Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 68, No 422, December 1850. Various
single, and leaves not anything to do. All is at each instant moving forward, regardless of every obstacle. The mighty flood of speech rolls on in a channel ever full, but which never overflows. Whether it rushes in a torrent of allusion, or moves along in a majestic exposition of enlarged principles, descends hoarse and headlong in overwhelming invective, or glides melodious in narrative and description, or spreads itself out shining in illustrations, its course is ever onward and ever entire; never scattered, never stagnant, never sluggish. At each point manifest progress has been made, and with all that art can do to charm, strike, and please. No sacrifice, even the smallest, is ever made to effect; nor can the hearer ever stop for an instant to contemplate or admire, or throw away a thought upon the great artist, till all is over, and the pause gives time to recover his breath."22
It is the more remarkable that this great and decisive superiority on the part of ancient oratory should exist, when it is recollected that the information, sphere of ideas, and imagery at the command of public speakers, in modern times, is so widely extended in comparison of what it was in Greece and Rome. As much as the wide circuit of the globe exceeds the limited shores of the Mediterranean Sea, do the knowledge and ideas which the modern orator may make use of outstrip those which were at the disposal of the brightest genius in antiquity. Science has, since the fall of Rome, been infinitely extended, and furnished a great variety of images and allusions – many of them of the most elevated kind – which at once convey a clear idea to any educated audience, and awaken in their minds associations or recollections of a pleasing or ennobling description. The vast additions made to geographical and physical knowledge have rendered the wide surface of the globe, and the boundless wonders of the heavens, the theme alike for the strains of the poet, the meditations of the philosopher, and the eloquence of the orator. Modern poetry has added its treasures to those which antiquity had bequeathed to us, as if to augment the chords which eloquence can touch in the human heart. Chivalry has furnished a host of images, ideas, and associations wholly unknown to ancient times; but which, however at times fantastic or high-flown, are all of an ennobling character, because they tend to elevate humanity above itself, and combat the selfish by the very excess of the generous affections. History has immensely extended the sphere of known events, and not only studded the annals of mankind with the brightest instances of heroism or virtue, but afforded precedents applicable to almost every change that can occur in the varied circumstances of human transaction. Above all, Religion has opened a new fountain in the human heart, and implanted in every bosom, with the exception only of those utterly depraved, associations and recollections at once of the most purifying and moving kind. The awful imagery and touching incidents of the Old Testament, exceeding those in the Iliad itself in sublimity and pathos; the pure ideas and universal charity of the New, as much above the utmost efforts of unassisted humanity, have given the orator, in modern times, a store of images and associations which, of all others, are the most powerful in moving the human heart. If one-half of this magazine of ideas and knowledge had been at the disposal of the orators of antiquity, they would have exceeded those of modern Europe as much in the substance and magnificence of their thoughts, as they already do in the felicity and force of their expression.
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