A COURSE OF LECTURES ON ORATORY AND CRITICISM. By JOSEPH PRIESTLEY, LL.D. F.R.S. Et rerum caufas, et quid natura docebat. OVID. DUBLIN: PRINTED BY WILLIAM HALLHEAD, M.DCC.LXXXI. gulafton 27334 TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD VISCOUNT FITZMAURICE. MY DEAR LORD, As your Lordship is now of a proper age to understand many particulars in the following Lectures, and will foon be capable of a regular study and a thorough comprehension of the whole subject, I was ambitious to dedicate the work to you; as a mark of my attachment, and of my earnest wish to contribute whatever may be in my power, towards your improvement in every thing that is useful or ornamental, and thereby to the distinguished figure that, I flatter myself, your Lordship will one day make in this country. 1 To act an useful and honourable part in the community to which we belong, is an object of laudable ambition to every man, in proportion to the rank which he holds in it; and your Lordship cannot but be fully apprized, that the only foundations for a refpectable figure in life, are good principles and good difpofitions, joined to a cultivated understanding. Eminence in these refpects is what, in ftricteft right, may be expected of those whom their fellow-citizens, naturally their equals, are, by the conftitution of their country, made to look up to, as their fuperiors. It is a debt due for that diftinction. For it is univerfally true, that the obligation to do good is of the very fame extent with the power and opportunity of doing it. This, my young Lord, is an age in which every thing begins to be estimated by its real use and value. The fame maxims of good fenfe which regulate all other things, will finally new-arrange whatever belongs to the affairs of fociety and government; and those diftinctions which mere force, mere fuperftition, or mere accident will be found |