ORATORY AND THE PRESS.
From the “Boston Advertiser.”
The lamented death of Mr. H. W. Grady affords a fit occasion for saying that oratory is not one of “the lost arts.” A great deal is said from time to time about the decadence of oratory as caused by the competition of the press. We are told that public address is held in slight esteem because the public prints are much more accessible and equally interesting. It is said that this operates in two ways, that the man who has something to say will always prefer to write rather than speak, because the printed page reaches tens of thousands, while the human voice can at most be heard by a few hundreds, and that not many people will take the trouble to attend a lecture when they can read discussions of the same subject by the lecturer himself, or others equally competent, without stirring from the evening lamp or exchanging slippers for boots. But there is a great deal of fallacy in such arguments. The press is the ally, not the supplanter of the platform. The functions of the two are so distinct that they cannot clash, yet so related that they are mutually helpful. Oratory is very much more than the vocal utterance, of fitting words. One of the ancients defined the three requisites of an orator as first, action; second, action; and third, action. If by action is meant all that accompanies speech, as gesture, emphasis, intonation, variety in time, and those subtle expressions that come through the flushing cheek and the gleaming eye, the enumeration was complete. Mr. Grady spoke with his lips not only, but with every form and feature of his bodily presence. Such oratory as his, and such as that of the man whose lecture on “The Lost Arts” proved that oratory is not one of them, will never be out of date while human nature remains what it is. There is, indeed, one class of public speakers whose occupation the press has nearly taken away. They are the “orators,” falsely so called, whose speech is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Cold type is fatal to their pretensions.