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AN

ESSAY

ON

ELOCUTION:

WITH

ELUCIDATORY PASSAGES FROM VARIOUS AUTHORS.

TO WHICH ARE ADDED

REMARKS

ON

READING PROSE AND VERSE,

WITH

SUGGESTIONS TO INSTRUCTORS OF THE ART.

BY JOHN HANBURY DWYER,

PROFESSOR OF ELOCUTION.

FIFTH EDITION, WITH ADDITIONS.

ALBANY:

WEARE C. LITTLE.

1844.

Edice T 4118,43,4

HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY

FROM

THE BEQUEST OF
EVERT JANSEN WENDELL

1918

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1843, by JOHN HANBURY DWYER, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Northern District of New-York.

PRINTED BY C. VAN BENTHUYSEN AND CO.

PREFACE.

As usefulness to our fellow men is one of the grand ends of our being, it behoves every one to contribute his share to the general good; therefore, if this attempt prove but as the widow's mite, yet is the writer justified in making it.

The Exercises which it was necessary that the Author should compose for the instruction of his pupils, first suggested the idea of attempting to make a book upon the subject, by extending the plan. This suggestion was strengthened and encouraged by the favorable opinions of some who read those exercises, and for whose judgment and talents the writer and the community at large have a high respect.

If Elocution, so diligently studied by persons of respectability in Europe, were duly appreciated in this country, its advantages would be so apparent, that wonder would arise that it, should have remained so long without a proper place amid the general mass of information, so widely disseminated among the people of America. Perhaps, useful knowledge being the grand aim here, ornamental aids may have been considered superfluous; but, in this case, they are so happily blended, and so necessarily connected, that just fault cannot be found with the mixture. Independently of Elocution, correct oral eloquence cannot exist, for it is its grammar. In this, the freest country that now exists, or ever did

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