's Lectures, vol. i., p. 260.

* Our author proceeds to illustrate his meaning by showing the use to which the final e mute may be put in promoting this harmony of sound; and he gives us an apt quotation from Massillon, in his description of the death of a good man. But as in this part of the author's enlargement his remarks are confined to the peculiarities and terminations of the French language, the editor has omitted them in his translation, as being useless to the mere English reader. On the subject of "Harmony of Sounds and Sentences," the reader is referred to BLAIR's twelfth Lecture throughout, where he will find many ingenious and critical observations; also to WARD's System of Oratory, vol. i., p. 367, et seq.

tion of the ideas. Uniformity in the manner of expression always implies languor of thought.†

Are you at a loss how to vary your periods? Lay

down your pen. Resume meditation, and every trait will soon have its appropriate character and likeness.

The repetition of the same modes of expression at the commencement of a new division of the subject succeeds in pulpit style; but if we wish to preserve the hearers from the weariness which accompanies uniformity, it is peculiarly proper, in the minute opening of such parts, to diversify the expressions and metaphors, and to give a new colouring to each phrase.

The sermons of the Abbé Poulle, which we have heard with so much pleasure, deserve to be quoted, in the first instance, as admirable models of the art of oratory. What principally distinguishes the style of this celebrated writer is that inexhaustible fertility of a brilliant imagination, which continually changes his descriptions, his movements, his language; and which, though discovering every moment the genius of an orator under a variety of forms, always retains the simplicity that is inseparably connected with real ability.

* Variare orationem magnoperè oportebit, nam omnibus in rebus similitudo satietatis est mater.-CICER., de invent., lib. i., 76.

SECTION XXXVI.

OF PERSPICUITY.

LET us guard, however, against sacrificing perspicuity to variety, and never become obscure and unintelligible in the pursuit of synonymes or periphrases, with a view to avoid the repetition of the same expression or turn of thought. The intention of speaking is to be understood.

The Greeks, whose language painted to the mind, and often to the eyes, the signification, and even the functions of each word, called the voice light.* Dionysius of Halicarnassus compared Demosthenes to a fire kindled in the midst of the public places of Athens, enlightening and inflaming a people equally blind and insensible to their true interests.

Such, indeed, should be the perspicuity of eloquence, as indiscriminately to strike every mind. The orator should continually ask himself, when he revises his productions, “What was it I meant to express? Have I expressed it?" The more simple the expression, the greater its perspicuity: this simplicity always imparts to it double energy.†

* Gr. dwve, vox, a páw, inusit. luceo.-HEDERIC., Lex. in verbum.

+"Perspicuity ought not to be sacrificed to any other beauty whatever. If it should be doubted whether perspicuity be a positive beauty, it cannot be doubted that the want of it is the greatest defect. Nothing, therefore, in language ought to be more studied than to prevent all ob

« AnteriorContinuar »