RECITATION FIFTEENTH.

OF THE APPLICATION OF THE VOCAL ELEMENTS, IN EXPRESSING EMOTION.

Loudness.

THIS is appropriate to sentiments of great energy and earnestness, astonishment, exultation, rage, anger, joy, and others.

Feebleness is appropriate to humility, sorrow, penitence, shame, apathy, and other sentiments allied to depression of mind.

The intermediate degrees of force, belong to didactic subjects, from which passion is for the most part, excluded to simple reading, to philosophical, critical, and professional lectures, etc.

Increased rtae of voice.

A moderately quick rate of voice, is appropriate to all cheerful subjects, and such as approach the character of ordinary conversation. A quicker time is required in parentheses, and in sections of discourse, which interrupt the main current of thought;-also in the emotions of anger, joy, mirth, and all the more animating passions.

Slowness of voice, or slow time, on the contrary, is appropriate to all grave, solemn, dignified, and pathetic subjects.

Quality of voice.

Familiar subjects are best expressed by the voice of common conversation, while serious, grand, and solemn ones, require the orotund fullness. In conversation, the voice of most persons is comparatively meagre; it wants sonorous fullness, and seems to issue from the lips.

The impression I receive from it, in some instances in which it seeems particularly determined to the teeth and lips, might be expressed by the term lip bound; and if the condition of the lips be inspected in persons whose voice is marked by the peculiarity I would now designate, they will be found to be more than usually compressed towards the teeth during speech. The voice, in order to sound full, should have free course. To borrow a homely phrase, the gangway should be kept perfectly clear.

Its sonorous character should not be changed by determining its action to the teeth and lips, by partially closing the former, and compressing the latter: or by interfering with its exit, by an improper use of the tongue. When the elements are once formed, the mouth should be freely opened for their explosion. A voice proceeding from their throat, rung upon the roof of the mouth, and having free exit through the teeth, lips, and nose, and little modified by their action, will be most full, sonorous, and agreeable. A nasal twang should be especially avoided. Persons frequently have this, who speak in spectacles, from their impeding the current of air through the nose.

The semitone.

The semitone ought to be exclusively appropriated to plaintive subjects, and only to such as are very conside

rably so. It cannot often be introduced into narrative reading. Pathetic subjects, if not highly plaintive, when read with a grave tone, and with long drawn time, will be sufficiently expressive without the semitone. The pathetic character of the language itself, being enough to produce the desired impression. The semitone, however, is necessary to express grief, and vexation. It is the natural language of lamentation, sorrow, complaint, disappointment, and pity, in their highest degrees. It is appropriate to the penitential parts of supplication; but only to these-not to prayer in the form of requests, The semitone is too much in use, in the pulpit, where it is often combined with a drawl, and a mixture of song; which, certainly, together, constitute a mode of utterance, which can only please those who have their own peculiar associations, to reconcile them to such offence against the laws of agreeable speech. Many persons perform all their religious services, as if under the constant pressure of severe bodily pain.

etc.

The simple melody of speech, is appropriate to all those portions of discourse, where emotion, interrogation, and emphasis, do not intervene, and should never be broken, except for the purpose of expressing these.

The rising slides of the voice, differ in intensity, from the simple suspension of the voice at a comma, up to the sneering octave, in scornful interrogation. The slides, and radical changes, appropriate to interrogation, emphasis, and emotion, are those of a third, a fifth, and an octave. The more intense the slide, the more earnest is the question, and the greater the degree of emotion expressed by it. Persons are less likely to fail in the right expression of interrogation, than in many other points of speech. The

expression of interrogative sentences, is effected by concrete and discrete rises of a third, a fifth, and an octave.

Words of long quantity, in such sentences, become interrogative by a concrete rise, and words that do not admit of extended quantity, acquire the interrogative intonation, by running along the line of the vanishing points of the long concretes, with the simple rise of a second. In instances of very intense and earnest questioning, the short syllables not only begin an octave higher than the long concretes, as just stated, but rise concretely, a third, a fifth, or an octave, in addition. Such combination of radical and concrete rise, is confined, however, to words and sentences of earnest and passionate interrogation. The greater the number of words are on which the interrogative intervals fall, the more intensely earnest the sentence becomes. Vanishing stress, renders interrogation more passionate and emphatic.

'We deem this sufficient on the subject, as the object of this work is exclusively practical. Persons who wish to see the principles of interrogatory sentences more fully discussed, will do well to consult Dr. Rush's " Phisophy of the voice," on that subject. Indeed, on that and all others, connected with the art of speech, the most valuable information will be derived from its perusal nor is it in the slightest degree intended, by the author of this grammar to offer it as a substitute for that profound, original, and ingenious treatise.

The rising radical movements of the voice, are employed in various degrees of intensity, to mark emphasis, condition, and admiration, and, (as has been already observed) interrogation.

The downward movements of the voice, in the various degrees of intensity marked by the descent of a third, a fifth, and an octave, express strong exclusive emphasis, surprise, astonishment, wonder, command, reprehension, denunciatton, positiveness of conviction and determination, indignation, resolve, confidence, satisfaction, defiance, etc.

We refer to examples under emphasis.

Protracted quantity.

Long drawn time, as has been already said, naturally assumes the form of the wave of the second. It is appropriate to subjects of a solemn and grand character, and has been fully treated under its appropriate head. Force.

The use of force, under its various forms, has been already amply specified. So have that of the tremor of the voice, aspiration, and the guttural emphasis.

DRIFT OF VOICE.

Sometimes the use of the same elements of the voice prevails throughout the whole, or certain portions of a discourse, giving a peculiar character or coloring to expression, independent of emphasis, or solitary words. Dr. Rush is the first person who has drawn attention to this department of elocution. See sect. 45, of his Philosophy of the Human Voice.

The diatonic drift, is the most common, and of most extensive application. It consists, principally, of a series of rising tones, with an occasional fall of a second. We have already stated under what circumstances it is applicable. It may be united with more or less of stress