N° 407.

Tuesday, June 17.

Ovid. Met. 1.13. v. 127.

abeft facundis gratia di&tis.

Eloquent words a graceful manner want.

MOST foreign writers who have given any cha

racter of the English nation, whatever vices they afcribe to it, allow in general, that the people are naturally modeft. It proceeds perhaps from this our national virtue, that our orators are obferved to make use of lefs gefture or action than thofe of other countries. Our preachers ftand stock-ftill in the pulpit, and will not fo much as move a finger to fet off the beft fermons in the world. We meet with the fame fpeaking ftatues at our bars, and in all public places of debate. Our words flow from us in a fmooth continued ftream, without thofe ftrainings of the voice, motions of the body, and majefty of the hand, which are so much celebrated in the orators of Greece and Rome. We can talk of life and death in cold blood, and keep our temper in a difcourfe which turns upon every thing that is dear to us. Though our. zeal breaks out in the finest tropes and figures, it is not able to ftir a limb about us. I have heard it observed more than once by those who have feen Italy, that an untravelled Englishman cannot relish all the beauties of Italian pictures, because the poftures which are ex、› preffed in them are often fuch as are peculiar to that country. One who has not feen an Italian in the pulpit, will not know what to make of that noble gefture in Raphael's picture of St. Paul preaching at Athens, where the apoftle is reprefented as lifting up both his arms, and pouring out the thunder of his rhetoric amidst an audience of pagan philofophers.

It is certain that proper geftures and vehement exertions of the voice cannot be too much studied by a public orator. They are a kind of comment to what

he utters, and enforce every thing he fays, with weak hearers, better than the strongeit argument he can make ufe of. They keep the audience awake, and fix their attention to what is delivered to them, at the fame time that they fhew the speaker is in earnest, and affected himself with what he fo paffionately recommends to others. Violent gefture and vociferation naturally fhake the hearts of the ignorant, and fill them with a kind of religious horror. Nothing is more frequent than to fee women weep and tremble at the fight of a moving preacher, though he is placed quite out of their hearing; as in England we very frequently fee people lulled afleep with folid and elaborate difcourfes of piety, who would be warmed and tranfported out of themselves by the bellowings and distortions of enthusiafin.

If nonfenfe, when accompanied with fuch an emotion of voice and body, has fuch an influence on mens minds, what might we not expect from many of those admirable difcourfes which are printed in our tongue, were they delivered with a becoming fervour, and with the most agreeable graces of voice and getture?

We are told that the great Latin orator very much impaired his health by this laterum contentio, this vehemence of action, with which he used to deliver himfelf. The Greek orator was likewise so very famous for this particular in rhetoric, that one of his antagonists, whom he had banished from Athens, reading over the oration which had procured his banishment, and feeing his friends admire it, could not forbear afking them, if they were fo much affected by the bare reading of it, how much more they would have been alarmed, had they heard him actually throwing out fuch a ftorm of eloquence.

How cold and dead a figure, in comparison of thefe two great men, does an orator often make at the British bar, holding up his head, with the oft infipid ferenity, and ftroking the fides of a long wig that teaches down to his middle? The truth of it is, there is often nothing more ridiculous than the geftures of an English speaker; you fee fome of them running their hands into their pockets (as far as ever they can thru them, and others looking with great attention on a piece of paper that h ́s VOL VI. C

nothing written in it; you may see many a fmart rhetorician turning his hat in his hands, moulding it into fe veral different cocks, examining fometimes the lining of it, and fometimes the button, during the whole course of his harangue. A deaf man would think he was cheapning a beaver, when perhaps he is talking of the fate of the British nation. I remember when I was a young man, and used to frequent Westminster-hall, there was a counsellor who never pleaded without a piece of packthread in his hand, which he used to twist about a thumb or a finger all the while he was fpeaking: the wags of thofe days ufed to call it the thread of his difcourfe, for he was not able to utter a word without it. One of his clients who was more merry than wife, stole it from him one day in the midft of his pleading; but he had better have let it alone, for he loft his caufe by his jeft.

I have all along acknowledged myself to be a dumb man, and therefore may be thought a very improper perfon to give rules for oratory; but I believe every one will agree with me in this, that we ought either to lay afide all kinds of gefture, (which feems to be very fuitable to the genius of our nation) or at least to make ufe of fuch only as are graceful and expreffive.

N° 4c8.

Wednesday, June 18.

O.

Decet affectus animi neque fe nimiùm erigere, nec fubja

cere ferviliter.

We thould keep cur paffions from measure, or fervilely depreffed.

< Mr. SPECTATOR,

TULL. de Finibus.

being exalted above

I HAVE always been a very great lover of your

fpeculations, as well in regard of the fubject, as to your manner of treating it. Human nature l'always thought the most useful object of human reason, and to make the confideration of it pleasant and enter

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taining, I always thought the best employment of human wit other parts of philofophy may perhaps 'makes us wifer, but this not only answers that end, 'but makes us better too. Hence it was that the ora'cle pronounced Socrates the wifeft of all men living, because he judiciously made choice of human nature ' for the object of his thoughts; an inquiry into which as much exceeds all other learning, as it is of more confequence to adjust the true nature and measures of right and wrong, than to fettle the distance of the planets, and compute the times of their circumvolutions.

เ

'One good effect that will immediately arife from a near obfervation of human nature, is, that we shall cease to wonder at those actions which men are used to reckon wholly unaccountable; for as nothing is ' produced without a caufe, fo by obferving the nature ' and courfe of the paffions, we fhall be able to trace < every action from its first conception to its death. We fhall no more admire at the proceedings of Catiline or Tiberius, when we know the one was actuated by a cruel jealoufy, the other by a furious ambition: for the actions of men follow their paffions as naturally as light does heat, or as any other effect flows from its caufe; reafon must be employed in adjufting the paffions, but they muft ever reniain the principles of ' action.

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The ftrange and abfurd variety that is fo apparent in mens actions, fhews plainly they can never proceed immediately from reafon; fo pure a fountain emits no fuch troubled waters: they muft neceffarily arife from the paffions, which are to the mind as the winds to a hip, they only can move it, and they too often deftroy it; if fair and gentle, they guide it into the harbour; if contrary and furious, they overfet it in the waves in the fame manner is the mind affifted or endangered by the paffions; reafon muft then tike the place of pilot, and can never fail of fecuring her charge if he be not wanting to herfelf: the ftrength of the paffions will never be accepted as an ecafe for complying with them; they were defigned for fubjection, and is a man fuffers them to get the

upper hand, he then betrays the liberty of his own foul.

As nature has framed the feveral fpecies of beings as it were in a chain, fo man seems to be placed as the • middle link between angels and brutes: hence he participates both of flesh and fpirit by an admirable tie, which in him occafions perpetual war of pallions; and as a man inclines to the angelic or brute part of his conflitution, he is then denominated good or bad, virtuous, or wicked; if love, mercy, and good-nature prevail, they speak him of the angel; if hatred, cruelty, and envy predominate, they declare his kindred to the brute. Hence it was that fome of the ancients imagined, that as men in this life inclined more to the angel or the brute, fo after their death they should tranfinigrate into the one or the other; and it would be no unpleasant notion to confider the feveral fpecies of brutes, into which we may imagine that tyrants, mifers, the proud, malicious, and illnatured might be changed.

I have

As a confequence of this original, all paffions are in all men, but appear not in all; conftitution, edu'cation, custom of the country, reafon, and the like caufes, may improve or abate the strength of them, but ftill the feeds remain, which are ever ready to fprout forth upon the leaft encouragement. heard a flory of a good religious man, who, having been bred with the milk of a goat, was very model in public by a careful reflection he made on his actions, but he frequently had an hour in fecret, wherein he had bis friiks and capers; and if we had an op portunity of examining the retirement of the strictest philosophers, no doubt but we fhould find perpe⚫tual re urns of thote paflions they fo artfully conceal from the public. I remember Machiavel obferves, that every itate fhould entertain a perpetual jealousy of its neighbours, that fo it fhould never be unprovided when an emergency happens; in like manner fhould reafon be perpetually on its guard against the pations, and never fuffer them to carry on any deAgn that may be deftractive of its fecurity; yet at the fame ti ne it au&t be careful, that it do not fo far break