From hundreds of living extemporizers we will call attention to but three, and these of the highest eminence. They are all distinguished writers and do not rely on the extempore method of discourse because of inability to succeed in other methods. These men are Henry Ward Beecher, Charles H. Spurgeon, and William E. Gladstone. The amount and quality of work of all kinds they have accomplished would have been impossible for speech-readers or reciters. Beecher sometimes reads a sermon or a lecture, but though he reads well, the effect is small as compared with the fire and consummate eloquence of his extempore addresses. Spurgeon has drawn together and maintains probably the largest congregation that ever regularly attended the ministry of one man, and he is purely extemporaneous. Both these men are subjected to the additional test of having their sermons written from their lips and widely published, thus showing that their popularity has other elements besides the personal presence and magnetism of the speakers.
The wonderful power of Gladstone has been displayed unceasingly for half a century. While eager critics, hostile as well as friendly, in Parliament or at the hustings, are waiting to catch every word from his lips, he does not find it necessary to control his utterances through the use of the pen. Day after day, in the midst of heated canvasses, he discusses a wide range of complicated questions, and neither friend nor foe ever suggests that he could do better if his words were written out and memorized. Even in such addresses as include the details of finance and abound in statistics he uses but a few disconnected figures traced on a slip of paper. Some years ago, when his modes of speech were less known than now, the writer asked him to give a statement of his method of preparation, and any advice he might feel disposed to convey to young students of oratory. The following courteous and deeply interesting letter was received in reply, and with its weighty words we may appropriately close this chapter:
Hawarden, North Wales, }
October 12th, 1867.}
Sir:—Though I fear it is beyond my power to comply in any useful manner with your request, I am unwilling to seem insensible to your wishes.
I venture to remark, first, that your countrymen, so far as a very limited intercourse and experience can enable me to judge, stand very little in need of instruction or advice as to public speaking from this side of the water. And further, again speaking of my own experience, I think that the public men of England are beyond all others engrossed by the multitude of cares and subjects of thought belonging to the government of a highly diversified empire, and therefore are probably less than others qualified either to impart to others the best methods of preparing public discourses or to consider and adopt them for themselves.
Suppose, however, I was to make the attempt, I should certainly found myself mainly on a double basis, compounded as follows: First, of a wide and thorough general education, which I think gives a suppleness and readiness as well as firmness of tissue to the mind not easily to be had without this form of discipline. Second, of the habit of constant and searching reflection on the subject of any proposed discourse. Such reflection will naturally clothe itself in words, and of the phrases it supplies many will spontaneously rise to the lips. I will not say that no other forms of preparation can be useful, but I know little of them, and it is on those, beyond all doubt, that I should advise the young principally to rely.
I remain, sir, your most obedient servant,
W. E. Gladstone.