Page images
PDF
EPUB

AN ESSAY

ON

E LOCUTION.

MUCH declamation has been employed to con

vince the world of a very plain truth, that to be able to speak well is an ornamental and useful accomplishment. Without the laboured panegyrics of ancient or modern orators, the importance of a good elocution is fufficiently obvious. Every one will acknowledge it to be of fome confequence, that what a man has hourly occafion to do, fhould be done well. Every private company, and almost every public affembly affords opportunities of remarking the difference between a juft and graceful, and a faulty and unnatural elocution; and there are few perfons who do not daily experience the advantages of the former, and the inconveniences of the latter. The great difficulty is, not to prove that it is a defir.B

able

able thing to be able to read and fpeak with propriety, but to point out a practicable and eafy method by which this accomplishment may be acquired.

FOLLOW Nature, is certainly the fundamental law of Oratory, without a regard to which, all other rules will only produce affected declamation, not just elocution. And fome accurate observers, judging perhaps, from a few unlucky fpecimens of modern eloquence, have concluded that this is the only law which ought to be prescribed; that all artificial rules are ufelefs; and that good fenfe, and a cultivated. taste, are the only requifites to form a good public fpeaker. But it is true in the art of fpeaking, as well as in the art of living, that general precepts are of little ufe till they are unfolded, and applied to particular cafes. To obferve the various. ways by which nature expreffes the feveral perceptions, emotions, and paffions of the human mind, and to distinguish these from the mere effect of arbitrary custom or false taste; to discover and correct thofe tones, and habits of speaking, which are grofs deviations from nature, and as far as they prevail muft deftroy all propriety and grace of utterance: and to make choice of fuch a courfe of practical leffons, as fhall give the fpeaker an opportunity of exercifing himself in each branch of elocution: all this must be the effect of attention and labour; and

2

XV

and in this much affistance may certainly be derived from inftruction. What are rules or leffons for acquiring this or any other art, but the obfervations of others, collected into a narrow compass, and digefted in a natural order, for the direction of the unexperienced and unpractifed learner? And what is there in the art of speaking, which fhould render it incapable of receiving aid from precepts?

PRESUMING then, that the acquifition of the art of speaking, like all other practical arts, may be fa cilitated by rules, I proceed to lay before my readers, in a plain didactic form, fuch rules refpecting elocution, as appear beft adapted to form a correct and graceful speaker.

RULE I.

Let your ARTICULATION be DISTINCT and DELI

BERATE.

A GOOD Articulation consists in giving a clear

and full utterance to the several simple and complex founds. The nature of these sounds, therefore, ought to be well understood; and much pains fhould be taken to discover and correct thofe faults in articulation, which, though often afcribed to fome defect in the organs of specch, are generally the confequence of inattention

B 2

« PreviousContinue »