fluency of words, but never known the exercise of thought, or attended to the development of a single proposition? Tell him that he ought to hear what may be said on the other side of the question-he agrees to it, and either begs leave to wind up with a few words more, which he winds and wiredraws without end; or, having paused to hear, hears with impatience a very little, foreknows everything you had further to say, cuts short your argument, and bolts in upon you with-an answer to that argument-? No; with a continuation of his own babble; and, having stifled you with the torrent of his talk, places your contempt to the credit of his own capacity, and foolishly conceives he speaks with reason, because he has not patience to attend to any reasoning but his own. There are also others, whose vivacity of imagination has never felt the trammels of a syllogism. To attempt at hedging in these sciolists, is but lost labour. These talkers are very entertaining, as long as novelties with no meaning can entertain you; they have a great variety of opinions, which, if you oppose, they do not defend, and if you agree with, they desert. Their talk is like the wild notes of birds, amongst which you shall distinguish some of pleasant tone, but out of which you compose no tune or harmony of song. These men would have set down Archimedes for a fool, when he danced for joy at the solution of a proposition, and mistaken Newton for a madman, when, in the surplice which he put on for chapel over night, he was found the next morning, in the same place and posture, fixed in profound meditation on his theory of the prismatic colours. So great is their distate for demonstration, they think no truth is worth the waiting for: the mountain must come to them: they are not by half so complaisant as Mohammed. They are not easily reconciled to truisms, but have no particular objection to impossibilities. For argument they have no ear; it does not touch them; it fetters fancy, and dulls the edge of repartee. If by chance they find themselves in an untenable position, and wit is not at hand to help them out of it, they will take up with a pun, and ride home upon a horse laugh: if they cannot keep their ground, they will not wait to be attacked and driven out of it. Whilst a reasoning man will be picking his way out of a dilemma, they, who never reason at all, jump over it, and land themselves at once upon new ground, where they take an imposing attitude, and escape pursuit. Whatever these men do, whether they talk, or write, or act, it is without deliberation, without consistency, without plan. Having no expanse of mind, they can comprehend only in part; they will promise an epic poem, and produce an epigram. In short they glitter, pass away, and are forgotten; their outset makes a show of mighty things; they stray out of their course into byways and obliquities; and, when out of sight of their contemporaries, are for ever lost to posterity.' EXERCISES IN RHYTHM.'* Rhythm' is, in elocution, the result of that regular and symmetrical movement of the voice, which is caused by the comparatively measured style of rhetorical composition. It implies, also, a just observance of those pauses, whether marked in the punctuation or not, which the sense of a passage demands; and these pauses thus become, like rests in music, portions of the measure and rhythm. It is this last mentioned effect which renders rhythm so important to an easy, fluent, and natural use of the voice, in reading and speaking; suggesting the practice of frequent, slight, but well-timed breathing, instead of the common faulty mode of drawing breath at distant and irregular intervals, and with painful effort. The former of these habits renders public reading and speaking easy, even to persons of feeble health; the latter wears away the organic strength of the most vigorous. The former mode * The word 'rhythm' is used, in elocution, to designate that regulated movement of voice, which exists, in its fully marked form, in the combined effect of the metre and pauses of verse, but which belongs, in degree, to all well-written and well-spoken language, in prose,—in the forms, particularly, of declamation and discourse. preserves the smooth, even flow of voice; the latter breaks the continuity both of sound and sense. Rhythm is, in detail, the regular recurrence of accent, at definite and measured intervals, and may be beat and marked as strictly as in music, if attention is paid to the suspensions of sound by pauses, so as to include them, as well as the actual sounds of the voice, between the beats, as in the bars of music. Every accented syllable is, in elocution, equivalent to the beginning of a bar in music, and may be so marked; thus, | Muse | music | musical | un- | musical |; or, if read with pauses | Muse |, |or|| music |, | or || musical |,| or || un- | musical | The subjoined exercises should be practised with the aid, at first, of beating time at the commencement of every bar, as in music. The rhythm should be, for some time, marked quite strongly with the voice; the beat and the decided marking may be gradually laid aside, as the ear becomes competent to direct itself. But the actual time should never cease to be carefully observed in reading, speaking, and reciting, any more than in music itself. The fact, however, should never be forgotten, that an habitual strong marking of rhythm, is the same fault in elocution as in music. It protrudes what should be a barely perceptible property, and turns an excellence into a defect. A delicate marking of rhythm, is a genuine grace of cultivated elocution, in the reading of verse, and in the language of oratory or of sentiment. The great object of practice, as regards 'time,' is truth, not force. The student of elocution would do well to score numerous passages, for himself, in the manner exemplified as follows. * Every accented monosyllable, in elocutionary rhythm, constitutes a bar; all the unaccented syllables, in a polysyllable, are grouped in the same bar, with the accented syllable. The rule for marking is simply, Place a bar before every accented syllable, wherever found, and before every pause. One or more unaccented syllables are sometimes grouped into the same bar with a pause. For the convenience of marking, a bar is assumed as composed of one quarter or two eighth notes. Verse, or Metrical Accent. Iambic Metre. Blank Verse. * 'Be wise to- | day|;|99|'tis | madness |≈ to de- | fer; Next day the | fatal | precedent will | plead |;|| | Thus | on|,|till | wisdom | is | pushed | out of | life|·|99|99| |≈Pro- | crasti- | naftion | is the | thief|of| time |· |G|99| Year after year | it | steals |, | till | all | are | fled |, | And to the | mercies of a | moment || leaves | | The | vast con- cerns never | is of an e- | ternal | scene |'|99|99|99| Heroic Couplets. springs e- | ternal |in the| human | breast|;|9l soul |, | un- Octosyllabic Couplets. There's nothing | bright |, |a|bove, From | flowers that | bloom to stars But in its light|my| soul can | see | Some feature of thy | Deity | !' | below ||| that | glow |, || Octosyllabic Quatrian Stanza (Long Metre). 'Dear is the | hallowed | morn | to me |, | And When | village | bells | a- | wake the | day |;|9a| by their | sacred | minstrelsy |, | Call me from | earthly | cares away.' Common Metre Stanza. Like children | for some | bauble | fair That | weep them- | selves to |rest |;|| We | part with | life | a | wake ||| and | there The jewel in our | breast!' * The rests are usually 'rhetorical' pauses, or prolongations added to the grammatical pauses indicated by the punctuation. The initial rest represents the slight interval between the first bar and the preceding utterance, whatever that may be. † The half accent in polysyllables, is counted in rhythm as the equivalent of a full accent. Sweet Short Metre Stanza. at the | dawning | light |, | |Thy | boundless | love | to | tell |;| | And when ap- | proach | the | shades of | night |, | Trochaic Measure. 'Now begin the | heavenly | theme |, | | Sing of mercy's | healing | stream |:||99 | Sing of his re- | deeming love ||||99! Re-sides in that | heavenly | word |!|99| Prose Rhythm. Extract from Psalm XXXIII. V. 1. Rejoice in the | Lord |, | Oye | righteous |:| and sing unto him with the psaltery an instrument of | ten | strings |.|99|99|99|3. Sing unto him a new | song |;|| and | play | skilfully | with a | loud | noise |·||| 97 | 4. | ≈ For the word of the Lord | is | right |;|~| and | all his | works are done | in truth|.|99|99|99| 5. ~ He *From the analysis which has been given of rhythm, in conjunction with metrical accent in its principal forms, it may be perceived that, in reading, the prosodial grouping of syllables is subordinate-not predominant-in the audible effect. The common fault in reading verse is caused by inverting this rule; and, when to this defect is added that of omitting the rhythmical pauses, nothing is left to the ear but the mere jingle of the scanning. |