THE STUDY OF FORENSIC ELOQUENCE
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.