of the ground he traverses, but often labouring as much at the smallest obstacles as when he should gather himself together for some bold, decisive, and crowning effort. Again, the memoriter speaker generally rejoices in long poetical quotations and laboured combinations of words, the effect of which is particularly unfortunate, being sufficient of itself to keep up the feeling in the hearer that he is merely listening to a formal recitation. If the speaker is not aware of his faults, they are liable to become habitual; so that even when he is really speaking on the impulse of the moment he will fall into the same style, and thus lose the effect generally incidental to extempore speaking. One difficulty attending memoriter speaking is, that the attention is likely to be concentrated upon words and periods rather than upon the whole subject, so that often on coming to the end of a sentence the speaker will have lost the thread of his argument, and there will be a total blank presented to his mind. He will be much in the same position as that often indicated in conversation by the familiar exclamation: "What in the world was I talking about!" This difficulty must be met either by copious notes, or, better still, by the power of " extemporising," which, enabling him to enlarge for a few moments on the last idea which he has put forward, will give him time for thought, and infallibly recal to his mind the lost thread of his argument. Under these circumstances, the great thing will be for a man, having anticipated the probability of such an occurrence, to retain perfect self-possession, and not to let his audience perceive that he is at a loss; inasmuch as if he once makes his hearers nervous, their nervousness will infallibly react upon himself, and thus increase his difficulty tenfold. The best way, however, to avoid falling into such a dilemma at all will be for the speaker to abandon himself to his subject, and to make even his memoriter speaking, in some sort, a spontaneous effort ;* if what he has previously written and studied has been expressed in simple and natural language, it will then be difficult for him to help reproducing it in nearly the same terms. Not so, however, if he has indulged in mere rhetorical ornament or loose unconnected argument; in this case the effort must necessarily be a purely mechanical one, and proportionally difficult and hazardous. By thus, in a measure, combining the two methods of speaking, an orator will ultimately gain * The great difficulty of speaking when actually tied down to a particular form of words is shown by the fact of many extempore preachers, and even those who have the power of memoriter speaking, being quite unable to repeat any of the Collects or Prayers in the Church Service, or, at times, even the Lord's Prayer, without a book before them. The fear of repeating the words incorrectly does in reality prevent them thoroughly feeling what they say, and prevents them uttering those words which would flow spontaneously under other cir cumstances. the ease and freedom of a natural delivery, and the power, order, and connection of a written discourse. He will be able to judge, within a very few minutes, of the time that his subject will occupy him; and should he be led to enlarge upon any particular portions of his argument, he will proportionately condense that which is to follow. He will handle his subject as a master; he will travel on as upon a road he is familiar with, and his own manifest assurance will not fail to have its influence upon his hearers, and lead them, in the end, to trust implicitly to his guidance. That the sort of mental brick-making without straw, which so many persons understand by extempore speaking, is a process almost unknown to the world's best orators we have abundant proof. The following notes of a Lecture by the late Mr. Robertson of Brighton, published after his death, will give a good idea of the minimum of preparation which will enable most men to express themselves as they would wish on any public occasion. Those who may have known Mr. Robertson's singular force and felicity of expression, his concentration, and even condensation of ideas, and the power which he invariably exercised on the minds of his hearers, will regard the authority of his ex ample in this matter as second to none in modern times. “I am here to-night through the invitation of your kind friends, with no right but that of unfeigned interest in every institution like yours. "The subject I had proposed was the Progress of Society. I changed it for that of the Working Classes. But even this is too full of pretension. Nevertheless, the mere fact of my standing here to-night is full of significance. More so than railways or electric telegraphs. That so many of the Working Classes should come here after a hard day's work is very significant. It proves the growing victory of the spirit over the animal: that the lower life of toil and animal indulgence is getting to be reckoned as not the all of man. It shows, too, that the Working Classes are becoming conscious of their own destinies, &c. &c." The notes for the whole Lecture are as full and accurate as the above, and show how thoroughly his subject, even for a village Lecture, was thought out and arranged. CHAPTER X. "Where I have come, great clerks have purposed SHAKESPEARE, Midsummer Night's Dream. HERE is," says Mr. Addison, "a sort of elegant distress to which ingenuous minds are the most liable, and which may, therefore, deserve some remarks. Many a brave fellow who has put his enemy to flight in the field has been in the utmost disorder upon making a speech before a body of his friends at home. One would think there was some kind of fascination in the eyes of a large circle of people when darting altogether upon one person. |