LECTURE I.

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GENERAL VIEW OF RHETORIC AND ORATORY.

IN entering upon a course of lectures on subjects, which have not hitherto been treated, as separate branches of instruction at this place, and which must in some sort bear the characters of novelty, it will be proper to take a general view of the nature and extent of the field before us. Although, until this time, no specific and peculiar establishment, confined to rhetoric and oratory, has existed, yet the pupils of this seminary have not been destitute of instruction upon its most essential parts, under the direction of teachers in the kindred arts of grammar, or language in general, and of logic. As these departments of study still remain, and the institution, under which I appear, has been superadded to them, by embracing a part of their duties, a preliminary consideration

requires, that we should ascertain precisely what is the compass and extent of this art, and where are the lines, by which it is separated from the study of language in general, without which it cannot exist at all; and from the art of reasoning, without which that of oratory would be destitute of all solid foundation.

The subjects, upon which it is my province to discourse, are rhetoric and oratory; terms, which in ordinary language are often used, as synonymous in their meaning; but which are to be distinguished, as properly applying, the former to the theory, and the latter to the practice of the art. This distinction will become the more obvious from the consideration, that the terms are, even in common understanding, no longer convertible, when modified to designate the persons, professing them; and the difference between the rhetorician and the orator, is instantly perceived and distinctly conveyed, by the mere use of theserespective appellations. This distinction it will. be proper constantly to bear in mind. It is always useful to mark the difference, as well as the relation between the cause and its effect; and in the progress of our discussion we shall have frequent occasion separately and distinctly to exam

ine as well the principles of the rhetorician, as the performances of the orator.

The definitions of rhetoric, by the ancient writers upon the art, are so numerous and so various, not only in the selection of their terms, but in the ideas, which they embrace, that Quinctilian, after recapitulating and submitting to the test of critical examination a great number of them, declares, that every new author seemed possessed with the foolish ambition of discarding all definitions, before adopted by any other, and determined at all events to give one of his own. Among the many imperfect, redundant, and affected forms, which this rage for novelty of expression, and this studi ed indocility to the toils of preceding laborers, have occasioned, I shall present to your consideration only these of the three great masters, from whom every thing of real importance to the art has been derived, Aristotle, Cicero, and Quinctilian himself. Rhetoric, says Aristotle, is the power of inventing whatsoever is persuasive in discourse.

This is liable to two objections. First, as it includes only one part of the art, invention, omitting the essential requisites of disposition and elocution. And secondly, though persuasion be one

of the principal ends of rhetoric, it is not exclusively so. Of a very important and extensive class of discourses, styled by Aristotle himself, and by all the other ancient rhetoricians, demon, strative orations, persuasion is not even the principal end; and, even in the fields of deliberative and judicial eloquence, all the arts of rhetoric have often been employed without producing per

suasion.

This difficulty stands yet more conspicuously in the way of Cicero's definition, the art of persuasion; a definition, appearing indeed only in the rhetorical compilations of his youth, of which he himself afterwards entertained a very indifferent opinion. To say, that rhetoric is the art of persuasion, is to make success the only criterion of eloquence. Persuasion must in a great measure depend upon the will, the temper, and the disposition of the hearer. If the adder will turn away his ear, what persuasion is there in the voice of the charmer? Persuasion then is not the infallible test of the rhetorical art; neither is rhetoric exclusively in possession of persuasion. To enumerate all the instruments of persuasion, would be to give a catalogue of all the passions and motives,