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 guilty, and of which the remorse of their consciences convicts them still more than the reproaches of your zeal. "When you make known unpalatable 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 choose to say in direct terms, in his funeral oration for the Queen of England, that Charles I. died upon a scaffold; but, to recall 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 himself. The adversary hath spread out his ger to all the villanies of his freedman; that great industry had been used to conceal them from him; that those who could have informed him of them were denied all access to him; that, on the whole, it was not surprising that Sylla, who alone had the care of re-establishing and governing the commonwealth, should not know or neglect several things, since a great many escaped the knowledge and attention of Jupiter himself in the government of the universe. It is very obvious that such precautions were absolutely necessary."-(ROLLIN's Belles Let., ii., 37, 38.)—Am. Ed.

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

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.

Throw yourself at once into the midst of the danger, that you may the better display the resources of your genius, and make your attack while put upon your defence. This risk to which the orator exposes himself imparts to eloquence a glow of enthusiasm, which raises him superior to his usual exertions. It then happens to him-may I be forgiven

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

this comparison ?-as to the soldier who said, while passing under the citadel of Namur the day following the assault, "Yesterday I stormed this rock in the midst of fire, and to-day I should not be able to mount it." "I firmly believe it," replied one of his comrades ; 66 nor can I there is no more any firing

against us."

SECTION XLI.

OF HYPOTHESIS.

IT is evident that on such hazardous occasions the great business of an orator consists in omitting no precautions, and in adding energy to art.

It is an excellent method to make choice of a proper and ingenious circumlocution to convey the meaning of what cannot be so well expressed. The hypothesis is a figure well adapted to yield this resource to eloquence. Cicero often uses it in his orations, and especially in those against Verres, where he is every moment forming suppositions more stiriking than the facts, with a view to render the exactions of Verres odious to the people of Rome.

Bossuet, whom I am perpetually quoting, because I know not a better model, hath made an admirable use of hypothesis in his funeral oration for Tellier. "Sleep on, ye rich men of the earth, and remain in your native dust. Ah! if some ages-what do I say? if, some years after your death, ye may be.

come men forgotten in the midst of the world, ye should hasten to enter into your tombs, that ye may not behold your names tarnished, your memories extinguished, and your foresight deceived in your friends and dependants, and still more in your heirs and children. Is this, then, the fruit of the toil with which ye have been consumed under the sun?"

SECTION XLII.

OF EGOTISM OF STYLE.

LET us reckon also among oratorical precautions a studied attention never to speak about one's self in the pulpit.

*

Flechier, who, in the composition of his funeral oration for Turenne, stands in the foremost rank of orators, although he do not delineate the excellent character of his hero in private life, and his dis

"What is most distinguishable in M. Flechier is a purity of diction, elegance of style, rich and florid expressions, beautiful thoughts, a prudent vivacity of imagination, and the consequence of it; that is, a wonderful art in painting objects, and making them, as it were, sensible and obvious. But then I think a kind of monotony and uniformity runs through all his writings; he has everywhere almost the same turns, the same figures, the same method. The antithesis engrosses very near all his thoughts, and often enervates by an endeavour to embellish them."-ROLLIN's Belles Letters, b. iii., c. xi., vol. ii., p. 39.

course be in other respects far inferior to the chief performances of Bossuet, affords us, in a letter which is prefixed to his funeral orations, a singular example of egotism and vanity. He draws his own portrait in this letter; and one would imagine that he is sending to his friend the materials for a panegyric; or, rather, it is a complete eulogium, in which he forms sparkling antitheses from the recital and contrast of his various merits. See how Flechier describes himself in this passage: he tells us that "he hath a sort of genius capable of executing whatever he undertakes; his style is nature approaching to art, and art resembling nature. Nothing can be added to what he writes without superfluity, nor retrenched without removing something necessary. He can scatter some grains of odoriferous incense to refresh, and yet not overpower; but he accepts of none which are not equally pure with those which he bestows. There is discernible in his eyes a certain something corresponding with his genius. After all, it would be better if he could inure himself to study, and if his memory, somewhat treacherous, without, however, being unfaithful, were equally serviceable to him as his genius. But there is no perfection in the world, and every one hath his weak side." It were to be wished, for the honour of Flechier, that posterity had confirmed this judgment which he passed upon himself.

It is, without doubt, an unnecessary apprehension that a Christian orator could ever suffer himself to advance in the pulpit an egotism so preposterous. R