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it is better that he should restrain himself until the audience begin to kindle, and then they will expect him to do the same.

The orator's display of his own feelings is a chief instrument of infecting others; but his appearing to restrain himself will often make the hearers burst out all the sooner.

(2.) There are allied groups of feelings, and also oppositions among them. Thus Sympathy, Affection, and Fine Art Emotion, conspire to produce a favorable sentiment. They are opposed by the Egotistic class, by the different forms of Anger, and by Ridicule, these making a kindred group among themselves. There is also an opposition between Anger and Fear, rendering them mutually incompatible.

(3.) The orator will occasionally seek to divert the feelings of the audience already roused. Intense emotion demands its appropriate vent; indignation once excited requires a victim, and the only way of rescuing one is to provide another. A burst of ridicule is met by returning it.

(4.) There is understood to be in every attempt at persua sion a groundwork of argument, or of the appearance of argument, whereon to rest the appeals to the passions.

117. The DEMEANOR of the Speaker includes certain points affecting an orator's success.

By the demeanor of the speaker, are signified his tone and manner in general, and, in particular, his choice between the opposite methods of conciliation and vituperation, humility and assumption.

Conciliation is necessary in facing a strong opposition; but the force of a conciliatory manner is much enhanced by the known power of the speaker to denounce with severity.

So with regard to humility and deference, as opposed to assumption. There are times when an orator can with safety assume the oracular and the self-confident tone, as was so often done by Chatham and by the younger Pitt. It is by means of a more humble address, however, that a speaker contends against difficulties, and rises to a position enabling him to dispense with humility of demeanor.

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Persuasive address, when called Eloquence, usually supposes a certain energetic delivery and elevation of manner, which distinguish oratory from common speech. The language and the thoughts of the speaker are more intense, and the hearer is roused to the like impassioned pitch. Men's ordinary motives are increased in power, and their determinations are such as would not be arrived at in cool blood. In this impassioned mode of address, the language becomes strongly rhythmical, approaching to poetry; and is accompanied by the music of the voice and the arts of Elocution.

CHAPTER V.

POETRY.

118. POETRY has been already often referred to.

Most of the Figures of Speech have a poetical bearing. The Arrangement and the Number of Words are regulated in part by the aims of poetry. Of the Qualities of Style, Strength, Feeling, the Ludicrous, Harmony, are unconnected with the conveyance of instruction to the understanding; and, when combined with Exposition, are an avowedly extraneous interest. Oratory likewise avails itself of the poetic charms.

119. Poetry is a Fine Art, operating by means of thought conveyed in language.

Poetry agrees generically with painting, sculpture, architecture, and music; and its specific mark is derived from the instrumentality employed. Painting is based on color, sculpture on form, music on a peculiar class of sounds, elocution on the vocal enunciation of articulate speech, and poetry on the meaning and form of language.

The definition now given supposes an understanding of Fine Art in general, or, as it is sometimes called, the Beautiful in its widest acceptation.

The feelings of the Beautiful, or the Fine Art emotions, are included among our pleasures, and the objects causing them differ from other agreeable things in the following points :

(1.) Their primary and immediate intention is Pleasure; and they are contrasted with intermediate ends, as life, health, money, or worldly rank.

(2.) Works of Art are sources of pure or unmixed pleasure; that is, they are kept free from whatever would offend any of our sensibilities. They have thus a certain superiority over our sensual enjoyments. Refinement consists in removing painful adjuncts from our various sources of delight.

(3.) A work of Art, unlike the things that perish in giving delight to one individual, admits the participation of a multitude. A picture, a poem, or a fine building, can be enjoyed by successive generations of men It is chiefly what appeals to one or other of the higher senses-sight and hearing-that complies with this demand. Objects of gustatory sensibility are consumed by the single user; odors affect a greater number, but are still limited; things that gratify the feelings of touch and muscularity-a bed or a chair-are monopolized for the time. It is the ennobling function of Art to draw human beings together in mutual sympathy and common enjoyment, instead of holding out occasions of strife and apples of discord.

To Art we should thus oppose the Useful, as embodied in objects of common industry,-food, clothing, houses, articles of convenience, public security, &c. We should likewise oppose science, or the pursuit of Truth, which is not generally an end in itself, and whose study to the mass of men is more laborious than pleasurable. The Ethical, or the Good, is also contrasted with the Artistic, since duty is not necessarily pleasure, and often the reverse. It must be noted, however, that the Useful, the True, and the Good, are all capable of occasionally lending themselves to Art. The objects of the inferior senses, when set forth in idea, are exalted into the class of the diffusible and the free. The fragrant bosom of Andromachê and Aphroditê finds a place in Homer's poetry. Truth, when not painfully laborious, possesses the requisites of artistic interest. The Good, or

TYPICAL FORM OF POETRY.

259

Duty, as a spectacle, or an ideal, is highly aesthetic. The existence of didactic poetry from the earliest times (Hesiod— Works and Days; Virgil-Georgics, &c.), is a proof that it is possible to ground poetry on utility, and invest common occupations with artistic interest. All that is said about the poet as a teacher has sprung from the frequent poetic treatment of communicated knowledge, and still more of duty.

120. There are certain subjects and a certain form that are typical of Poetry. Many (so-called) poems depart from the type.

The elements characteristic of poetry will appear as we proceed. We may here indicate, as examples approaching to purity, the Elegy of Gray, the Faerie Queen, the plays and poems of Shakespeare, the Homeric poetry, the Æneid.

These may be contrasted with the various mixed kinds: namely, Didactic poems, as the Ars Poetica, the Georgics, the Essay on Criticism; Moral poems, as the Night Thoughts, and the poetry of Cowper; Philosophical or Scientific poems, as the work of Lucretius, Pope's Essay on Man, Darwin's Zoonomia; Satirical poems, as the Satires of Juvenal, and the Dunciad.

The feelings awakened by the typical form of poetry are the pleasures characteristic of Fine Art; we express them by the names-charm, fascination, delight; they incline to pure feeling, or to the passive susceptibilities of our nature. The "Lotos-eaters" of Tennyson, the "Endymion" and "Nightingale " of Keats, the "Cloud" of Shelley, are extreme instances. perfect example is seen in the lines

"How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music

Creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night

Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Sit, Jessica look how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;

There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest,

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim."

When a poem kindles enthusiasm, fire, high and noble as

pirations, it has touched the springs of action and become eloquence. Much of Lyric poetry works in this manner. The quality of strength, or the sublime, which confers the elation of superior might, being akin to activity, always verges on persuasion. The greatest compositions are, not the pure poems, but those that, without submerging artistic beauty, can both exercise the intellectual powers and stimulate the active dispositions of the mind.

121. In explaining the Qualities of Strength, Feeling, Humor, and Melody, we anticipated the leading constituents of Poetry. A fuller handling is now desirable.

I. Poetry, in the first place, selects materials from external nature; the selection being governed by æsthetic feeling.

Whatever intrinsically delights the eye, or the ear, is admitted into Fine Art. Pleasing colors, forms, and sounds, are beautiful. These, which are called the sensuous properties of the world, are the foundation and material of all the Fine Arts.

It must be laid down, in opposition to Alison, that certain effects of sight and hearing are originally and intrinsically agreeable. The effulgence of the noon-day, the colors of sunset, the varied hues of vegetation, the pellucid brook, the lustre of the pearl, the youthful countenance,-operate upon the primitive sensibility of the eye, causing a sensation of delight. Rounded forms are pleasing in themselves. So, there are sounds intrinsically sweet, that is, pleasurable. The painter, having color and form for his material, appeals to the immediate sense. The poet can only suggest them to the mind by the force of descriptive art; his direct instrument is language.

The circumstance that language is best adapted to express action, succession, or events, still farther limits the poetic selection and treatment of subjects. A vast and variegated scene, in unbroken stillness, is suited to the painter, but not to the poet. Such objects as, from their simplicity or familiarity, are in themselves easily conceived, when put in action or undergoing changes also easily conceivable, are the proper material of

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