Burke uses connectives with more skill, perhaps, than any other author in the English language. This is an art of which he was master. There is not space to give quotations illustrating this, but any one who studies his works cannot fail to observe it.
Webster, although he was not so skilful in the use of connectives as Burke, used them well, as the following extract from his speech in Faneuil Hall will show: “Do they find, and
do they admit, and do they feel, that money is scarce and dear?——And how in my judgment, further, so long as this sub-treasury lasts, so long as the tariff of 1846 continues, this state of accumulation by the rich, of distress of the industrious, and of the aggravated poverty of the poor, will go on from degree to degree, to an end which I shall not attempt to calculate.”—Webster is especially fond of beginning his sentences with ‘and.’ Burke and Webster do not use figures of speech to excess, and they use them very advantageously. Burke, in making comparisons, employs the Antithesis effectively. Thus: “Compare the two. This I offer to give is plain and simple, the other full of perplexed and intricate mazes. This is mild, that is harsh. This is found by experience effectual for its purpose, the other is a new project. This is universal, the other calculated for certain colonies only. This is immediate in its conciliatory operations, the other remote, contingent, full of hazard.” Burke at times uses the Climax also. The chief difference between Burke and Webster, as regards the use of figures, is that the former generally employs the strongest Metaphors, while the latter uses Similes more frequently. Note this as a sample of Webster’s style: “We shall see Carolina looming up like one of the Southern Constellations.” Burke, in his speech on
Conciliation with America, argues by means of strong historical illustrations. Webster, on the other hand, often reasons by means of interrogations, and then by appealing strongly to the feelings of his audience. It is said that a dash may be eloquent. This is well illustrated in Webster’s speech in Faneuil Hall.
On the whole, we may say that Mr. Webster was a strong, forcible speaker and writer. His style is smooth and flowing. His arguments are powerful and convincing. The great peculiarity of Burke’s style is that every sentence “grows in the very act of unfolding it.”
H. S.
ORIENTAL AND OCCIDENTAL CHARACTER.
Whether the Roman idea, that climate affects character be true or not, the Orientals exhibit a character very unlike that of the Occidentals. With the one, impulse is the ruling power, and all others are subordinate to it; with the other, reason interposes to check the uprising passions, and to guard against the extremes of thought or deed. No Western writer would ever have thought of devising the inhuman course pursued by Schahriar, king of Persia, to maintain the honor of his harem, and perhaps no maiden of this hemisphere would have subjected herself to such imminent danger as did the beautiful and accomplished Scheherazade to deliver her sex from
the cruel revenge of a blood-thirsty prince. Both were acting from impulse rather than from reason, and in this at least they conformed to the general character of the Orientals. Capable of the most passionate love yet extremely revengeful, the Oriental is the kindest friend yet the bitterest enemy, the most extravagant in grief yet the most relentless in those things which produce it in others. Such a medley of contradictions and seeming paradoxes are interwoven in Eastern character, making it one of the greatest extremes.
Again, the Orientals are more mythical than the Occidentals. They have chimerical ideas of life. Their minds are shadowy and fanciful in their tendency. There is the home of the genii, the ghouls, and the houri. Their literature is burdened with mythical legends, which show that their minds, the foundation of all character, drift toward the fanciful and unreal. In the literary lore of the West, we find no such fabulous stories as that of Aladdin and his “wonderful lamp,” or of a Samandal, reigning over the empire of the ocean. Where else but in the literature of the Orientals could we hope to find the origin of such a story as the history of Beder presents? The most exciting incidents of fiction contained in Western authors appear tame in comparison.