By ISAAC GRANT THOMPSON
There is another essential, aside from the
knowledge of the law, for the successful court
lawyer—that is eloquence; the sort of
eloquence which Blair defines to be "the art of
speaking in such a manner as to attain the
end for which we speak." Most young men,
who study with a view of coming to the bar,
have an ambition, more or less strong, to
become advocates—to be able to convince judges
and persuade juries by the power of their
logic and the graces of their style and utterance;
but a visit to our courts is but too likely
to show how lamentably the great majority of
them fail of achieving their desire.
Lack of perseverance in performing the
labor necessary to the student of elocution, or
ignorance of the method to be pursued; or, in
many cases, a notion that orators, like poets,
"are born, not made," has served to make the
number of eloquent advocates very small indeed.
The most universal idea seems to prevail,
that industry can effect nothing; that every
one must be content to remain just what he
happens to be, and that eminence is the
result of accident. For the acquirement of any
other art, men expect to serve long apprenticeships;
to study it carefully and laboriously;
to master it thoroughly. If one would
learn to sing, he attends a master and is
drilled in the elementary principles; and it is
only after the most careful discipline that he
dares to exercise his voice in public. If he
would learn to play a musical instrument,
how patiently and persistently does he study
and practise, that he may draw out, at will,
all its various combinations of harmonious
sounds, and its full richness and delicacy of
expression. "And yet," adds a learned
writer, "a man will fancy that the grandest,
the most complex, the most expressive of all
instruments, which is fashioned by the union
of intellect with power of speech, may be
played upon without study or practise. He
comes to it a mere tyro, and thinks to manage
all its stops, and command the whole
compass of its varied and comprehensive power;
he finds himself a mere bungler in the
attempt, wonders at his failure, and settles it in
his mind forever that the attempt is vain"—that
it can be done only by genius.
Nothing can be more mischievous and
unfortunate to the student than for him to fall
into such an error—to hold the opinion that
excellence in speaking is a gift of nature and
not the result of patient and persistent labor
and study. If all men had entertained and
acted upon such an opinion, those who have
won fame and honor by their eloquence would
have remained mute and inglorious. Never
would Demosthenes have charmed an
Athenian audience, nor Cicero have hurled his
denunciations against Cataline. Lord
Chatham would have remained simple William
Pitt, and Erskine live an ordinary English
barrister. Curran would have been "Orator
Mum" to the end of his days, and Choate
died "unwept, unhonored, and unsung."
Men who believe that eloquence is the
result of genius, and not of labor, are like the
dwellers in the East, as described by Sir
Joshua Reynolds in his address to the pupils
of the Royal Academy. He says: "The travelers
into the East tell us that when the ignorant
inhabitants of those countries are asked
concerning the ruins of stately edifices yet
remaining among them, the melancholy monuments
of their former grandeur and long-lost
science, they always answer: 'They were
built by magicians.' The untaught mind
finds a vast gulf between its own powers and
those works of complicated art, which it is
utterly unable to fathom; and it supposes that
such a void can be passed only by supernatural
powers." What Sir Joshua says of painting
is true of oratory. Those who know not the
cause of any thing extraordinary and beyond
them may well be astonished at the effect;
and what the uncivilized ascribe to magic
others ascribe to genius—two mighty
pretenders who, for the most part, are safe from
rivalry only because by the terror of their
names they discourage in their own peculiar
sphere that resolute and sanguine spirit of
enterprise which is essential to success. But
as has been well said, "all magic is science in
disguise," and it is our object to proceed to
take off the mask—to show that the mightiest
objects of our wonder, so far as eloquence is
concerned, are mere men like ourselves, have
attained their superiority by steps which we
can follow, and that we can walk in the same
path even tho there remain at last a broad
space between us.
Lord Chesterfield was not very far wrong
when, in his letters to his son, he told him
that any man of reasonable abilities might
make himself an orator; not an orator like
Cicero's magnificent myth, who should have
"the acuteness of the logician, the wisdom of
the philosophers, the language almost of
poetry, the memory of lawyers, the voice of
tragedians, the gesture of the best actors";
such orators, we admit, must be nascitur, non
fit—born, not made—and they are rarely to
be found; but orators like Pitt and Fox, like
Mansfield and Erskine, like Pinckney and
Choate—orators who can "sway listening
senates," who are stormy masters of the
jury-box.
Chesterfield was perhaps an illustration of
his own theory, for he said that he at one time
determined to make himself the best speaker
in Parliament, and set about a severe course
of training for it; and we have the opinion
of so able a judge as Horace Walpole that he
was the first speaker of the House. Every
schoolboy can tell you of the gigantic labors
of Demosthenes in training himself for a
public speaker. It will be refreshing for any
student who desires to improve himself in
speaking to turn to Plutarch's life of
Demosthenes, and read of his early struggles with
obstacles which would have discouraged at
the threshold the great majority of mankind.
Laughed at and interrupted by the clamor of
the people in his first efforts, by reason of his
violent and awkward manner, and a weakness
and stammering in his voice, he retired to his
house with covered head and in great distress,
yet not disheartened. At one time he
complained to Satyrus, the player, "that tho he
was the most laborious of all the orators, and
had almost sacrificed his health to that
application, yet he could gain no favor with
the people." Satyrus seems to have been a
judicious adviser, and proceeded to correct
his faults, as Hume says he who teaches
eloquence must—by example. He requested
Demosthenes to read some speech from
Euripides or Sophocles. When he had done,
Satyrus pronounced the same speech with so
much propriety of action that it appeared to
the orator quite a different passage. "He
now understood so well," says Plutarch, "how
much grace and dignity of action adds to the
best oration, that he thought it a small matter
to premeditate and compose, tho with the
utmost care, if the pronunciation and propriety
of gesture were not attended to. Upon this he
built himself a subterranean study, whither
he repaired every day to form his action and
exercise his voice; and he would often stay
there two or three months together, shaving
one side of his head, that if he should happen
to be ever so desirous of going abroad, the
shame of appearing in that condition might
keep him in." The contemporaries of
Demosthenes esteemed him as a man of but
little genius, and concluded that all his
eloquence was the result of labor. Certain it is
that he was seldom heard to speak extempore;
and tho often called upon in the assembly to
speak, he would not do it unless he came
prepared. It is undoubtedly true, that nature
had sowed in Demosthenes the seeds of a great
orator; but they were brought to perfection
only by the most patient labor and severe
discipline—labor and discipline that would make
any student of the law, of ordinary judgment
and sense, the equal of Pinckney, of Wirt,
or of Choate.
Think of the eloquence of Cicero! How
wonderful the grandeur and magnificence of
his style; how copious and elegant his diction;
how various and comprehensive his knowledge;
surely, we say, like the dwellers in the East,
this is the work of magic—of genius. But
when we take off the mask we find that it is
mainly the result of careful, unflagging,
untiring study and practise. Middleton says:
"His industry was incredible, beyond the
example or even conception of our days; this
was the secret by which he performed such
wonders, and reconciled perpetual study with
perpetual affairs."
Nor were these orators of antiquity singular
in their devotion to the art of speaking. All
the great orators of modern times have
emulated their greatness by emulating their love
of labor. Lord Chatham, who has been justly
regarded as the most powerful orator of
modern times, was from his early youth a
most laborious and devoted student of
oratory. His biography says of him: "At the
age of eighteen, Mr. Pitt (afterward Lord
Chatham) was removed to the University of
Oxford. Here, in connection with his other
studies, he entered on that severe course of
rhetorical training which he often referred to
in after life as forming so large a part of his
early discipline. He took up the practise of
writing out translations from the ancient
orators and historians, on the broadest scale.
Demosthenes was his model; and we are told
that he rendered a large part of his orations
again and again into English, as the best
means of acquiring a forcible and expressive
style.... As a means of acquiring copiousness
of diction and an exact choice of words,
Mr. Pitt also read and reread the sermons of
Dr. Barrow till he knew many of them by
heart. With the same view he performed a
task, to which, perhaps, no other student in
oratory has ever submitted. He went twice
through the folio dictionary of Bailey,
examining each word attentively, dwelling on
its peculiar import and modes of construction,
and thus endeavoring to bring the whole range
of our language completely under his control.
At this time, also, he began those exercises in
elocution by which he is known to have
obtained his extraordinary powers of delivery.
Tho gifted by nature with a commanding
voice and person, he spared no effort to add
everything that art could confer for his
improvement as an orator." His success was
commensurate with his zeal. Garrick himself
was not a greater actor, in that higher sense
of the term in which Demosthenes declared
action to be the first, and second, and third
thing in oratory. The labor which he
bestowed on these exercises was surprizingly
great. Probably no man of genius since the
days of Cicero has ever submitted to an equal
amount of drudgery.
Lord Mansfield, equally famous as an
advocate and judge, affords us another example
of unwearying patient discipline. He studied
oratory with the greatest fervor and
diligence. He read everything that had been
written on the subject of the art; he made
himself familiar with all the great masters of
eloquence in Greece and Rome, and spent
much of his time in translating their finest
productions as the best means of improving
his style. During his study of the law at
Lincoln's Inn, he carried on the practise of
oratory with the utmost zeal, and was a
constant attendant and speaker in a debating
society which he had joined. One day, says
his biographer, he was surprized by a friend,
who suddenly entered his room, in "the act
of practising before a glass, while Pope (the
poet) sat by to aid him in the character of an
instructor." Such are the arts by which are
produced those results that the uninitiated
ascribe to genius.
Sheridan was one of the most brilliant
orators of modern times, and yet his maiden
speech in Parliament, delivered when he was
nearly thirty years old, was a failure. Woodfall,
the reporter, used to relate that Sheridan
came up to him in the gallery, when the speech
was ended, and asked him, with much anxiety,
what he thought of his first attempt. "I am
sorry to say," replied Woodfall, "that I don't
think this is your line; you would better have
stuck to your former pursuit." Sheridan
rested his head on his hand for a few minutes,
and then exclaimed, with vehemence: "It is
in me, and it shall come out of me." Quickened
by a sense of shame, he now devoted
himself, with the utmost assiduity, to the
cultivation of his powers as a speaker. Seven
years after he brought forward, in the House
of Commons, the charges against Warren
Hastings, relating to the princesses of Oude, in
a speech of such brilliancy and eloquence that
the whole assembly, at its conclusion, broke
forth into expressions of tumultuous applause,
and the House adjourned to recover from the
excitement produced by it. Pitt said, "An
abler speech was perhaps never delivered,"
and Fox and Windham, years after, spoke of
it with undiminished admiration. As Sheridan
had said to Woodfall, it was in him and
it did come out, but it was wrought out by
patient toil and study. Moore paints him at
his desk at work on this very speech—writing
and erasing with all the care and painstaking
of a special pleader. Indeed, it transpired
after his death that his wit was most of it
studied out before hand. His commonplace
book was found to be full of humorous
thoughts and sportive turns, written first in
one form and then in another—the point
shifted from one part of the sentence to
another to try the effect. How little did his
delighted hearers imagine, as some playful
allusion, keen retort, or brilliant sally flashed
out upon them from his speeches, in a manner
so easy, natural, and yet unexpected, that it
had been long before laboriously molded and
manufactured. Johnson tells us that Butler,
the author of "Hudibras," had garnered up
his wit in the same way. How conclusively do
these examples illustrate the truth of Sir
Joshua Reynolds' remark, that the effects of
genius must have their causes, and that these
may, for the most part, be analyzed, digested,
and copied, tho sometimes they may be too
subtle to be reduced to a written art.
Charles James Fox rose, says Mr. Burke,
"by slow degrees, to be the most brilliant and
accomplished debater the world ever knew,"
and Fox himself has told us the secret of his
skill. He gained it, he says, "at the expense
of the House," for he had frequently tasked
himself, during an entire session, to speak on
every question that came up, whether he was
interested in it or not, as a means of
exercising and training his faculties.
Curran, the Irish orator and advocate, was
known at school as "stuttering Jack Curran";
and, while studying at an Inn of Court, the
members of a debating society to which he
belonged called him "Orator Mum," in honor of
his signal failure as a speaker. But he made
up his mind to become an orator, and was not
to be put down by obstacles. He spent his
mornings, as he states, "in reading even to
exhaustion," and the rest of the day in the more
congenial pursuits of literature, and especially
in unremitting efforts to perfect himself as a
speaker. His voice was bad, and his articulation
hasty and confused; his manner was
awkward, his gestures constrained and
meaningless, and his whole appearance calculated
only to produce laughter. Such is the picture
of him left us by his biographers. Surely,
one would think, an orator could never be
made out of such materials. Yet all these
faults he overcame by severe and patient
labor. Constantly on the watch against bad
habits, he practised daily before a glass,
reciting passages from Shakespeare, Junius, and
the best English orators. He frequented
debating societies, and unmindful of the ridicule
that greeted his repeated failures, he
continued to take part in the discussions. At
last, he surmounted every difficulty. "He
turned his shrill and stumbling brogue," says
one of his friends, "into a flexible, sustained,
and finely-modulated voice; his action became
free and forcible; and he acquired perfect
readiness in thinking on his legs"; in short, he
became one of the most brilliant and eloquent
advocates that the world has ever produced.
Well might one of his biographers say: "His
oratorical training was as severe as any Greek
ever underwent."
The biographies of Pultney, of Burke, of
Pitt, of Erskine, of Grattan, of Brougham—of
all the great orators of England—contain
records of the same careful training and
discipline in the art of speaking.
Nor have American orators found the path
to success less difficult. Rufus Choate—who
was, perhaps, the most accomplished advocate
America has yet produced—was a noble
illustration of what systematic culture and
discipline can do. He was, in the truest sense of
the term, a made orator. Forensic rhetoric
was the great study of his life, and he
pursued it with a patience, a steadiness, a zeal,
equal to that of Chatham or Curran. He
trusted to no native gift of eloquence, but
practised elocution every day for forty years
as a critical study. Everything that could be
prepared, was prepared; every nerve, every
muscle, that could be trained was trained;
every power that daily practise could
strengthen was invigorated. So thoroughly
imbued was he with a zeal for oratory, that it
formed the subject of his almost daily
conversation, as it did of his daily practise; and
his biography will rouse an ambitious student
as the sound of the trumpet does the war-horse.
Daniel Webster may, perhaps, be considered
to have been as nearly a natural orator as any
this country has produced; and yet the
students are few indeed that cultivate the art
of oratory so laboriously as he did. Even his
genius was mainly "science in disguise." He
himself told the late Senator Fessenden that
those figures and illustrations in his speeches,
which had become so famous and been so often
quoted, were, like Sheridan's wit, the result of
previous study and preparation; and that
that passage in his speech, wherein he
describes the glory and the power of England—a
passage known and quoted the world over—was
conceived and fashioned while he was
standing on the American side of the Niagara
River, listening to the British drum-beats on
the Canada shore.
From these examples we may learn that all
truly noble orators in every age have trusted,
not to inspiration, but to discipline; that great
as were their natural abilities, they were much
less than the ignorant rated them; that even
the mightiest condescended to certain rules
and methods of study by which the humblest
are able to profit. It is good for the student
to read of the studies and labors, the trials
and conflicts, the difficulties and triumphs, of
such men. It is to the ambitious student as
the touch of mother earth was to Antæus in
his struggle with Hercules—renewing his
strength and reviving his flagging zeal. It
rouses him to severer self-denial, to more
assiduous study, to more self-sustaining
confidence, and leads him to feel, like Themistocles
of old, that "the trophies of Miltiades will not
let me sleep." These examples will teach him
that God has set a price on every real and
noble achievement; that success in oratory, as
in everything else worth succeeding in, can be
purchased only by pain and labor; and lastly
and mainly, that those who would follow in
their steps must give their days and nights to
study, and emulate their greatness by
emulating their love of labor.
Having endeavored to show that eloquence
is not so much the result of natural gifts as of
persevering and persistent labor, we now
proceed to offer some suggestions as to the best
means of improvement in forensic eloquence.
Socrates used to say that "all men are
sufficiently eloquent in that which they
understand"; but it would have been nearer
truth to say that no man can be eloquent on
a subject that he does not understand; nor on
a subject that he does understand, unless he
know how to form and polish his speech.
The two essential things to the orator are
something to say and a knowledge of how to
say it. There is no art that can teach one to
be eloquent without knowledge. Attention to
style, diction, and all the arts of speech, can
only assist the orator in setting off to
advantage the stock of materials which he
possesses; but the stock, the materials themselves,
must be brought from other quarters than
from rhetoric. In the first place, the advocate
must have a profound knowledge of the law.
On this depends his reputation and success,
and nothing is of such consequence to him or
deserves more his deep and serious study. In
no other profession is superficial knowledge
sooner detected or more ruthlessly exposed,
and however brilliant as a speaker one may
be, if it but become known that he is not well
grounded in the law, few will choose to
commit their cause to him. Besides a knowledge
of the general principles of law, another thing
highly material to the success of every
advocate is a diligent and careful attention to
every cause that is intrusted to him, so as to
be thoroughly master of all the facts and
circumstances relating to it, Cicero has left a
very instructive record of the method pursued
by him in the preparation of a cause for trial,
and which we commend to the careful
consideration of every student and lawyer. He
tells us, under the character of Antonius, in
the second book De Oratore, that he always
conversed at full length with every client who
came to consult him; that he took care there
should be no witnesses to their conversation,
in order that his client might explain himself
more freely; that he was wont to start every
objection, and to plead the cause of the
adverse party with him, that he might come at
the whole truth and be fully prepared on
every point of the business; and that after the
client had retired he used to balance all the
facts with himself under three different
characters: his own, that of the adversary,
and that of the judge. He censures very
severely those of the profession who decline to
take so much trouble; taxing them not only
with shameful negligence, but with dishonesty
and breach of trust. Quintilian likewise
urged the necessity of carefully studying
every cause, again and again recommending
patience and attention in conversation with
clients. "For," said he, "to listen to
something that is superfluous can do no hurt;
whereas to be ignorant of something that is
material may be highly prejudicial. The
advocate will frequently discover the weak side
of a cause, and learn at the same time what
is the proper defense, from circumstances
which to the party himself appeared to be of
little or no moment." It is said of Rufus
Choate, that he began to study a case the
moment it was brought to him, and that he
continued to study it till the day of trial.
Besides the knowledge of the law, the
advocate must make himself acquainted with the
general principles of logic. He must learn
how to reason; how to draw conclusions from
premises; how to found an argument.
Without a knowledge of these things, no matter
how copious his diction or elegant his
delivery, his speeches will be little more than
"sounding brass and tinkling cymbals."
The object of the advocate is chiefly to
convince, and to do this he must satisfy the
understanding. Solid argument and clear
method must, therefore, be used. Nothing
can be more erroneous than the idea that
mere declamation is eloquence. It may have
the show, but never can produce the effect;
it "may tickle the ear," but it will never lead
a judge to pass that judgment or a jury to
adopt that side of the cause to which we seek
to bring them. "There is no talent, I
apprehend," said Dugald Stewart, "so essential to
a public speaker as to be able to state clearly
every step of those trains of thought by
which he himself was led to the conclusions he
wishes to establish." Especially is this true
at the bar—the eloquence suited to which is
of the calm and temperate kind, connected
with close reasoning. Let the advocate take
for his motto the advice of Quintilian, "To
your expression be attentive; but about your
matter be solicitous."
There was much wisdom in the remark of
Sir William Jones, that "an elegant method
of arranging the thoughts is powerful to
persuade as well as to please." William Pitt,
being asked how he acquired his talent for
reply, answered at once that he owed it to the
study of Aristotle's logic in early life, and
the habit of applying its principles to all the
discussions he met with in the works he read
and the debates he witnessed. So it is said
of Rufus Choate, "he was a thorough master
of logic. He had studied it, not only in
detail and immediate application of style and
arrangement, but in its essence and origin."
The treatise best calculated to give the
student an insight into the rules and principles
of logic is that by Dr. Whately. The book
recommended for the strengthening of the
reasoning faculties is Chillingworth's "The
Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to
Salvation," which was written in answer to the
arguments of an adversary, and which has
for years been considered the most perfect
specimen of logical argument. Locke, than
whom there could not be a more competent
authority, proposes "for the attainment of
right reasoning, the constant reading of
Chillingworth"; and Lord Mansfield pronounced
it the "perfection of reasoning."
Law and logic are the immediate and foundation
studies of the advocate, but they are
not all. Besides these he must drink deep at
the fountains of science, philosophy, history
and belles-lettres. These are the handmaids
of oratory. They enlarge and liberalize the
mind, embellish the style and afford illustrations,
ideas, arguments, phrases, words, and
last, tho not least, intellectual enthusiasm.
There are few occasions, indeed, on which an
advocate will not derive assistance from a
cultivated taste and extensive knowledge.
Their illustrations, allusions and principles,
woven in with the weightier matters of the
law, will make a pattern which will not fail
to please and interest—will throw around the
dry and uninteresting legal principles a freshness
and charm that will fix the attention and
fascinate the hearer.
But perhaps the chief benefit to be derived
from their study is the improvement they
afford to style and language. Cicero
remarked in the third book De Oratore, that
"all elegance of language, tho it receive a
polish from the science of grammar, is yet
augmented by the reading of orators and
poets." From this source have all great
orators drawn their copious and elegant
diction and their polished and graceful style.
Erskine is represented by an excellent
authority as having spoken the finest and richest
English ever spoken by an advocate. For
two years prior to his call to the bar, he
devoted himself exclusively to the study of
literature, and probably no two years of his
life were so profitably spent. In addition to
his reading in prose, he devoted himself with
great ardor to the study of Milton and
Shakespeare. His biographers tell us that he
committed a large part of the former to memory,
and became so familiar with the latter "that
he could almost, like Person, have held
conversations on all subjects for days together
in the phrases of the great English dramatist." Here
it was that he acquired that fine choice
of words, that rich and varied imagery, that
sense of harmony in the structure of his
sentences, that boldness of thought and
magnificence of expression for which he was
afterward so much distinguished. He could have
drawn these things from no richer source. To
use the words of Johnson, slightly varied, he
who would excel in this noblest of arts must
give his days and nights to the study of
Milton and Shakespeare.
"Hither, as to a fountain,
Other suns repair, and in their urns
Draw golden light."
Lord Chatham read and reread Dr. Barrows'
sermons until he knew many of them
by heart, "for the purpose," as he himself
said, "of acquiring copiousness of diction and
an exact choice of words." William Pitt, his
son, obtained his remarkable command of the
English tongue from the same source, in
connection with Shakespeare and the Bible; the
latter he studied not only as a guide of life,
but as the true "well of English undefiled." No
wonder that his contemporary, Fox, should
have said of him, "He always has the right
word in the right place."
William Pinckney has himself unlocked the
secret of his intellectual affluence and elegant
diction. He says that he made it a rule from
his youth never to see a fine idea without
committing it to memory. Rufus Choate, in
speaking of this fact, said "the result was
the most splendid and powerful English
spoken style I ever heard." Choate pursued
a plan equally commendable. During the
greater portion of his life he made it a
practise to read aloud every day a page or more
from some fine English author. This he did
for the improvement of his expression. He
was a most indefatigable student of words,
and made the whole round of literature
tributary to his vocabulary.
The following extract from the address of
Lord Brougham to the University of Glasgow
will be a sufficient guide, with what has been
already said, to the selection of those authors
that will tend most to improve the style and
diction: "The English writers who really
unlock the rich sources of the language are those
who flourish from the end of Elizabeth's to
the end of Queen Anne's reign; who used a
good Saxon dialect with ease, but correctness
and perspicuity—learned in the ancient
classics, but only enriching their mother
tongue where the Attic could supply its
defects—not overlaying it with a profuse
pedantic coinage of words."
The great masters of oratory should be
studied most carefully and diligently;
Erskine, Burke, Pinckney, Webster, and, above
all, the legal orations of Cicero are the best
models for a young lawyer. Read Bolingbroke
for specimens of the splendid and ornate;
Fox and Pitt for the classical and
argumentative; advantage may likewise be derived
from the letters of Junius.
In pursuing these studies, the motto must
be multum haud multa—much, not many. No
real advantage and improvement will be
gained from a rambling, desultory course of
reading. There is a whole sermon in that
saying of Hobbes, of Malmesbury, "If I had
read as many books as other persons, I should
probably know as little." The wisest and
best informed teach us, both by counsel and
example, to read a little and that well; to
count not by the books we have read, but by
the subjects we have exhausted. Swift said
that the reason a certain university was a
learned place was that most persons took some
learning there and few brought any away with
them, so it accumulated. Such is the effect of
a proper course of reading—everything adds
and nothing takes away.
We are not counseling an imitation of the
men of one book, but the pursuit of one
system. Choose those authors most suited to the
object in view and know them.
The advocate should make choice of his
book, Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, Burke,
Erskine, Bolingbroke, and make that his chief
study. One sterling author to call my own,
ever most conspicuous and most at hand, read,
reread, "marked and quoted," will do much
to form the mind, to teach one to think, to
give precision of expression, purity of taste,
loftiness of views and fervency of spirit. No
better selection can be made by the advocate
than the works of Edmund Burke. "Among
the characteristics of Lord Erskine's
eloquence," observes one of his recent
biographers, "the perpetual illustrations
derived from the writings of Burke is very
remarkable. In every one of the great state
trials in which he was engaged, he referred to
the productions of that extraordinary person
as to a text-book of political wisdom—expounding,
enforcing and justifying all the
great and noble principles of freedom and of
justice." "When I look," says Lord Erskine
himself, "into my own mind and find its best
lights and principles fed from that immense
magazine of moral and political wisdom
which he has left an inheritance to mankind
for their instruction, I feel myself repelled by
an awful and grateful sensibility from
perpetually approaching him." Take, then, the
words of this sublime philosopher and orator,
bind them up in one thick volume, on which
write wisdom in gold letters, and begin to read
it through every New-year's day.
Another means of acquiring a command
of language is translation, and it is
commended alike by the precepts and example of
the great masters. Two thousand years ago
Cicero stocked his vocabulary by this plan,
translating from the Greek into Latin.
Chatham translated the orations of Demosthenes
again and again into English. Mansfield
declared that there was not one of the orations
of Cicero that he had not translated more
than once. Pitt pursued the same plan for
ten years, and to this he ascribed his
extraordinary command of language, which enabled
him to give every idea its most felicitous
expression, and to pour out an unbroken stream
of thought hour after hour without once
hesitating for a word or recalling a phrase, or
sinking for a moment into looseness or
inaccuracy in the structure of a sentence. Choate
was a most indefatigable translator. This
exercise he persevered in daily, even in the
midst of the most arduous business. Five
minutes a day, if no more, he would seize in
the morning for this task. Tacitus was his
favorite author. He attended chiefly to the
multiplication of synonyms. For every word
he translated, he would rack his brain and
search his books till he got five or six
corresponding English words. This is the true
way to translate when style and diction is the
object. Turn the passage read into regular
English sentences, aiming to give the idea
with great exactness and to express it with
idiomatic accuracy and ease. This plan of
translating is infinitely better than the plan
sometimes advised of taking some passage of
classic English, getting the ideas from it and
then expressing them in the best manner
possible. In this latter method, the author
has already selected the most appropriate
words, and if the student use the same words
he will receive no profit, or if other words, it
is prejudicial, as it accustoms one to use such
as are less eligible.
The student of advocacy can not give too
much attention to the culture of expression.
Orators in every age have made it a specific
study. Cicero says, "The proper concern of
an orator, as I have already often said, is
language of power and eloquence accommodated
to the feelings and understanding
of mankind." Language and its elements,
words, are to be mastered by direct, earnest
labor. A speaker ought daily to exercise and
air his vocabulary and add to and enrich it.
The advocate does not want a diction gathered
from the newspapers, caught from the air,
common and unsuggestive; but one whose
every word is full freighted with suggestion
and association, with beauty and power. It
is a rich and rare English that one ought to
command, who is aiming to control a jury's
ear.
Chesterfield, in his letters to his son, said,
"Manner is of as much importance as matter";
and that this has been the opinion of
all great orators may be gathered from the
vast labor expended by them on the cultivation
of expression and delivery. How much
stress was laid upon this by the greatest of
all orators, Demosthenes, appears from a
noted saying of his related by both Cicero and
Quintilian, when, being asked what was the
first point in oratory, he answered, action;
and being asked what was the second, he
answered, action; and afterward what was
the third, he still answered, action. And
Plutarch said of him that "he thought it a
small matter to premeditate and compose, tho
with the utmost care, if the pronunciation and
propriety of gesture were not attended
to." Esteeming delivery of such vast importance to
the orator, there is no wonder that he should
have labored for months together in his
subterranean study to form his action and
improve his voice.
To the superficial thinker, the study of
gesture and of the management of the voice
may appear to be but "vanity of vanities"—gaudy
tinselry and worthless decoration; but
the experience of all time has proved that
they are powerful to persuade and strong to
convince. We all know how much meaning—how
much expression—how much power there
may be in a look, in a tone of the voice, or
in a motion. The impression they make on
others is frequently much stronger than any
that words can make. They are the language
of nature, and are understood by all far
better than words, which are only the
arbitrary conventional symbols of ideas. The
speaker who should use bare words, without
aiding their meaning by proper tones and
accents, would make but a feeble impression,
and leave but a misty and indistinct
conception of what he had delivered.
It is surprizing, indeed, to see how perfectly
persons practised in the art of gestures
can communicate even complicated trains of
thought and long series of facts without the
aid of words. This fact was known and
appreciated by the ancient Greeks and Romans,
who made the subject a study far more than
have subsequent nations. Cicero informs us
that it was a matter of dispute between the
actor Roscius and himself whether the former
could express a sentiment in a greater variety
of ways by gestures, or the latter by words.
During the reign of Augustus, both tragedies
and comedies were acted by pantomime alone.
It was perfectly understood by the people,
who wept and laughed, and were excited in
every way as much as if the words had been
employed. It seems, indeed, to have worked
upon their sympathies more powerfully than
words; for it became necessary, at a
subsequent period, to enact a law restraining
members of the Senate from studying the art of
pantomime—a practise to which, it seems, they
had resorted in order to give more effect to
their speeches before that body.
There have been volumes written on this
subject of delivery, but they are little better
than a "vexation of spirit." The tone of the
voice, the look, the gesture, suited to express
a thought or emotion, must be learned from
experience and the example of living speakers
and masters. Curran and many others have
made it a practise to speak before a glass, that
they might themselves judge of the propriety
of their gestures, and correct those at fault.
A more condensed or sensible treatise on this
subject can not be found than Hamlet's
direction to the players:
"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I
pronounce it to you—trippingly on the tongue;
but if you mouth it, as many of our players
do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my
lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with
your hand; but use all gently, for in the very
torrent, tempest, and (as I may say)
whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and
beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.
Oh, it offends me to the soul, to hear a
robustious, periwigpated fellow tear a passion
to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the
groundlings, who, for the most part, are
capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb
shows and noise.... Be not too tame,
neither, but let your own discretion be your
tutor; suit the action to the word, the word to
the action; with this special observance, that
you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for
anything so overdone is from the purpose of
playing, whose end, both at the first and now,
was, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up
to nature; to show virtue her own feature,
scorn her own image, and the very age and
body of the time, his form and pressure. Now,
this overdone, or come tardy off, tho it make
the unskilful laugh, can not but make the
judicious grieve; the censure of which one
must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole
theater of others."
The student who shall follow these directions,
which are as applicable to the speaker
as to the player, will not go very far wrong.
The first consideration of a speaker must be
to make himself heard by all those to whom
he speaks. This, tho often neglected, is of the
first importance, and is a matter that rests
mainly in the management of the voice, and
not in the strength of lungs. Nor is it, as
many suppose, a natural talent, for the voice
is susceptible of the greatest culture, and may
be formed after almost any model. To make
oneself audible, it is not necessary that the
voice should be pitched on a high key.
Strength of sound does not depend upon the
key or note on which one speaks, but on the
proper management of the voice. A speaker
may render his voice strong and full while
speaking in a middle or conversational tone,
and will be able to give the most sustained
force to that pitch, as it is the one to which
in conversation he is accustomed. The
conversational key is the one that the advocate
should, with rare exceptions, adopt;
otherwise he will exhaust himself and be heard
with pain by his audience. Grattan tells us
that he heard Lord Chatham speak in the
House of Lords; and it was just like talking
to one man by the buttonhole, except when
he lifted himself in enthusiasm, and then the
effect of the outbreak was immense; and of
Harrison Gray Otis it is said that when you
met him in the street and heard him talk,
you heard the orator Otis almost as much as
if he were in Faneuil Hall talking about
politics.
In the next place, the student of advocacy
must study to articulate clearly and distinctly.
On this, as much as on the quantity of sound,
depends the capacity to make oneself heard.
We need say nothing with regard to emphasis,
pauses, tones and gestures. Every one
who goes about his work in earnest will devote
proper attention to these matters, and will
gain more from experience and observation
than from the rules laid down in the books.
One thing seldom laid down in the books is of
the highest importance to the advocate: that
is, to study always to feel what he speaks.
Unless he do this, his oratory will be little
more than an empty and puerile flow of words.
"The author who will make me weep,"
says Horace, "must first weep himself." "In
reality," adds Henry Fielding, "no man
can paint a distress well which he doth not feel
while he is painting it; nor do I doubt but that
the most pathetic and affecting scenes have
been writ with tears." In Shakespeare's
Richard II, the Duchess of York thus
impeaches the sincerity of her husband:
"Pleads he in earnest? Look upon his face,
His eyes do drop no tears; his prayers are jest;
His words come from his mouth; ours, from our breast;
He prays but faintly and would be denied;
We pray with heart and soul."
No kind of language is so generally understood,
or has such force and weight, as the
language of feeling. The advocate must be
in downright earnest before he can impress
his hearers.
It only remains for us to add, that the
student of oratory must exercise himself
continually in both writing and speaking.
Writing is said by Cicero to be "the best and most
excellent modeler and teacher of oratory";
"for," he continues, "if what is meditated
and considered easily surpasses sudden and
extemporaneous speech, a constant and
diligent habit of writing will surely be of more
effect than meditation and consideration
itself." Write with as much pains as possible,
and write as much as possible. It is even as
Quintilian said: "It is not writing rapidly
that you come to write well, but by writing
well you come to write rapidly." In mental
culture, as in the culture of the earth, the seed
sown in the deepest furrows finds a more
fruitful soil, is more securely cherished and
springs up in its time to more exuberant and
healthful harvest. Without this discipline,
the power and practise of extemporaneous
speech will yield only an empty loquacity—only
words born on the lips. In this discipline,
deep down there are the roots, there
the foundations; thence must the harvest
shoot, thence the structure ascend; there is
garnered up, as in a more sacred treasury,
wealth for the supply of even unanticipated
exactions. Thus, first of all, we must
accumulate resources sufficient for the contests to
which we are summoned. In writing, seek
for the best; do not eagerly and gladly
lay hold on that which first offers itself;
apply judgment to the crowd of thoughts
and words which fill your mind and
retain those only of which your judgment
deliberately approves. Nor should every
word be allowed to occupy the exact spot
where the order of time in which it occurs
would place it. Seek rather by a variety
of experiments and arrangements to attain to
the utmost power and eloquence of style.
There is nothing like the pen to correct
vagueness of thought and looseness of expression.
Every argument, every speech should, so far
as possible, be carefully written out. It is
not necessary, nor is it even advisable, to
commit it to memory, save in rare instances. The
mind should be left untrammeled by any set
speech to take advantage of the inspiration of
the moment. But the simple act of carefully
composing and writing down an argument will
fix in the mind the general order and sequence
of facts and illustrations, and will greatly aid
in a clear and forcible arrangement. The
night before Alexander Hamilton delivered
his celebrated speech, which more than anything
else led to the establishment of a liberal
and more just law regarding libel and slander
in the State of New York, he wrote the
argument all out and then deliberately tore it up.
Besides frequent practise in writing, the
student must have constant practise in speaking,
which is of more real value than all the
precepts of the masters.
It is sometimes said that men by speaking
succeed in becoming speakers, but it is just as
true that men by speaking badly succeed in
becoming bad speakers. It is frequently the
case, that students do nothing more in practise
than to exercise their voice, and not even
that skilfully—and try their strength of
lungs and volubility of tongue. Such
practise is but a waste of breath. The student
should make it a cardinal rule always to do his
best even while practising in his room; to
speak on subjects that he has deliberately
considered, and in such a style as he would adopt
were an audience before him. Of course, that
kind of speaking will be most advantageous to
the advocate which is most in accordance with
the business of his life. Prominent advocates
in every age have, while developing their
powers, made it a practise to propose a case
similar to those brought in the courts, and to
make arguments thereon as nearly as possible
as they would were it an actual case in court.
Cicero followed this plan two thousand years
ago, as he himself has told us, and Curran and
Choate were both indefatigable in this practise.
Such are the means, such the labors by
which the student may make himself an
advocate. It is not the work of an hour or a
day or a year, but of years—years of application
and of industry—of patient plodding and
painful study. It is not by starts of
application and intermittent labor that anything
valuable can be achieved. It is the outgrowth
of well-directed and persistent effort. In
nothing more than oratory are the lines of
the poet true:
"The Father of our race Himself decrees
That culture shall be hard."
It has been the glory of the great masters
of the art to confront and to overcome; and
all the wisdom of these latter days has
discovered no other road to success. These
suggestions apply not only to the lawyer, but to
every man who would become an efficient
public speaker and a leader of men.