Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

The orator must know how so to utter his thought that it will stay. The poet and the orator have this in common. Each must so express and clothe his thought that it shall penetrate and take possession of the soul, and, having penetrated, must abide and stay. How this is done, who can tell? Carlyle defines poetry as a "sort of lilt." Cicero finds the secret of eloquence in a

Lepos quidem celeritasque et brevitas.

One writer lately dead, who has a masterly gift of noble and stirring eloquence, finds it in "a certain collocation of consonants." Why it is that a change of a single word, or even of a single syllable, for any other which is an absolute synonym in sense, would ruin the best line in Lycidas, or injure terribly the noblest sentence of Webster, nobody knows. Curtis asks how Wendell Phillips did it, and answers his own question by asking you how Mozart did it.

When I say that I am not sure that this is not the single gift most to be coveted by man, I may seem to have left out the moral quality in my conception of what is excellent. But such is the nature of man that the loftiest moral emotions are still the overmastering emotions. The orator that does not persuade men that righteousness is on his side will seldom persuade them to think or act as he desires; and if he fail in that he fails in his object; and the orator who has not in fact righteousness on his side will in general fail so to persuade them. And even if in rare cases he do persuade his audience, he does not gain a permanent place in literature. Bolingbroke's speeches, though so enthusiastically praised by the best judges, have perished by their own worthlessness.

Although the danger of the Republic, and his own, still occupied his thoughts, Cicero found time in his old age to record, at the request of his brother Quintus, his opinion, de omni ratione dicendi. It is not likely that the treatise "de Oratore" or that "de Claris Oratoribus" will ever be matched by any other writer on this fascinating subject, except the brief and masterly fragment of Tacitus.

He begins by inquiring why it is that, when so many persons strive to attain the gift of eloquence, and its rewards of fame and wealth and power are so great, the number of those who succeed as orators is so small in comparison with the number of those who become great generals, or statesmen, or poets. I suppose this fact, which excited the wonder of Cicero, exists in our country and our time. There is a foreign country which is to us as a posterity. If we reckon those Americans only as great orators who are accepted in England as such, or who, belonging to past generations are so accepted now by their own countrymen, the number is very small. A few sentences of Patrick Henry are preserved, as a few sentences of Lord Chatham are preserved. The great thoughts of Webster justify, in the estimation of the reader, the fame he enjoyed with his own generation. The readers of Fisher Ames—alas, too few—can well comprehend the spell which persuaded an angry and reluctant majority to save the treaty to which the nation had pledged its faith, and, perhaps, the life of the nation itself. With these exceptions, the number of American orators who will live in history as orators can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

I have never supposed myself to possess this gift. The instruction which I had in my youth, especially that at Harvard, either in composition or elocution, was, I think, not only of no advantage, but a positive injury. Besides the absence of good training, I had an awkward manner, and a harsh voice. Until quite late in life I never learned to manage so that I could get through a long speech without serious irritation of the throat. But I have had good opportunity to hear the best public speaking of my time. I have heard in England, on a great field day in the House of Commons, Palmerston, Lord John Russell, and John Bright, and, later, Disraeli, Gladstone and Bernal Osborne. I have heard Spurgeon, and Bishop Wilberforce, and Dr. Guthrie in the pulpit.

At home I have heard a good many times Daniel Webster, Edward Everett, Rufus Choate, Robert C. Winthrop, John P. Hale, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, Richard H. Dana, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James G. Blaine, Lucius Q. C. Lamar, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, William M. Evarts, Benjamin F. Thomas, Pliny Merrick, Charles Devens, Nathaniel P. Banks, and, above all, Kossuth; and in the pulpit, James Walker, Edwards A. Park, Mark Hopkins, Edward Everett Hale, George Putnam, Starr King, and Henry W. Bellows. So, perhaps, my experience and observation, too late for my own advantage, may be worth something to my younger readers.

I am not familiar with the books which have been lately published which give directions for public speaking. So I dare say that what I have to advise is already well known to young men, and that all I can say has been said much better. But I will give the result of my own experience and observation.

In managing the voice, the speaker when he is engaged in earnest conversation, commonly and naturally falls into the best tone and manner for public speaking. Suppose you are sitting about a table with a dozen friends, and some subject is started in which you are deeply interested. You engage in an earnest and serious dialogue with one of them at the other end of the table. You are perfectly at ease, not caring in the least for your manner or tone of voice, but only for your thought. The tone you adopt then will ordinarily be the best tone for you in public speaking. You can, however, learn from teachers or friendly critics to avoid any harsh or disagreeable fashion of speech that you may have fallen into, and that may be habitual to you in private conversation.