EDITOR'S PREFACE

HE primary object of this book is to bring within reach of public speakers and students, all that is essential in what Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, Fénelon, Blair, Whately, and other great authorities, ancient and modern, have written on the subject of oratory as an art-the art of telling the truth in such a way as to give it its greatest possible influence.

The distinction between oratory and rhetoric has not been clearly made even in modern times; and by classical writers it is not made at all. A great part of the works of Quintilian and much of the treatises of Aristotle and Cicero are devoted to etymology, prosody, and questions of philology that are now treated separately either in the Grammar, Rhetoric, and Prose Composition of the common schools, or in such learned works as those of Grimm and Bopp. While the views of classical authorities on such questions are valuable for the purposes of philologists and antiquarians, they are out of place in a book devoted strictly to public speaking as an art. In editing the classical authorities and in selecting from the treatises of such moderns as Blair and Whately, nothing has been retained unless it bore directly on public speaking either at the bar, in the pulpit, on the lecture platform, or in public life. To a extent great authorities have been allowed to repeat each other, so that from Aristotle to Henry Ward Beecher, the student may have the of the greatest writers on oratory as they attempt to define what oratory great.

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these studies of oratory as an art has been added a department of On the great orators by such writers as Macaulay, Cormenin, Harsha, Matthews, Headley, and Jebb, while Longinus, Edmund Burke, John Locke,

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Lord Kames, Beattie, and others of like authority, discuss the use

of words as vehicles of power, beauty, and sublimity.

The oratory of the pulpit is so intimately connected in its principles with that of the forum and senate, that what is said of one illustrates all; but special chapters on pulpit eloquence are included from Fénelon, Isaac

Watts, Hugh Blair, George Campbell, Archbishop Maury, Dr. Matthews, and Henry Ward Beecher. Elocution and Delivery are treated in chapters from Cicero, Quintilian, Fénelon, Lord Chesterfield, Dr. William Enfield, John Quincy Adams, Richard Whately, and Epes Sargent - who summarizes Rush and other important writers on the artistic control of the voice in speaking. While the importance of this branch of the subject has been given due weight, it has not been allowed to distract attention from the central fact of oratory,- that success depends on the strength of a governing idea firmly grasped and coherently expressed. It is in the art of coherent expression throughout the whole of a speech, composed of clearly defined parts, each supporting and strengthening the other, from exordium to peroration, that the classical orators excel the moderns. As has been already suggested, the chief object of this Handbook is to make the great authorities in the art of doing this available and intelligible to all who believe that in public speaking, as in everything else, what is worth doing at all is worth doing as well as possible. It remains only to be added that the classical oration is not divided by its parts, but rather united by them into a harmonious, consecutive, coherent whole. Assuredly Charles Dickens in writing the speech of Sergeant Buzfuz in "Bardell vs. Pickwick » had no idea of imitating Attic models, but in travestying great English lawyers, students of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, whom he had so often heard in doing his work as a reporter, he achieves a well-defined exordium, a masterly statement, and a highly artistic peroration. The most serious pulpit addresses composed as Aristotle, Quintilian, and Fénelon direct, will have the same ease of motion and the same appearance of wholeness which distinguishes this remarkable parody in which Dickens suggests the power of the British bar in making "the worse appear the better part."

It is equally true that such orations and addresses from the poets, as Antony at Cæsar's Funeral, Belial and Moloch to the Council of War of the Fallen Angels, and Satan's Address to the Sun in « Paradise Lost," illustrate the classical rules of oratory and are models of what a prose oration should be in its unities. Hence the Handbook includes a department of imaginary addresses and soliloquies, giving speeches and soliloquies from the poets from the time of Homer. To complete the work as a Handbook and reference book, there have been added departments of celebrated passages from great orators ancient and modern and from poets oftenest quoted in public speaking. The "Celebrated Passages from the Best Orations" begin with Pericles (born 495 B. C.) and end with the year of publication. They illustrate the three great periods, Classical, Medieval, and

Modern, and they include the oratory of the pulpit as well as that of the bar and of public life.

The Chronological arrangement has been adopted for the authorities on oratory (from Aristotle to Jebb, 384 B. C. to 1900 A. D.), and it is believed that the work includes all that the modern student can need of the great classical masters—especially as the direct translations from the great classics have been reinforced by the complete text of the analysis and summary of Aristotle's "Rhetoric» made by the celebrated Thomas Hobbes.

The number and variety of the "Celebrated Passages from the Best Orations Ancient and Modern» has necessitated the alphabetical arrangement by authors, and it is hoped that the care taken in making the selections will justify the attempt to bring the most striking thoughts of the great orators ancient, mediæval, and modern within reach of the student.

It is believed that the Handbook, attempting as it does what has not been attempted before thus extensively and systematically, will be useful not only as a table book for professional men, but a text-book for students. Care has been taken to make it authoritative. The translations are from accepted and standard authorities and the dates have been tested by the British Encyclopædia and the Century Dictionary of Names. A reference to the Tables of Contents will complement what is said here of the purposes and scope of the work and will suggest much that remains unsaid. Indeed, it is believed that in these tables the Handbook will find its best introduction and a sufficient explanation of its reason for existence.