You see, Sir, I pass over these chapters on the qualities of Eloquence, though they make so large a part of your Dissertation, very rapidly: and I do it, not to escape from any force I apprehend there to be in your argument or observations, but because I am persuaded that every man, who knows what language is, and how it is formed, is so convinced that those qualities of it by which it comes to be denominated pure, and elegant, and interesting, are the effects of custom, fashion, and association, that he would not thank me for employing many words on so plain a point. Only, as you conclude this part of your work with an appeal, which you think sufficiently warranted, against the most positive decisions of fashion, custom, or prejudice, to certain general and established principles of rational criticism, subversive, as you think, of the Bishop’s whole theory, I shall be bold to tell you, as I just now promised, what my opinion is, of these established rules of RATIONAL CRITICISM: by which you will understand how little I conceive the Bishop’s system to be affected by this confident appeal to such principles.
I hold then, that what you solemnly call the established principles of rational criticism are only such principles as criticism hath seen good to establish on the practice of the Greek and Roman speakers and writers; the European eloquence being ultimately the mere product and result of such practice; and European criticism being no further rational than as it accords to it. This is the way, in which ancient and modern critics have gone to work in forming their systems: and their systems deserve to be called rational, because they deliver such rules as experience has found most conducive to attain the ends of eloquence in these parts of the world. Had you attended to this obvious consideration, it is impossible you should have alarmed yourself so much, as you seem to have done, at the Bishop’s bold Paradox, as if it threatened the downfall of Eloquence itself: which, you now see, stands exactly as it did, and is just as secure in all its established rights and privileges on the Bishop’s system of there being no Archetype of Eloquence in nature, as upon your’s, that there is one. The rules of criticism are just the same on either supposition, and will continue the same so long as we take the Greek and Roman writers for our masters and models; nay, so long as the influence of their authority, now confirmed and strengthened by the practice of ages, and struck deep into the European notions and manners, shall subsist.
You need, therefore, be in no pain for the interests of Eloquence, which are so dear to you; nor for the dignity of your Rhetorical office in the University of Dublin; which is surely of importance enough, if you teach your young hearers how to become eloquent in that scene where their employment of it is likely to fall; without pretending to engage them in certain chimerical projects how they may attain an essential universal eloquence, or such as will pass for eloquence in all ages and countries of the world.
You see, Sir, if this opinion of mine be a truth, that it overturns at once the whole structure of your book. We, no doubt, who have been lectured in Greek and Roman eloquence, think it preferable to any other; and we think so, because it conforms to certain rules which our criticism has established, without considering that those rules are only established on the successful practice of European writers and speakers, and are therefore no rules at all in such times and places where a different, perhaps a contrary, practice is followed with the same success. Let a Spartan, an Asiatic, an African, a Chinese system of rhetoric be given: Each of these shall differ from other, yet each shall be best and most rational, as relative to the people for whom it is formed. Nay, to see how groundless all your fancies of a rational essential eloquence are, do but reflect that even the European eloquence, though founded on the same general principles, is yet different in different places in many respects. I could tell you of a country, and that at no great distance, where that which is thought supremely elegant passes in another country, not less conversant in the established principles of rational criticism, for FINICAL; while what, in this country, is accepted under the idea of sublimity, is derided, in that other, as no better than BOMBAST.
What follows, now, from this appeal to experience, against your appeal to the established rules of criticism? Plainly this: That all the rhetors of antiquity put together are no authority against what the Bishop of Gloucester asserts concerning the nature of eloquence; since THEY only tell us (and we will take their word for it) what will please or affect under certain circumstances, while the Bishop only questions whether the same rules, under ALL circumstances, will enable a writer or speaker to please and affect. Strange! that you should not see the inconsequence of your own reasoning. The Bishop says, The rules of eloquence are for the most part, local and arbitrary: No, you say, The rules are not local and arbitrary, FOR they were held reasonable ones at Athens and Rome. Your very answer shews that they were local and arbitrary. You see, then, why I make so slight on this occasion of all your multiplied citations from the ancient writers, which, how respectable soever, are no decisive authority, indeed no authority at all, in the present case.
Hitherto, the Bishop had been considering eloquence ONLY SO FAR as it is founded in arbitrary principles and local prejudices. For, though his expression had been general, he knew very well that his thesis admitted some limitation; having directly affirmed of the various modes of eloquence, not that they were altogether and in all respects, but MOSTLY, fantastical (p. 67), which, though you are pleased to charge it upon him as an inconsistency[152], the reader sees is only a necessary qualification of his general thesis, such as might be expected in so exact a writer as the learned Bishop. He now then attends to this limitation, and considers what effect it would have on his main theory.
‘It will be said, Are there not some more substantial principles of eloquence, common to all the various species that have obtained in the world?—Without doubt, there are.—Why then should not these have been employed, to do credit to the Apostolic inspiration? For good reasons: respecting both the speaker and the hearers. For, what is eloquence but a persuasive turn given to the elocution to supply that inward, that conscious persuasion of the speaker, so necessary to gain a fair hearing? But the first preachers of the Gospel did not need a succedaneum to that inward conscious persuasion. And what is the end of eloquence, even when it extends no further than to those more general principles, but to stifle reason and inflame the passions? But the propagation of Christian truths indispensably requires the aid of reason, and requires no other human aid[153].’
Here, again, you are quite scandalized at the Bishop’s paradoxical assertions concerning the nature and end of eloquence; and you differ as widely from him now he argues on the supposition of there being some more substantial principles of eloquence, as you did before, when he contended that most of those we call principles were arbitrary and capricious things. You even go so far as to insult him with a string of questions, addressed ad hominem: for, having quoted some passages from his book, truly eloquent and rhetorical, you think you have him at advantage, and can now confute him out of his own mouth.
“Can any thing,” you ask, “be more brilliant, more enlivened, more truly rhetorical, than these passages? What then are we to think of the writer and his intentions? Is he really sincere in his reasoning? or are these eloquent forms of speech so many marks of falshood? Were they assumed as a succedaneum to conscious persuasion? And is the end and design of them to stifle reason and inflame the passions[154]?”
To blunt the edge of these sharp and pressing interrogatories, give me leave to observe that the main question agitated by the Bishop is, whether divine inspiration can be reasonably expected to extend so far as to infuse a perfect model of eloquence, and to over-rule the inspired Apostles in such sort, as that all they write or speak should be according to the rules of the most consummate rhetoric. He resolves this question in the negative: first, by shewing that there is no such thing as what would be deemed a perfect model of eloquence subsisting in nature; a great part of what is called eloquence in all nations being arbitrary and chimerical; and, secondly, by shewing that even those principles, which may be justly thought more substantial, were, for certain reasons, not deserving the solicitous and over-ruling care of a divine inspirer. His reasons are these: First, that eloquence, when most genuine, is but a persuasive turn given to the elocution to supply that inward, that conscious persuasion of the speaker, so necessary to gain a fair hearing, and which the first preachers of the Gospel had already, by the influence and impression of the holy Spirit upon their minds: And, next, that the end of eloquence, even when it extends no further than to those more general principles, is but to stifle reason and inflame the passions; an end of a suspicious sort, and which the propagation of Christian truths, the proper business of the sacred writers or speakers, did not require.