Modern Eloquence

This is what made him, according to Burke, "rise by slow degrees to be the most brilliant and accomplished debater the world ever saw."

Sir Henry Bulwer's "Life of Palmerston" does not tell us whether he was trained by the habit of writing translations or in debating societies. But he was a very eager reader of the classics. There is little doubt, however, considering the habit of his contemporaries at Cambridge, and the fact that he was ambitious for public life and represented the University of Cambridge in Parliament just after he became twenty-one, that he belonged to a debating society, and that he was drilled in English composition by translating from the classics.

Gladstone was a famous debater in the Oxford Union, as is well known, and was undoubtedly in the habit of writing translations from Greek and Latin, of which he was always so passionately fond. He says in his paper on Arthur Hallam that the Eton Debating Club, known as the Society, supplied the British Empire with four prime ministers in fourscore years.

The value of the practise of translation from Latin or Greek into English, in getting command of good English style, can hardly be stated too strongly. The explanation is not hard to find. You have in these two languages, especially in Latin, the best instrument for the most precise and most perfect expression of thought. The Latin prose of Tacitus and Cicero, the verse of Virgil and Horace, are like a Greek statue or an Italian cameo. You have not only exquisite beauty, but also exquisite precision. You get the thought into your mind with the accuracy and precision of the words that express numbers in the multiplication table. Ten times one are ten, not ten and one one-millionth. Having got the idea into your mind. with the precision, accuracy, and beauty of the Latin expression, you are to get its equivalent in English. Suppose you have knowledge of no language but your own. The thought comes to you in the mysterious way in which thoughts are born, and struggles for expression in apt words. If the phrase that occurs to you does not exactly fit the thought, you are almost certain, especially in speaking or rapid composition, to modify the thought to fit the

phrase. Your sentence commands you, not you the sentence. The extempore speaker never gets, or easily loses, the power of precise and accurate thinking or statement, and rarely attains that literary excellence which gives him immortality. But the conscientious translator has no such refuge. He is confronted by the inexorable original. He cannot evade or shirk. He must try and try and try again until he has got the exact thought expressed in the English equivalent. This is not enough. He must get an English expression, if the resources of the language will furnish it, which will equal, as near as may be, the dignity and beauty of the original. He must not give you pewter for silver, or pinchbeck for gold, or mica for diamond. This practise will soon give him ready command of the great riches of his noble English tongue. It will give a habitual nobility and beauty to his own style. The best word and phrase will come to him spontaneously when he speaks and thinks. The processes of thought itself will grow easier. The orator will get the affluence and abundance which characterize the great Italian artists of the Middle Ages, who astonish us by the amount and variety of their work as by its excellence. The value of translation is very different from that of original written composition. Cicero says:

"Stilus optimus et praestantissimus dicendi effector ac magister."

Of this I am by no means sure. If you write rapidly you get the habit of careless composition. If you write slowly you get the habit of slow composition. Each of these is an injury to the style of the speaker. He cannot stop to correct or scratch out. Cicero himself in a later passage states his preference for translation. He says that at first he used to take a Latin author, Ennius or Gracchus, and get the meaning into his head, and then write it again. But he soon found that in that way, if he used again the very words of his author, he got no advantage, and if he used other language of his own, the author had already occupied the ground with the best expression, and he was left with the second best. So he gave up the practise and adopted instead that of translating from the Greek.

It is often said that if a speech read well it is not a good

speech. There may be some truth in this. The reader cannot, of course, get the impression which the speaker conveys by look, and tone, and gesture. He lacks that marvelous influence by which, in a great assembly, the emotion of every individual soul is multiplied by the emotion of every other. The reader can pause and dwell upon the thought. If there be a fallacy, he is not hurried away to something else before he can detect it. So also, his more careful and deliberate criticism. will discover offenses of style and taste which pass unheeded in a speech when uttered. But still the great oratoric triumphs of literature and history stand the test of reading in the closet, as well as of hearing in the assembly. Would not Mark Antony's speech over the dead body of Cæsar, had it been uttered, have moved the Roman populace as it moves the spectator when the play is acted, or the solitary reader in his closet? Does not Lord Chatham's "I rejoice that America has resisted" read well? Do not Sheridan's great peroration in the impeachment of Warren Hastings and Burke's read well? Does not "Liberty and union, now and forever," read well? Does not “ Give me liberty or give me death' read well? Does not Fisher Ames' speech for the treaty read well? Do not Everett's finest passages read well? There are a few examples of men of great original genius who have risen to lofty oratory on some great occasion who had not the advantage of familiarity with any great authors. But they are not only few in number, but, as I said before, the occasions are few when they have risen to a great height. In general, the orator, whether at the bar or in the pulpit or in public life, who is to meet adequately the many demands upon his resources, must get familiar with the images and illustrations he wants, and the resources of a fitting diction, by soaking his mind in some great authors who will alike satisfy and stimulate the imagination and supply him with a lofty expression. Of these, I suppose the best are, by common consent, the Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton. To these I should myself by all means add Wordsworth. It is a maxim that the pupil who wishes to acquire a pure and simple style should give his days and nights to AddiBut there is a lack of strength and vigor in Addison, which, perhaps, prevents his being the best model for the

son.

advocate in the court-house or the champion in a political debate. I should rather, for myself, recommend Robert South to the student. If the speaker, whose thought has weight and vigor in it, can say it as South would have said it, he may be quite sure that his weighty meaning will be expressed alike to the mind of the people and the apprehension of his antagonist.