When we proceed to inquire why bad habits of speaking prevail to such extent, we find that they cannot be attributed in all, nor in most cases, to any defect of voice or taste. Many of the worst speakers have voices of uncommon clearness, flexibility, and compass, and can readily detect any fault in the delivery of others. Their conversation is conducted in tones which are natural and pleasing. Request one of them to give you the substance of the sermon he has just delivered, and he will do it without any of that false emphasis, and uncouth modulation practised in the pulpit, and with the nicest discrimination of sense, and the most just and eloquent expression of feeling. But write down this very conversation and request him to read it, and the whole style of his delivery will be altered; his emphasis, cadence, tones, modulation, will be different, and his expression of countenance, and probably every manifestation of feeling, will disappear. Let him commit it to memory and deliver it publicly; and a new and inexpressive gesture will be substituted, with tones and emphasis, more animated perhaps than his reading tones, but if possible more uncouth. While this man has received from God all which is necessary to render him an eloquent speaker, he has insensibly formed habits fatal to a just elocution. These, instead of being overcome, are usually confirmed by the practice of public speaking. He reads his psalm with a singsong tone, and his weekly lesson from the scriptures with an alternate and gradual elevation of the voice till it reaches a certain pitch, and a gradual and alternate depression of it to the same cadence in every sentence. It is not difficult to understand how these habits were formed. The babe, when it begins to learn the use ofits organs, and makes its first articulate sounds, has already perceived the difference usually made between the tones of conversation and those of reading. Let it attempt to imitate the continuous language of conversation, and then give it a book, and let it attempt to imitate the voice in reading, and you will perceive that it already expresses, in its unmeaning sounds, the variety of the one and the monotony of the other. The same spirit of imitation has a similar influence when this child begins to read at the village school. "Among instructors of children scarcely one in fifty thinks of carrying his precepts beyond correctness in uttering words, and a mechanical attention to pauses. So that a child who speaks the words of a sentence distinctly and fluently, and "minds the stops,' as it is called, is without scruple, pronounced a good read er."* Be the composition the simplest and the most colloquial in its style, the child feels bound to read it in the artificial tones used by his instructors, parents, and companions. At a suitable age, this child, now a youth, is transferred to the academy. Here he first learns to declaim, and adopts the artificial tones prevalent in these institutions. These are carried to the college. Here they are modified perhaps by others equally artificial, and the student enters his professional studies with a burden of false habits in delivery, which cling to him through life. Especially is this the case in the clerical profession in which less opportunity is afforded, of changing habits of speaking than in the practice of the law. The history we have now given, we do not doubt will be found to be substantially that of almost every public speaker who is stiff and unnatural in his mode of delivery. He may at times have become sen *Analysis, p. 36. sible of his faults, and have endeavoured to free himself from their thraldom; but, discouraged at his unsuccessful attempt, he has relapsed into former habits; or, ignorant what is requisite to form correct habits, has blundered out of his old ones into others equally bad. He may, however, have escaped, and completed his professional studies a tolerably good speaker. He has now new duties to discharge. If he is a clergyman, amid the labour of his weekly preparation, he has little time for any attention to the mere delivery of his sermons. He comes before the public an inexperienced young man. ors. Others are sitting under his ministry in many respects fitted to be his instructOppressed with diffidence, he may fear a direct look at his audience, and, fastening his eyes on his notes, may hurry through his discourse with a precipitancy and labour fatal to rhetorical effect. Bashfulness may thus originate bad habits in a young speaker, which will remain through life. Since so many are labouring with an unnatural delivery, it is desirable that something should be done for their relief, as well as for the aid of those who are training up for public duties. The only sure safeguard is to be found in modes of education adapted to the formation of public speakers. But these cannot exist till "a race of teach ers shall arise, competent as living models, to regulate the tones of their pupils. These teachers are to be themselves formed." But how shall this be effected? It will answer no good purpose to tell those who are wishing to become public speakers, to speak often; their speaking confirms their ungracious tones and false empha sis. Our author discusses this point in the following words: We have seen that a man, with no defects of intellect or of sensibility, may have great faults in the management of his voice as a speaker. These perhaps he acquired in childhood, just as he learned to speak at all, or to speak English rather than French,-by imitation. His tones both of passion and articulation, are derived from an instinctive correspondence between the ear and voice. If he had been born deaf, he would have possessed neither. Now in what way shall he break up his bad habits, without so much attention to the analysis of speaking sounds, that he can in some good degree distinguish those which he would wish to adopt or avoid? How shall he correct a tone, while he cannot understand why it needs correction, because he chooses to remain ignorant of the only language in which the fault can possibly be described? Let him study and accustom himself to apply a few elementary principles, and then he may at least be able to understand what are the defects of his own intonations.-p. 38. The question as to voice, is, are there any settled principles in elocution? When a skilful teacher has read to his pupils a sentence for their imitation, is there any reason why he should have read it as he did!—or why he or they should read it again in the same manner? Can that reason be made intelligible? Doubtless it may, if it is founded on any stated law of delivery. The pupils then, need not rest in a servile imitation of their teacher's manner, but are entitled to ask why his emphasis, or inflection, or cadence was so, and not otherwise; and then they may be able to transfer the same principles to other cases. Then too, one skilful teacher, by means of such intelligible analysis, may assist other teachers, whose capacity is equal to his own, than his. pp. 39, 40. but whose experience has been less Such an analysis of speaking tones would enable those, who have a bad delivery, to detect their faults, and to fix upon the exact causes of them; and would suggest the remedy to be used, which, without such analysis, is a most difficult thing to prescribe. Obvious as these remarks are, the tones of a natural elocution have not been analyzed till within a few years. The plain reason of this is, the slight attention hitherto bestowed on the management of the voice. From the days of Quintillian to those of Sheridan, while much labour was employed on the matter of elo quence, the instrument of eloquence was strangely neglected. The regulation of the voice was aided by no rules founded on scientific grounds, but whoever wrote on the subject, quoted the precepts of Quintillian without bestowing a thought on the principles which govern a just and natural delivery. Hence though elocution has been constantly taught from the days of Pericles, its teachers have laboured in the dark, and attacked the hydra of false delivery at the great est disadvantage. When we inquire into the reason of this, we find that there is something intrinsically difficult in the analysis of speaking tones, because they are not permanent in their nature. Ever varying, the nicest perception, the most painful application, and the soundest judgment, are needed to ascertain their nature, and give them so far a form and name that their nice shades can be made perceptible. It is at the same time sufficiently obvious, that while natural science and intellectual philosophy have received much and close attention, there have been but few labourers in this department, and those but poorly qualified for their task. Little can be done in elocution as a science, till men of nice discrimination make it their serious study; nor can such men labour in this department with success, if they indulge in theorizing, or spend their time in manufacturing rules not founded on careful analysis of speaking tones. Sheridan was sensible of this necessity, and the result of his investigations is a valuable work which every one should read who would not be ignorant of the common sense principles of managing the voice, with which, some are unacquainted, who, so far as regards strength and closeness of thought, are our best preachers. But Sheridan himself was not satisfied with his own efforts to define those qualities of voice which were the subjects of his serious investigation. There was something in good delivery, which flitted like a shadow before every attempt he made to apprehend it. Walker has too generally enjoyed the credit of having first analyzed the tones of conversation, and of having pointed out the distinction between the rising and falling inflection. It was a musician named Steele, however, to whom we owe this distinction, in a work entitled, "Prosodia Rationalis," published a number of years previous to that of Walker. Another author stated the same distinction in "the Art of delivering written language," which was published somewhat earlier than Walker's Treatise. To Walker, however, we are indebted for the first attempt to establish practical rules for the adjustment of the inflections. The distinction, just alluded to, constitutes the principal difference between the tones of the voice in conversation and those expressed in music. In music each tone is prolonged on the same key, but in speaking, the tones consist of slides of the voice through several notes of the octave while the sound of a syllable is forming. These slides are either upward or downward, or are united on the same syllable or word. An important part of good elocution, consists in making these slides in the proper places, with sufficient and not excessive strength of voice, with distinctness, just modulation and gesture. The imitators of Walker have adopted his fundamental principle, and followed him more or less closely. Wright in England, Knowles and Ewing in Scotland, have imitated him without adding much that is valuable to his system, or freeing it to any great degree, of the obscurity exhibited in its development, or the fancifulness in its application. For though Walker has broached, in our apprehension, the true system of elocution, we rarely meet with a book so obscure as his treatise, or so burdened with absurd and impracticable rules. It defies the power of the strongest memory to retain all his distinctions; and some of them, could they be rendered familiar, would so mislead him who should endeavour to put them in practice, and so fetter and harrass him in the act of delivery, as greatly to pain his hearers, unless there were some native excellency in his speaking, to atone for the fanciful emphasis borrowed from Walker. The fact with Walker, seems to have been, that having discovered the few principles which give to elocution harmony and variety, he has thrust them forward as a doting parent does his child, into places where they do not belong. Perhaps we ought to qualify our remarks, lest they should be deemed too sweeping. Walker has failed chiefly in his rules for harmonic inflection. The inflections he has given for the sentence, consisting of a series of members, seem to us to be almost entirely artificial. The same may be said of his rules for reading poetry. Hence the slight success which has attended the application of his principles, and the undeserved contempt with which they are treated by those whose opinions on this subject would be worthy of regard, could we believe them to be the results of knowledge and deliberation. Much of this however must be charged upon the imitators of Walker, especially in our own country, who, with a few exceptions, have carried his principles to extremes, and rendered the whole system complicated and suspicious. We shall be forgiven for introducing these remarks on Walker, since they seem to be required in noticing a book which adopts his theory, and professes, though with much modesty, to correct and simplify his system. It should be a subject of rejoicing that one so well qualified as the Bartlett Professor at Andover has undertaken this task. It is well known that Walker's system has been the subject of his attentive examination, and that he has successfully exemplified in his own practice the benefit of an acquaintance with vocal inflections. His chapter on inflections is one of great value. It reduces to a small compass what in Walker is spread over many pages. It confines the application of the inflections to "the rhetorical principles of language where tones express sentiment." Dr. Porter's "Rules," besides being few in number, are perspicuous, and commend themselves to the common sense of the reader. They could have been framed only by a nice observation of the human voice and a thorough investigation of the principles which govern it. Knowles, Ewing, and Wright, and those who have written on this subject in our own country, have copied Walker's faults, but our author, after borrowing his leading distinction in the tones of the voice, has proceeded nearly as if Walker had not written on the subject. This was necessary in reducing to system what was without form and void. We may be permitted to suggest however, the query whether Rule V. p. 54, will not lead the student to suppose that tender emotion is always expressed by the rising slide, and whether, if it does give him this impression, it will not mislead. To us it seems that tender emotion is frequently marked by the modulation simply. A case in point will sentence; as, You was paid to fight against Alexander, not to rail at him. be found in the exercises appended turns the voice upwards at the end ofa to the volume No. 104, Epitaph on Mrs. Mason." It is one of the most tender expressions of conjugal affection mourning over the departed object of love that we ever read. Yet it seems to us, tenderness is expressed in this case by modulation rather than by the slides of the voice. So simple seems to us the analysis of vocal inflections we wonder it had not sooner occurred to the teachers of elocution. Some inflections are easily distinguished. Sterne observed the use of the circumflex long before it was noticed by any writer on elocution. He represents Trim as giving this accent to a text and thus perverting its sense. Triin reads, "for we trust we have a good conscience." "Trust Trust we have a good conscience!" "Certainly Trim," quoth my father, interrupting him, "you give that sentence a very improper accent-you read it with such a sneering tone, as if the parson was going to abuse the apostle.' This chapter on inflections our readers will recognise as having appeared before the public in a pamphlet form, under the title "Analysis of Vocal Inflections," in which shape it was favourably received. As it now appears, it is greatly enlarged, and improved. The sentiments advanced by our author on emphasis seem to us founded in truth. EMPHASIS is governed by the laws of sentiment, being inseparably associated with thought and emotion. It is the most important principle, by which elocution is related to the operations of mind. Hence when it stands opposed to the claims of custom or of harmony these always give way to its supremacy. The accent which custom attaches to a word, emphasis may supersede; as we have seen under the foregoing article. Custom requires a cadence at the final pause, but emphasis often Harmony requires the voice to rise, at the pause before the cadence; whereas emphasis sometimes prescribes the falling slide at this pause, to enforce the sense; as, Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven. Now I presume that every one who is at all accustomed to accurate observation on this subject, must be sensible how very little this grand principle is regarded in forming our earliest habits of elocution; and therefore how hopeless are all efforts to correct what is wrong in these habits, without a just knowledge of emphasis. What then is emphasis? Without staying to assign reasons why I am dissatisfied with definitions heretofore given by respectable writers, the following is offered as more complete, in my opinion, than others which I have seen. Emphasis is a distinctive utterance of words which are especially sig. nificant, with such a degree and kind of stress, as conveys their meaning in the best manner. pp. 70, 71. As a specimen of his mode of treating the subject, we quote the following passage. But to show that emphasis attaches itself not to the part of speech, but to the meaning of a word, let one of these little words become important in sense, and then it demands a correspondent stress of voice. We have an example in the two following sentences, ending with the participle so. In one it is used incidentally, and is barely to be spoken distinctly. In the other it is the chief word, and must be spoken forcibly. "And Saul said unto Michal, why hast thou deceived me so?" "Then said the high priest are these things 86?" Another example may show how a change of stress on a particle changes the entire sense of a sentence. In the narrative of Paul's voyage from Troas |