his form had not yet lost
All her original brightness; nor appeared
Less than archangel ruined, and the excess
Of glory obscured: as when the sun, new risen,
Looks thro' the horizontal misty air
Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon,
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs. Darken'd so, yet shone
Above them all the archangel.
An increased time of utterance must be secured through the prolongable vowels and consonants, rather than through pauses, though the latter must also be somewhat extended. Accelerated utterance must not impress as hurry.
The fifth chapter of the Book of Daniel, descriptive of Belshazzar's feast, affords good illustrations of the slighting of speech. ([Note 5.]) Take, for example, the first five verses (the parts which should be slighted are indicated by smaller type):
1. Belshazzar, the king, made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand.
2. Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, might drink therein.
3. Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the house of God which was at Jerusalem; and the king and his princes, his wives and his concubines, drank in them.
4. They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.
5. In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king's palace; and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.
The parts in smaller type have various degrees of subordinate value, which the nicely appreciative reader would indicate by his reading; but they all belong to the background of the description. Any of these parts, if brought fully into the foreground, would be given an undue importance, and would reduce somewhat the prominence and distinctness of the other parts.
In the first verse, 'the king,' should be read with an abatement of voice, being an understood appositive; 'to a thousand of his lords' ('thousand' being used for an indefinite large number), is sufficiently implied in 'gave a great feast,' and the voice should be reduced upon it, and should not descend upon 'lords,' as it is assumed that the feast was given to the chief men of the kingdom; 'and drank wine before the thousand:' the voice after descending upon 'wine,' should drift lightly over 'before the thousand.'